Medieval Teachers of Freedom: Boethius, Peter Lombard and Aquinas on Creation from Nothing [Paperback]

Medieval debates over divine creation are systematically obscured in our age by the conflict between Intelligent Design Creationists and Evolutionists. The present investigation cuts through the web of contemporary conflicts to examine problems seated at the heart of medieval talk about creation. From three representative authors we learn that the doctrine of divine creation is supposed to invite understanding of the relation between artistic freedom and natural necessity, of the very essence of causality, and thereby of the nexus between experience (our world of empirical determinations) and reality (the absolute indetermination of eternal being). Most importantly, medieval scholarship shows us that the problems it addresses are originally inherent in the understanding itself, whereby the question of being emerges as inseparable from the question of interpretation.

Prefatory Remarks: The Poetic Telos of the Present Study

Introduction

1. Poetic Reason as Key to Reading Medieval Authors
2. Theology or Philosophy? A False Dilemma
3. A Universe from Nothing beyond Theology?
4. Medieval Scholarship as Guide in Interpretation?
5. Aristotle or Plato? Another false dilemma
6. Introduction to the problem of Context
7. Medieval Platonism Beyond Intellectual History
8. Medieval Platonism
9. Medieval Platonic Hermeneutics
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