{224} (cont’d)

3) But between historical will and biographical will there lies in a certain way a subtle and difficult articulating point, the will to origination. Man has appeared on Earth at a certain time. What is from the point of view of God this originating will? Certainly, we have already seen in the Yahwist account of Genesis that this will to origination adopts the form of an elaboration, like a potter who is forming the animals from the dust of Earth, and finally man. In the priestly code He appears as a creator by his own word telling us “and God said” in successive creations. Today, of course, we think that the “let us make” (Gn 1:26) expresses, from the point of view of reality, the initiative that is unfolding in a very long cosmic process, which is precisely what we call evolution. Hominization emerges precisely as terminus of a very long process in which God is not excluded (just the opposite), but in which man is being generated in the cosmos.

a) In the first place, this evolution affects not only his body, but also what is called his soul. There is no doubt about this. It will be said that there is no evolution capable of producing a free intelligence and a free will. If by evolution is understood a transformation of matter, certainly this is true. But human psychism in its highest functions, like the ones I have just mentioned, is mounted upon the poorly named {225} sensitive psychism, which is a more radical and profound stratum. However, the sensitive psychism insofar as psychism is a product of evolution. Man could not have been created through the evolution of an echinoderm. He comes from a hominid, with the proper, special, and particular psychism of that hominid from which he has been created. Man in body and soul is the product of evolution, at least taking the soul in this radical and basic sense.

b) But, in addition, divine causality, in what concerns the other dimensions of the human spirit that do not proceed from transformation (for example, pure intelligence and pure will), does not consist in an external addition to evolution. Quite the contrary, the fact is that God is subjacent as fontanal reality in the depth of all material creation, and is going to commence being such in the depth of every human reality. Precisely from the depth of that material reality of a hominid, and not fallen from the sky, is how He is going to bring forth a psychism that may have qualities that could not have flourished by mere transformation. At any rate, evolution is in this sense an internal and intrinsic flourishing. And as flourishing is how the originating will of God has willed that man may exist upon Earth. A flourishing that is determined by two dimensions of the divine causality. One is the exigent dimension, without it the terminus of the transformation of a hominid could not have had the perdurable subsistence it has had for thousands of years. And in second place, it is intrinsic, because it springs forth from the very depth of reality. Hence, this in each individual means it is a divine initiative of internal flourishing. In the species it means a kind of will to groping. God is not a kind of definitional dictator, theological or cosmic, ordering that {226} man may exist, and arranging that each one of them may exist. God has provided that creation may in a certain way continue to make itself divinely. That is the divine way, by evolution. And here is precisely where God has been groping the several dimensions of evolution, in order to have them reach deiformation.

But here appears again the subject of sin. Because, at any event, there is in that will to origination, and in the entity originated by it, a sin of origin. What is all this about original sin?

Above all, there is no obligation to think that the whole of mankind descends from just one couple. Monogenism is an interpretation, and that is all it is, an interpretation, besides there is no obligation to affirm it. Also, it would be biologically improbable that the whole of mankind, which covers such extraordinary dimensions in the biosphere, would proceed from only one couple. That would be absolutely improbable. Humanity proceeds from several, multiple couples. Then we can assume that it proceeds at least from a unique group of couples. And in this case we would have what I would call a group monogenism. For example, Rahner, a great theologian has suggested this¹. But it seems chimerical to me, who has ever suggested that the Pithecanthropus of Java and the Archanthropus of Morocco constitute a group? There would be not one group, but several groups. In other words, I do not believe there is a one couple monogenism, or even a group monogenism.

At any rate, humanity, which has been sprouting by evolution and by the intrinsic and exigent action of God in many {227} points of the Earth has become involved in a mass of sin. Our question is, in what does the originating characteristic of this sin consist? Let us be aware in this problem that it is precisely by the body that human beings are open to each other and to the whole world. Men form groups and resemble God precisely by that dimension of corporeity man’s own reality has. Hence, this corporeity is not a corporeity consecutive to what man is, but it is a constitutive corporeity. Man constitutively would never be turned (in the form he has to be) towards other men if it were not because of his body.

From this follows, on the one hand, that the original sin, which was certainly personal in Adam, is not personal in the rest of men. No one has been born with a sin for which he is personally responsible. That is chimerical. No one has been born with a personal sin. It will then be said that it is a kind of hereditary epidemic. It is not said that way, but in the end the immense majority of the classical expositions of original sin deal with it as if it were a sickness that man is always inheriting. No, that is completely chimerical.

The original sin is not a personal sin or a natural epidemic. It is something different. In Spanish we can say it quite well, it is a preparatory stage for peccability (Sp. estadio primero de empecatamiento). Man is born with a constitutional structure, with respect to other men, prepared for peccability. Certainly, not because of each man, but because of those that naturally constituted the origin of humanity. Man is born in a situation prepared for peccability as the result of a personal rejection by those who constituted the exordium of humanity. It has left men constituted in such a way that they possess the molding or the result of this {228} rejection. The result of this rejection is not a rejection. No one has a rejection of God because of original sin. But also there is no full possession of the Trinitarian life. Then, what is it? It is precisely a Trinitarian life lived with a deprivation. Man in original sin has no act of rejection; he has a state ready for peccability, which formally consists in a privation, in the privation of the fullness of the Trinitarian life.

