Yale University
A seminar series by Prof. William E. Carroll (Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and Wuhan University)
Series Part One of Four
Monday, October 14th
7:30PM
This seminar is free. Space is limited, and registration is required. To register, contact rmarisseau@dhs.edu
Seminar Abstract:
Central to almost all of Thomas Aquinas's philosophy and theology is his understanding of what it means to be created. One of his important contributions in this respect is the distinction he draws between creation understood philosophically, in the discipline of metaphysics, and creation understood theologically, based on faith. As he notes, "not only does faith hold that there is creation, reason also demonstrates creation." This four-week seminar will be a discussion of crucial texts from Thomas's analysis of what it means to affirm that all that is, in whatever way or ways anything is, is created by God. How does reason demonstrate that all things that exist are created? If God is the cause of all that is, how can there be other causes in the created order: causes discovered in the natural sciences as well as human free will? What is the relationship between the metaphysical and theological senses of creation?
About the Speaker:
Professor William E. Carroll has recently retired from research and teaching at the Aquinas Institute of Blackfriars in the University of Oxford. For the past two years he has been a Visiting Professor at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Wuhan, China), and at the Hongyi Honor College of Wuhan University. He is a European intellectual historian and historian of science whose research and teaching concern: 1) the reception of Aristotelian science in mediaeval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and the development of the doctrine of creation, and 2) the encounter between Galileo and the Inquisition. He has also written extensively on the ways in which mediaeval discussions of the relationship among the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology can be useful in contemporary questions arising from developments in biology and cosmology.
He is the author of four books: Aquinas on Creation; La Creación y las Ciencias Naturales: Actualidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino; Galileo: Science and Faith; and Creation and Science (with translations in Slovak, Spanish, and Chinese). His published work has appeared in 12 languages.
Over many years he has written more than 25 op-ed pieces for Public Discourse, the web site of the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton.