How Creation Shows God's Power (Aquinas 101)

How should we interpret Biblical accounts of creation? Do they contradict scientific findings for the origins of the universe? In this episode of Aquinas 101: Science and Faith, join Fr. Jordan Schmidt, O.P., a Biblical scholar and Dominican friar from the Province of St. Joseph, as he presents how to interpret Biblical accounts of how the world is created through God's power.

How Creation Shows God's Power (Aquinas 101) - Fr. Jordan Schmidt, O.P.

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This video was made possible through the support of grant #61944 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

*Scripture quotations are from The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

[ThomisticInstitute]

More from Fr. Jordan Schmidt, O.P.'s Aquinas 101 creation series:

[nickkraw]

You guys have a number of excellent videos highlighting the compatibility of religion and science, Catholicism and evolution, the Big Bang Theory, etc. Would you guys mind making a video specifically shredding Father Ripperger’s ridiculous criticism of evolution and non-creationism where he makes an artificial distinction between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ evolution and claims that the entire process is impossible because apparently unchanging Aristotelian essences of various taxonomic categories can’t change as generations evolve? It would be broadly beneficial to many to see you doing so from a Thomistic perspective, given that many narrow minded and naive young Thomists who don’t understand material science are swayed by his rhetoric and literally false claims about the incompleteness of the fossil record and lack of additional evidence for evolution.

[SevenDeMagnus]

Cool, I like the verse "Let there be light".
God bless.

[johnfisher]

God's creation is unfolding and is still in action and will still be in action until the end of time. Natural selection and change through heredity and generation is part of this creative action. For God who is not in time and for whom past present and future are one, this is creation.

[mietteanastacia]

Great video! This helped me deepen my understanding of the subject. I can better explain this to others now :)

[wab]

presence: seraphim
wisdom: cherubim
power: thrones
interesting...

[damo]

That was excellent. As a scientist, thankyou for the dialogue 🙏

[tonygville]

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well in the end. Jesus' words to Julian of Norwich 🙏❤️
My translation, Jesus is saying, I got this 👍💪🙏❤️🙏

[byron]

As Dr. Albert Einstein stated I qoute Whoever invented the Atoms owns the Universe! K

[johnfisher]

St Augustine of Hippo in his commentary on Genesis discusses this question. Putting it simply, if a scriptural seems to contradict known science, science must be accepted. He said those that use scripture to argue against science are causing mockery of Christianity. St Augustine asks if the description of creation in 7 days is figurative? He asks how can there be days in the beginning when there were none? He also derides Christian heretics who twist scripture to prove a flat earth. Something the ancients including Greeks and Romans never ever believed. They knew the world was spherical and even calculated its circumference. One example: Ptolemy the astronomer was a pagan. His theory of heliocentricity was accepted and therefore scripture interpreted in the light of it. Galileo proposed another theory which did not answer the observable change of seasons as his theory did not include elliptical orbits of the planets around the sun. Two theories both with pros and cons. Galileo got into trouble because he proposed a theory as fact and derided anyone who questioned him and raised problems with his theory. He demanded his proposals were not a theory but fact. His instruments he used such as the lenses fir his handmsde telescope were new and doubts temained about the hand made lenses. The Scriptures are not science and that is to be expected. The Scriptures are expressed with the known science of the authors and their times in the background. Scripture is interpreted in the light of the known science of the times in which they are read, heard and understood. There is no divide between science and Christianity. None.

[mers]

Psalm 74 is poetry, Genesis is a historical account, totally different!

[liquidoxygen]

I believe science should be the lens through which we interpret certain aspects of Scripture. In some parts of the text, like the Beatitudes, it has no place (obviously). In other areas, it's useful for determining what should be read as poetic language/where we must look at the simple theological understanding within the text.



There is an account that when Galileo first posited his ideas, churchmen said that they needed to be considered after more evidence *and in light of further scriptural analysis*. I think that's wrong: read the Bible as hard as you want, the observations made by science are, occasionally, going to cause your exegesis to hit a brick wall. In instances like that, direct physical observation should be our guiding light for how to interpret the scriptures, although I'd caution to never try to declare scientific explanations completely infallible. They're always being refined!



Even in the Galileo example, there are many caveats in place. In some sense, yes, of course, the Earth revolved around the Sun. But there is a great deal of nuance to that understanding. From the perspective of ourselves as observers (very important in physics!), the Sun indeed appears to revolve around the Earth: The Earth can accurately be described as motionless and the Sun as circling us from our frame of reference (just as the interior of an automobile traveling at 60 miles per hour can be described as if it were motionless with respect to the objects inside the vehicle, and just as the relative speed of a passing automobile going 70 mph on the ground can accurately be described as going 10 mph with respect to the subject automobile, and just as the book sitting on my shelf can accurately be described as "completely motionless" while in reality it sits on a planet spinning at tremendous speeds).



Moreover, the Earth also necessarily sits at the center of the observable universe, and every point in space can also accurately be described as the "central" or "starting" point from where the Big Bang expanded. In some sense, neither geo- nor heliocentrism are correct, since our solar system orbits the center of our galaxy, and our galaxy in turn takes its specific place in galactic clusters & superclusters. So, in some ways, geocentrism is dead wrong. In other ways, it's correct!



The moral here is that I believe that science should be our guide to the scientific parts of the Scriptures, but also that science does not necessarily warrant a cold or total or complete rejection of old ideas where it appears they should be overturned. Sometimes they are just colored in different lights, and sometimes old beliefs are vindicated in a new sense.



The Pagan perspective is useful here: Pagan sages would advise people that when their myths seemed internally contradictory, that was a signal that there was a deeper mystery lying within the stories that had to be be meditated upon and derived. So too should it be within the Christian tradition and when it comes to apparent conflicts between scientific discovery and the tenets of the Faith.

[antoniopioavallone]

Jesus and the apostles, when they refer to psalms, they speak of the King David. Either Jesus who is God himself, was wrong (and it is absurd if you're christian) or scholars are wrong.

[abelovedchildofgod]

Adam and Eve and genealogy of Jesus Christ are not metaphors.

[yousufnazir]

God is omnipresent and the omnipotent and the omniscient and he created the universe out of nothing genesis and psalm 74 is the little illustration of the word of God as the book of job mentioned the Orion nebula and the Arcturus the neutron stars and leviathan and the behemoth and the infinite number of species as the divine laws of the transcendental secret of God

[germanr]

I would have focuses on Genesis 1 and 2. We often are made fun of for believing God made everything literally in 7 days not for believing God killed dragons and monsters to make the universe.

[classicalliberalarts]

Why would the interpretation of Sacred Scripture be dependent on "scientific" THEORY? This fear of disagreeing with scientists is weak. There is no certainty among experimental scientists. This is embarassing.

[falnica]

If what you say is true, why is it that most ancient Christians, even highly educated ones, believed things that are not compatible with science? Because they believed those things based on what scriptures says

If our understanding of scripture is improved by science then maybe scripture is not as useful as we thought