Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/535

 CREATIONISM

475

CREATIONISM

jible, St. Thomas, in his sohcitude that infidels might dave no ground to cavil with the arguments which be- lievers assign for the temporal origin of creation (pas- sive), says: "That the world has not always existed is held by faith alone, and cannot be demonstrated" (Summa, I, Q. xlvi, a. 2). St. Bonavcnture and many athers mamtain that the inherent impossibility of eternal creation is demonstrable. Arguments too subtle for discussion here are adduced by both sides of the controversy.

VIII. Specol.^tive and Practical Position of rHE Doctrine of Cre.\tion. — From what has been said it follows that belief "in God the Creator of heaven and earth" is the theoretical basis of all relig- ious and theological truth, the real foimdation under- lying all other truths concerning God, and the objec- tive principle whence all other truths proceed. The Incarnation completes in the supernatural order the creative purpose and plan by the Divine Personal Idea, the Word, assuming to Himself man's nature, wherein the natural order of creation is synthesized, and thus carrj-ing back completely the whole creation to its origin anil end. The Redemption, the Church, ind the sacramental system are obviously the exten- sion of the Incarnation, and so, through the medium jf the latter mystery, follow from creation. The proposition that the Infinite is the absolutely primary source of all other re.ality is also- the first philosophical truth, not of course in our order of attainment but in itself. All created being, truth, goodness, beauty, perfection are eminently contained in the Creator's jssence, conceptually in His creative intelligence, po- tentially in His creative oinni|)otence, and are deter- iiined to their measure of actual objective existence ay the creative vriW. The real distinction of the finite from the Infinite opposes every form of exaggerated nonism, while the entitative contingency and depend- ?nce of the creature on the Creator refutes an ex- iggerated dualism. A rational mediating dualistic iionism is based on the truth of creation. Lastly, the •nd aufl purpose of creation sets before man the first deal and norm of life; and thus the final reason of the listinction between right and wrong conduct is found n the conformity of the one and the diflfonnity of the jther with the orginal exemplar in the Creator's mind. Acting up to his complete nature, man is at once self-
 * onsistent and accordant proximately with the cre-

ited copy and hence mediately accordant with the jriginal pattern in the eternal design of his Creator.

(See Co.sMOLOGY, Cosmogony, Evolution, God, Life, Man, Socl, World, M.\teri.\lism, Pantheism.)

Harper. Mclaphyrics of the School (New York, 1881), II; UlvART. Lessons from Sa{ure (New York, 1876); Id.. Genesis >f Species (New York, 1871); GrinF.RT, Lrs orinines, tr. In Ihn beginning (New York. 1901); Gkh ■ ':■. /: -' .i..nary Philosophy ind Common Sense (London. 19M_', M' i m \vx, Altitude of he Colholics towards Darwinism n>: I ^i. Louis, 1906);

Hi-iiHKS. Principles of Anthrop"t- : : <n ' /; ',v;7 (New York, 1^'iu . Clerke. Modern Cosmofionirs (Lon'lon, 1905); Thein, .; Anthropology (.New York, 1881); Vaughan, Faith 7' ■■:■/ (New York. 1908). II; WiLHELM AND Scansei-l, Mongol of Catholic Theology (New York, 1890), I; McCosh. Realistic Philosophy (New York, 1881); Wallace. Darwin- ism (.New York. 1881); Shields. Ultimate Philosophy (New ^ork, igO.')), Ill; Croll, Basis of Evolution (London, 1890); iV'iLLEMs. Inslitutiones Philosophiw (Treves, 1906), II; Pe.sch, Wcllrntsel (Freihure, 1907); Pra^Jecliones Phitosonhia: Naturalis [Freiburg. 1897): Didiot, Contribuiion philosophique h I'etudc ies sciences (Lille. 1902); GuTBERLET. Apologetik (Miinster, 189.5); Der Mensch (Miin.ster. 190.5); Mercier. La ps|/c/io/o(7ie, (Louv.tin. 1905): Faroes. La vie el revolution desesptces (Paris. 1894); Pesch. Pralectinnes Dogmalicce: De Deo CrearUe (Frei- burg. 1895); Van Noort, Dc Deo Croinfe (Amsterdam, 1903); Pinard in Diet, de theoL. cath., a. v. — the most thorough and iMst documented monograph on the subjent.
 * ■•1,1 (London. 1901); Hunter. Outlines of Dogmatic

