This site documents the Divine Mind:
the Universe that enables us to create ourselves
page 2: Introduction
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 1:27 (KJV)
page 2: Contents
2.1: Evolution2.2: Paradigm changes
2.3: General relativity, black holes and the initial singularity
2.4: A new theology
2.5: How did this world come to be?
2.1 Evolution
The theory of evolution, developed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, is one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made. Charles Darwin (1859, 1998): The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's books on evolution are now standard accounts of our creation. Darwin was originally intended to become an Anglican clergyman. He well knew the standard Christian story of creation, paradise, sin and redemption but turned instead to natural science. He developed his ideas about evolution during a five year trip around the world on the HMS Beagle with Captain Robert Fitzroy. The Voyage of the Beagle - Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg: Charles Darwin: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
Darwin already knew, from the pigeon fanciers and farmers around him, that it is possible by selective mating to move species in particular directions. In wild nature, the selective pressure comes from the environment, favouring individuals that better fit their habitat. The history of Christianity suggests similar process, a simple and attractive set of beliefs well promoted by the promise of heaven and the fear of Hell. When I was young it certainly worked for me.
Christianity grew from a small group of Jewish activists led by Jesus of Nazareth to dominate the Roman Empire. In terms of wealth, membership and politics it is now the most powerful religion on Earth. Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, Catholic Church - Wikipedia
According to the account of his life and work in the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was divine, the Son of God. His revolutionary preaching upset the local Jewish hierarchy and they prevailed upon the occupying Romans to torture him to death. On the third day after his death, the story goes, he became alive again and explained their mission to his followers:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Matthew 28: 16-20. Great Commission - Wikipedia
The Christian New Testament introduced an entirely new conception of God. No longer a remote and inscrutable power, often angry and vindictive (remember the flood), God became human and lived with us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Many attribute the rapid spread of Christianity to its divine origin. Christianity itself has seen major changes in its two thousand year history. In its early days it appealed to many of the writers of the Mediterranean region. These people produced not only the New Testament but the vast body of literature known as the Greek and Latin Patrology , written by the '"Fathers of the Church". Genesis flood narrative - Wikipedia, Patristics - Wikipedia, Church Fathers - Wikipedia
2.2 Paradigm changes
Like everything else, science evolves. Variation arises within the scientific community as workers create new hypothesis to understand particular sets of data. Selection operates through the community, first by peer review, then by further exploration and testing by the scientific community and finally, if the science proves right, by application and industrial exploitation. Fortun & Bernstein(1998): Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Kuhn called periods of rapid evolution in science paradigm changes. Christianity was a new theological paradigm which promoted itself as the fulfilment of prophecies recorded in the Hebrew Bible. These books record the difficult relationship between the Hebrews, their God Yahweh and the predatory empires surrounding Judea. Thomas Kuhn (1962, 1996): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The story begins in Genesis with the creation and the triumph of evil in the form of Satan, a fallen angel. It ends when Yahweh loses the popularity contest contest with Satan recorded in the Book of Job. The Hebrew Bible covers the period of about 1000 years before the emergence of Christianity. It remains the subject of intense literary and archaeological study. Jack Miles (1996): God: A Biography
Biological evolution tracks environmental changes. If change is too extreme, species may become extinct. Science tracks data and changing social perspectives. New data from new observations and measurements often demand new science. Old ideas may slowly become extinct because they no longer fit the data. New points of view, analogous to a new species which can thrive on the new data, appear. New branches on the tree of life like sharks and crocodiles may live for millions of years. The oldest parts of the scientific tree, like the discovery of writing, are at most tens of thousands of years old. Newer ideas like evolution, conservation of energy, relativity and quantum mechanics are still in their early centuries. Tree of life (biology) - Wikipedia, Larissa Behrendt, Rob Collins: Screen Australia: The First Inventors
In its first centuries the developers of Christianity were the writers of the New Testament and the Fathers of the Church. The union of Christianity and the Roman Empire gave it a military and political role which has continued to the present day. The Empire faded but the Church grew and assumed an imperial role with the Crusades, first to expel Islam from the Holy Land and then to exterminate European heretics who did not toe the Catholic theological line. Crusades - Wikipedia
This policy had two effects. First, to pay for its wars the Church began to sell indulgences, salvation guaranteed in the afterlife for cash now. Martin Luther and others attacked this as an abuse and protested many other features of Roman Catholicism, causing the Protestant Reformation. Since religion was tightly bound to European politics this led to a long period of civil war within European Christianity. These wars killed a large proportion of the population and devastated an enormous amount of capital. Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, European wars of religion - Wikipedia
Second, it introduced the work of Aristotle to the newly emerging universities of Europe. At this period the work of Aristotle and his commentators was the epitome of science, and the result was the radical revision of theology which we associate with Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275) and his contemporaries. Recovery of Aristotle - Wikipedia, Scholasticism - Wikipedia
Einstein's published his general theory of relativity in 1915. It has stood the test of time and forms the theoretical backbone of our understanding of the Universe. It is consistent with everything that astronomers have observed, although it still remains inaccessible to quantum field theory. General relativity - Wikipedia
Penrose, Hawking and Ellis have argued that the theory predicts the existence of singularities, points that lie outside space-time. One category of singularities, black holes, have now been observed. These authors also propose the existence of an initial singularity, which is understood to be the source of the universe. The big bang theory of cosmogenesis explains that about 14 billion years ago this singularity suddenly exploded to create the Universe we now experience. Hawking & Ellis (1975): The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time
These singularities are considered to lie outside the laws of nature. Our experience with black holes shows that they contain energy and mass which shape the space-time around them, so controlling the motions of nearby visible structures. This suggests that the pointlike singularity at the root of the Universe may contain all the energy of the Universe.
