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!
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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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
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.
*_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)
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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”
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. 🙂
Aquinas was a genius IMO. Created causality is nothing but another property of creation, it's not the cause of creation. Even if Darwinian evolution were true, it would still be just a descriptive mechanism of how creation looks from left to right, not from inside out. It took quantum physics for us to learn that not only space but time also is quantized and that every moment in time is created from here to the next one. Time doesn't just exist. It is being summoned into existence. If spacetime is a grid, then pure nothingness is the transition from one sector in the grid to its neighbour. Every object that moves through this grid necessarily goes through multiple nothingness-es only to reemerge existing within the neighboring sector. This process requires recreation every time it happens and it happens all the time, as nothing stays still.
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.
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
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.
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?
"Creation is not an event in time. Rather, time itself is part of creation i.e. time is (always) being created by God." (Paraphrasing). As someone who got sucked into the New Atheist trend (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) for a while as an adolescent, it always amazes me to see something like this and reflect on how shallow the New Atheists’ understanding of Christianity really was. I heard a thousand times that "even if God created the universe, it’s still necessary to explain what created God, and thus the existence of God has little explanatory power in relation to the existence of the universe" and even thought this was a good argument. But it’s a total strawman. Christians don’t believe that God CREATED the world (past-tense), rather that He is the ontological ground of Creation itself. But seeing as scientistic currents of thought like New Atheism have basically no concept of ontology, it’s not surprising that such errors were made.
@@brunonascimentolima5971 th-cam.com/video/KYXPIy3MzoM/w-d-xo.html this video of Bishop Robert Barron critiquing Stephen Hawking's own critique of religion comes to mind. Interestingly enough, my own readings of the atheist philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche each greatly contributed to my disillusionment with new atheism. This is because both of them, though atheist, actually take Christianity seriously and understand something of the Christian worldview. Much of Nietzsche's work in particular is focused on understanding the implications of the "Death of God" which is his metaphor for the decreasing relevance of Christian theology to the modern Western understanding of the world. He understood that Christianity had been the theoretical-ideological foundation of Western society's understanding of itself, the wider world and the human condition for over a millennium and explained how the progressive secularization of Western society was leaving a gaping hole in this understanding that would need to be filled by something else. Once you are exposed to ideas like this it's really hard to be satisfied with new atheism, which pretends like Christianity had merely been 50% childish superstition and 50% precursor to modern secular science. Science has not filled the void Christianity left, and New Atheism thinks otherwise only because it fails to grasp what Christianity actually was/is.
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.
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 one of the reasons I can't believe any religion. All these people claiming to understand an invisible, intangible, unproveable entity who cannot be proven to have ever interacted with the universe. Hogwash.
Similarly to how we come to know aspects of each other by voluntarily divulging personal information to one another. It is better explained by the Apostle Paul: "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."--1 Corinthians 2
@@thomasdykstra100 these are all claims you make. I have reason to believe that you exist, because I see what you have written. If godcis speaking to me, it is not nearly as evident.
Also, was Aquinas an Avicennan? Did his distinction between God and creatures borrow from Avicenna's distinction between Necessary Existent and possible existents?
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.
What, then, is to be made of physics, especially the theory of relativity, which models times a being another spatial dimension similar to a graph in which the past, present, and future all exist at the same time? And what about Newtonian physics which is just a little further behind say that everything that happens has a predictable cause and a predictable effect in the future? The only possible rebuttal today might be through quantum mechanics.
We should not assume the theory of relativity's conceptualization of the four-dimensional "block universe" implies the simultaneity of past, present and future in reality. Time remains the measure of prior and posterity in motion according to before and after. That Einsteinian spacetime amalgamates time and space into a geometrical whole does not disrupt this. And as for Newtonian mechanics, its account of deterministic causality aligns well with secondary causality at the level of physical interaction, without excluding the primacy of God's universal causality. However, quantum indeterminacy, if truly intrinsic rather than epistemic, may demand a revised understanding of how divine and secondary causes relate at the subatomic scale.
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.
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?
To me, this whole argument almost seems similar to how scientists describe the method by which reality came into existence, being preceded by a persistent yet timeless nothingness. The only difference is it's actually satisfying and ultimately meaningful.
Some modern Engish Bibles translate Genesis 1:1-3 differently from the older ones. For example, in the JPS translation: When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. In this case, it's creation from chaos rather than creation from nothing. (Rashi already in the 11th century suggested that verse 1 was not a complete sentence, just a temporal clause.)
