28
I
Entropy and eden
by
Paula Haigh
1992
[Computerized in 2001]
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
I. A Reading of St. Thomas 5
II. The Protestant Creationist Scientists 13
III. Catholic Creationists 18
IV. The First Law of Thermodynamics 23
V. Historical Note on the Two Laws 25
VI. Some Key Terms and Concepts 27
VII. References 29
Introduction
A Catholic theology of creation must include a consideration of the laws of thermodynamics in relation to the nature of the created universe and the state of innocence of our first parents. Rather than beginning with definitions from modern physics, I suggest a reading of St. Thomas Aquinas without any preconceived notions. This method will enable us to see whether the laws of thermodynamics are really universal and so, of scientific certitude, because if they are, then St. Thomas will make some acknowledgement of them in his writings, perhaps not in the words of present-day scientists, but certainly as presenting the same ideas of perceived reality.
Some preliminary considerations are necessary. We must understand clearly the relation between the natural and the supernatural orders.
The supernatural life of divine grace does not exist in itself but in something else. It is therefore not a substance but an accident. Thus the supernatural life presupposes a created nature which receives it and in which it operates. (Ott, p.102)
This Catholic doctrine is essentially different from the modernist heresy which teaches a “vital immanence” according to which everything of a religious or spiritual nature develops out of the necessities of human nature in a purely natural fashion. (Ott, p.102) The modernist thus makes divine grace to be of the very substance of the soul as belonging to it by some inherently natural right. On the contrary, divine grace is an entirely gratuitous gift super-added to human nature and is therefore subject to humble and grateful acceptance or to prideful rejection on the part of a free will.
The Catholic doctrine of grace is also radically different from that of many if not most Protestants who simply have no clearly defined or developed theology of divine grace and the soul or of which includes Sacramental theology, virtue, sin, etc, etc.
According to St. Thomas, as soon as God formed Adam's body from the earth and infused the rational soul, He also raised him to the supernatural order of divine grace. (Ott, p. 103 and ST, I, Q 95, a 1)
The State of Original Justice or Innocence had its source in the sanctifying grace that permeated Adam’s soul. This supernatural endowment included in addition to the gift of sanctifying grace, certain preternatural gifts which depended on grace alone and flowed directly from it. These additional gifts were:
1) The gift of rectitude or integrity, meaning freedom from irregular desires in the physical order and a perfect control of the passions by reason;
2) Bodily immortality or freedom from bodily death;
3) Bodily impassibility or freedom from suffering and bodily degeneracy, i.e., sickness;
4) The gift of science or knowledge of natural and supernatural truths infused by God.
This State of Original Justice was intended by God to be hereditary. (Ott, pp. 103-105)
We know of only two human beings who by reason of their being absolutely sinless possessed these gifts in their fullness and never lost them: Our Divine Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary.
We know from Holy Scripture that the sentence of bodily death was not carried out immediately upon Adam's fall from grace. Quite the contrary. Adam and the Patriarchs -- and so, we may reasonably assume, everyone else -- lived to extremely long ages. The same may justly be inferred regarding the other gifts.
These facts belong to the history of the world and of mankind before the Flood and are mentioned here only by way of indicating what a wealth of knowledge there is at hand for constructing a true history of the world to replace the false evolutionary world view currently prevailing.
Concerning the consequences of Original Sin, we can be absolutely certain only of the following:
1) Our First Parents lost Sanctifying Grace and the preternatural gifts flowing from it, provoking the anger of God and His indignation;
2) They became subject to sickness and death as a punishment for sin; they also became subject to the dominion of the Devil (Gen. 3:15; John 12:31; 14:30; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb. 2:l4; 2 Peter 2:19).
3) The privations due to Original Sin are transmitted by natural generation. (Ott, pp. 107-108)
All the rest is opinion based on inferences more or less soundly based. Such are the following: since only human beings, i.e., Adam and Eve and their descendants, fell directly under the curse of Genesis 3. But we may admit, with many Catholic authors, that nature suffers indirectly from the curse inasmuch as it is influenced by mankind: "Cursed be the earth in thy work." (Gen. 3:17)
I. A Reading of Saint Thomas
Let us now listen to the words of St. Thomas and try to discover what he teaches about the world before and after the Fall of our First Parents.
Under the Question "Whether in the State of Innocence Man Would Have Been Immortal?" St. Thomas answers:
It is written (Rom. 5:l2) By sin death came into the world. Therefore, man was immortal before sin. (ST, I, Q 97, a 1)
But this concerns only man. It tells us nothing about the universe in general or the rest of nature. This point is well worth noting, for St. Thomas will always be concerned primarily with man and man’s relationship with God, his Creator. Next, St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine:
God made man’s soul of such a powerful nature that from its fullness of beatitude [in the state of innocence] there redounds to the body a fullness of health with the vigor of incorruption. God made man immortal as long as he did not sin, so that he might achieve for himself [by free choice] life or death.
St. Thomas then adds his own explanation wherein we may begin to perceive the answer to our question about entropy in Eden:
For man's body was indissoluble not by reason of any intrinsic vigor of immortality but by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the soul, whereby it [the soul] was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so long as it remained itself subject to God. This entirely agrees with reason; for since the rational soul surpasses the capacity of corporeal matter, it was most properly endowed at the beginning with the power of preserving the body in a manner surpassing the capacity of corporeal matter. Further, this power of preserving the body was not natural to the soul, but was the gift of grace. (ST, I, Q 97, a 1, ad 3)
The view of St. Thomas here is clear: the preternatural. gifts were due entirely to the supernatural life of Grace exerting a truly miraculous power over the body, a power which surpassed the "natural capacity of corporeal matter." The inference is that "corporeal matter" not being impassible or immortal by its own nature, must then be, by its nature, quite the opposite, that is, passible and mortal, inclining to dissolution. Such is the essential meaning of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thus, when St. Thomas speaks of natural capacities in this context, we must assume the nature to which he refers is the same nature in and by which we live today.
