In about the year 180 a Christian bishop, about whom we know very little, wrote to a pagan about whom we know even less: “God brought everything into being out of what does not exist, so that his greatness might be known as understood through his works.” These words of Theophilus of Antioch may seem to contemporary eyes and ears thoroughly unexceptional as a piece of Christian teaching, but at the time they not only represented something controversial for the entire tradition of Greek philosophy – which provided a terminological background for the foundations of Christian theology – but also introduced something new and original to the very foundations of Christianity. The lecture will address some crucial facts from the history of the development of the conviction that the universe must have come into existence from nothing (ex nihilo).
26 September 2022
How Did We Come to the Conclusion That the Universe Was Created Ex Nihilo?
Lecture Six of the Online Professors Series 2021-2022, with Fr Mariusz Tabaczek, OP, STL, PhD, Professor of Theology, The Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
In about the year 180 a Christian bishop, about whom we know very little, wrote to a pagan about whom we know even less: “God brought everything into being out of what does not exist, so that his greatness might be known as understood through his works.” These words of Theophilus of Antioch may seem to contemporary eyes and ears thoroughly unexceptional as a piece of Christian teaching, but at the time they not only represented something controversial for the entire tradition of Greek philosophy – which provided a terminological background for the foundations of Christian theology – but also introduced something new and original to the very foundations of Christianity. The lecture will address some crucial facts from the history of the development of the conviction that the universe must have come into existence from nothing (ex nihilo).
In about the year 180 a Christian bishop, about whom we know very little, wrote to a pagan about whom we know even less: “God brought everything into being out of what does not exist, so that his greatness might be known as understood through his works.” These words of Theophilus of Antioch may seem to contemporary eyes and ears thoroughly unexceptional as a piece of Christian teaching, but at the time they not only represented something controversial for the entire tradition of Greek philosophy – which provided a terminological background for the foundations of Christian theology – but also introduced something new and original to the very foundations of Christianity. The lecture will address some crucial facts from the history of the development of the conviction that the universe must have come into existence from nothing (ex nihilo).
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