This is another one of those cases where the Hebrew is very difficult to understand, therefor difficult to translate. The great Hebrew scholar Robert Sacks, in his masterful commentary on Genesis, writes "It is somewhat embarrassing for a commentator to confess that he does not even understand the first line of the book he has chosen." Augustine wrote a book on the 'literal' meaning of Genesis as a result of his attempts to refute the Gnostic attacks on Genesis, decided it was insufficient, made a second attempt that he abandoned, then wrote a third. Alas, he was doing his best without having much understanding of Hebrew, which critically handicapped him. Even so, there is much of worth to be found in his struggles. 'Tohu v' bohu' is yet another one of those expressions that is rarely used, and typically as an expression of the uttermost horror and dismay. Realizing that understanding the text revolved around understanding what it meant, and after considerable research looking at the creation myths of other cultures (hoping some independent detail(s) were remembered about the subject), I found that the very concept of chaos had shifted over the millennia to our present notion of chaos as disorder. The word comes from 'chasm', a great empty abyss. Nothingness. The very meaning of the word 'void' in its most straightforward sense; nothing there. So what about 'tahoom', the 'deep'? There is a word used in modern Hebrew for infinite, which is 'tahoomy'. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser; the sea is not infinite. Was the ocean being used as a symbol for some limitless, surging depth? What about the 'face of the waters'? I came across a midrash in which is was said that there were only two things before Creation, the Holy Spirit of G-d and the 'waters', yet the rabbis had already figured out that nothing comes into existence without G-d speaking them into existence. Absolutely nothing. They were very troubled by this seeming contradiction. Not the tiny earth, and not its tiny seas. They understood that creation started with 'BE, LIGHT!' and not before. They could not figure out how to reconcile these things. My first big breakthrough was to figure out that, seeing that Genesis 1 was all about the steps G-d took to bring into being a place where humans could live, each instance of 'speaking' into existence that which was missing, starting with the most fundamental things, laid down brick on top of brick, and realizing the prologue at the beginning of John 1 was a commentary or revelation of Genesis 1, and looking at what 'tohu' and 'bohu' meant, it was finally clear. 'Tohu v' bohu' in this context meant 'the nothing of nothings', a wonderful way of saying that our planet did not exist at all. The first several 'verses' (no verses in the original text, remember, and no punctutation either!) was just one big run-on sentence. Rashi was right, but his conclusion was wrong. So what of the waters? And what is the Breath of G-d doing on the 'face of the waters'? I understood that what we call the Holy Spirit could perhaps be more accurately described as 'the Life of G-d', so we could name the Most Holy Trinity the Origin and Decider of All Existence (Father), the Word of the Origin and the Life of the Origin. Early theologians understood that the Word is always carried by the Breath; they cannot be separated. Then I finally remembered that fellow that said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as Scripture has said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." In a desert culture, there are three primary symbols of life; spirit (breath), water, and blood. D'oh! As someone born and raised in the desert, I should have picked up on that right away, instead of taking years to figure it out. The 'waters' and the 'breath' in Genesis are both used of the Life of G-d, being used in a very interesting juxtaposition. Alas, I am a PAINFULLY slow typist (my top speed is no more than 30 mistakes a minute), and it is the week before Christmas, and I must break off; I will conclude by saying that the Hebrew of Genesis one is far more consistent with classic Christian theology than seems apparent in our translations.
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.
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!
God bless you, father. I don't get tired of listening to this video about creation.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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 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.
I'm glad you exist!
The best philosopher ever
Thank you, Thomistic Institute and thank you Saint Thomas Aquinas!
Thanks for watching! God bless you!
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.
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.
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!
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!!
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.
Thank you for this beautiful explanation!
Whenever you make a choice (of thought, primarily) you are displaying the image of God. Be careful, therefore, in your choices.
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!
Very instructive and enlightening, thank you.
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…
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.
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!🙏⚘🦋🌿
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.
Excellent video. Thank you for taking on time.
*_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)
I need to watch this about five more times.
You should consider making a
pay pal account avaliable so international donnors can contribute a bit with your project
I prefer a debate instead of a monologue regarding the subjects.
All you need to do is explain how anything exists outside of space and time -- whatever THAT means -- and you're all set!
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.
Ya'll are asking what is creation, but no one ever asks *how* is creation smh.
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 why the question where did God come from is redundant.
Bottom line: Creation is an everlasting, continuous act, from moment to moment?
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.
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.
This is very good!
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.
Thank you, Fr. Legge.
could a video be made on the differences on Aristotle and Thomas and where Aristotle went wrong?
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?
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.
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
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! 🙂
I like so much thanks
Thanks for watching! May the Lord bless you!
Brillant, as always.
Cheers, and thanks for watching! God bless you!
This is great!! Thank you for that! SUBSCRIBED!
Wonderful! So glad you've found this helpful. God bless you!
Very well done
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."
Well...you certainly won a subscriber! Great production value and good explanation!
