CREATIONISM. — This may indicate the philosophical system that holds creation (v.); or, in opposition to “evolutionism,” the doctrine that regards the various biological species as having been created immediately by God (v. EVOLUZIONISMO CULTURALE); or, finally, in the question of the origin of the human soul, the doctrine, opposed to “generationism” and “ traducianism,” that God creates individual souls at the moment of their informing the body. Here c. is understood in this latter sense.
Tertullian (De anima, 19 and 27) thought that the soul was generated by the parents in the same way as the body, through material seed. St. Augustine rejected this explanation (“quo perversius quid dici potest?”: Epist., 190, n. 14: PL 33, 861), but was never able to exclude a spiritual generationism, according to which, in a mysterious and immaterial manner, the child’s soul would derive from the souls of the parents, just as one flame is kindled from another flame without dividing II. He did not conceal the difficulties of this hypothesis (loc. cit., n. 15: PL 33, 862); indeed, he would have preferred the opinion of immediate creation, as defended by St. Jerome, to have been freed from every objection: “optarem ut haec sententia vera esset” (Epist., 166, cap. 8, n. 26: PL 33, 731–32); but he did not see the danger removed, in c., of making the transmission of original sin impossible, and preferred to leave the question open. The uncertainty of St. Augustine persists in
St. Gregory the Great (Epist. ad Secundinum, VII, 53) and in St. Isidore (De officiis ecclesiasticis, I, 2, cap. 23); it reappears in the 18th century with Cardinal E. Noris (Vindiciae Augustinianae, Bruxelles 1675, cap. 4, 3, col. 691), and in the 19th century in E. Klee (Kathol. Dogmatik, II, Magonza 1835, p. 234) and G. Ubaghs (Anthropologia, Lovanio 1834); while G. Froschammer and G. Hermes held that the parents produce their children’s souls through creation. A. Rosmini’s position is well known: according to him, parents generate, together with the body, the sensitive soul, which then becomes intellectual through the illumination communicated to it by God (Antropologia soprannaturale, III, cap. 8, § 3; cf. Denz-U, 1910–11).
Nevertheless, c. must now be regarded as a certain part of Catholic doctrine and as taught by the ordinary Magisterium. St. Thomas already said that it had been declared by the Church (In epist. ad Rom., cap. 14, lect. 3), although it is not easy to find before him a document that clearly excludes spiritual generationism. Among the Fathers, many taught c.: Giovanni Crisostomo, Gregorio Nazianzeno, Cirillo Alessandrino, Girolamo, Lattanasio, etc. And, independently of Revelation, c. is also the only doctrine that satisfies the demands of reason (v. ANIMA). The difficulty that prevented St. Augustine from accepting it is sufficiently resolved by observing that original sin, the sin of nature, is transmitted with nature, which is constituted not by the soul alone but also by the body, deriving from Adam through human generations. The soul created in the body undergoes the condition of that nature which it comes to complete.