This seems to me to be very difficult to imagine, since energy is a feature of spacetime which cannot therefore exist without it. This suggests that if the initial singularity is real, the total energy of the Universe is zero. This may be possible. Feynman suggests in his book on gravitation, that the positive energy of the matter in the Universe may be exactly offset by the negative potential energy in gravitation. Richard Feynman (2007): Feynman Lectures on Computation
This beings us to another problem. General relativity is a classical theory and, as Newton noted, the classical world is inert. It only moves because it is moved by God. In modern physics, everything is moved by quantum mechanics, so we can solve this problem simply by making the the initial singularity a quantum entity.
The Protestant reformers attempted to purify Christianity from its scholastic accretions by turning back to the Bible. Martin Luther translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into German and the new technology of printing propagated his work widely. The Universities embraced Aristotle and used his work to develop a new understanding of the nature of divinity. They understood that God is everywhere in everything and that theology is the theory of everything. Luther Bible - Wikipedia
When modern physicists talk about creating a theory of everything, what they have in mind is a unified theory of the four fundamental forces, gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force. From the theological point of view this is a very limited ambition. A real theory of everything would be a theology, able to embrace every detail of creation from beginning to end. Theology itself paints the broad picture, relying on all the other sciences and arts to fill in the details. At present we have a good picture of the development of the Universe since it was about 300 000 years old. Eventually, perhaps, a theological picture something like the Catholic theory of God and the Trinity will take us back to the beginning.
Aristotle travelled this path from physics to theology nearly 2400 years ago. He began with logic, then moved through physics, astronomy and psychology to metaphysics, poetry, rhetoric and politics. I want to follow this path as a tribute to Aristotle, using the results of modern science and art.
In the world as we know it, physics deals with matter and theology deals with spirit and they are a long way apart. But if we go back to the beginning, the initial singularity, they must be the same.
Aristotle’s work is built around two technical terms, potential (Greek dynamis, δυναμις) and act (energeia, ενεργεια or entelecheia εντελεχηεια). He coined both these terms: energeia signifies act as doing; entelecheia suggests finished or perfect act. He also has one axiom: no potential can actualize itself. He defines motion as the transition from potential to act. He explains physical change through his doctrine of matter and form, hylomorphism. Actus et potentia - Wikipedia, Hylomorphism - Wikipedia
His story is very simple, but it carried Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries to a scientific description of God which is still maintained in the Catholic Church. With these ideas in mind, they produced a new interpretation of the scriptures, exhibited in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. They did not doubt that the Bible is the word of God. Summa Theologica - Wikipedia
The plan here is to retrace Aristotle’s journey in modern terms. Aristotle thought the world is eternal. Christianity insists that the world was created by an eternal God. Either way, if we accept that nothing comes from nothing, we must accept that reality has an eternal source.
