I was unfairly inserting in the parentheses my own presumption about why Christians saw the world as having been created perfect. The passage I was talking about from Aquinas did not talk about perfection of the environment.
I’d like to see what Aquinas did say. Have you got a citation? I’m pretty sure that the notion that the world was created imperfect has never been tolerated by the Catholic Church. Asserting that creation was imperfect might even be condemned as Manicheeism. Opinions vary on what happened after the Fall, but I find it unlikely that Aquinas could have said God’s original creation was imperfect. (If he did, he was probably copying Aristotle, and making some fine definitional distinction not explained here, to avoid heresy.)
I know he does make that statement about his opinion being “better and more theological”; however I don’t have the specific citation at the moment. However, I did find this text from the disputed questions on power:
It should be said that it does not only pertain to the liberality of a giver that he should give quickly, but also that he should give to each thing ordinately and at a fitting time. Whence where it is said, “When you can give immediately,” one should consider not only the power by which we can give something absolutely, but also by which we can give more fittingly. Whence for the fitting preservation of order God first instituted things in a certain imperfection, that thus they might come gradually from nothing to perfection.
He was not copying Aristotle (since Aristotle thought the world was eternal and would have passed back and forth an infinite number of times between perfection and imperfection), but Augustine. Augustine says that the world was created in an instant, in an imperfect state, but one which contained its perfections in potency. Logically this is even consistent with what actually happened (i.e. Big Bang and evolution). Needless to say neither of them was thinking of any such detail in giving that general account.
Both of them think would say that the account in Genesis is true, and in that way avoid heresy. But Augustine’s explanation of the text is at any rate extremely metaphorical.
I was unfairly inserting in the parentheses my own presumption about why Christians saw the world as having been created perfect. The passage I was talking about from Aquinas did not talk about perfection of the environment.
I’d like to see what Aquinas did say. Have you got a citation? I’m pretty sure that the notion that the world was created imperfect has never been tolerated by the Catholic Church. Asserting that creation was imperfect might even be condemned as Manicheeism. Opinions vary on what happened after the Fall, but I find it unlikely that Aquinas could have said God’s original creation was imperfect. (If he did, he was probably copying Aristotle, and making some fine definitional distinction not explained here, to avoid heresy.)
I know he does make that statement about his opinion being “better and more theological”; however I don’t have the specific citation at the moment. However, I did find this text from the disputed questions on power:
He was not copying Aristotle (since Aristotle thought the world was eternal and would have passed back and forth an infinite number of times between perfection and imperfection), but Augustine. Augustine says that the world was created in an instant, in an imperfect state, but one which contained its perfections in potency. Logically this is even consistent with what actually happened (i.e. Big Bang and evolution). Needless to say neither of them was thinking of any such detail in giving that general account.
Both of them think would say that the account in Genesis is true, and in that way avoid heresy. But Augustine’s explanation of the text is at any rate extremely metaphorical.