History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St. Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. In his great treatise on Genesis he says: "To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish.... God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips."

St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter," argues that, even if this be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals "whose numbers the after-time unfolded."

In his great treatise on the Trinity—the work to which he devoted the best thirty years of his life—we find the full growth of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings there was something like a growth—that God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.(19)

(19) For the Chaldean view of creation, see George Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 14,15, and 64-86; also Lukas, as
above; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, Hibbert Lectures
for 1887, pp. 371 and elsewhere; as to the fall of man, Tower of Babel,
sacredness of the number seven, etc., see also Delitzsch, appendix to
the German translation of Smith, pp. 305 et seq.; as to the almost exact
adoption of the Chaldean legends into the Hebrew sacred account, see
all these, as also Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
Testament, Giessen, 1883, early chapters; also article Babylonia in
the Encyclopedia Britannica; as to similar approval of creation by the
Creator in both accounts, see George Smith, p. 73; as to the migration
of the Babylonian legends to the Hebrews, see Schrader, Whitehouse's
translation, pp. 44,45; as to the Chaldaean belief ina solid firmament,
while Schrader in 1883 thought it not proved, Jensen in 1890 has found
it clearly expresses—see his Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp.9 et seq.,
also pp. 304-306, and elsewhere. Dr. Lukas in 1893 also fully accepts
this view of a Chaldean record of a "firmament"—see Kosmologie, pp.
43, etc.; see also Maspero and Sayce, the Dawn of Civilization, and for
crude early ideas of evolution in Egypt, see ibid., pp. 156 et seq.

For the seven-day week among the Chaldeans and rest on the seventh day, and the proof that even the name "Sabbath" is of Chaldean origin, see Delitzsch, Beiga-ben zu Smith's Chald. Genesis, pp. 300 and 306; also Schrader; for St. Basil, see Hexaemeron and Homilies vii-ix; but for the steadfastness of Basil's view in regard to the immutability of species, see a Catholic writer on evolution and Faith in the Dublin Review for July, 1871, p. 13; for citations of St. Augustine on Genesis, see the De Genesi contra Manichoeos, lib. ii, cap. 14, in Migne, xxxiv, 188,—lib. v, cap. 5 and cap. 23,—and lib vii, cap I; for the citations from his work on the Trinity, see his De Trinitate, lib. iii, cap. 8 and 9, in Migne, xlii, 877, 878; for the general subject very fully and adequately presented, see Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, New York, 1894, chaps. ii and iii.

This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the original creation was helped in its growth by a theological exigency. More and more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and "creeping things" was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other.

The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark—supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion.

Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine, wolves, and owls.

This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until, in the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary, The Sentences, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church, emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been created "potentially" the latter "actually."

In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thomas Aquinas and virtually received from him its final form. In the Summa, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he accepts the idea that certain animals spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either actually or virtually. He develops this view by saying, "Nothing was made by God, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."