Creation in Thomas Aquinas

To go right to the matter and according to the information presented in the Summa Theologiæ and the Summa Contra Gentiles, creation is for Thomas Aquinas the first of God's acts outside himself. Without creation, no Revelation is possible, neither history of salvation (Pesch , 504–12). His doctrine is attuned to the problems raised by the Manichaean and the Cathar heresies (Aquinas , book 2). It reasserts the goodness of material creation by relating it to divine action and not to an evil principle that would be opposed to God. It is in this perspective that one has to understand the concept of creation ex nihilo. God needs nothing else than his own power to make beings spring into existence. He poses creation through a unique and eternal act in a beginning of time (Sertillanges , 254–55; Aquinas , 142). It is a free act that depends on the sovereign will of the creator to allow for the existence of a nondivine otherness, through the exercise of pure generosity and superabundance of love. As such, God is free and sovereign when it comes to creating (Aquinas , 69). Creation is not an extension or an emanation of divine substance, but it is the contingent position in being of substances that are perfectly different from the divine substance.

In an intentional Trinitarian perspective (Emery , 406), creation is the fruit of the will of the Father who thinks through the order of creation in his Word and as such gives it form (Summa Theologiæ Ia, qu. 34, a. 3.). Through the Holy Spirit, principle of love of the Father, creatures are posited in their difference and they are led to their end (Aquinas , 119–21). The whole creative action is set within the processions of the divine Persons, it is itself a procession ad extra, in which the whole of the Trinity is involved through perichoresis (Emery , 417).

According to a criticism already met in Antonin‐Dalmace Sertillanges, the act of creation can only be unique and eternal, which implies that we have of it a temporal perception in the continuity of ongoing time. This is why it is only legitimate to speak of continuous creation from the viewpoint of the creature, which is that of the experience of being created. To speak of continuous creation from the viewpoint of God would be a dubious anthropomorphism that one should attempt to avoid. In this perspective, continuous creation can only be a concept that is analogical in relation to the creative act (Sertillanges , 265).

What is more, the relationship of the Angelic Doctor to Greek metaphysics implies that he thinks the invariability of forms and archetypes of creatures are present in the divine Word from all eternity. This means that novelty can only be relative to an eternal plan that preexists creation. The change in creation is not understood in terms of creation, but in terms of Providence.

Providence in Thomas Aquinas

The notion of Providence is related to world order and its becoming. First, in Thomas Aquinas, Providence is the ordained agency of creation toward an end (Summa Theologiæ, Ia q. 22, a.1, resp.; a. 3 in corp.). If it is possible to discern an order in the world, this is because it corresponds to a divine intention that has established this order according to an accomplishment, a profound significance (Summa Theologiæ, Ia, qu. 2, a. 3). So, Providence comes before creation in the order of realization of the creative act, since this order is first present in the eternal divine word. The becoming of creation is thought about in terms of this deployment of Providence through time, since the beginning.

For Thomas Aquinas, Providence is distinguished alongside two complementary facets: government and conservation. Conservation, following on questions 22 and 103–105 and the whole first part of Summa Theologiæ, allows one to conceive the sustenance in being of creatures and of the whole universe. Government supposes conservation in its dimension of static permanence to think about the conduct of God directing creatures toward their end, their accomplishment that is the union with God (Summa Theologiæ, Ia q. 22 a. 1 in corp.; see Souchard , 77–78). As such, novelty and change in the order of creation are related to the divine government that presides over the becoming of things, in particular in the process of going from potency to act in Aristotelian terms. Change in the world comes from the generation and corruption of beings that is explained through a change of form that ends up modifying substance (see Aquinas ; Crouslé , 249).

One has to say that authors such as Marie‐Dalmace Leroy have, in the nineteenth century, integrated this perspective to try to think through a form of compatibility of evolutionary theory with Christian theology, but these authors do not speak of continuous creation in order to interpret the bringing forth of new species (Artigas, Glick, and Martínez , 52–123; Martínez , 602–05).

With these elements in hand, we can conclude that the concept of continuous creation, as a direct implication of creative power in the bringing forth of novelty, cannot find any legitimacy in Thomas's context of thought when it bears on creation and Providence. The only exception to the rule of creation of Thomas's is human begetting, which implies immediate creation—nevertheless, an ex nihilo of souls at the moment of procreation. One can read in the Summa Contra Gentiles, “Now, in the first generation, the creation of the soul follows the generation of the body, for, when the bodily matter is prepared by the power of the separated seed, God infuses the soul by an act of creation” (Aquinas , 310; see also Summa Theologiæ Ia, q. 90, a. 4). A suggestion to work on Thomas's concept of continuous creation could be to generalize the exception in order to make it a rule. This is the pathway followed by Claude Tresmontant in La crise moderniste (, 280). What can we say about it from the viewpoint of Scripture and patristics?

The testimony of Scripture

A study of the vocabulary of creation in the Bible brings one to realize that this theme has a broader meaning than that implied by Thomas's metaphysics. The simple use of the Hebrew verb bara shows this polysemantic range. Terence E. Fretheim (, 34–35) identifies eleven modes of divine creation in the Bible: (1) by the Word alone (Psalm 33:6–9; 147:4f.15–18; 148:5; Wisdom 9:1; Heb 11:3.); (2) through the Word and through other acts such as separation (Genesis 1); (3) by an invitation of other divine persons to participate in the creative process (Genesis 1:26, closer to our subject); (4) God uses primary matter to give rise to new creatures (Genesis 2:7–8.19; Psalm 8:3, 95:5.), he is a constructor (Genesis 2:22) and a potter (Job 10:8‐9; Psalms 33:15, 94:9, 103:14.). He uses the dust (Isaiah 27:11, 29:16, 43:7, 44:2, 21, 24; 45:9, 11; 64:8; Jeremiah 10:16; Zechariah 12:1.); God is an artisan and a builder (Job 38:4–7.); (5) God also creates by imposing order on that which already exists (Genesis 1:2–9), and exerts action on a formless matter: “And indeed your all‐powerful hand which created the world from formless matter, did not lack means” (Wisdom 11:17—NJB); (6) God creates from nothing (2 Maccabees 7:22–23; Romans 4:17); (7) the naming of the animals is a complementary work of creation done by man (Genesis 2:20); (8) the evaluation of the goodness of creation allows God to envision additional works; (9) God creates by his Spirit and his breath (Genesis 2:7; Psalm 104:30); (10) he creates in Wisdom (Jeremiah 10:12; Psalm 104:24.; Proverbs 3:19f.), and through Wisdom (Wisdom 9:2); (11) he also creates in combat as we find in the traces of archaic cosmogony (Isaiah 27:1, 51:9; Psalm 74:12–17.).

The verb bara is used to identify the creation of the people of God through the gift of the Torah in the desert. In this case, it implies that the creative act is identified to an act of salvation, something normative for the theology of creation (Beaucamp , col. 547f.). The experience of faith is first and foremost an experience of salvation that leads us to think about the power of the creator God in a second moment. In the same way, creation is modified to allow for this act of creation‐salvation (Wisdom 19:5–6.). The Psalms testify to this continuity between the acts of creation of God and the act of salvation destined to the people of Israel (Psalms 135:5–12; 136:4–26). The creation ex nihilo stems naturally from the Old Testament reflection on the possibility of a resurrection, notably in the context of persecution (2 Maccabees 7:28).

Oftentimes, creation is conjugated in the present tense in the biblical text, and it refers to the creation of new and unseen things among beings in the events of history. Man participates in this creative action with the proviso that the human creature is never the subject of this verb bara. This we see in the naming of animals, understood as an action of completion of creation. The nonhuman creature participates in this process when it obeys the divine order and produces animal and vegetable beings in Genesis 1.

One must finally also point out that the wisdom tradition of creation is a corpus of texts that insists on the temporal and dynamic dimension of God's creative involvement with the world. The divine Wisdom enacts creation by the ordering of a cosmos from the chaos. This is already present in Genesis 1:1–2 and is manifested by the theme of the divine creative play, notably in Proverbs 8. Even the whole text of Genesis 1 can be understood as speaking of creation as a temporal process, articulating both the unity of divine action and creation through a series of elements of the world, through the rhythm of night and day, and the response of creation through the production of beings that inhabit this world.

So it appears that the biblical reading of the theme of creation gives one a broader sweep to think about continuous creation. The elements of this wisdom tradition of creation identify a diacosmesis, an organization‐ordering of the cosmos, and those elements have been taken over in patristic thought, thus giving to the theology of creation of the first Church Fathers its dynamic dimension when they talk about the creative act, something very interesting for us to consider about continuous creation today.

The testimony of Christian antiquity

In the first Fathers, the dynamism of the creative act in time is mediated through the theme of the unceasing character of creation. The first formulation of this concept is found not in a Christian writer, but in the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus. Commenting on Genesis chapter 1, he interprets the Sabbath rest not as a halting of divine activity, but as a change in the modality of creative action. The Sabbath is thus an unceasing divine action (Philo , 52–53). This formulation is also found in another Alexandrian, one who is Christian in this case, Clement of Alexandria, in the sixth of the Stromata: “God's resting is not, then, as some conceive, that God ceased from doing. For, being good, if He should ever cease from doing good, then would He cease from being God, which it is sacrilege even to say” (Clement of Alexandria , 388). The six days of creation are not understood literally as to their chronology, but as a metaphysical explicitation of some atemporal creation of the archetypes of creatures, according to a Platonic interpretation of Genesis 1. This metaphysical perspective is also taken over in Augustine in an original elaboration on the theology of creation, both faithful to Scripture and in dialogue with the philosophy of that era. One could summarize thus such a theology: God creates all things, including time, from nothing, but according to a distinct order of perfection and completion. Augustine's long reflection on time that one finds in the Confessions in book xi (Augustine of Hippo , books ix–xiii, and 229) presents a foundational character that will be reutilized in the thought of Thomas Aquinas a few centuries later, in the perspective of articulating time and eternity, as in the work of Edmund Husserl who credits Augustine with being the first great philosopher of time (Husserl , 3). The expression “before creation” does not make sense for Augustine because it does not point to any metaphysical reality. Since time is part of the created order, there cannot be a creation before time.

The particularity of Augustine is to be found in his interpretation of the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 according to the method of literal reading he used in is ultimate commentary of Genesis (Augustine of Hippo ). In the course of the Hexæmeron, he distinguishes creatures that are created completely each in their own day, such as the angelic creature; the four elements represented by the oceans, the continents, the heavenly bodies, and the firmament; and finally the soul of the first man. In the same simultaneous motion are created beings that are included in their causal reasons, called to develop toward perfection in the course of time. Augustine thinks that these causal reasons are immersed in the terrestrial element, the mud of the soil in a certain sense (de Sinety , 247–49). The concept of causal reason is the hinge element that allows one to understand the articulation between creation of metaphysical genera in the course of the six days, and the creative activity present in the course of time. The causal reasons are in fact the archetypes of creatures that are present under the form of seeds in the whole of creation. By deployment and development, they are the mediation for the temporal creative action that gives rise to successive bursting out of live created elements. Augustine at this point introduces the concept of concreation (concreata; see Augustine of Hippo , 302–03). He offers two reflections on this problem, in continuity with the unceasing creation of his Alexandrian predecessors, a way of conceiving two different creative moments, two creative kairoi that are different: one is atemporal and completely metaphysical, in the sense of the beyond, and even below the borders of sensible nature. The other moment is mediated through the action of causal reasons.

The biblical and patristic traditions opened the way for a legitimate work of elaboration of a dynamic conception of the creative act in time. They also allow us to say with caution that Thomas's theology of creation might not be the last word of Christian thought on creation, and as such can be overcome. The work of synthesis on continuous creation that lies ahead of us must now be done in dialogue with the natural sciences, in particular through an analysis of what the philosophy of nature understands to be natural novelty, if this concept can be held as a basis for theological elaboration.

