Related Videos: Five Ways to Prove God Exists: th-cam.com/video/42Eg6UUBqqo/w-d-xo.html Yes, There is A Theory of Everything: th-cam.com/video/rnzqm09adgM/w-d-xo.html
Catholics believe God is "a unity of three [persons]," which is what the word "trinity" means. So, does the Bible prove that the trinity exists? Not a chance! The God of the Bible has a personal name, which is Yahweh. As he said to Moses: "You are to tell the Israelites, "Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you." This is my name for all time." (Ex. 3:15) Now, is the God of the Bible a trinity? Not according to Catholic theologian Edmund Fortman, who said in his book, "The Triune God": "[The Old Testamemt] tells us nothing explicitly or by necessary implication of a Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we take the New Testament writers together they tell us there is only one God, the creator and lord of the universe, who is the Father of Jesus." Clearly, the God of the Bible is Jesus' Father. As Jesus himself said to his apostles through Mary: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' (John 20:17) So, can Catholics prove from the Bible that a triune deity exists? Absolutely not!!
@@salomonkalou9002 You seem not to have read the Bible at all if you disagree with what I have already said. That explains why you would leave a short comment and then run away. Come back when you have something meaningful to say.
@@salomonkalou9002 As I said before, come back when you have something meaningful to say. I have already proved from the Bible that God is not a trinity. If you disagree, then, prove me wrong. Don't say something silly like, "You seem to have not read Ps. 110:1 and Matt. 28:19," neither of which says or even implies that God is "a unity of three [persons]," which is what the word "trinity" means.
@@salomonkalou9002 Where at Matt. 28:19 does it say or even imply that God is "a unity of three persons," which is what the word "trinity" means? Do you even know what the trinity doctrine says? Apparently not. BTW, you're a pretty ignorant person who makes claims he can't prove. I've asked you multiple times where Matt. 28:19 says or implies that God is a trinity. Instead of answering the question, all you say is, 'Read it again."
This is exactly why I love the Church. It is backed by highly sophisticated philosophical and logical grounds, which are rarely seen in some fundamentalist denominations. I am lucky enough to know this channel. Keep up the good work!
I really like the fact that theists say that their scripture is absolute but in reality the interpretation of their scripture changes in almost every generation. Like in the beginning of this video ( pun intended ) the father mentions the big bang Cosmology when in fact the big bang Cosmology is incompatible with the genesis account of creation allegedly written by the same god who created the universe that we live in Genesis:1 1 In the beginning, God[a] created the heavens and the earth 14 God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of sky to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
@@celestialsatheist1535i think i saw this comment before Interpretation cannot change in Catholicism. It's irrevocable. That alone would disprove your post lol. But for what it's worth, the Church has made no infallible interpretation on it, except on the person of Adam being historical, and the narration referring to an actual event.
@@celestialsatheist1535 here you go. th-cam.com/video/d2Ik1ea8yUI/w-d-xo.html I am not sure if you have heard, but the bible was written in a time before the scientific method even came about. I'm sure no one told you that for that reason, it was not written with the intent to be a science text book. In other words how you believe the world was initially made is irrelevant to the salvation of our soul and the truth of God's existence. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't know that catholics don't read or interpret everything in the bible literally. The Truths and wisdoms expressed in the bible are told in ways that people of the times it written in would understand. They are read and interpreted within that context as much as we have available to know and universal human nature truths. Since our human nature doesn't really change (our tendencies) it can still teach some lessons today. The bigger context as a whole is read and viewed as salvation history. Hope you are willing to look into what that actually means. I would encourage you to maybe check out a bible study called From Genesis to Jesus made by Scott Hahn and St. paul center. It may help. Maybe not. Also, feel free to call in to Catholic Answers and ask questions and even debate them if you want they are much more well formed than most of us here. Best Wishes to you in your search for truth.
@@celestialsatheist1535except... It's not true. Even the Church Fathers such as Augustine - a long time before modern cosmology - knew that the Genesis week of Creation wasn't necessarily meant to be taken literally. If you want to go for a more literalistic approach where six days can be compatible with modern science, maybe you can try the writings of Jewish physicist Gerald L. Schroeder, where he applies General Relativity to the Six Days of Creation, saying that God created over six literal 24-hour days that count as 14 billion years in our timeframe. Just some food for thought.
This has to be the most concise and clearest explanation of Creation I've ever seen. I'm teaching Confirmation right now, and I want to stress that God not only created the universe but keeps all things in existence. I'm going to use the info in this video to explain that to my students. Thank you!
Aquinas 101 production team, the video and lighting of Fr. Legge looks excellent!! Looks like you learned a couple of new tricks in the animation as well. Keep up the good work.
I groan when a profound topic, dealing with the nature of God, creation, time, and ontology receives the most superficial comment imaginable: father looks good, great lighting.
@@marbonifacde it’s important as well. No point in trying to educate people if they can’t hear you for poor audio quality or not understand you for bad illustrations.
Absolutely astonishing work! In trying to meditate and think about God’s creation, I had forgotten that Time itself is a creation. Thank you for your channel and sharing the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who in my mind might very well be the smartest man to ever put pen to paper. May God bless you and the Virgin Mary protect you!
Father Legge, I am so grateful for your work in providing these videos but even more for your stewardship of the Dominican House of Studies. The environment provided for those who study there is so fundamental in the formation of these gifted individuals. Listening to these bright, talented, dedicated men and women uplifts and affirms my faith and trust in God, His Church, and our ability to know Him.
I stumbled across this video about a month ago, and put it on my Watch Later list. I am so glad I finally did watch it. What an amazing explanation! Time to browse the channel for more videos on extremely important topics!
Many claim philosophy has no utility. But everything is based on it. Am glad TI countering the prevalent culture of relativism and liberalism thru this going back to basic videos. Bless you more TI….❤from the Phils
Loved this video. Because I was thinking of this topic today, that we in modern times tend to....anthropromorphis God, if that’s the right term. Not that God isn’t a person in a sense, he’s more of a person then anyone on earth, but we tend to simplify him as an old man in the sky. We seem to have forgotten how complex he truly is.
I prefer St. Augustine's famous formulation: "Everlasting God IN WHOM we live and breathe and have our being" [emphasis added] I believe the universe - Creation, us - exists in the mind of God. Personally, I think this resolves many theological, ethical, philosophical and even scientific dilemmas. God is both Creator and Sustainer. God will be Judge at the end of time.