Aristotle was a student of Plato, who proposed a heaven of perfect forms. Our world is a very poor copy of this heaven, a view that was enthusiastically embraced by Christians about 500 years later. Christian Platonists understood that our damaged and sinful world needed redemption. We had so angered the Father in Eden that they punished us and our world by introducing death, pain and work. Christianity is built on the idea that God the Father, to reconcile humanity to himself and admit us to heaven, had is own Son crucified as a human sacrifice to himself. Christians cast themselves as administrators of this salvation. Their slogan: outside the Church there is no salvation. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus - Wikipedia
Aristotle had no such belief, and accepted the world as he found it like a modern scientist. He saw that Plato’s ideas were purely formal and inert, like puppets. They could not move themselves, so he devised a first unmoved mover. Since he held no potential can actualize itself, this mover must be pure action. Aquinas took this for a definition of God: God is actus purus. Here we identify this unmoved mover with the quantum initial singularity. Since in the beginning the singularity is all that there is, it must create the world within itself. Unmoved mover - Wikipedia
Our decks are now cleared of the vindictive creator, an evil angel, a defective universe, a sinful population, crucifixion, salvation and many other mythological elements that Christianity inherited from an ancient world full of gods. Keith Hopkins (2001): A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity
Aquinas uses Aristotle’s argument for the unmoved mover as his first proof for the existence of God. Having proven the existence of God, Aquinas goes on to study the divine nature. He follows the ancient view that God is so far beyond out ken that we can say nothing positive about them. We can only deny inconvenientt attributes like spatial extension, substance and accidents and to on. God is absolutely structureless. Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7: Is God altogether simple?
Aquinas, following Aristotle, associates knowledge with immateriality. This is not consistent with the modern theory of information, which requires that information comes in discrete units each represented by a discrete material point. The initial singularity cannot therefore be omniscient, nor could it have contained a plan, like Plato’s ideas, for the universe which it was going to create. Aquinas, Summa: I, 14, 1: Is there knowledge in God?
The doctrine of the Trinity implies that God may emerge from God. Catholic dogma restricts the Trinity to three persons or sources, but there does not seem to be any logical reason for this restriction. Let us therefore assume that the initial singularity can be an unlimited source of quanta of action. Since it has no structure this source must, at least initially, act at random. We therefore have the prerequisites for evolution, a random source constrained by consistency. Aquinas, Summa, I, 27, 1: Is there procession in God?
We therefore have two axioms for the construction of the universe:
1. The initial singularity is an eternal and continuous source of action; and
2. Actual contradiction cannot exist.
These two points are necessary and sufficient for the construction of the consistent Universe that we observe.
The details are explained in the following chapters.
(Revised Friday 29 December 2023)
2.3: General relativity, black holes and the initial singularity
2.4: A new theology
2.5: How did this world come to be?
Copyright:
You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.
Notes and references
Further reading
Books
Darwin (1859, 1998), Charles, and Greg Suriano (editor), The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.'
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Feynman (2007), Richard, Feynman Lectures on Computation, Perseus Publishing 2007 Amazon Editorial Reviews
Book Description
'The famous physicist's timeless lectures on the promise and limitations of computers
When, in 1984-86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a "Feynmanesque" overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.'
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Fortun (1998), Mike, and Herbert J Bernstein, Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century, Counterpoint 1998 Jacket: ' Messy. Clumsy. Volatile. Exciting. These words are not often associated with the science, which for most people still connote exactitude, elegance, reliability and a rather plodding certainty. But the real story is something quite different. The sciences are less about the ability to know and to control than they are about the unleashing of new forces, new capacities for changing the world. The sciences as practised exist not in some pristine world of "objectivity," but in what Mike Fortnum and Herbert Bernstein call "the Muddled Middle".
This book explores the way science makes sense of the world and how the world makes sense of science. It is also about politics and culture—how these forces shape the sciences and are shaped by them in return.'
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Hawking (1975), Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.'
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Hopkins (2001), Keith, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity, Penguin Random House 2001 ' In this provocative, irresistibly entertaining book, Keith Hopkins takes readers back in time to explore the roots of Christianity in ancient Rome. Combining exacting scholarship with dazzling invention, Hopkins challenges our perceptions about religion, the historical Jesus, and the way history is written. He puts us in touch with what he calls “empathetic wonder”—imagining what Romans, pagans, Jews, and Christians thought, felt, experienced, and believed-by employing a series of engaging literary devices. These include a TV drama about the Dead Sea Scrolls; the first-person testimony of a pair of time-travelers to Pompeii; a meditation on Jesus’ apocryphal twin brother; and an unusual letter on God, demons, and angels.'
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Kuhn (1962, 1996), Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1962, 1970, 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]
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Miles (1996), Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.'
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Tyerman (2019), Christopher, The World of the Crusades, Yale UP 2019 ' Throughout the Middle Ages crusading was justified by religious ideology, but the resulting military campaigns were fueled by concrete objectives: land, resources, power, reputation. Crusaders amassed possessions of all sorts, from castles to reliquaries. Campaigns required material funds and equipment, while conquests produced bureaucracies, taxation, economic exploitation, and commercial regulation. Wealth sustained the Crusades while material objects, from weaponry and military technology to carpentry and shipping, conditioned them.