Nature also has its history

Can we transpose all of this in the realm of nature? In this context, philosophical criticism and philosophical hermeneutics have to be put to work. Two problems will face us. The first is that, since Immanuel Kant, we have become familiar with an opposition between nature and culture. Nature is that which is under determinism and as such considered ahistorical, while culture stems from free actions posited by beings capable of self‐determination and which are for that reason unpredictable (see Feltz , 69). History is considered to bear only on the human realm. What is more, to say that something is new in nature is to say things from a viewpoint that might not be understood by science itself. The scientific discourse only speaks of that which is regular and determined. To say that something is new is to say that it would come from the field of human action or of creation, and that is something in which we are indeed interested.

But then, the most accepted theories of astrophysics—such as the Big Bang theory (Lemaître , 49–59; Friedmann and Lemaître )—and biology as well as evolution force us to consider that nonhuman nature has a history. The universe had a beginning, a development, and many scenarios for its doom can also be envisioned. Physical elements themselves have a history because they are relative to the balance of the great forces that are at the foundations of physics and their setting into place. They are also related to the action of the burning‐ovens of the cosmos to be found in the stars, also called supernovæ, and in which complex atoms can be created by fusion of simpler elements. With the Darwinian theory of evolution, we have the idea that life is by its nature historical because it is genealogical; living species succeed each other and give birth to each other in the temporality of geological scales.

When we speak of history, we speak of contingent events. The history of life is showing to what extent this contingency is to be taken into account in the mechanisms for the appearance of new species (speciation) for which the paradigm of mutation‐selection still remains the dominant one, although it has been criticized as insufficient (Kauffman , 26). Contingency is to be taken into account in the disappearance of the living, particularly through natural selection and even more by the great planetary catastrophes that are responsible for the disappearance of more than 99 percent of living species on Earth. There have been five such catastrophes, the last one was that of the dinosaurs, called the crisis of the Cretaceous‐tertiary, 65 million years ago, after a series of upheavals that were climatic as much as geological.

The problem of novelty

The events of nature are to be taken seriously and should be studied in a historical perspective. Michel Morange considers that novelty is an engine of historicity, and also that the reciprocal is true, namely that the historicity of nature produces novelty (Morange , 184). Thus, the recognition of nature's historicity implies necessarily that newness is offered to be known. This was defended by Henri Bergson in Creative Evolution: novelty is everywhere present, it is unforeseeable, and most of all it is the fruit of an act of creation (see Crouslé , 81; Bergson , 239).

On the other hand, scientists are not in agreement on what to name this novelty is in biology (Morange , 81). Is it something to be found on the purely material level with the appearance of new molecules of the living? In this case, there is not much that is novel for the past hundreds of millions of years. Is it to be found in moments of transcendence of matter over itself? By this we would refer to the appearance of the living in relation to the inert, of consciousness in relation to the unconscious, particularly articulate language proper to human beings. Or is it to be found in the level of species and taxonomy? Should we look at organs, or functions? Oftentimes these two levels are mingled. Or is it finally the level of genetic information with the appearance of new genes, or new alleles of genes?

We have to define novelty. But for it to be efficient, it must be set within a larger hermeneutics of the cosmos at the metaphysical level. In a Greek and Ancient philosophy perspective, radical novelty does not exist, since in nature things are only the expression, more or less programmed, of an archetypal and eternal form, which does preexist. For Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, if the foundation of being is motion or relation (Bergson , 115), the form is not all preformed, but there is on the contrary a question about the new forms that can be brought about and that can be principles of substantial and radical novelties. One has to position oneself in a metaphysical model that can bear the ontological consistency of novelty.

A distinction between event and novelty

All natural events cannot be said to be novelties, since even if a situation is novel it is only the product of a modification of circumstances. However, an event transforms itself into novelty when it is the object of a certain fixation both structurally and temporally. This is why I think that all the levels mentioned in the previous paragraph are to be considered places for a possible appearance of novelty—the elementary level, atomic and thus physical, molecular and thus chemical, genetic, cellular, organic; then there are the structural, physiological and dysfunctional, organismic, specific, generic, and more largely taxonomical levels; I would even go as far as the ecosystemic level, not to mention the biospheric one.

