Christendom College welcomed well-known professor and St. Thomas Aquinas expert Dr. Steven Baldner to campus for the college’s latest talk for its Collegiate Lecture Series on January 29. In an eloquent lecture offered as the college’s annual St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture, entitled “Thomas and Descartes on Creation,” Baldner explained the differences in St. Thomas Aquinas and Descartes’ philosophical stances on creation, and how these contrasts sabotaged Descartes’ attempt to establish a firm foundation for modern science.
Baldner, a Professor of Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, launched into his talk with a basic outline of St. Thomas Aquinas and Descartes’ philosophical precepts of creation, warning that apparent similarities concealed more drastic disagreements. He followed this with an overview of each philosopher’s understanding of God’s role and causality in creation and introduced the most important concept of his lecture—Descartes’ Second Causal Proof—an argument for God’s existence as a creator out of nothing.
He proceeded to lay out exactly how Descartes’ misunderstanding of causality led to occasionalism.
“The occasionalist doctrine holds that all efficient causality in our world is really caused by God, although God provides this causality universally on the occasion of the apparent interaction of creatures,” explained Baldner.
The professor then delved into the consequences of this belief, especially emphasizing how occasionalism removes the concept of causality, within both physical and metaphysical actions.
“Most scholars agree that Descartes has no room for any creaturely causality. When Descartes talks about ‘force’ in material things, he means God—God is the force moving everything,” said Baldner. “My contribution, however, is to show that Descartes’ removal of causality is much more extensive: it applies to the interactions between the soul and body, between the bodily world and the soul, and even within the soul itself. All of these interactions are part of temporal duration, according to Descartes, and what is true of all temporal duration must apply to them.”
He continued to expound on this theme, reflecting on how Descartes’ occasionalism was accepted by the thinkers who followed him and how it affects science today.
However, in his conclusion, Dr. Baldner explained that adherence to Descartes’ view of causality and science is not the only solution, explaining how Aquinas refuted his argument.
“The answers Descartes might give to Aquinas’ criticisms of occasionalism count more against Descartes than for him. We can be champions of contemporary science that has so impressively used mathematical analysis to understand the physical sciences,” said Baldner. “We do not, however, have to divorce the mathematical analysis from the more fundamental physical analysis that Aristotelians and Thomists have striven to give us.”
The evening concluded with a Q&A session, in which students, faculty, staff, and members of the local community asked questions related to Baldner’s lecture.
This lecture joins Christendom’s other recent Collegiate Lecture Series events, including talks from acclaimed poet Dr. James Matthew Wilson and author and professor Dr. Clint Brand, each of whom offered an evening of dynamic engagement with perennial truths—the very purpose of each Collegiate Lecture Series event.
Expanding upon the college’s original Major Speaker Series, the Collegiate Lecture Series provides students, faculty, staff, and members of the community an opportunity to hear from regional and national speakers on topics relevant to Christendom’s mission of “Restoring All Things in Christ.” For students, especially, these events allow them to connect classroom learning with the broader ideas and questions posed by the speakers. The series also honors those who have pursued wisdom in their lives and share it generously with the Christendom community.
To watch Baldner’s full lecture, visit here.
Contributed by Bridget Palm ’28.