THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 95
Cosmic background radiation
provides evidence of the “Big Bang”
that started the universe, but we can
still argue, like Aquinas, that this was
not the only possible way for it to exist.
remained faithful to the Church’s
teachings, but this did not prevent
his thought from almost being
condemned as heretical shortly
after his death. The great thinkers
and teachers of the following
century, such as the secular
philosopher Henry of Ghent, and
the Franciscans John Duns Scotus
and William of Ockham, were all
far more willing to say that purely
philosophical reasoning, as best
represented by Aristotle’s
arguments, is often mistaken.
Scotus thought that Aquinas’s
Aristotelian view of the soul was
inadequate, and Ockham rejected
Aristotle’s account of knowledge
almost entirely. Henry of Ghent
explicitly criticized Aquinas’s view
that God could have created a
universe that always exists. If it
always existed, he argued, there
would be no possibility of its not
existing, and so God would not
have been free to create or not
create it. Aquinas’s supreme
confidence in the power of reason
meant that he had more in common
with the greatest philosopher of
the previous century, the French
philosopher and theologian Pierre
Abélard, than he did with his
contemporaries and successors.
Coherent belief
Both Aquinas’s general view on
the relation between philosophy
and Christian doctrine, and his
particular treatment of the eternity
of the universe, remain relevant
in the 21st century. Today few
philosophers believe that religious
positions, such as the existence of
God or the immortality of the soul,
can be proved by philosophical
reasoning. But what some claim for
philosophy is that it can demonstrate
that although religious believers
hold certain doctrines as a matter
of faith, their overall views are no
less rational or coherent than those
of agnostics or atheists. This view
is an extension and development of
Aquinas’s constant endeavor to
develop a philosophically coherent
system of thought, while holding
on to his Christian beliefs. Reading
Aquinas’s works is a lesson in
tolerance, for Christians and
non-Christians alike.The role of philosophy
Today, we do not look to philosophy
to tell us whether or not the universe
has always existed, and most of us
do not turn to the Bible, as Aquinas
and other medieval philosophers
did. Instead we look to physics,
in particular to the theory of the
“Big Bang” proposed by modern
scientists, including the British
physicist and cosmologist Stephen
Hawking. This theory states that
the universe expanded from a state
of extremely high temperature and
density at a particular point in time.
Though most of us now turn toscience for an explanation of how
the universe began, the arguments
of Aquinas show that philosophy is
still relevant to how we think about
the subject. He demonstrates how
philosophy can provide the tools for
intelligent enquiry, allowing us to
investigate not what happens to be
the case, but what is possible and
what is impossible, and what are
intelligible questions to ask. Is it or
is it not coherent to believe that the
universe had a beginning? This is
still a question for philosophers, and
no amount of theoretical physics
will be able to answer it. ■One may say that
time had a beginning at
the Big Bang, in the sense
that earlier times simply
would not be defined.
Stephen Hawking