Metaphysical Creationism and the Paradoxes of Evolutionary Theism: A Contribution to the Discussion within Contemporary Thomism

Andrzej Maryniarczyk

doi:10.18290/rf20684-8

Andrzej Maryniarczyk John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy, Poland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rf20684-8

Keywords: metaphysics, metaphysics of creation, creation ex nihilo, evolutionary theism

Abstract

In this article I argue that metaphysical creationism that we encounter in the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, as opposed to American creationism and theological and biblical creationism, is a theory that stems from a purely philosophical explanation of the beginnings of the world and man. It is not, therefore, a biblical idea transferred to philosophy. Like the theism of the Aristotelian metaphysics, the theism of Aquinas’s metaphysics is not a religious (theological) theism, but a purely philosophical (metaphysical) theism, because it stems from a metaphysical explanation of reality. Metaphysical creationism is the ultimate explanation of the source of the existence of beings that are given to us in experience as both unnecessary in their own existence and changeable. American creationism, on the other hand, is a biological-cosmological interpretation of the biblical truth concerning the creation of the world within a certain time frame (the 7-day paradigm) and—at its starting point—refers to the data of Revelation, which it wants to confirm scientifically.

This article is divided into two parts. The first part presents the key elements of the metaphysical theory of ex nihilo creation and the understanding thereof. In the second part, the elements of evolutionary theism are recalled which, from the point of view of metaphysical creationism, are the source of various paradoxes and, at times, even absurdities, and thus demand reconsideration.

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