A definition in five points

The difficulty of finding a definition that can apply to all these levels must not be underestimated. When one confronts the diverse theories of speciation, particularly those of Charles Darwin, François Jacob (, 312), Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart ()—refounding the notion of the Baldwin Effect—and Stuart Kauffman () in an emergentist perspective, we arrive at a concept of novelty that should be consensual in philosophy of nature. I propose a definition in five points. (1) Novelty as contingent and unforeseeable reality. This means that it is not the fruit of the determinist program, unless the program itself be novel. Radical novelty cannot therefore be predicted by the scientific model. (2) Novelty is a systemic reality that is made consistent by the interplay of constitutive interactions. In fact, novelty cannot spring forth unless the elements that enter in interaction in a configuration of a given milieu permit the constitution—in the strong sense—of this novel entity. (3) Novelty is a finalized entity in a system of a superior level of complexity (the cell in an organ, an organ in an organism or ecosystem, an organism in an ecosystem, a species in an ecosystem or in the biosphere). As such, novelty brings about finality and functionality within the systems that have made it possible, and to which it from then on takes part, because it exerts a significant influence on its own constituents. (4) Novelty is a reality that is in dynamic equilibrium, that is, it sets itself in duration and possesses a form of structural stability. This is the central aspect that makes it distinct from an ephemeral event. Novelty must be stable and perennial to be structurally inserted into systems that come before it, and which will be modified by itself or durably consolidated. (5) In summary, novelty is an integrated and autonomous reality capable of having its own impact on its constitutive elements and on those of its environment. It is thus a reality that produces an action on its environment and which modifies the conditions of its own environment. This idea of integration gives meaning to that of principle. If there is integration, it is because there is a principle of integration in which these different constituting elements of novelty are rooted and find their coherence.

This is the point from which the process of articulation of discourses must take place. If this philosophical definition finds a certain point of application in physical and biological reality, we can look for its metaphysical foundations on which to lay a theological elaboration.

Concerning configurable primordial causes allowing us to think continuous creation

The contribution from Tresmontant is useful here to think of form as information. This last idea refers to an abstract data that can be created, modified, reconfigured by addition or withdrawal, and that can also have different meanings in relation to the receptor where it is received, read, and decoded. In agreement with John Haught, but without direct relation, Tresmontant envisions continuous creation as introduction of creative information into the world, an information that gives rise to novel configurations within the living and the cosmos in general (Tresmontant , 273–82). I posit that this introduction of creative information corresponds to the procession of primordial causes in the intelligible and sensible worlds. But this supposes that the primordial causes be themselves configurable, reconfigurable, and as such mutable, which would clash with the classical idea of immutability of forms. The metaphysical tool to which I have recourse is paradoxically fully Plotinian. In fact, in the Enneads, Plotinus discusses the idea of logoi in relation to the archetype of sensible beings. A logos in Plotinus is an assembly of ideas. The ideas are in a certain sense metaphysical building blocks, the assembly of which forms the logoi (such assembly being for him immutable) describing the genera (equally immutable) of sensible beings (Enneads II, 4, 3; V, i, 4; see Augustine of Hippo , 654–57 n. 21, as well as Gire , 31). In the Neoplatonic perspective, there is a finite number of genera that can find their place in the sensible world considered as fixed, that is, which is not in evolution as we would have it in the paradigm of modern cosmology. Taking over the vocabulary of Eriugena, I consider that the primordial causes are to be divided into categories: primary and secondary primordial causes. The former correspond to ideas, the later to logoi. So the fourfold level of procession of the originals gathers added complexity, that of the configuration of secondary primordial causes by primary primordial causes. The secondary primordial causes can give rise to a process in the intelligible and sensible worlds. The assembly of primary primordial causes can virtually produce a number of configurations of secondary primordial causes tending to infinity. On the other hand, we experience the finiteness of forms with this insight, often verified that many forms virtually conceptualizable are neither possible nor desirable in the realm of existence. The mammal with six legs is not viable and has not been selected by natural selection, in the midst of evolutionary processes. There are thus constraints that impede the expression of some forms favoring some others, more plausible and more pertinent, within a given order. This means that we have to consider continuous creation not as the execution of a program, but as a process of propositions that imply the feedback on the part of the intelligible and the sensible domains on that of primordial causes.