So glad to hear that! Thanks for watching. God bless you!
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.
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.
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”
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.
Aquinas was a genius IMO. Created causality is nothing but another property of creation, it's not the cause of creation. Even if Darwinian evolution were true, it would still be just a descriptive mechanism of how creation looks from left to right, not from inside out.
It took quantum physics for us to learn that not only space but time also is quantized and that every moment in time is created from here to the next one. Time doesn't just exist. It is being summoned into existence. If spacetime is a grid, then pure nothingness is the transition from one sector in the grid to its neighbour. Every object that moves through this grid necessarily goes through multiple nothingness-es only to reemerge existing within the neighboring sector. This process requires recreation every time it happens and it happens all the time, as nothing stays still.
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.
What is the next video that includes the Most Holy Trinity to reveal more about God and Creation?
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?
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.
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?
Fantastic, thank you!
Thank you Father for this precise and concise video. This clip proves that God is always active
"Creation is not an event in time. Rather, time itself is part of creation i.e. time is (always) being created by God." (Paraphrasing). As someone who got sucked into the New Atheist trend (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) for a while as an adolescent, it always amazes me to see something like this and reflect on how shallow the New Atheists’ understanding of Christianity really was. I heard a thousand times that "even if God created the universe, it’s still necessary to explain what created God, and thus the existence of God has little explanatory power in relation to the existence of the universe" and even thought this was a good argument. But it’s a total strawman. Christians don’t believe that God CREATED the world (past-tense), rather that He is the ontological ground of Creation itself. But seeing as scientistic currents of thought like New Atheism have basically no concept of ontology, it’s not surprising that such errors were made.
Could you please tell me some of the material that made you realize new age atheism's shallowness? It would be of great help
@@brunonascimentolima5971 th-cam.com/video/KYXPIy3MzoM/w-d-xo.html this video of Bishop Robert Barron critiquing Stephen Hawking's own critique of religion comes to mind. Interestingly enough, my own readings of the atheist philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche each greatly contributed to my disillusionment with new atheism. This is because both of them, though atheist, actually take Christianity seriously and understand something of the Christian worldview. Much of Nietzsche's work in particular is focused on understanding the implications of the "Death of God" which is his metaphor for the decreasing relevance of Christian theology to the modern Western understanding of the world. He understood that Christianity had been the theoretical-ideological foundation of Western society's understanding of itself, the wider world and the human condition for over a millennium and explained how the progressive secularization of Western society was leaving a gaping hole in this understanding that would need to be filled by something else. Once you are exposed to ideas like this it's really hard to be satisfied with new atheism, which pretends like Christianity had merely been 50% childish superstition and 50% precursor to modern secular science. Science has not filled the void Christianity left, and New Atheism thinks otherwise only because it fails to grasp what Christianity actually was/is.
A differentiation between analogical being and univocal being would have made it clearer.
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.
Thank you.
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.
One wonders how it is that humans could come to know all of these aspects of god.
This is one of the reasons I can't believe any religion. All these people claiming to understand an invisible, intangible, unproveable entity who cannot be proven to have ever interacted with the universe. Hogwash.
Similarly to how we come to know aspects of each other by voluntarily divulging personal information to one another. It is better explained by the Apostle Paul:
"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."--1 Corinthians 2
@@matthewgordon3281 , you have God's own personal Witness in the presence of your conscience...
@@thomasdykstra100 these are all claims you make.
I have reason to believe that you exist, because I see what you have written. If godcis speaking to me, it is not nearly as evident.
@@thomasdykstra100 you can't prove your delusion.
there is no other way of explaining our existence except for eternal creator. infinite number universe made from not eternal materials not possible.
Thank You Father. May I ask where you are located. Are you attached to a community?
How can I help the channel?
Ipsum esse subsistens: Being itself which subsists, subsisting Being itself (no subject, no potency, pure actuality), el mismo Ser subsistente
Also, was Aquinas an Avicennan? Did his distinction between God and creatures borrow from Avicenna's distinction between Necessary Existent and possible existents?
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.
Put Spanish subtitles on this vidéo, please, God bless you and a hug from the Dominican Repúblic 🇩🇴
@Joseph Paez 😂🤗
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.
The notification turned off by itself. Is TH-cam doing it deliberately?
Great assertions
What, then, is to be made of physics, especially the theory of relativity, which models times a being another spatial dimension similar to a graph in which the past, present, and future all exist at the same time? And what about Newtonian physics which is just a little further behind say that everything that happens has a predictable cause and a predictable effect in the future? The only possible rebuttal today might be through quantum mechanics.
