Creation Rediscovered by Gerard J. Keane
Sound metaphysics, viz., Christian metaphysics, to employ the term of St. Bonaventure, tells us that something cannot come from nothing except by a creative act; and that the more perfect can only come from the less if the Creator acts miraculously to form the "higher" species as He formed the body of Adam from the slime of the earth. No natural process - read Evolution - can explain this because it cannot do what it necessarily presupposes to exist and act: Creation. That is why the origin of man is an historical event, not a term appearing at the end of an evolutionary process.
Traditional Catholic theology tells us that the Universe, visible and invisible, was created out of nothing by the triune God and subsequently structured and adorned in the work of six days, culminating in the formation of Adam's body directly from inorganic matter and the body of Eve directly from the unique body of Adam. All this: the creation of the world, the differentiation of the species and the ordering of the Universe within limits and for ends set by the Creator (not determined and progressively broadened by the operation of the creature) was principally the work of the Creator alone. Only after the Creator "rested" from this specific kind of action can the world be said to have begun to function "on its own," under the direction of men and angels, and so, in respect to its visible operations, to be the object of empirical science.
The great Fathers, East and West, the scholastics like St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas, are unanimous in their literal, not mythical, interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis on the origin of the world and of our first parents, in the sense just stated. For only thus can the uniqueness and dignity of human nature, in the body as well as in the soul, be securely demonstrated.
Some say the teaching of these Doctors in this regard has no more value than their teaching on questions scientific: that of an antiquated opinion. Such persons are mistaken. The question of Origins is not a scientific, but a theological question, uniquely so, for it involves a question of what God did freely and what only He could do when there were no witnesses. Hence, the importance of divine testimony in Revelation, attested by the Fathers, on this point.
There is only one reason for dissenting: the possibility that "science" might one day demonstrate an evolutionary theory of human origins to be factual in reference to the bodies (not souls) of Adam and Eve. But of this there is no reasonable expectation. Mr. Keane's study illustrates scientifically that reasonableness.
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