Concerning the interaction of primordial causes with the sensible and intelligible worlds: On the role of creatures in the process of continuous creation

Here, we reach the aspirations of many contemporary theologians of continuous creation who see this process as a creative partnership. To think this through, one has to call on some elements of Whiteheadian metaphysics. Whitehead understands that any actual existing entity, or creature—human or not—would be endowed with a pole of subjectivity, which is an openness to God's transcendence in order to welcome in itself creative information proposed by God (Whitehead [1929] , 248). The creature is therefore in a tension that orients it toward the welcoming of this information. But this pole of subjectivity is also the seat of a discrimination within possibles. This means that all information is not pertinent to receive due to the state of evolution in which this creature is to be found. The organism is considered as participating in its own evolution and this tension that it exerts on itself to welcome, continuously in some cases or with discontinuity in others, the creative information corresponds to a step in a significant evolution.

This process makes of the creature a partner in its own evolution, which is here understood as a quasi‐synonym of continuous creation (creative advance) in the Whiteheadian perspective (Whitehead [1929] , 222–23). In terms of my own elaboration, there is a transposition to operate and I will say that secondary primordial causes constitute the possibles, and that the creatures of the intelligible and insensible domains are likely to accept or discriminate in relation to their state.

The mechanism of this acceptance or refusal of creative information is to be understood through a philosophy of the nature of novelty that I previously developed. It is through an ontology of the interactedness of natural novelty that this can come about. The networks of ecological interactions are part of a framework that regulates the constraints and openness of natural systems to the input of novel information. The novel information stemming from the interaction of elements in the system does not come from the system itself. It emerges, not as we would have in an iceberg, but in the sense of a reality of its existence at the level of the system, in the perspective of Tresmontant completed and corrected by the Whiteheadian and emergentist approaches to novelty. The interactedness is creative to the extent that it constitutes the welcoming condition necessary for novel and creative information, and this corresponds to a configuration of secondary primordial causes that is pertinent for a creature in a given evolutionary situation. The passage from the primordial cause to novelty is realized as a fruit of the process that I defined previously, as work done by the Holy Spirit creator. In this sense, God is the one who gives being. The creature is not creative in the strictest sense, it is a partner to continuous creation, and even co‐creator in conformance with the expression of Tresmontant (, 29), Adolphe Gesché (, 153–84; , 76–82), and Philip Hefner (, 32). Such a place given to creatures in the process of continuous creation implies a conceptual articulation with the notion of contingency. If the collaborative creativity is authentic, the creature and the whole of creation have the possibility of being causes in the orientation of their becoming, which is not a fruit of a predetermined program. Creatures can even make strategic errors in evolution. To understand this complex process of respectful collaboration when it comes to the role of the creature, we have to give random phenomena within natural processes their place in order to ground a true contingency to continuous creation events.

Recurrent schemes and propensities as intelligibility of order, of disorder, of evolution, and as fruits of continuous creation

This reflection follows the path cleared by Jacques Monod () when he titled his famous monograph Chance and Necessity. The question of contingency is that of understanding the order of the world that articulates both constraint networks and regularity networks, structuring a universe that testifies to the absence of an unstable chaos where no life would be possible. Seen differently, contingency articulates the necessary openness of these networks of constraints allowing us to welcome ontological indeterminacy as something necessary to bring forth unpredictable novelty.

Concretely, we observe that emergent phenomena testify to an intrication of order and disorder for the setting into place of hierarchical ascending levels of organized structures of great complexity (Jacob , 302). That which appears chaotic at one level gives rise to an ordered structure at another level, and vice versa. Mathematical models have shown that in some cases the most performing living structures appear in conditions that are at the border of order and chaos (Kauffman , 280–81). It is therefore inappropriate to oppose these two concepts to conceive the whole of reality; it is even necessary to link them closely according to a unique dynamism, which could be accounted for through the statistics associated with the classical system of mathematics.

