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State of the question. The materialists and positivists
try to explain the origin of man, with regard to body and
soul, by the natural laws of evolution without any
intervention from God the first cause. This theory
proposed by Huxley and Darwin, called absolute
transformism, is, as we have shown earlier in considering
the production of the corporeal creature, in open
contradiction to both faith and reason. According to it
more is produced by less, and the more perfect comes from
the less perfect in opposition to the principle of
causality. Be, sides this, the order of the world and
the finality of beings demands that there be a first
intelligent cause and that this cause should intervene in
the production of matter, of vegetative life, of
sensitive life, and of intellective life. Mitigated
transformism admits all this, but many of its supporters
do not admit God's special intervention in the formation
of man's body to make it fit for supersensitive life, as
if natural evolution were sufficient to account for the
formation of man's body.[1363]
The Catholic teaching. The direct creation of the soul
from nothing is a dogma of faith according to the universal
teaching of the Church;[1364] and according to the
common teaching of the Fathers and theologians the body of
the first man was formed by a special action of God
directly from the slime of the earth without any
transformation of species. On June 30, 1909, the
Biblical Commission declared that the literal sense of
the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis cannot be
called into doubt With regard "to the peculiar creation
of man and the formation of the first woman from the first
man."[1365]
Sacred Scripture tells US: "And God created man to
His own image: to the image of God He created him:
male and female He created them";[1366] "And the
Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and
breathed into his face the breath of life";[1367]
"He took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it.
And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam
into a woman" (Gen. 2:21 f.). The Hebrew text
conveys the same sense. The obvious meaning is that
Adam's body was formed directly from the slime of the
earth, not through succeeding periods by the
transformation of species, and that the body of Eve was
formed from Adam's rib. Moreover, the words "breathed
into his face the breath of life" refer to direct action
by God, without the interposition of the progressive
evolution of plants and animals. Hence Leroy,
Bonomelli, and Zahn, who defend the opposite opinion as
probable, are not on firm ground.
The Fathers and theologians, with the exception of
Origen, Cajetan, and a few others, are almost
unanimous in their interpretation of the teaching of the
Bible on the formation of the bodies of our first
parents.[1368]
Confirmation of reason. Between man and the animals
close to him, such as the ape, we find essential
differences not only with respect to the soul but also with
respect to the body. Beings that are essentially so
diverse cannot come from the same parent.[1369]
Physically, the apes are equipped with four hands
(quadrumanual), whereas man has only two, and because
of this men and apes do not walk in the same way. We also
find a great difference in the facial angle of men and
apes; similarly the brain is differently evolved in man
and ape. Man enjoys the faculty of speech for the clear
and distinct expression not only of sensations and emotions
but also of ideas and judgments; the ape lacks this
faculty. Above all things, man alone of all animals
possesses reason, he knows necessary and universal
principles, the ideas of being, truth, goodness,
justice, moral beauty, religion, and holiness, which
are manifestly above the senses. Animals know only the
individual and they are incapable of intellectual, moral,
and religious life.
For these reasons many transformists today admit that man
did not come from the ape, but that both descended from
some remote common parent. Such a common parent,
however, left no trace in the geological strata.
It does not seem absolutely repugnant that God should
infuse into an animal organism the power by which it might
gradually be changed into the human organism. But that is
a purely gratuitous hypothesis, destitute of any basis in
fact, and contrary to the literal sense of the biblical
narrative.[1370]
St. Thomas shows that the human body was produced
directly by God and admirably equipped to serve the
rational soul and its operations, that is, the human body
is excellently equipped for sensitive life, which in turn
serves the intellectual life.[1371] Although man
lacks horns, claws, and the furry covering of the
animal, he has in their stead reason and hands. So also
man's posture is erect with face uplifted to consider all
things; the animal is inclined to the earth as if its only
concern were the quest for food.
St. Thomas also points out why man is said "to be made
to the image of God."[1372] Man is the true image
of God by reason of his intellectual nature. He was made
by God Himself in the image of God's intellectual life
and thus he is able to know and love God as God knows and
loves Himself. This image is, of course, imperfect;
only the Son of God is the perfect image of the eternal
Father. Properly speaking, irrational creatures are not
made to the image of God, for although they resemble God
in their being or in living, they are not like God in
intellection. More perfectly than man, the angels are
images of God.
God's image can be seen in man in three ways: 1.
inasmuch as man possesses the ability to know God; 2.
inasmuch as man knows and loves God supernaturally by
faith and charity; 3. inasmuch as man perfectly knows
and loves God in the light of glory and in the charity of
heaven.
When some of the Fathers say that the image of God is
destroyed is man by sin, they are referring to the image
that was produced in the re-creation of grace.
Lastly, man is an image of God even with regard to the
Trinity of persons, inasmuch as man in understanding
himself produces a word and by loving himself produces
love, and this image is enhanced in man when by knowing
God he produces a word and by loving this word produces
love.[1373]
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