Consider the following Patristic opinions:
"Like tops, which after the fist impulse, continue their evolutions..; thus,
nature, receiving the impulse of this first command, follows without
interruption the course of the ages, until the consummation of all things."
"God did not command the earth immediately to give forth seed and fruit, but
to produce germs, to grow green, and [then] to arrive at maturity...so that
this first command teaches nature what she has to do in the course of the ages."
These are from St. Basil's HOMILIES ON THE HEXAEMERON. Then, from
Augustine's, THE LITERAL TRANSLATION OF GENESIS:
"...all...things were created at the beginning, being primordially woven
into the texture of the world; but they await the proper opportunity for
their appearance."
"...from the beginning of the ages, when day was made, the world is said to
have been formed, and in its elements at the same time there were laid away
the creatures that would later spring forth with the passage of time..."
In his CONFESSIONS, Augustine also wrote,
"...it is by (your) Word that all things are made which you say are to be
made. You created them by your word alone...Yet the things which you create
by your Word do not all come into being at one and the same time..."
Augustine, like Basil believed that God created all things instantaneously,
but they did not believe that everyting was instantaneously created in its
final form. Augustine, relied on Greek philosophy to resolve an exegetical
problem--which is how to maintain that God's creative activity is truly
completed in the beginning, yet taking full account of commonsense notions
regarding the development of natural things that are clearly visible to the
eye. Augustine and Basil believed that in the beginning many of the final
forms of the creation existed not actually, but potentially, or according to
Augustine, as "seed principles" Thus, God created and imbued an unformed
but formable cosmos with a full spectrum of "seed principles" necessary to,
over time, give rise to all the final forms that FIRST EXISTED IN THE MIND
OF GOD.
In the context of this discussion on the creation of Adam, it is noteworthy
that Augustine applied the doctrine of seedlike principles to the origin of
Adam and Eve. He believed that they arose from a created earth-substance
that he called "slime".
So, Augustine and Basil left us with a vitalistic concept of creation. They
believed that in the beginning, when God called the whole of creation into
existence (by His Word alone, according to Augustine in his CONFESSIONS), He
imbued it with the capapbility to assemble, over timE, into the myriad of
final forms that God ORIGINALLY had in mind. In other words, all matter in
its various final forms is the intentional product of God's INITIAL act of
creation. Thus, the creation is OBEDIENT over time to God's primary will.
Somehow, this view of God's initial and full creative act has been
overturned in favor of creation as a discontinuous process that requires
God's special intervention at certain critical junctures. Stated
differently, the creationist viewpoint requires that, in the beginning, God
purposively withheld certain capabilities from the creation so that it would
be necessary for Him to perform special miracles at certain time in the
formation of the creation in order to bring into exisitence things such as
living creatures that the CREATION ITSELF WAS NOT EQUIPPED TO FORM.
How have we gotten from there to here? How have we gotten from Basil's and
Augustine's view that God's creation is imbued with all things necessary to
give rise to the final forms, to the creationist viewpoint that the creation
is incomplete and requires God's specific intervention at very specific
times? When was it decided that we should ignore Augustine and Basil?
Shalom,
Steve
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Steven S. Clark, Ph.D. Phone: (608) 263-9137
Associate Professor FAX: (608) 263-4226
Dept. of Human Oncology and email: ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
UW Comprehensive Cancer Ctr
University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53792
"Philosophers consistently see the method of science before their eyes,
and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science
does. This tendency...leads the philosopher into complete darkness."
Ludwig Wittgestein, The Blue Book, 1933
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