We should not assume the theory of relativity's conceptualization of the four-dimensional "block universe" implies the simultaneity of past, present and future in reality. Time remains the measure of prior and posterity in motion according to before and after. That Einsteinian spacetime amalgamates time and space into a geometrical whole does not disrupt this. And as for Newtonian mechanics, its account of deterministic causality aligns well with secondary causality at the level of physical interaction, without excluding the primacy of God's universal causality. However, quantum indeterminacy, if truly intrinsic rather than epistemic, may demand a revised understanding of how divine and secondary causes relate at the subatomic scale.
Subscribed. Excellent content. Thankyou.
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".
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?
To me, this whole argument almost seems similar to how scientists describe the method by which reality came into existence, being preceded by a persistent yet timeless nothingness. The only difference is it's actually satisfying and ultimately meaningful.
I love Edward Feser's 2017 book!
Excellent thank you so much
So a creation is an act the that leads to formation.
Wonderful video! I hope you add Spanish subtitles soon!
Some modern Engish Bibles translate Genesis 1:1-3 differently from the older ones. For example, in the JPS translation: When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
In this case, it's creation from chaos rather than creation from nothing. (Rashi already in the 11th century suggested that verse 1 was not a complete sentence, just a temporal clause.)
This is another one of those cases where the Hebrew is very difficult to understand, therefor difficult to translate. The great Hebrew scholar Robert Sacks, in his masterful commentary on Genesis, writes "It is somewhat embarrassing for a commentator to confess that he does not even understand the first line of the book he has chosen." Augustine wrote a book on the 'literal' meaning of Genesis as a result of his attempts to refute the Gnostic attacks on Genesis, decided it was insufficient, made a second attempt that he abandoned, then wrote a third. Alas, he was doing his best without having much understanding of Hebrew, which critically handicapped him. Even so, there is much of worth to be found in his struggles. 'Tohu v' bohu' is yet another one of those expressions that is rarely used, and typically as an expression of the uttermost horror and dismay. Realizing that understanding the text revolved around understanding what it meant, and after considerable research looking at the creation myths of other cultures (hoping some independent detail(s) were remembered about the subject), I found that the very concept of chaos had shifted over the millennia to our present notion of chaos as disorder. The word comes from 'chasm', a great empty abyss. Nothingness. The very meaning of the word 'void' in its most straightforward sense; nothing there. So what about 'tahoom', the 'deep'? There is a word used in modern Hebrew for infinite, which is 'tahoomy'. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser; the sea is not infinite. Was the ocean being used as a symbol for some limitless, surging depth? What about the 'face of the waters'? I came across a midrash in which is was said that there were only two things before Creation, the Holy Spirit of G-d and the 'waters', yet the rabbis had already figured out that nothing comes into existence without G-d speaking them into existence. Absolutely nothing. They were very troubled by this seeming contradiction. Not the tiny earth, and not its tiny seas. They understood that creation started with 'BE, LIGHT!' and not before. They could not figure out how to reconcile these things. My first big breakthrough was to figure out that, seeing that Genesis 1 was all about the steps G-d took to bring into being a place where humans could live, each instance of 'speaking' into existence that which was missing, starting with the most fundamental things, laid down brick on top of brick, and realizing the prologue at the beginning of John 1 was a commentary or revelation of Genesis 1, and looking at what 'tohu' and 'bohu' meant, it was finally clear. 'Tohu v' bohu' in this context meant 'the nothing of nothings', a wonderful way of saying that our planet did not exist at all. The first several 'verses' (no verses in the original text, remember, and no punctutation either!) was just one big run-on sentence. Rashi was right, but his conclusion was wrong. So what of the waters? And what is the Breath of G-d doing on the 'face of the waters'? I understood that what we call the Holy Spirit could perhaps be more accurately described as 'the Life of G-d', so we could name the Most Holy Trinity the Origin and Decider of All Existence (Father), the Word of the Origin and the Life of the Origin. Early theologians understood that the Word is always carried by the Breath; they cannot be separated. Then I finally remembered that fellow that said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as Scripture has said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." In a desert culture, there are three primary symbols of life; spirit (breath), water, and blood. D'oh! As someone born and raised in the desert, I should have picked up on that right away, instead of taking years to figure it out. The 'waters' and the 'breath' in Genesis are both used of the Life of G-d, being used in a very interesting juxtaposition. Alas, I am a PAINFULLY slow typist (my top speed is no more than 30 mistakes a minute), and it is the week before Christmas, and I must break off; I will conclude by saying that the Hebrew of Genesis one is far more consistent with classic Christian theology than seems apparent in our translations.
@@jamesgillaspie2338 Very interesting essay.
Science says how it was created it or how it operates
Faith says who created it or who ordained its procedure of operation
This is mind blowing
Absolutely brilliant. This friar is awesome intelligent.
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