As a Christian, Grosseteste believed that God created the world with a beginning; indeed, he thought, as some sketchy arguments in the Hexaæmeron 1.9.7 indicate, that the beginning of the world could be proved. But his primary contribution to the medieval debate over the beginning of the world was his interpretation and refutation of Aristotle’s arguments in Physics 8 for a beginningless or “eternal” world (see Dales 1986).  In this connection Grosseteste was at odds with some of his early thirteenth-century contemporaries, such as Alexander of Hales, who thought that Aristotle did not mean to deny the beginning of the world but only that it had a natural beginning.  Let those who adopt such an interpretation, he writes in his Hexaemeron, “not deceive themselves and pointlessly try to make a Catholic of Aristotle, thereby wasting their time and mental powers and, in making a Catholic of Aristotle, make heretics of themselves” (Dales and Gieben 1982, 61)