St. Thomas Aquinas: Eternity of the World
De Aeternitate Mundi.
Aristotle believed the world had always existed. Thomas believed it false. The Bible tells us so. It cannot be proved by reasoning alone that the world did not exist from eternity. Createdness has to do with total and radical dependence on god as first cause of all things – a separate issue from the world’s having a beginning. There is nothing incoherent in the idea of a created eternal world. That the world began is a matter of faith, not something that can be proved. Agreement and disagreement with opponents: If someone holds that something beside God could have always existed, in the sense that there could be something always existing and yet not made by God, then we differ with him. If it be impossible that something caused by God has always existed, it will be so either because God could not make something that has always existed or because such a thing could not be made, regardless of God’s ability to make it.
In view of his infinite power, God could have made something that has always existed. That the world began is a matter of faith, not something that can be proved. Thomas: The world in which we find ourselves doesn’t just exist, inexplicably, for no reason or by chance. Josef Pieper, a great exponent of Thomas, the key to his thought more or less hidden lies in the idea of creation, the idea that nothing exists which is not created – except the Creator himself.