F. P. Siegfried.

Creationism (Lat. crentio). — (1) In the widest sense, the doctrine that the material of the universe was created by God out of no pre-existing subject. It is thus opposed to all forms of Pantheism. (2) Less widely, the doctrine that the various species of

living beings were immediately and directly created or produced by God, and are not therefore the outcome of an evolutionary process. It is thus opposed to Transformism.

(3) In a restricted but more usual sense, the doc- trine that the individual human soul is the immediate effect of God's creative act. It is thus opposed to Traducianism. The first two acceptations of the term are treated in the article Cre,\tion; the third alone is here considered. The proposition that the human soul is immediately created by God is a corollary of the soul's spirituality. Certain psychical phenomena, viz. intellectual and volitional — especially when these regard immaterial objects — indicate that their radical principle subsists essentially and intrinsically independent of the purely corporeal organism. This transmaterial subsistence supposes a corresponding mode of origin ; for that the soul must have had a beginning follows obviously from its finitude and contingency. That origin cannot be:

(a) by way of emanation from God, as Pantheists declare, since the Divine substance, being absolutely simple, cannot be subject to any emissional process;

(b) nor by spiritiLal generation from the souls of par- ents — as the German theologian Frohschammer (1821- 1893) maintained — because human souls, being essen- tially and integrally simple and indivisible, can give forth no spiritual germs or reproductive elements;

(c) still less by physical generation (as corporeal Traducianists suppose), since such a mode of produc- tion plainly conflicts both with the essential simplicity and the spirituality of the soul. The only other intelligible source of the soul's existence is God; and since the characteristic and excUisive act of the Di\-ine Cause is creation (q. v.), the soul must owe its origin to that operation.

As regards the time when the individual soul is created, philosophical speculation varies. The an- cient Platonic doctrine of the pre-natal existence of souk and their subsequent incarceration in bodies may be passed over as poetic fiction and not scientific theorj''. The same may be said of the ancient hy- pothesis of transmigration, which, however, still survives in Buddhism and is revived by recent Theos- ojihy. Besides being entirely gratuitous, metempsy- chosis rests on a false view which conceives of body and soul as only accidentally, not essentially, com- bined in the unity of the human person. The traditional philosophy of the Church holds that the rational soul is created at the moment when it is infused into the new organism. St. Thomxs, following Aristotle's embryologj', taught that the human fcEtus passes through progressive stages of formation wherein it is successively animated by the vegetative, sensitive, and rational principles, each succeeding form summing up virtually the potencies of its predecessor. Accordingly, the rational soul is created when the antecedent principles of life have rendered the frotus an appropriate organism for rational life, though some time is required after birth before the sensory organs are sufficiently developed to assist in the fimctions of intelligence. In this view the embryonic historj' of man is an epitome of the stages through which the upward march of life on our globe is now held by pala-ontologists to have pa.ssed. On the other hand, most neo-Schol;istics hold that the rational soul is created and infused into the incipient human being at the moiuent of conception. It should be noted that the doctrine of Creationism is not an appeal to the supernatural or the "miraculous" to account for a natural effect. The creation of the soul by the First Cause, when second causes hav<! posited the pertinent conditions, falls within the order of nature; it is a so-called "law of nature", not an interference therewith, .as is the c.a.se in .a miracle.

So much for the philosophical or purely rational aspect of Creationism; as regards the theological, it