Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

[ Three errors especially are opposed to the Mosaic history of the creation of man. The first of these is that of those who deny that man was formed by God, at least immediately, but assert that he arose from organizing particles or essences, as they call them, or from a vegetative force, with which God endowed nature — which they assert all the more of the other living things. — The second error, akin to the first, is that of our pantheists, who derive the production of man from that law of the eternal substance of the world, by which nature, the mother of all things, progresses necessarily and eternally from the imperfect forms of things to the more perfect. Hence they dream that man was at first a most imperfect sea-animal, for example, an oyster; then, through various stages, emerged from the sea after the manner of an amphibian; crawled for a long time; from a reptile became a quadruped, from a quadruped a quadrumane, from the quadrumane ape (orang-outang) became a two-footed, two-handed rational being. Since this condition is the noblest of the infinite forms which nature has thus far assumed, nature takes pleasure in itself in the human form, in which it has rested for many ages now. Yet this form is not the last; for humanity, which is the head of eternal nature, by the fatal law of progression, tends inescapably toward the form of God, that is, toward a more perfect form than uncreated matter can assume. The most recent and more celebrated herald of this system, Darwin, calls this series of evolutions transformism. — The third error of these men is that of those who assert that other men were formed before Adam: who are therefore called pre-Adamites. The founder of this error was Isaac La Peyrere, in a work entitled Praeadamitae. He, having been recalled from Calvin's school to a better way of thinking, abjured this opinion along with its heresy. Not far from this error are those who hold that not all men were begotten from the same parent, but who contend that in each region of the world there were their own aborigines, distinguished in species, from whom the different races of men arose, whose first parents, however, were formed by God.

I say 1°: Our first parents were formed immediately by God.

This is against the first and second error. — And it must be noted that, when we say that our forebears were formed immediately by God, we wish our proposition to be understood not only of the soul, but also of the body, not agreeing with certain rabbis who have supposed that God made use of the ministry of angels to form the body of the first parent from the slime of the earth, into which He Himself afterward breathed life and a soul; whom Augustine refutes, lib. IX de Genes ad litt., c. 15, n. 26, as we shall see below.

Proof 1°. This proposition belongs to the faith, as is clear from

the Fourth Lateran Council: « We firmly believe... that there is one only true God..., the one principle of all things, creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal, who by His almighty power, together, from the beginning of time, made both creatures out of nothing, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the worldly, and then the human, as it were common, constituted of spirit and body. »

Proof 2° from Holy Scripture. Genes., II, 7, openly hands down that, once all the irrational living things had been formed, God created man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. From this it is rightly deduced that God made the whole man; for by Himself He formed the body from the slime of the earth, and imparted the soul by inspiration. And this indeed concerning the man. But concerning the formation and origin of the woman we read, ibid., 21: The Lord sent a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and built it into a woman. If we understand these things, as we ought, in the historical and literal sense, it is clear that each of our first parents was formed and made by God Himself, that is, immediately, as regards the body just as the soul. Now that these words are to be taken in the literal sense, the context itself, the traditional understanding of the Hebrews, and the irrefragable authority of the rest of the sacred books show. In the first place, the context requires it. For unless the literal sense is held to, the things that follow cohere with it in no way. For scarcely had Adam, awakened from his sleep, beheld Eve, when, divinely inspired, he said, ibid., 23: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. And to these words the Apostle plainly alludes, saying, I Cor., XI, 8: For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Likewise I Tim., II, 13: For Adam was first formed, then Eve. Nor have the Jews, except for certain rabbinical fable-tellers, ever departed from this same sense.

Proof 3° from tradition. It is superfluous to review the ancient Fathers of the Church one by one, since there is but one opinion of them all. Let Augustine speak for all, who, refuting the opinion of those who asserted that the bodies of the first parents were formed by the hands of angels at God's command, says, lib. IX de Genes. ad litt., c. 15, n. 26, 27 and 28: « These things, perhaps, might be said to have been able to be done through angels. But to form or build a rib, that there might be a woman, no one but God could do, from whom the whole of nature subsists, so that I would not believe that even that supplement of flesh in the body of the man, which took the place of that rib, was made by angels, any more than the man himself was made from the dust of the earth... No angel can create nature, any more than it can create itself... I would say most certainly... that this was done in no other work of God than one which God worked not through angels, but through Himself. » Many teach that the formation of Eve from the side of Adam while sleeping was a type of the Church formed from the side of Christ the Lord as He died on the cross: which work assuredly has God Himself as its author. Hence, as the adversaries themselves admit, it is from this very source, as it were, that the myths about the formation of woman current and received among the peoples of the East, akin to the Mosaic history, have spread, especially among the peoples of upper Asia, nor are there wanting documents of this tradition among the barbarous peoples recently discovered. All of which things indeed prove that the Mosaic anthropogony is to be taken in its native and literal sense, and that therefore our first parents were formed immediately by God.

I say 2°: The whole human race was propagated from Adam, the first parent of all.

Proof 1°. This proposition belongs to the faith, having a necessary connection with the article on the propagation of original sin, which will be treated below.

