FIRST ARTICLE: THE CREATION OF OUR FIRST PARENTS

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]