This lavishly illustrated volume considers the material trappings of crusading wars and the objects that memorialized them, in architecture, sculpture, jewelry, painting, and manuscripts. Christopher Tyerman's incorporation of the physical and visual remains of crusading enriches our understanding of how the crusaders themselves articulated their mission, how they viewed their place in the world, and how they related to the cultures they derived from and preyed upon.'
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Links
Actus et potentia - Wikipedia, Actus et potentia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The terms actus and potentia were used by the scholastics to translate Aristotle's use of the terms energeia or entelecheia, and dynamis. There is no single word in English that would be an exact rendering of either. Act, action, actuality, perfection, and determination express the various meanings of actus; potency, potentiality, power, and capacity, those of potentia.' back |
Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 22, 3, Does God have immediate providence over everything?, ' I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 27, 1, Is there procession in God?, 'As God is above all things, we should understand what is said of God, not according to the mode of the lowest creatures, namely bodies, but from the similitude of the highest creatures, the intellectual substances; while even the similitudes derived from these fall short in the representation of divine objects. Procession, therefore, is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement or by way of a cause proceeding forth to its exterior effect, as, for instance, like heat from the agent to the thing made hot. Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him. In that sense the Catholic Faith understands procession as existing in God.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God altogether simple?, 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back |
Aquinas, Summa: I, 14, 1, Is there knowledge in God?, ' I answer that, In God there exists the most perfect knowledge. . . . it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and according to the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowledge. Hence it is said in De Anima ii that plants do not know, because they are wholly material. But sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed, as said in De Anima iii. Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality as stated above (Question 7, Article 1), it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge.' back |
Big Bang - Wikipedia, Big Bang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. ' back |
Catholic Church - Wikipedia, Roman Catholic Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian Church, with more than 1.29 billion members worldwide. As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilisation. Headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, the church's doctrines are summarised in the Nicene Creed. Its central administration, the Holy See, is in the Vatican City, enclaved within Rome, Italy.' back |
Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Charles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS JP (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science.' back |
Church Fathers - Wikipedia, Church Fathers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come (see Proto-orthodox Christianity). The term was used of writers and teachers of the Church, not necessarily "saints", though most are honoured as saints in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches, as well as in some other Christian groups; notably, the heretics Origen and Tertullian (as described herein below) are generally reckoned as Church Fathers.' back |
Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' During the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (AD 306–337), Christianity began to transition to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Historians remain uncertain about Constantine's reasons for favoring Christianity, and theologians and historians have often argued about which form of early Christianity he subscribed to. . . . Constantine's decision to cease the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was a turning point for early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Triumph of the Church, the Peace of the Church or the Constantinian shift. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan decriminalizing Christian worship. The emperor became a great patron of the Church and set a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor within the Church and raised the notions of orthodoxy, Christendom, ecumenical councils, and the state church of the Roman Empire declared by edict in 380. He is revered as a saint and is apostolos in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, and various Eastern Catholic Churches for his example as a "Christian monarch”.' back |
Crusades - Wikipedia, Crusades - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Crusades were a series of intermittent military campaigns in the years from 1096 to 1487, sanctioned by various Popes. In 1095 the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I, sent an ambassador to Pope Urban II requesting military support in the Byzantines' conflict with the westward migrating Turks in Anatolia. The Pope responded by calling Catholics to join what later became known as the First Crusade. One of Urban's stated aims was to guarantee pilgrims access to the holy sites in the Holy Land that were under Muslim control while his wider strategy was to reunite the Eastern and Western branches of Christendom, divided after their split in 1054, and establish himself as head of the united Church. This initiated a complex 200-year struggle in the region.' back |
European wars of religion - Wikipedia, European war of religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The conflicts began with the minor Knights' Revolt (1522), followed by the larger German Peasants' War (1524–1525) in the Holy Roman Empire. Warfare intensified after the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation in 1545 against the growth of Protestantism. The conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany and killed one-third of its population, a mortality rate twice that of World War I. The Peace of Westphalia broadly resolved the conflicts by recognising three separate Christian traditions in the Holy Roman Empire: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.' back |
Evolution - Wikipedia, Evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, '. . . Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to different rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable. . . . ' back |
