Funday Post

Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk and author of Summa Theologica, is considered by some to be "the Vulcan's theologian" given his starkly logical rationale of Christianity.







Fascinating.



Saint Thomas Aquinas' views on predestination (in a nutshell) state that God has a plan for everyone, the universe should manifest His goodness, each creature (read: man) has goodness and/or qualities arranged in degrees in order to see variously God's goodness and that- because there is an ultimate plan- things are pre-ordained. We do have free will but there is an end out there somewhere.



He says:

“We must therefore say that what happens here by accident, both in natural things and in human affairs, is reduced to a preordaining cause, which is Divine Providence. […] For God alone can change the will, as shown above. Consequently the ordering of human actions, the principle of which is the will, must be ascribed to God alone. So therefore inasmuch as all that happens here below is subject to Divine Providence, as being pre-ordained, and as it were "fore-spoken," we can admit the existence of fate: although the holy doctors avoided the use of this word, on account of those who twisted its application to a certain force in the position of the stars."

Saint Augustine of Hippo in The City of God says this:

“If anyone ascribes human affairs to fate, meaning thereby the will or power of God, let him keep to his tongue.”

(Are they thinking about "The City on the Edge of Forever"?)

Saint Augustine also said (quite quixotically):

Who shall hold it and fix it, that it may rest a little, and by degrees catch the glory of that everstanding eternity, and compare it with the times which never stand, and see that it is incomparable; and that a long time cannot become long, save from the many motions that pass by, which cannot at the same instant be prolonged; but that in the Eternal nothing passes away, but that the whole is present; but no time is wholly present; and let him see that all time past is forced on by the future, and that all the future follows from the past, and that all, both past and future, is created and issues from that which is always present? Who will hold the heart of man, that it may stand still, and see how the still-standing eternity, itself neither future nor past, utters the times future and past?


For whence could innumerable ages pass by which You did not make, since You are the Author Creator of all ages? Or what times should those be which were not made by You? Or how should they pass by if they had not been? Since, therefore, You are the Creator of all times, if any time was before You made heaven and earth, why is it said that You refrained from working? For that very time You made, nor could times pass by before You made times. But if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it asked, What were You doing then? For there was no then when time was not.

Aahhh, yes- the time paradox.


So- if God predestined everyone and everything and there was time before time and yet no time, how then can people time-travel in Star Trek, or even change time? Wouldn't they be upsetting the natural order of things or are they supposed to? Who made temporal agents vanguards of time?

(Aquinas Trek- boldly go where no Christian has gone before.)

Discuss.

(This has nothing to do with Aquinas or Star Trek. It's just a piglet wearing red rainboots.)