Proof 2° from Holy Scripture, against those who admit the authority of the divine Books. For Holy Scripture excludes the existence of pre-Adamites, if it constantly presents Adam to us as the sole and only progenitor of all men. And such is indeed the case. It is read, Genes., I, 27, that, once all the works of the sensible world had been completed, God created man to his own image...: male and female he created them. But of this man, before the manner of his creation is more clearly set forth, it is said, ibid., II, 5:

And there was not a man to till the earth, whence it appears that, to fulfill the end which God had proposed to Himself, one man sufficed at first. Accordingly it is added, ibid., 7: And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth. One is formed, because more would then have been useless. This man, then, from whom the whole race necessarily had to arise, having been made, the reason is shown why he was not to remain alone. Other men do not come forth through creation; a wife is given to him, because, ibid., 20, for Adam there was not found a helper like himself. And that it might be known that all men were to arise from that one man and the one wife built from his rib, it is added, ibid., III, 20: And Adam called his wife's name Eve: because she was the mother of all living. This is confirmed both from Sap., X, 1: She (wisdom) preserved him who was first formed by God, the father of the world, when he was created alone; and from Paul, saying, Act., XVII, 26: And hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth. These things are so plain that it is superfluous to argue from these words. But if there be added the traditional sense of the Hebrews and the Christians, which is constant and universal, and the dogma of the propagation of original guilt into each man, which, as we shall show, the Church has always professed, and which rests upon this truth and cannot be conceived apart from it, no room for doubt remains. Therefore.

Proof 3° from traditions and facts, especially against those who reject the authority of the divine Scriptures. For 1°, against them stand all the anthropogonies which either poets or historical writers admit, which agree entirely with the Mosaic narrative. Sanchoniaton, cited by Eusebius, Berosus the Chaldean, in Syncellus, Diodorus Siculus, trace the origin of the whole human race back to one man and one woman, as also do the poets Orpheus, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Horace, and Ovid. 2° In favor of this origin fight the traditions of all peoples, not only of the more ancient, but also of the more recent. 3° All the histories which relate the migrations of colonies from Asia, especially Chaldea, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, etc., most clearly testify that all peoples grew, from a slender

beginning, gradually increased, and had a common origin, as is related by Moses, so that the later histories of his narrative appear to be nothing but commentaries and confirmations of it. 4° Philology itself, which has been cultivated with the greatest care in this our age, supplies another argument against those whom we are attacking. For it has been ascertained that all languages are to be traced back to two chief or matrix and primitive tongues, namely the Semitic and the Japhetic. Moreover these languages, or idioms, have many roots, indeed even common words, apart from a slight difference of inflection, and sometimes also forms and grammatical system. Again it has been found that the Sanskrit language, which is in use among the Indians, agrees in very many words with Greek and Latin, and that therefore one and the same was the first language of these peoples. But all these things prove that all men arose from a common origin. Therefore¹.

Proof 4° from reason. Those who reject the divine creation of man are refuted as follows. 1° It is mathematically evident that there cannot be given either a successive or a simultaneous infinite series of terms. Therefore man necessarily had some origin. 2° From physics it is likewise certain and scientifically demonstrated that all living things presuppose other beings of the same species by which they are begotten, and that the systems both of organic particles, and of an egg existing without a beginning, and of spontaneous generation from putrefaction, are absurd. As for transformism especially, the most ancient histories and monuments of sculpture, which must certainly be referred to three, and perhaps to four, thousand years, prove that the human species was already then fixed and altogether the same as we now behold it. But this immobility the theory of indefinite evolutions would not allow. Therefore.

You will ask 1° where Adam and Eve were formed.

I answer. Adam and Eve were formed outside the paradise of pleasure, into which they were transferred a little afterward.

Proof from Holy Scripture. After the narrative of the creation of man, whom God created male and female, it is read, Genes., II, 15: And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it and to keep it. If man is said in the singular number, this is understood in the sense stated above, that is, of the man both male and female, and it is proved otherwise from the fact that Eve induced Adam to sin in paradise.

You will ask 2° what work and what keeping were enjoined upon Adam by God.

Augustine answers, lib. VIII de Genes. ad litt., c. 10, n. 22: « Man was placed in paradise, that he might till that same paradise, by an agriculture not laborious, but delightful, and suggesting great and useful things to a prudent mind; and that he might keep that same paradise for himself, lest he should admit anything for which he would deserve to be expelled from it. »

You will ask 3° whether paradise was a corporeal place².

I answer. As Augustine relates, lib. XIII de Civit. Dei, c. 21, « some refer the whole paradise, in which the first parents of the human race are related by the truth of Holy Scripture to have been, to things intelligible, and turn those trees and fruit-bearing woods into the virtues and habits of life. » And he adds: « Let these things, and whatever else can more fittingly be said about understanding paradise spiritually, be said, no one forbidding it: provided, however, that the truth of that history also be believed, commended by the most faithful narration of the things done. » Whence St. Jerome, Epist. 74 ad Pammachium, charges Origen with « so allegorizing paradise, and taking away the truth of the history, understanding angels for the trees, heavenly powers for the rivers, and overturning the whole content of paradise by a tropological interpretation. » ]