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IN DEFENSE OF AQUINAS'S ADAM: ORIGINAL JUSTICE, THE FALL, AND EVOLUTION
Author(s) -
Macdonald Paul A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
zygon®
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-9744
pISSN - 0591-2385
DOI - 10.1111/zygo.12692
Subject(s) - adam smith , economic justice , subject (documents) , philosophy , state (computer science) , language change , original sin , natural (archaeology) , adam and eve , environmental ethics , law , law and economics , epistemology , sociology , theology , political science , history , economics , linguistics , neoclassical economics , archaeology , algorithm , library science , computer science
In this article, I show how traditional Thomistic claims about the creation and fall of the first human beings—or “Adam”—are compatible with the claims of evolutionary science concerning human origins. Aquinas claims that God created Adam in a state or condition of original justice, wholly subject to God and so fully virtuous, as well as internally immune to bodily corruption, suffering, and natural death. In defense of “Aquinas's Adam,” I first argue that affirming that the prelapsarian Adam was internally immune to suffering and death does not require denying that these things predated his emergence within evolutionary history, or that he would have faced real challenges posed to him by his natural environment. Next, I rebut the claim that Adam must have been spiritually and morally fragile, given the traits he inherited from his evolutionary ancestors. Finally, I dispute the claim that Adam only could have fallen if he existed in a spiritually and morally fragile state.