This is TRULY one of the best explanation/formulation I have ever heard on this topic… thank you so much for sharing this… it is an eye-opener for me… really. A shame our religion teacher couldn’t explain it so well 40 years ago…😞 I need to dig deeper into this and think/meditate… or just be silent and listen for god. Good night everyone, wishing you a blessed new day tomorrow, and stay healthy! Best wishes❤️ Steven
God cannot "windup the universe and let it be" because this would remove his love from the universe. God is love. God created ... loved ... the universe into being. By removing his love, God would deny himself. And God cannot deny himself.
I believe to avoid these misleading concepts we must use apophatic theology (negative theology) terms. Positive statements (cataphatic theology) can only be used as analogous, similar but never to be understood at the same level of analysis as that of the created things, due to our inadequacy to grasp divine things we must speak negatively. Positive terms makes us feel like we understand God in a way, but in the end if we lack the proper virtues we may fall into the trap of "caging" God in human concepts, making idols and false gods in the process.
Aprende, if we lack the proper virtues, however we speak of God, we will entrap ourselves. Put another way, properly speaking of God depends more on our growing in love than on our growing in knowledge which is certainly also required. Truth proceeds from love, truth being divine love. Thanks for your provocative insight.
@@PhilMatous This is true, but we can recognize that positively speaking of God leads to more misunderstandings, because we push our finite understanding of things to the unboundedness of God. We only concieve things as finite, terms like "infinite" for example, can never be fully grasp by us. So to speak about the Love of God, saying that "is not" finite helps us more than just saying he "does" loves you, since we may confuse our finite and bounded love with God's love. Positive theology needs a bunch of apophatic premises to work properly; that's why we often find Thomists say things like we are "not to" understand God's. (insert attribute) in order to make it palatable.
@@tryhardf844 Saint Thomas wasn't a Thomist he was a lover and a seeker of God, that's why he became a Saint, not because he wrote the Summa Theologie. If we want to seek God we won't be trapped into one line of seeing and describing him, we will be humble servants open to him in every single way possible.
What do you mean? 🙂 Let me ask then and try to correct me according to your way. As I've understood there are two (2) things here, 1] God is holding the universe in place or keeping it on it's intended course. 2] God is holding the universe against NOTHINGNESS, because if not, NOTHINGNESS would swallow everything. - as we also know about motion, things at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by force and things in motion will remain motion if acted upon, as well. So what's keeping things in motion is not any invisble hand but because it has always been that way it's just that no force has acted upon it that would change it's course. So, I don't understand what it means by holding them in place. What's holding them in place is the presence of equal opposing forces, or absence of forces. All these natural way to keep things moving or to keep them in their trajectory need no God. - As he said, absolute nothing can't be thought about, it cannot exist. So when it's said god is holding the universe from NOTHINGNESS tha's a self-reflecting act. When you think of nothing since it does not exist it relfects back to the universe itself. There's no Nothing that would SWALLOW the universe. The Universe is all there is.
So basically the difference between deism and theism. Although it is important to highlight _ex nihilo_ because modern materialists always strawman a counterargument to this by insisting something can come from nothing, when that is not at all possible. Hence, Fr. Dominic explains, yes, even gravity is creatio ex nihilo.
*_Brilliant!_* And I'm only halfway through the video. God's act of creation is NOT in the past, but perpendicular to the timeline; just as His cause is from the side instead of behind the past. The Buddhists also have a good handle on the separation of "creaturely" vs. the "divine." The Bible was written in the language of spirit; not human languages. Yet, too many people read only the *_ink_* and miss the *_spirit._* (2 Cor. 3:3-8)
My brother once told me he thought God must be something like a 17th dimension or something. (I still don’t know if he was just trying to rile me up or if he really believed that). I knew he was wrong, obviously, but didn’t know how to respond. But now I can see an answer to his idea….His God is too small. Each dimension: length, height, width and time are elements of creation. If there are some higher dimensions that we are unaware of then even those would simply be additional “creatures”, not the Creator. Now if only I had thought of that thirty years ago when he said that comment…
Great video! The editing and production was very well done. A question pertaining to the interpretation of God's creative acts: does God's sustaining of the universe and reality entail that he is continually creating? I pose this question because the video states clearly that creation is an ongoing activity of God. I don't believe that sustaining and creating can be used interchangably here. God created in the beginning in six literal days, rested on the seventh day, then sustains reality and the universe while at times acting in what we perceive as miracles.
I have to look into it more but I hear that the actual word used way back then was "ages" or "era". Makes more sense for him as he perceives time completely different than us.
The difficulty of imagining a supreme spiritual Being creating matter; which is radically different from it made me think recently about Berkeley solution of this problem.
Everything exists here and now. Everything really is the same moment. There is only one moment in creation. And what you call diferent moments, is really the same moment from diferent points of view.
i am reading a book on the history/philosophy of science, which notes that all the sciences currently point to a creator, no exception. this was a timely video to watch
Interesting material. Thank you! I´m an interfaith UU Christian, and calling myself an empirical theist with Multidisciplinary Philosophy as a basis for Multidisciplinary Theology. While the speaker comfortably discuss God as a higher order cause, the original and necessary one, in terms of Aquinas, I see beyond the merely Thomistic to the need to help raise understanding about spiritual-religious experience, personal effort in spiritual practice, and the human mind, along with emergentism. I´m glad that you Catholics are doing such good work. I look forward to making my own contributions to the dialogue in the spirit of interfaith syncretic Christianity, US-type Civil Rights, UN human rights, and the meaning of Jesus´ legacy in University-based, globalized society in desperate need of sustainability. May Greenpeace type activism inspire us all, as well as Fair Trade and pro-poor Grameen Bank type.
@@elinelcrat8272 That´s you talking, and all you´re really showing is who you are. Still, that´s not saying much at all. It also leaves the real world as bad as it ever was.
I appreciate this video although I’m not a believer in the supernatural. The assertion made at 5:48 that God exists necessarily is one that requires support, it does not stand firmly absent some support. It is no different than suggesting that the universe itself is uncaused. We have evidence of neither, therefore unfortunately the best we can say is “I don’t know” and leave it there.
I was just reading Philo of Alexandria's writing about Creation. He is a pretty interesting Jewish writer I am learning about, from the same time of the life of Jesus, and was influential on early Christians and maybe even the New Testament. For instance I was really interested to read today the same thing I have said many times about how we are "in the image of God" as primarily having to do with the soul's powers of intellect and will, that I probably learned from St John of the Cross, is present already in Philo's writing, he says the important way we are in the image of God is not our body (God is spirit) but the higher aspect of the soul, the mind.
Wonderful. God is present in all things at all times and His power holds all together. His power is out of this world and incomprehensible, He permeates all things.
So Creation is an ongoing process that continues even to this day. I never thought of it like that before. Thank you for opening my mind to different views :)
@@wms72 Didn't he discarded that creation part? his new 'creation' only meant hold in existence, not created in the sense that has a beginning. So everything was already there, he is just holding it in place so they wouldn't go astray from how they themselves inherently intended to move, or did he just contradicted himself there? 🙂
@@wms72 Why use the word creation if god is doing something else? 🙂 Holding against what? I think it's better to say the universe is a self-contained entity that has it's own internal rules than positing a non-existent to which the universe has a tendency to recede, if nothing is holding it. No god needed there. 🙂
One might start to question a tradition because of how much it leans on one man from the middle ages. I personally prefer the theology of many early church fathers Would Abraham be able to recognize this God of first causes?
It is a bit more complicated than that. St. Thomas pulled together the work of earlier theologians in his Summa. In that sense, his achievement was like Euclid's in geometry, creating a synthesis of prior works. Most of these books had been written against prevailing heresies at the writer's time. The result was by the 13th century, a student of theology would not know where to begin. The Summa Theologia solved that. In the process, Aquinas introduced some new language and concepts, drawing on Aristotle and others available in his time.
In the book "The Book: The Realm of Time," Dr Zolb explains that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" can be translated "God chose the universe to order," which He does by the introduction of time more specifically the realm of time which is still being unrolled throughout the cosmos and this is why the universe is still expanding as it slowly succumbs to the realm of time; the prison of us all. Time does not create it is the created as St Augustine points out or as Confucius tells it, "'Time is created, to say you don't have the time to do something is the same as saying you won't do it,' homework procrastinators!"
This is next level... throughout the video, I had to stop it seven to eight times, bcz I had that much ahhaaaa moments.. May God bless Fr Legge n his team... ❤❤❤ Apart from that I loved the new animation tricks which helped to convey the meaning better 😍
Not really the topic of the video, and quite a nitpick, but the pool ball analogy doesn’t work to explain a chaotic view of the universe as an altercation to the deterministic view as in the watch example. The cue ball’s force, angle, and shape will determine the force and angle of the first ball it hits in the break, and that ball will determine the same for all it hits afterward etc. So it’s still a deterministic view, just one that allows the limited perspective of humans to be considered “random”
This presentation sounds very similar to how John Owen describes and given his training and knowledge he likely read Aquinas thoroughly. Though carefully reading Scripture will clue one in pretty quickly too. I like to point to God’s answer to Job that Creation is an ongoing activity.
Here's a question though, if God created the universe out of nothing, is He STILL creating things in our universe in the same way? Are black holes literally God's boom-tube/colider or a path for molecules from Him to us in an act of creation?
Things are created in time and in the nature of our creation we are inside the parameters of time , because matter can’t exist out of time. Since God is not bound to or of time ( the instance of matter-time) he is by potency omnipresent, He is God.
I struggled with the relationship between primary (God) and secondary (natural) causes. I believe the underlying assumption is that effects have logically concommittant efficient causes: primary (one) and secondary (several). This would disspell any contradiction between science and God: when He makes a miracle, it is His cause acting. Including that would have helped.
The material would stand equal to God. He is saying in effect, the universe is identical to god not existing outside of it. 🙂 If god didn't create the world in the sense we use creation, ergo, he didn't created it. 🙂
Causality imposes a time arrow in the subject of the timelessness of God's relationship to "creation". Creation itself implicates God of existing with time. I would argue, God is time, for time is what predicates all other things. This is why we have a hard time defining both time and God. Time is not a simple part of God's creation, it is God acting.
Reading Genesis gives the feeling that there was something other than God; call it “not God.” There was no order to it for anything that is “not God” would be opposite of God; dead, chaotic, etc.
Nothing is created without knowledge wisdom and understanding..... Father and son are one, the same as one. No father, no son. No son can create without a father to create it as one. This world we live was created by the son, whom the father acknowledged as one... this is physical reality created by the son who was like the father as one, yet the father is not physical nor needed to be.
This is where Science and Theology will always break up. There are several theories in Science to account for time creation itself (from prior steady state universe) and also energy (as long as there is vacuum there can be potential energy at the Planck Scale)
Sort of. Yes, there is science relating to nothingness only being an average of nothing and not pure nothingness, ( an absolutely amazing scientific discovery! ), but all that means in this context is that there is always matter in existence within space-time. Theories surrounding the dimension of time always involve some prior state, and so just offset the ultimate question by one degree. Where Science and Theology definitely will always break up is where there is no proof or substantial, measurable evidence, because then it is no longer science by definition but is, again by definition, mysticism. In my own view, Theology is highly over rated and pretty much futile as it attempts to describe the ineffable. Science, on the other hand, can only know the knowable and can only describe what is measurable, and so is just as inept as theology when it comes to speaking of God. Philosophy and mysticism seem a better approach, in that they speak generally in metaphor and are constantly flexible in that they remain always in the business of pondering mystery and what ultimately cannot be fully understood.
Excellent explanation. A being within time and space trying to conceive of the reality of a being outside of time and space is like the 2 dimensional beings of Flatland thinking they "see" a 3-D object, when in actuality they are only grasping the smallest fragment of it that can enter their sensory perception. When you reflect on Biblical excerpts like "how high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts", "tell them that I AM has sent you" or the magnum opus which is the beginning of the Gospel of John, you get a sense how the authors, while inspired by the Holy Spirit and trying to put the truth in intelligible human words, still worked with the restrictions of human comprehension while at the same time illustrated how the manifest reality of God must be what it is for anything else to be. You end up talking in circles if you try too hard to put it into words, because what you're talking about is what is allowing you to talk about it.
Thus, we continually bump up against the limitations of our mental and spiritual autonomy (10-12% brain usage) that God himself bestowed upon us. I wonder whether our next Tower of Babel will be Elon Musk's NeuralLink. What happens when you unlock the power of the other 90% of your brain? Do we all become gods, or even Gods? The prospect both frightens and fascinates me.
In the light of science, philosophy, and critical Biblical exegesis I have found that the fundamentalist/literalist take on creation to be possible only if one does one of the following 1. Simply refuse to think about it at all. 2. Try to explain it away by distorting or cherry picking your facts. 3. Put it all down to some kind of conspiracy.
This is exactly why I ended up as a Catholic and not a Protestant (although I knew that after 2 weeks when I came to faith in Christ), I was also fascinated by Orthodoxy, but I did not find the clarity and unity I found in Catholicism (not the Novus Ordo Church) with Sola Scriptura you simply discard all the philosophical treasures of Historical Christianity. The faith goes beyond scripture, The Logos is also logic and philosophy, it's the full incarnated wisdom of God.