Did Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden need to take food? This question is most relevant to our purpose because (to anticipate some definitions) it is necessary to know, even if St. Thomas was not so explicitly aware, that the processes of digestion and assimilation are thermodynamic processes. He says:
In the State of Innocence, man had an animal life requiring food; but after the resurrection, he will have a spiritual life needing no food.
This is a most important distinction to observe, for we must in no way equate the State of Innocence in Eden with the Life of Glory after the final Resurrection. We have only to think of Our Divine Lord in His life on earth and then, in His appearances after the Resurrection. Before the Resurrection He needed to eat and drink. After the Resurrection, He was able to do so but did not need to do so. Adam’s body in Eden was not a glorified body. Nor will the state of the world, that of "the new heavens and the new earth" (2 Peter 3:13 and Apoc. 21:1-8; Cf. Ott, pages 494-496) be like that of the Garden before the Fall.
Returning to the discussion of life before the Fall, St. Thomas continues:
In order to make this clear, we must observe that the rational soul is both soul and spirit. The soul in common with all other souls [vegetative and sensitive, i.e., plant and animal] gives life to the body. The soul is called spirit according to what is proper to itself and not to other souls, that is, as possessing an intellectual immaterial power. Thus in the state of innocence the rational soul communicated to the body what belonged to itself so a soul, i.e., life… Now the first principle of life in the inferior creatures is the vegetative soul, the operations of which are the use of food, generation, and growth. Wherefore, such operations befitted man in the state of innocence. ... For the immortality of the original state was based on a supernatural force in the soul and not on any intrinsic disposition of the body; so that by the action of heat, the body might lose part of its humid qualities; and to prevent the entire consumption of the humor, man was obliged to take food. A certain passion and alteration attends nutriment on the part of the food changed into the substance of the thing nourished. So we cannot thence conclude that man's body was possible [i.e., corruptible] but that the food taken was passible,... (ST, I, Q 97, a 3, ad 1 and 2)
The point to note here is that the plant kingdom in Eden was certainly subject to the Second Law even though Adam’s body, on account of the supernatural life of grace, was not. The fact, however, that he did need to take nourishment is an indication that there was a certain degree of subjection to the Second Law, even though the life of grace prevented it from exerting its full influence. Furthermore, in answer to an objection that Adam would have taken no superfluous food and therefore had no need to defecate, St. Thomas replies:
…this is unreasonable to suppose … for voiding the surplus was so disposed by God as to be decorous and suitable to the state of innocence.
These facts of theology indicate that Adam and Eve in the exalted state of innocence nevertheless were subject, to some degree, to the operation of the Second Law even though the divine life of grace in their souls prevented its full effects of sickness and death. Furthermore, in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve possessed two remedies against two defects:
1) One of these defects was the loss of humidity by the action of natural heat, …a remedy against such loss was provided with food taken from the trees of Paradise, as now we are provided with food which we take for the same purpose.
2) The second defect arises from the fact that the humor which is caused from extraneous sources being added to the humor already existing, lessens the specific [i.e., of the species] active power... so we may observe that at first the active force of the species [in this case, human nature] is so strong that it is able to transform so much of the food as is required to replace the lost tissue, as well as what suffices for growth; later on, the assimilated food does not suffice for growth, but only replaces what is lost. Last of all in old age, it does not suffice even for this purpose; whereupon, the body declines and finally dies from natural causes.
Against this defect man was provided with a remedy in the Tree of Life; for its effect was to strengthen the force of the species against the weakness resulting from the admixture of extraneous nutriment. Wherefore Augustine says:
Man had food to appease his hunger, drink to slake his thirst; and the Tree of Life to banish the breaking up of old age; and… the Tree of Life, like a drug [or we might better say, a tonic] warded off all bodily corruption.
St. Thomas adds:
Yet it did not absolutely cause immortality; for neither was the soul’s intrinsic power of preserving the body due to the Tree of Life, nor was it of such efficiency as to give the body a disposition to immortality whereby it might become indissoluble; which is clear from the fact that every bodily power is finite; so the power of the Tree of Life could not go so far as to give the body the prerogative of living for an infinite time, but only for a definite time. ... since the power of the Tree of Life was finite, man’s life was to be preserved for a definite time, by partaking of it once; and when that time had elapsed, man was to be either transferred to a spiritual life, or had need to eat once more of the Tree of Life. (ST, I, Q 97)
It is not difficult to translate the medieval theories of bodily humors into modern ideas of physiology and nutrition. What is clear is that St. Thomas perceives defects in natural processes even in Paradise. Furthermore, his assertion that "every bodily power is finite" indicates a simple attribute of all created being -- its limitation and therefore, a certain kind and degree of imperfection. The necessary condition and prerequisite for entropy is therefore here in the very created nature of material or corporeal being; for only God is immaterial, having no parts, and infinitely perfect, having no need of change. Even the Angels are subject to change though not to any material or corporeal processes. Inherent in the very nature of materiality and of corporeal process is the fact of degeneration, if not sooner then later. St. Thomas says: