Is it possible for God to accomplish his plan through chance events in the world? This is a key question, not only for a right understanding of the theories of evolution and natural selection, but more generally for experimental science as a whole. Contemporary sciences investigate things in the world -- this is to study them as secondary causes. But philosophy (and faith) can be sure that, whatever science discovers, the kind of causality that a creature has is never in competition with God’s transcendent and primary causality of the world and of every being in it. Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., a Dominican friar from the Province of St. Joseph, explores how God is the source of what science studies.
16 April 2022
Evolution, Natural Selection, and God's Causality
Lesson Thirty-Six of Aquinas 101, with Fr Dominic Legge, OP, JD, STL, STD, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Thomistic Institute.
Is it possible for God to accomplish his plan through chance events in the world? This is a key question, not only for a right understanding of the theories of evolution and natural selection, but more generally for experimental science as a whole. Contemporary sciences investigate things in the world -- this is to study them as secondary causes. But philosophy (and faith) can be sure that, whatever science discovers, the kind of causality that a creature has is never in competition with God’s transcendent and primary causality of the world and of every being in it. Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., a Dominican friar from the Province of St. Joseph, explores how God is the source of what science studies.
Is it possible for God to accomplish his plan through chance events in the world? This is a key question, not only for a right understanding of the theories of evolution and natural selection, but more generally for experimental science as a whole. Contemporary sciences investigate things in the world -- this is to study them as secondary causes. But philosophy (and faith) can be sure that, whatever science discovers, the kind of causality that a creature has is never in competition with God’s transcendent and primary causality of the world and of every being in it. Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., a Dominican friar from the Province of St. Joseph, explores how God is the source of what science studies.
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