You would do best to set all else beneath the instruction of the Holy Spirit: "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith would not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. "Among the mature, however, we speak a message of wisdom-but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God, which He destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Rather, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.' But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit. "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. "The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ."
After watching this, i still don't get how creatio ex nihilo makes any sense at all. I get that he tries to address it, but saying that creation is a relation of god and everything is ambiguous. Am i missing something on the video?
Thank you for the beautiful video- explaining Thomas at his best. I will certainly be subscribing, as I find his work to be a rich and stimulating synthesis of Aristotle, all of the thinkers inspired by him (as in Avicenna’s contribution to the Quinque Viae as expounded here), as well as a deep spiritual insight. However, seeing your continuing responses to other commenters I cannot help but pick the bone I have with him here, perhaps in the hope that you will take it away. Simply, I do not think that one can see Telos from the outside of the object. I believe in Telos. I even believe that we can see it. I believe that we are all capable of becoming one another’s gardener- that we can, carefully, and with piety, bring one another closer to the flourishing that is the resting point of all our clockwork hearts. But this seeing as much as its enaction has only ever been accomplished by the agape that Thomas himself advocates. The deep empathy of seeing virtue past the creaturely surface. Why does the Catholic establishment persist with its complementarity, as if we finite imbeciles discovering artefacts of infinite hands could know through geometry alone? Why with creaturely biology treat this half holy beast? Moreover, with a method of biology that has since been abandoned by a science that has learned its limits? I am, for the record, neither gay nor a first communioned Catholic. I am only offended by the persistence of a blind spot in an otherwise great thinker that has caused so much cruelty since. Apologies if I come across over forthright. I thank you again sincerely for the video, and in advance for your reply.
If God gives the universe it's initial position and energy, and then it "ticks" without further aid, what was the point of God? If anything we don't understand could have created the universe, why do we assume it's God, and one that comes back to enact miracles, and loves us? We apply human traits to the cause of the universe.
Ok, this way to explain things by analogy makes everything more incomprehensible to me. If every explanation that leads to the conclusion that God exists and how God acts or do things are given as analogies, how not to conclude that God himself is an analogy of something else?
The best theory currently available in physics for explaining the origin of the universe is the Big Bang theory. This theory explains the origin of the universe as emerging suddenly from no material thing. There was nothing, then there was something. This does not say anything about if there was a spiritual substance or not, but it certainly challenges the mind to be open to such a possibility. Of course when you consider other possibilities this is where the argument starts to get interesting.
Related Videos:
Five Ways to Prove God Exists: th-cam.com/video/42Eg6UUBqqo/w-d-xo.html
Yes, There is A Theory of Everything: th-cam.com/video/rnzqm09adgM/w-d-xo.html
Catholics believe God is "a unity of three [persons]," which is what the word "trinity" means. So, does the Bible prove that the trinity exists? Not a chance! The God of the Bible has a personal name, which is Yahweh. As he said to Moses: "You are to tell the Israelites, "Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you." This is my name for all time." (Ex. 3:15)
Now, is the God of the Bible a trinity? Not according to Catholic theologian Edmund Fortman, who said in his book, "The Triune God": "[The Old Testamemt] tells us nothing explicitly or by necessary implication of a Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we take the New Testament writers together they tell us there is only one God, the creator and lord of the universe, who is the Father of Jesus."
Clearly, the God of the Bible is Jesus' Father. As Jesus himself said to his apostles through Mary: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' (John 20:17)
So, can Catholics prove from the Bible that a triune deity exists? Absolutely not!!
@@salomonkalou9002 You seem not to have read the Bible at all if you disagree with what I have already said. That explains why you would leave a short comment and then run away. Come back when you have something meaningful to say.
@@salomonkalou9002 As I said before, come back when you have something meaningful to say. I have already proved from the Bible that God is not a trinity. If you disagree, then, prove me wrong. Don't say something silly like, "You seem to have not read Ps. 110:1 and Matt. 28:19," neither of which says or even implies that God is "a unity of three [persons]," which is what the word "trinity" means.
@@salomonkalou9002 Where at Matt. 28:19 does it say or even imply that God is "a unity of three persons," which is what the word "trinity" means? Do you even know what the trinity doctrine says? Apparently not.
BTW, you're a pretty ignorant person who makes claims he can't prove. I've asked you multiple times where Matt. 28:19 says or implies that God is a trinity. Instead of answering the question, all you say is, 'Read it again."
@@salomonkalou9002 What do Matt. 28:19 and Ps. 110:1 say about God's being tri-personal?
This is exactly why I love the Church. It is backed by highly sophisticated philosophical and logical grounds, which are rarely seen in some fundamentalist denominations. I am lucky enough to know this channel. Keep up the good work!
I really like the fact that theists say that their scripture is absolute but in reality the interpretation of their scripture changes in almost every generation. Like in the beginning of this video ( pun intended ) the father mentions the big bang Cosmology when in fact the big bang Cosmology is incompatible with the genesis account of creation allegedly written by the same god who created the universe that we live in
Genesis:1
1 In the beginning, God[a] created the heavens and the earth
14 God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of sky to give light on the earth”; and it was so.
16 God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.
17 God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the earth,
18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
@@celestialsatheist1535i think i saw this comment before
Interpretation cannot change in Catholicism. It's irrevocable. That alone would disprove your post lol.
But for what it's worth, the Church has made no infallible interpretation on it, except on the person of Adam being historical, and the narration referring to an actual event.
@@celestialsatheist1535 here you go. th-cam.com/video/d2Ik1ea8yUI/w-d-xo.html
I am not sure if you have heard, but the bible was written in a time before the scientific method even came about. I'm sure no one told you that for that reason, it was not written with the intent to be a science text book. In other words how you believe the world was initially made is irrelevant to the salvation of our soul and the truth of God's existence. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't know that catholics don't read or interpret everything in the bible literally. The Truths and wisdoms expressed in the bible are told in ways that people of the times it written in would understand. They are read and interpreted within that context as much as we have available to know and universal human nature truths. Since our human nature doesn't really change (our tendencies) it can still teach some lessons today. The bigger context as a whole is read and viewed as salvation history. Hope you are willing to look into what that actually means. I would encourage you to maybe check out a bible study called From Genesis to Jesus made by Scott Hahn and St. paul center. It may help. Maybe not. Also, feel free to call in to Catholic Answers and ask questions and even debate them if you want they are much more well formed than most of us here. Best Wishes to you in your search for truth.
Studying theology for a few thousand years has its benefits ... :-)
@@celestialsatheist1535except... It's not true. Even the Church Fathers such as Augustine - a long time before modern cosmology - knew that the Genesis week of Creation wasn't necessarily meant to be taken literally.
If you want to go for a more literalistic approach where six days can be compatible with modern science, maybe you can try the writings of Jewish physicist Gerald L. Schroeder, where he applies General Relativity to the Six Days of Creation, saying that God created over six literal 24-hour days that count as 14 billion years in our timeframe. Just some food for thought.
God bless you, father. I don't get tired of listening to this video about creation.
This has to be the most concise and clearest explanation of Creation I've ever seen. I'm teaching Confirmation right now, and I want to stress that God not only created the universe but keeps all things in existence. I'm going to use the info in this video to explain that to my students. Thank you!
Aquinas 101 production team, the video and lighting of Fr. Legge looks excellent!! Looks like you learned a couple of new tricks in the animation as well. Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much! God bless you!
@@ThomisticInstitute
Are you VEGAN? 🌱
I groan when a profound topic, dealing with the nature of God, creation, time, and ontology receives the most superficial comment imaginable: father looks good, great lighting.
@@marbonifacde it’s important as well. No point in trying to educate people if they can’t hear you for poor audio quality or not understand you for bad illustrations.
he is cute asf
Absolutely astonishing work! In trying to meditate and think about God’s creation, I had forgotten that Time itself is a creation. Thank you for your channel and sharing the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who in my mind might very well be the smartest man to ever put pen to paper. May God bless you and the Virgin Mary protect you!
Thanks for watching and for your kind words! May God bless you!
Father Legge, I am so grateful for your work in providing these videos but even more for your stewardship of the Dominican House of Studies. The environment provided for those who study there is so fundamental in the formation of these gifted individuals. Listening to these bright, talented, dedicated men and women uplifts and affirms my faith and trust in God, His Church, and our ability to know Him.
I stumbled across this video about a month ago, and put it on my Watch Later list. I am so glad I finally did watch it. What an amazing explanation! Time to browse the channel for more videos on extremely important topics!
Many claim philosophy has no utility. But everything is based on it. Am glad TI countering the prevalent culture of relativism and liberalism thru this going back to basic videos. Bless you more TI….❤from the Phils
This is a whole book read in few minutes.....thanks for your work
Cheers, thanks for watching! God bless you!
Then is it an interesting book?
Haha the summa theological with annotations is big. It can be very dull but there is also some incredibly fascinating things packed in.
Your videos are so well made, God bless you, I am sure your channel will grow even more
Thanks so much! We're happy you find them helpful. God bless you!
I'm glad you exist!
This was very helpful! I'm guilty of thinking of creation on a timeline and imagined a "time of nothingness". Thank you for your videos!!
The best philosopher ever
I found your channel yesterday... I've probably watched 10 videos by now. Amazing!
That's great to hear! God bless you and welcome aboard!
Loved this video. Because I was thinking of this topic today, that we in modern times tend to....anthropromorphis God, if that’s the right term. Not that God isn’t a person in a sense, he’s more of a person then anyone on earth, but we tend to simplify him as an old man in the sky. We seem to have forgotten how complex he truly is.
Thank you for this beautiful explanation!
Thank you, Thomistic Institute and thank you Saint Thomas Aquinas!
Thanks for watching! God bless you!
I prefer St. Augustine's famous formulation: "Everlasting God IN WHOM we live and breathe and have our being" [emphasis added]
I believe the universe - Creation, us - exists in the mind of God. Personally, I think this resolves many theological, ethical, philosophical and even scientific dilemmas. God is both Creator and Sustainer. God will be Judge at the end of time.
Very instructive and enlightening, thank you.
Excellent video. Thank you for taking on time.
This is TRULY one of the best explanation/formulation I have ever heard on this topic… thank you so much for sharing this… it is an eye-opener for me… really.
A shame our religion teacher couldn’t explain it so well 40 years ago…😞
I need to dig deeper into this and think/meditate… or just be silent and listen for god.
Good night everyone, wishing you a blessed new day tomorrow, and stay healthy!
Best wishes❤️
Steven
@ Steven Rud: Good night to you,too,Steven! And goodday tomorow.Stay healthy as well.God bless!🙏⚘🦋🌿
Now this is a whole new view of god. God isn't a thinking person who created stuff and wants worship. It is rather existence itself.
God cannot "windup the universe and let it be" because this would remove his love from the universe. God is love. God created ... loved ... the universe into being. By removing his love, God would deny himself. And God cannot deny himself.
Why would that remove his love from the Universe? I disagree.
I believe to avoid these misleading concepts we must use apophatic theology (negative theology) terms. Positive statements (cataphatic theology) can only be used as analogous, similar but never to be understood at the same level of analysis as that of the created things, due to our inadequacy to grasp divine things we must speak negatively. Positive terms makes us feel like we understand God in a way, but in the end if we lack the proper virtues we may fall into the trap of "caging" God in human concepts, making idols and false gods in the process.
Aprende, if we lack the proper virtues, however we speak of God, we will entrap ourselves. Put another way, properly speaking of God depends more on our growing in love than on our growing in knowledge which is certainly also required. Truth proceeds from love, truth being divine love. Thanks for your provocative insight.
@@PhilMatous This is true, but we can recognize that positively speaking of God leads to more misunderstandings, because we push our finite understanding of things to the unboundedness of God. We only concieve things as finite, terms like "infinite" for example, can never be fully grasp by us. So to speak about the Love of God, saying that "is not" finite helps us more than just saying he "does" loves you, since we may confuse our finite and bounded love with God's love. Positive theology needs a bunch of apophatic premises to work properly; that's why we often find Thomists say things like we are "not to" understand God's. (insert attribute) in order to make it palatable.
Thomsism is only a smidge of what god really is.Aquinas knew this.
@@tryhardf844 Saint Thomas wasn't a Thomist he was a lover and a seeker of God, that's why he became a Saint, not because he wrote the Summa Theologie. If we want to seek God we won't be trapped into one line of seeing and describing him, we will be humble servants open to him in every single way possible.
What do you mean? 🙂 Let me ask then and try to correct me according to your way. As I've understood there are two (2) things here,
1] God is holding the universe in place or keeping it on it's intended course.
2] God is holding the universe against NOTHINGNESS, because if not, NOTHINGNESS would swallow everything.
- as we also know about motion, things at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by force and things in motion will remain motion if acted upon, as well. So what's keeping things in motion is not any invisble hand but because it has always been that way it's just that no force has acted upon it that would change it's course. So, I don't understand what it means by holding them in place. What's holding them in place is the presence of equal opposing forces, or absence of forces. All these natural way to keep things moving or to keep them in their trajectory need no God.
