During a break earlier today I read through an excerpt from Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences (using the Penguin Classics translation by Relph McInerny).
A nice find, but I’m not sure it’s terribly powerful against creationism.
“So, you can’t talk about a tree without first talking about the ground, doesn’t make sense. But the example he gives is that you can’t talk about the earth without talking about the stars… I’m not sure what he means by that actually.”
What he means is not that “you can’t talk about the earth without talking about the stars,” but rather, he’s saying that it’s unfitting to hold or express (“say”) the position that God addressed the creation of the lesser (the earth) before the greater (the stars).
It is interesting, but I would generally agree, and it suffers from the overarching problem of developing a certain philosophical perspective first, and then concluding that the Bible can't mean what it sounds like it is saying because my philosophy would prohibit it. As I told students, if Genesis actually said "and on day two, God made angels and cows, and on day three he made chickens", they would all accept that, they would not insist that there must be some sort of problem with the text.
A nice find, but I’m not sure it’s terribly powerful against creationism.
“So, you can’t talk about a tree without first talking about the ground, doesn’t make sense. But the example he gives is that you can’t talk about the earth without talking about the stars… I’m not sure what he means by that actually.”
What he means is not that “you can’t talk about the earth without talking about the stars,” but rather, he’s saying that it’s unfitting to hold or express (“say”) the position that God addressed the creation of the lesser (the earth) before the greater (the stars).
It is interesting, but I would generally agree, and it suffers from the overarching problem of developing a certain philosophical perspective first, and then concluding that the Bible can't mean what it sounds like it is saying because my philosophy would prohibit it. As I told students, if Genesis actually said "and on day two, God made angels and cows, and on day three he made chickens", they would all accept that, they would not insist that there must be some sort of problem with the text.