The Genesis account (Gn 3) is completely legendary, no doubt about it. But what it is trying to say is that precisely because of that, moral evil had its beginning. Man, in one form or another, personally lost in all those who performed an act of rejection, the positive relationship with God, and he began to live and establish himself on Earth on the basis of that rejection. Everything else belongs, of course, to the literary and conceptual genre of the text of Genesis.

Taken from every possible angle, in each person or in history, the question from the part of God is of a will to deiformity staged for peccability. Staged for peccability, i.e., that each man is virtually someone who has the possibility of being an anti-God. And he is so precisely by virtue of his own Trinitarian structure. As I said above, this is a stupendous and extreme paradox, precisely the reality of the condemned man. Man has the possibility of acquiring the stage ready for peccability, of being in a state of peccability, and living his Trinitarian life with respect to God rejecting it. That is the reason why the radical sin is precisely the sin of pride.


III. The unity of creation

God has a will to molding that is, on the one hand, will to evolution in the closed essences. And on the other, has a will to {229} biographic, historical, and original deiformation in the open essences. We then ask, where is the unity of the will to creation? Indeed, the unity of the will to creation is precisely that, to be the molding ad extra of the very Trinitarian life.

Seemingly, one can think this is fine as long as the reference is only to man, but, what does the evolution of the galaxies has to do with the Trinitarian life? This “has to do” is not a matter of science, it is a question of what reality is. And, truthfully speaking, in each man his somatic aspect is never alien to his own human reality. It follows that the molding of Trinitarian life in one form or another involves the moment of the formation of a body. The body, while being perfectly material is, however, one of the ingredients (regardless of the structure that may be attributed to that set of ingredients) of the molding of the Trinitarian life in which man consists. This body, as moment of reality, forms an intrinsic part of the reality of man. It is precisely the possibility that I may be I, and in addition imposes itself on the I. All this makes that the body be, particularly the animated body, the temple of the holy Spirit. Therefore, the will of God, insofar as forming the matter of the human body, is not alien to the molding of his own Trinitarian life, and also not alien in the entire material evolution. Because, naturally, the body and the psychism have an origin, and that origin is material. Could God have created it directly? Indubitably, but He appears not to have done it that way. Be that as it may, then, the course of material evolution up to the human mind is precisely the stepping march from pure matter to freedom.

Inasmuch as the material universe is the outline of {230} that stepping march, evidently, matter belongs in a radical and fundamental manner to the molding of the Trinitarian life. Also, this matter defines man, as we have seen. Therefore, the entire material cosmos in one form or another expresses man. Let us remember the cosmic meaning of the glorification and the redemption, which for St. Paul the death and resurrection of Christ have, for him the entire cosmos groans for a glorification (cf. Rm 8:19-23). An obscure text, which undoubtedly makes that matter, as cause of the body of each man, as moment that produces the apparition of the first man, and as terminus and structure of history, may participate in the molding of the Trinitarian life. This molding, therefore, is not an elevation of a pure nature to the supernatural life. This idea of the supernatural is the perfect Hellenization of Christian thought. There is no elevation of nature to the supernatural order, but precisely the opposite, what exists is a descent (sit venia verbo) of the very Trinitarian life to its conditions of finitude. What we call nature are the dimensions of finitude of the Trinitarian life molded ad extra. Pure nature is, in fact, a Hellenization of Christian thought.

From the part of God, then, it is clear that the will to evolution in matter, to biography, to history, and to origination, all reveal that God has willed to create things out of nothing, but with a perfectly arranged will, towards creation as process. Creation does not have a pointlike characteristic, but rather a processable characteristic in an open world. The process starts from the reality of a substrate, created out of nothing. And that reality is going to move on processably and divinely elevating itself to forms each time more complex and richer of being by itself that which it is, in order to finish precisely in being it not ex se ipso, but a se ipso. It is a way {231} towards freedom. And the process itself, because of this, is an exact image of the Trinitarian procession ad extra. That is what deiformation is, and as such, this process continues to grow (at least in greatly elapsed times) making the entire creation richer, not only in the matter, but also in the open essences.

However, all this richness is nothing but the manifestation, each time greater, fuller and more detailed of what the truth of the Son is. The truth of the Son not only as Word, but also of a Word strictly and formally in human form, the case of Christ. Of course, up to this point creation has been precisely a giving of itself of the very Trinitarian life of God. The donation can still be even greater. It can be a donation of the very reality of God. In that case the terminus of this donation would be an identity between the Trinitarian processions and the initiating procession. This identity is precisely the person of Christ. That will be the subject of the next chapter.

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¹ Cf. K. Rahner, “Theologisches zum Monogenismus”, in his Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 1, Einsiedeln, 1960 (4th ed.) pp. 253-322; more explicitly his article on “Evolution und Erbsünde”, in Concilium, No. 3 (1967), pp. 459-465; also see his book in collaboration with P. Overhage, Das Problem der Hominisation, Fribourg, 1961.