- As he said, absolute nothing can't be thought about, it cannot exist. So when it's said god is holding the universe from NOTHINGNESS tha's a self-reflecting act. When you think of nothing since it does not exist it relfects back to the universe itself. There's no Nothing that would SWALLOW the universe. The Universe is all there is.
Well...you certainly won a subscriber! Great production value and good explanation!
So glad to hear that! Thanks for watching. God bless you!
So basically the difference between deism and theism. Although it is important to highlight _ex nihilo_ because modern materialists always strawman a counterargument to this by insisting something can come from nothing, when that is not at all possible. Hence, Fr. Dominic explains, yes, even gravity is creatio ex nihilo.
I prefer a debate instead of a monologue regarding the subjects.
Thank you, Fr. Legge.
This videos and others like it at Aquinas 101 is an amazing work. It brings the hard subject of theology to ordinary people.
Theology is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the improbable.
This is great!! Thank you for that! SUBSCRIBED!
Wonderful! So glad you've found this helpful. God bless you!
*_Brilliant!_* And I'm only halfway through the video. God's act of creation is NOT in the past, but perpendicular to the timeline; just as His cause is from the side instead of behind the past. The Buddhists also have a good handle on the separation of "creaturely" vs. the "divine." The Bible was written in the language of spirit; not human languages. Yet, too many people read only the *_ink_* and miss the *_spirit._* (2 Cor. 3:3-8)
You should consider making a
pay pal account avaliable so international donnors can contribute a bit with your project
Fr. Legge, you are the coolest Dominican on the internet, yes, even cooler than Fr. Pine 👍
Not all superheroes wear capes ... but some do. 😎
My brother once told me he thought God must be something like a 17th dimension or something. (I still don’t know if he was just trying to rile me up or if he really believed that). I knew he was wrong, obviously, but didn’t know how to respond. But now I can see an answer to his idea….His God is too small. Each dimension: length, height, width and time are elements of creation. If there are some higher dimensions that we are unaware of then even those would simply be additional “creatures”, not the Creator.
Now if only I had thought of that thirty years ago when he said that comment…
Great video! The editing and production was very well done. A question pertaining to the interpretation of God's creative acts: does God's sustaining of the universe and reality entail that he is continually creating? I pose this question because the video states clearly that creation is an ongoing activity of God. I don't believe that sustaining and creating can be used interchangably here. God created in the beginning in six literal days, rested on the seventh day, then sustains reality and the universe while at times acting in what we perceive as miracles.
I have to look into it more but I hear that the actual word used way back then was "ages" or "era". Makes more sense for him as he perceives time completely different than us.
Thank you.
Whenever you make a choice (of thought, primarily) you are displaying the image of God. Be careful, therefore, in your choices.
Subscribed. Excellent content. Thankyou.
The difficulty of imagining a supreme spiritual Being creating matter; which is radically different from it made me think recently about Berkeley solution of this problem.
What's his solution?
Oh, okay. I remember.
Everything exists here and now. Everything really is the same moment. There is only one moment in creation. And what you call diferent moments, is really the same moment from diferent points of view.
i am reading a book on the history/philosophy of science, which notes that all the sciences currently point to a creator, no exception. this was a timely video to watch
Which science relies on a creator?
A very nice video. I use many TI videos in CCD as they are relatively short, theologically correct, and are enjoyable to watch.
Can I ask what age group? I was thinking about using some but I was worried about it going over the kids head
@@paulceffalio4763 Paul. Seventh and Eight Grade. I also like the fact that it exposes them to religious.
Thank you Father for this precise and concise video. This clip proves that God is always active
I need to watch this about five more times.
Wonderful video! I hope you add Spanish subtitles soon!
Interesting material. Thank you! I´m an interfaith UU Christian, and calling myself an empirical theist with Multidisciplinary Philosophy as a basis for Multidisciplinary Theology. While the speaker comfortably discuss God as a higher order cause, the original and necessary one, in terms of Aquinas, I see beyond the merely Thomistic to the need to help raise understanding about spiritual-religious experience, personal effort in spiritual practice, and the human mind, along with emergentism.
I´m glad that you Catholics are doing such good work. I look forward to making my own contributions to the dialogue in the spirit of interfaith syncretic Christianity, US-type Civil Rights, UN human rights, and the meaning of Jesus´ legacy in University-based, globalized society in desperate need of sustainability. May Greenpeace type activism inspire us all, as well as Fair Trade and pro-poor Grameen Bank type.
You are truly confused.
@@elinelcrat8272 That´s you talking, and all you´re really showing is who you are. Still, that´s not saying much at all. It also leaves the real world as bad as it ever was.
Brillant, as always.
Cheers, and thanks for watching! God bless you!
This is very good!
I appreciate this video although I’m not a believer in the supernatural. The assertion made at 5:48 that God exists necessarily is one that requires support, it does not stand firmly absent some support. It is no different than suggesting that the universe itself is uncaused. We have evidence of neither, therefore unfortunately the best we can say is “I don’t know” and leave it there.
I was just reading Philo of Alexandria's writing about Creation. He is a pretty interesting Jewish writer I am learning about, from the same time of the life of Jesus, and was influential on early Christians and maybe even the New Testament. For instance I was really interested to read today the same thing I have said many times about how we are "in the image of God" as primarily having to do with the soul's powers of intellect and will, that I probably learned from St John of the Cross, is present already in Philo's writing, he says the important way we are in the image of God is not our body (God is spirit) but the higher aspect of the soul, the mind.
Read Sain Augustine commemts on the confessions or The Trinity.
The deeper image of God is: "Mens Notitia Sui and Amor Sui".
Wonderful. God is present in all things at all times and His power holds all together. His power is out of this world and incomprehensible, He permeates all things.
He didn't create them in the sense in how we think about creation, ergo, he did not create the world. 🙂
@@terminusadquem6981 Now you're just playing with words.
@@aclark903
It has merit.
@@terminusadquem6981 Merry Christmas.
@@aclark903
Happy Holidays! 🙂
All you need to do is explain how anything exists outside of space and time -- whatever THAT means -- and you're all set!
Very well done
Fantastic, thank you!
could a video be made on the differences on Aristotle and Thomas and where Aristotle went wrong?
Put Spanish subtitles on this vidéo, please, God bless you and a hug from the Dominican Repúblic 🇩🇴
@Joseph Paez 😂🤗
So Creation is an ongoing process that continues even to this day. I never thought of it like that before. Thank you for opening my mind to different views :)
No. The Universe is in a natural spiral of decay. It's just going to take an unfathomable amount of time for that to happen.
Father didn't say new Creation continues. Father said God continues to hold His creation in existence. The Bible says God rested on the 7th Day.
@@wms72 Yet there are new souls being created all the time, isn't it?
@@wms72
Didn't he discarded that creation part? his new 'creation' only meant hold in existence, not created in the sense that has a beginning. So everything was already there, he is just holding it in place so they wouldn't go astray from how they themselves inherently intended to move, or did he just contradicted himself there? 🙂
@@wms72
Why use the word creation if god is doing something else? 🙂 Holding against what? I think it's better to say the universe is a self-contained entity that has it's own internal rules than positing a non-existent to which the universe has a tendency to recede, if nothing is holding it. No god needed there. 🙂
A differentiation between analogical being and univocal being would have made it clearer.
Great assertions
God is outside and inside of all things. God is before the begining of all things we know. God is truely Holy and Great Always.
Did the church sit around for 12 centuries saying "I wish Aquinas would show up early because we can't have classical theology without him"?
lol
You have a point!
Well, they're Dominicans. St Thomas is their main guy.
One might start to question a tradition because of how much it leans on one man from the middle ages. I personally prefer the theology of many early church fathers
Would Abraham be able to recognize this God of first causes?
It is a bit more complicated than that. St. Thomas pulled together the work of earlier theologians in his Summa. In that sense, his achievement was like Euclid's in geometry, creating a synthesis of prior works. Most of these books had been written against prevailing heresies at the writer's time. The result was by the 13th century, a student of theology would not know where to begin. The Summa Theologia solved that. In the process, Aquinas introduced some new language and concepts, drawing on Aristotle and others available in his time.
In the book "The Book: The Realm of Time," Dr Zolb explains that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" can be translated "God chose the universe to order," which He does by the introduction of time more specifically the realm of time which is still being unrolled throughout the cosmos and this is why the universe is still expanding as it slowly succumbs to the realm of time; the prison of us all. Time does not create it is the created as St Augustine points out or as Confucius tells it, "'Time is created, to say you don't have the time to do something is the same as saying you won't do it,' homework procrastinators!"
This is next level... throughout the video, I had to stop it seven to eight times, bcz I had that much ahhaaaa moments.. May God bless Fr Legge n his team... ❤❤❤
Apart from that I loved the new animation tricks which helped to convey the meaning better 😍
I suggest you join the free course. You get extra readings and podcasts that expand each chapter. I'm following it and it is fantastic.
Glad to hear that the videos and supplemental materials are helping! God bless you both!
Not really the topic of the video, and quite a nitpick, but the pool ball analogy doesn’t work to explain a chaotic view of the universe as an altercation to the deterministic view as in the watch example. The cue ball’s force, angle, and shape will determine the force and angle of the first ball it hits in the break, and that ball will determine the same for all it hits afterward etc. So it’s still a deterministic view, just one that allows the limited perspective of humans to be considered “random”
This is mind blowing
Excellent thank you so much
I like so much thanks
Thanks for watching! May the Lord bless you!
I am not catholic but since I’m baptist I can have a wide range of opinions to choose from medieval theology and scholasticism. thanks great video.
This presentation sounds very similar to how John Owen describes and given his training and knowledge he likely read Aquinas thoroughly. Though carefully reading Scripture will clue one in pretty quickly too. I like to point to God’s answer to Job that Creation is an ongoing activity.
Bottom line: Creation is an everlasting, continuous act, from moment to moment?
What is the next video that includes the Most Holy Trinity to reveal more about God and Creation?
Here's a question though, if God created the universe out of nothing, is He STILL creating things in our universe in the same way? Are black holes literally God's boom-tube/colider or a path for molecules from Him to us in an act of creation?
Thank you.
Things are created in time and in the nature of our creation we are inside the parameters of time , because matter can’t exist out of time. Since God is not bound to or of time ( the instance of matter-time) he is by potency omnipresent, He is God.
I love Edward Feser's 2017 book!
I struggled with the relationship between primary (God) and secondary (natural) causes. I believe the underlying assumption is that effects have logically concommittant efficient causes: primary (one) and secondary (several). This would disspell any contradiction between science and God: when He makes a miracle, it is His cause acting.
Including that would have helped.
The material would stand equal to God. He is saying in effect, the universe is identical to god not existing outside of it. 🙂 If god didn't create the world in the sense we use creation, ergo, he didn't created it. 🙂
@@terminusadquem6981 brilliant, thank you.
Causality imposes a time arrow in the subject of the timelessness of God's relationship to "creation". Creation itself implicates God of existing with time. I would argue, God is time, for time is what predicates all other things. This is why we have a hard time defining both time and God. Time is not a simple part of God's creation, it is God acting.
Ya'll are asking what is creation, but no one ever asks *how* is creation smh.
Reading Genesis gives the feeling that there was something other than God; call it “not God.” There was no order to it for anything that is “not God” would be opposite of God; dead, chaotic, etc.
Thank you so much 🙏🏻
Nothing is created without knowledge wisdom and understanding.....
Father and son are one, the same as one. No father, no son. No son can create without a father to create it as one.
This world we live was created by the son, whom the father acknowledged as one... this is physical reality created by the son who was like the father as one, yet the father is not physical nor needed to be.
Beautifully said and shot. Thank you. May God bless your ministry.
This is where Science and Theology will always break up. There are several theories in Science to account for time creation itself (from prior steady state universe) and also energy (as long as there is vacuum there can be potential energy at the Planck Scale)
Sort of. Yes, there is science relating to nothingness only being an average of nothing and not pure nothingness, ( an absolutely amazing scientific discovery! ), but all that means in this context is that there is always matter in existence within space-time. Theories surrounding the dimension of time always involve some prior state, and so just offset the ultimate question by one degree.
Where Science and Theology definitely will always break up is where there is no proof or substantial, measurable evidence, because then it is no longer science by definition but is, again by definition, mysticism.
In my own view, Theology is highly over rated and pretty much futile as it attempts to describe the ineffable. Science, on the other hand, can only know the knowable and can only describe what is measurable, and so is just as inept as theology when it comes to speaking of God.
Philosophy and mysticism seem a better approach, in that they speak generally in metaphor and are constantly flexible in that they remain always in the business of pondering mystery and what ultimately cannot be fully understood.
Interesting stuff !! Thanks !!! Ironically this teleological point of view syncs with L Ron Hubbard’s “theta” concepts.
Hubbard was a weirdo and a psychopath and has no link with The Divine in fact he was a Satanist
Can I still be a Dominican if I am not that smart and bad at school? Or is that a sign I'm not called to be a Dominican
Thank You Father. May I ask where you are located. Are you attached to a community?
