Aquinas on Creation

by Saint Thomas (Aquinas), Steven E. Baldner, Steven Earl Baldner

1997 · PIMS

The immense achievement of Aquinas is to have explained so much of the Christian teaching on creation in philosophical terms. Nearly everything essential to the Christian idea of creation -- the existence of the Creator, the uniqueness of the Creator, the fact that the Creator creates without intermediaries, the fact that the creation is properly out of nothing, the fact that the Creator creates freely -- is not only philosophically comprehensible, according to Aquinas, but also philosophically demonstrable, although it is certainly comprehensible philosophically. For Aquinas, philosophy and theology are perfect working partners: what philosophy can know only incompletely is completed by the revelation of faith. True philosophical knowledge is never rejected by theology, but only perfected and brought to completion.