Creation, Fall, and Providence

In this chapter, I explore the (implicit) presence of hermeneutical perspectives in the thought of Thomas Aquinas with respect to issues of faith, outside the reach of ‘scientific’ reason, concerning the Christian meaning of creation, history and the temporal condition of human existence. First, the chapter discusses Aquinas’ view on creation as including a temporal beginning of the world. In this discussion on the ‘eternity of the world’, hermeneutical reason obliquely plays a role in suggesting the positive meaning of the temporality of the world in the light of faith and God’s guidance through history to an end beyond time and history. Aquinas’ treatment of the Christian doctrine of original sin is another example of a hermeneutical turn of reason with respect to tenets of faith. In dealing with the reality of original sin, as confessed by faith, moral theory must be supplied with what one may call a theological hermeneutics of the Christian experience of actual human life in its dimension of sinfulness with respect to God.