Excellent explanation. A being within time and space trying to conceive of the reality of a being outside of time and space is like the 2 dimensional beings of Flatland thinking they "see" a 3-D object, when in actuality they are only grasping the smallest fragment of it that can enter their sensory perception.
When you reflect on Biblical excerpts like "how high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts", "tell them that I AM has sent you" or the magnum opus which is the beginning of the Gospel of John, you get a sense how the authors, while inspired by the Holy Spirit and trying to put the truth in intelligible human words, still worked with the restrictions of human comprehension while at the same time illustrated how the manifest reality of God must be what it is for anything else to be. You end up talking in circles if you try too hard to put it into words, because what you're talking about is what is allowing you to talk about it.
Thus, we continually bump up against the limitations of our mental and spiritual autonomy (10-12% brain usage) that God himself bestowed upon us. I wonder whether our next Tower of Babel will be Elon Musk's NeuralLink. What happens when you unlock the power of the other 90% of your brain? Do we all become gods, or even Gods? The prospect both frightens and fascinates me.
Speculation vs. Science: A Double-Edged Sword
1. Methodology of Metaphysics
From a linguistic perspective “speculation” and “science” are mere abstract nouns but did Aquinas see fundamental differences and difficulties among assumptions, speculations, hypothesising, verification, falsification, statistics, induction? (Reference A).
2. Methodology of Physics
A Physicist, for example, Julius Mayer, Hermann von Helmholtz, James Joule, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), Clausius, Rankine, Maxwell and, later, Boltzmann (Reference B ), Einstein, Hawking, et al, would state: It is the case that the law of conservation of mass-energy and symmetries hold and in a given isolated and controlled system its total mass-energy is constant and if that total mass-energy is “something greater than zero,” then it neither can turn into “nothing” nor emerge from “nothing” into that “something.”
A Neothomist would claim: The mentioned by the Physicist isolated and controlled system with its greater than zero mass-energy content, i.e., its total mass-energy is sustained or upheld in existence by God.
A Physicist would likely ask the Neothomist then: How do you know that? And a series of nightmares and cold sweat would likely have burdened the Neothomist upon this question.
As a result the Neothomist would usually take his or her
“antique-medieval (language) toys” and retaliate with something like this: I do not play with you and your “scientific toys,” including your speculative mathematical models at extreme micro and macro scales. By this retaliation the Neothomist would effectively revert to an undercover of another metaphysical language game of their (e.g., Dominican Order) choosing.
The Neothomist question: How do you know that your mathematical speculations at the extreme micro or macro levels describe reality? would likely lead to a series of nightmares or at least cold sweats burdening the quality of Physicist’s life.
3. References
A. “Creation isn’t what you think it is! (Aquinas 101),” th-cam.com/video/4o8mGHN9t10/w-d-xo.html, accessed on 17 December 2021
B. IOP Institute of Physics, “The law of conservation of energy,” spark.iop.org/law-conservation-energy#gref, accessed on 17 December 2021
© 2021 Witold Piotr Nowak
In the light of science, philosophy, and critical Biblical exegesis I have found that the fundamentalist/literalist take on creation to be possible only if one does one of the following 1. Simply refuse to think about it at all. 2. Try to explain it away by distorting or cherry picking your facts. 3. Put it all down to some kind of conspiracy.
This is why the question where did God come from is redundant.
The notification turned off by itself. Is TH-cam doing it deliberately?
This is exactly why I ended up as a Catholic and not a Protestant (although I knew that after 2 weeks when I came to faith in Christ), I was also fascinated by Orthodoxy, but I did not find the clarity and unity I found in Catholicism (not the Novus Ordo Church) with Sola Scriptura you simply discard all the philosophical treasures of Historical Christianity. The faith goes beyond scripture, The Logos is also logic and philosophy, it's the full incarnated wisdom of God.
You would do best to set all else beneath the instruction of the Holy Spirit:
"When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith would not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
"Among the mature, however, we speak a message of wisdom-but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God, which He destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Rather, as it is written:
'No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no heart has imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love Him.'
But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit.
"The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
"The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ."
After watching this, i still don't get how creatio ex nihilo makes any sense at all. I get that he tries to address it, but saying that creation is a relation of god and everything is ambiguous. Am i missing something on the video?
Thank you for the beautiful video- explaining Thomas at his best. I will certainly be subscribing, as I find his work to be a rich and stimulating synthesis of Aristotle, all of the thinkers inspired by him (as in Avicenna’s contribution to the Quinque Viae as expounded here), as well as a deep spiritual insight.
However, seeing your continuing responses to other commenters I cannot help but pick the bone I have with him here, perhaps in the hope that you will take it away.
Simply, I do not think that one can see Telos from the outside of the object.
I believe in Telos. I even believe that we can see it. I believe that we are all capable of becoming one another’s gardener- that we can, carefully, and with piety, bring one another closer to the flourishing that is the resting point of all our clockwork hearts.
But this seeing as much as its enaction has only ever been accomplished by the agape that Thomas himself advocates. The deep empathy of seeing virtue past the creaturely surface.
Why does the Catholic establishment persist with its complementarity, as if we finite imbeciles discovering artefacts of infinite hands could know through geometry alone? Why with creaturely biology treat this half holy beast? Moreover, with a method of biology that has since been abandoned by a science that has learned its limits?
I am, for the record, neither gay nor a first communioned Catholic. I am only offended by the persistence of a blind spot in an otherwise great thinker that has caused so much cruelty since.
Apologies if I come across over forthright. I thank you again sincerely for the video, and in advance for your reply.
If God gives the universe it's initial position and energy, and then it "ticks" without further aid, what was the point of God? If anything we don't understand could have created the universe, why do we assume it's God, and one that comes back to enact miracles, and loves us? We apply human traits to the cause of the universe.
Ok, this way to explain things by analogy makes everything more incomprehensible to me. If every explanation that leads to the conclusion that God exists and how God acts or do things are given as analogies, how not to conclude that God himself is an analogy of something else?
Ipsum esse subsistens: Being itself which subsists, subsisting Being itself (no subject, no potency, pure actuality), el mismo Ser subsistente
The best theory currently available in physics for explaining the origin of the universe is the Big Bang theory. This theory explains the origin of the universe as emerging suddenly from no material thing. There was nothing, then there was something. This does not say anything about if there was a spiritual substance or not, but it certainly challenges the mind to be open to such a possibility. Of course when you consider other possibilities this is where the argument starts to get interesting.
Actually the big big theory is much more complex then that with matter existing in certain states before inflation.
Genesis 1:1