Evolution in Creation
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 01 Nov 2008 at 07:37 pm | Tagged as: Miscellaneous
Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI addressed the members of the Pontifical Academy of Science as they gathered in Rome for their plenary session and an international conference entitled “Scientific Insight into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life.” Among those attending the Pope’s audience was the world-famous mathematician and physicist Stephen Hawking (pictured above). What catches our eye is that, in his address, the Holy Father drew on the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas to outline an understanding of creation that underscores God’s continued relationship with created being.
The whole text is worth reading, of course, but it’s nice to see Aquinas here still going to bat for the Church and her teaching.
To state that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments is the provident wisdom of the Creator is not to say that creation has only to do with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. It implies, rather, that the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously. Thomas Aquinas taught that the notion of creation must transcend the horizontal origin of the unfolding of events, which is history, and consequently all our purely naturalistic ways of thinking and speaking about the evolution of the world. Thomas observed that creation is neither a movement nor a mutation. It is instead the foundational and continuing relationship that links the creature to the Creator, for he is the cause of every being and all becoming (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q.45, a. 3).
The proceedings of the conference will certainly provide excellent prep for our upcoming St. Albert’s Day Lecture.