more from
Augustine and Evolution which ties nicely to IDvolution.
41
Hence the doctrine is clear. God, having decreed this existing order of creation created all things
simultaneously in the beginning by His simple creative word. He created in the roots of time prime
matter - under what elementary form or forms, is of no consequence - with its universal passive
potency determined to those creatures only that were to exist in the course of time; and this is the
creation of all things in their seminal reasons. This determination of passive potency was in no way
the imposition of a form, but merely the adaptation of the universal negative potentiality of prime
matter having no definite ordination to any form, to those it was actually to receive. Wherefore,
seminal reasons were, with regard to the first members of any species originating by creation,
purely passive. They were the primordial ordination of matter to respond to the creative word in
time according to each creature’s appointed time. In this response no intermediary agent intervened.
To the creative word spoken in the simple unchangeable present of eternity, the response of each
seminal reason was immediate, instantaneous, however widely separated it was from others in time;
because the moment in time for the existence of each was immediately subject to the eternal,
immutable present. Make the course of time as long as you please. Separate the beginnings of
species by what duration you like. There can be no interval between the word spoken in eternity and
its effect in time. St. Augustine leaves no room in his doctrine, as he proposes it, for Evolution.
42
His formula is as close as it is complete. The creative word, immutable, eternal, spoken once
eternally in the eternal present of God, producing its effects, therefore, immediately in time yet according
to the mutability of time, created simultaneously in the roots of times in their seminal
reasons, that is, in the determination of the passive potentiality of matter to them alone among
things abstractly possible, all creatures that were to exist, as they were to exist, each in its own time.
We must observe that this “simultaneously” does not mean simultaneously with the creative act
only, but also simultaneously among themselves. Whatever happens in time is simultaneous with the ever present moment of eternity. The simultaneous creation of creatures in the roots of times is
opposed to the successive terminations of the creative act in the course of time, whereby each
creature begins its own existence in its own time.