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus - Wikipedia, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "outside the Church there is no salvation".The most recent Catholic Catechism explained this as "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body." This expression comes from the writings of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a bishop of the 3rd century. The axiom is often used as shorthand for the doctrine, upheld by many Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, that the Church is necessary for salvation. The theological basis for this doctrine is founded on the beliefs that (1) Jesus Christ personally established the one Church; and (2) the Church serves as the means by which the graces won by Christ are communicated to believers.' back |
General relativity - Wikipedia, General relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.' back |
Genesis 1:27 (KJV), God created mankind in his image, ' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.' back |
Genesis flood narrative - Wikipedia, Genesis flood narrative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is the Hebrew version of the universal flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre-creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's ark. . . .. A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology, paleontology and the global distribution of species. A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred.' back |
Great Commission - Wikipedia, Great Commission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In Christianity, the Great Commission is the instruction of the resurrected Jesus Christ to his disciples to spread the gospel to all the nations of the world. The Great Commission is outlined in Matthew 28:16–20, where on a mountain in Galilee Jesus calls on his followers to make disciples of and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.' back |
Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Hylomorphism (Greek ὑλο- hylo-, "wood, matter" + -morphism < Greek μορφή, morphē, "form") is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which analyzes substance into matter and form. Substances are conceived of as compounds of form and matter.' back |
Larissa Behrendt, Rob Collins: Screen Australia, The First Inventors, ' Rob Collins and a team of First Nations investigators delve into 65,000 years of Aboriginal Australian invention, looking at how landscapes were transformed, how events were recorded, the use of navigation tools, and how societies were organised. back |
Luther Bible - Wikipedia, Luther Bible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Luther Bible is a German Bible translation by Martin Luther, first printed with both testaments in 1534. This translation became a force in shaping the Modern High German language. The project absorbed Luther's later years. The new translation was very widely disseminated thanks to the printing press.' back |
Patristics - Wikipedia, Patristics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedi, ' Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin pater and Greek patḗr (father). The period of the Church Fathers, commonly called the Patristic era, is generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age (c. AD 100) to either AD 451 (the date of the Council of Chalcedon) or to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. ' back |
Project Gutenberg: Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries, IJournal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage Round the World of H.M.S. Beagle Under the Command of Captain Fitz Roy, R.N. |
Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to ("protested") the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led to the creation of new national Protestant churches. The Reformation was precipitated by earlier events within Europe, such as the Black Death and the Western Schism, which eroded people's faith in the Roman Catholic Church. This, as well as many other factors, contributed to the growth of lay criticism in the church and the creation of Protestantism.' back |
Recovery of Aristotle - Wikipedia, Recovery of Aristotle - Wikipedia, the free encclopedia , ' The "Recovery of Aristotle" (or Rediscovery) refers to the copying or re-translating of most of Aristotle's books (of ancient Greece), from Greek or Arabic text into Latin, during the Middle Ages, of the Latin West. The Recovery of Aristotle spanned about 100 years, from the middle 12th century into the 13th century, and copied or translated over 42 books (see: Corpus Aristotelicum), including Arabic texts from Arabic authors, where the previous Latin versions had only two books in general circulation: Categories and On Interpretation (De Interpretatione).' back |
Scholasticism - Wikipedia, Scholasticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics ("scholastics," or "schoolmen") of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100 to 1700, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending dogma in an increasingly pluralistic context. It originated as an outgrowth of, and a departure from, Christian monastic schools at the earliest European universities. . . . .' back |
Summa Theologica - Wikipedia, Summa Theologica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Summa Theologiae (Latin: Compendium of Theology or Theological Compendium; also subsequently called the Summa Theologica or simply the Summa, written 1265–1274) is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 - 1274), and, although it was never finished, it is arguably "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature". It was intended as a manual for beginners and a compilation of all of the main theological teachings of the time. It presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West by medieval scholastic reckoning. The Summa's topics follow a cycle: the existence of God; God's creation, Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God.' back |
The Voyage of the Beagle - Wikipedia, The Voyage of the Beagle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Voyage of the Beagle is the title most commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect. This was the third volume of The Narrative of the Voyages of H.M. Ships Adventure and Beagle, the other volumes of which were written or edited by the commanders of the ships. Journal and Remarks covers Darwin's part in the second survey expedition of the ship HMS Beagle. Due to the popularity of Darwin's account, the publisher reissued it later in 1839 as Darwin's Journal of Researches, and the revised second edition published in 1845 used this title.' back |
Thomas Kuhn - Wikipedia, Thomas Kuhn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom. Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality.' back |
Tree of life (biology) - Wikipedia, Tree of life (biology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor used to describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859).' back |
Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The unmoved mover (Ancient Greek: ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, lit. 'that which moves without being moved' or prime mover (Latin: primum movens) is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cause) or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek: Λ) of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek pre-Socratic philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae. ' back |