Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

[I answer affirmatively¹.

Proof 1° from Sacred Scripture. Genes., I, 28, God said to our first parents: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth. Therefore².

If you should contend that God said this to our first parents because he had foreseen that they would sin, and that on account of sin they would be liable to death, and therefore lest, when they should die, the human race would cease, he willed, by the force of that blessing given before sin, that after sin they should devote themselves to generation, for the multiplication of men,

I answer 1° that this evasion is a mere fiction without any foundation, and this is demonstrated whether from Sacred Scripture, or from tradition, or from reason, and it is against the natural and obvious sense of Sacred Scripture. 2° God directed these same words to the brute animals, which are not capable of sin, ibid., 22. Therefore they would have been verified independently of sin.

It is confirmed. It is incredible that God created this universe and all the things that are in it for the use of only two men, and that these two alone would have completed the number of the elect for the heavenly homeland.

Proof 2° from reason³. The principal intention of universal nature is toward that which is always and perpetual; but toward the temporal it is not, except in so far as it is ordered to another thing which is perpetual; otherwise, that temporal thing being corrupted, the principal intention of universal nature would remain void and vain. But in corruptible things nothing is perpetual and always remaining, except the species; whereas incorruptible substances always remain, not only according to species, but also according to individuals. Therefore, although in incorruptible substances, not only the species, but the individuals themselves also are of the principal intention of universal nature, in corruptible things nevertheless only the good of the species, and not of the individual, is of the principal intention of universal nature, and generation is ordered to the conservation of the species. — I subsume. But man is, as it were, a mean between corruptible natures and incorruptible natures; for he consists of a body, which is corruptible, and a soul, which is incorruptible. Therefore, although on the part of the body generation belongs to him so that the good of the species may be preserved, on the part of the soul, however, it belongs that

the multitude of individuals be per se intended by universal nature, or rather by the author of nature, who alone is the creator of human souls; and consequently, that generation for the multiplication of men would have existed in the state of innocence.

It is confirmed. If in the state of innocence only the good of the species had been of the intention of nature, Adam alone, and not Eve, would have had to be created immortal, since in him alone the human species would have been sufficiently preserved.

Proof 3° from inconvenience⁴. If in the state of innocence there had not been generation for the multiplication of the human race, it follows that sin was necessary for so great a good as is the multiplication of the human race, and especially of the elect. But sin can in no way be supposed necessary. Therefore the multiplication of the human race would have existed independently of sin.]