The indeterminacy of some phenomena makes it difficult to assimilate them in the classical conception of things, but statistics allow us to account for them in an intelligible way. The emergent probabilities as introduced by Bernard Lonergan in his major work Insight seem to be a good approach to study this overall phenomenon that assimilates in itself the notion of order and disorder (Lonergan , 148–50). “Recurrent schemes” are successions of events with constituent elements that cannot take place unless the preceding constituent has effectively taken place. B exists only if A has happened and C takes place only if B took place, and so on, until A comes back and starts over to recurrence. Those recurrent schemes function in a feedback circle. In nature, there are three kinds. First, they can be “actual,” that is, those that happen right now in their contingent unicity. Second, they can be “probable,” that is, they happen with an ideal expected frequency, but with divergences that can take place. Third, they can be “possible,” that is, it is really the whole of the recurrent schemes that could happen, whatever their probability (Lonergan , 141–43). The notion of emergent probability is the synthesis of the probability of appearance of the recurrence schemes and their survival probability. Once a recurrence scheme has put itself into place, the probability of appearance of the next one is found to be greater (Lonergan , 144–48).

The evolution of the living sets itself in this theoretical approach of recurrent schemes and emergent probabilities: the novel characters appear on the scene only if other ones are there before them, to open for them the possibility of taking place (Lonergan , 156). Organic and genetic structures are the proof that recurrent schemes actually exist in the living; this would call for a longer elaboration, but it can be said that one of its manifestations is the phenomenon of convergence of characters studied by the palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris (, 11, 272–73, 304–07), also called evolutionary convergence, such as hydrodynamism in aquatic animals (e.g., in the dolphin, tuna, and ichtyosaurus), or the development of superior limbs as wings in flying animals (birds, bats, and pterosaurus).

We can then interpret the evolution of the universe in terms of those recurrent schemes. They are put into place by the interplay of emergent probability. Structures form themselves one after the other and provide the next one a naturalization due to the huge amounts of time available in the universe. What the basic structures will put into place can be called “propensities” after the terminology of Arthur Peacocke (, 72), himself relying on the writings of Karl Popper (). The notion of propensity expresses tendencies for some potentialities to be actualized due to pressures of an environment on a system. The propensity describes the situation where the context makes it so that a random phenomenon will become more probable (Peacocke , 704). Natural selection is akin to such a mechanism in the living world: the milieu exerts a pressure of selection on organisms, favoring the emergence of complex systems that will allow adaptation of these organisms. Peacocke thinks that on a large scale there is for instance a propensity to store and treat information in the living, which even introduces a propensity for consciousness (Peacocke , 705–06). The storage of information in the organism is organized more and more efficiently, so as to produce the emergence of consciousness by the complexification of the nervous system, which is a place for processing of this information.

Thus, recurrence schemes and propensities are a stimulating approach to help us think about the mechanism of development in the universe within an evolutionary paradigm. Order and disorder are understood as facets of one and the same reality and must not be looked upon as opposite terms but on the contrary as terms in cooperation. This is why we can say that, even if chance presides over the evolution of the living, it does not allow the appearance of just any possible. It acts on that which preexists, and this preexistent entity offers a frame that limits the possibilities of further appearances. This defines a universe of limited possibilities. Chance brings with it the contingent elements that will direct it, or at least condition it severely (Exbrayat , 364).

The autonomy God granted to his creation will thereby consist in the possibility for creation to exploit a diversity of roads to actualize possible configurations of primordial causes, providing the appropriate creative information in an evolutionary situation, in the intelligible and sensible domains. This pathway is done with gentleness but with assurance in the spontaneity of trial and error that autonomy presupposes. In the end, however, God is sure of obtaining that which he expects, since he “takes his time,” according to a double perspective that we still need to develop.

Creation and beginning

Genesis 1 teaches the truth of creation in a beginning, according to the most literate translations of the Hebrew text. Tresmontant stresses that any creation properly understood is a beginning (Tresmontant , 271). All genuine novelty starts to exist in this radical way. Thus, for Tresmontant continuous creation of novelty represents many creations in a beginning. Continuous creation can then fall in place as an extension of the interpretation of Genesis 1 and it can stand for a locus of creative action as described in the Bible.

The two axes of continuous creation

The creative product of the interaction that constitutes continuous creation is manifested in its most visible effect at the level of the living: biodiversity (on which see the teaching of Pope Francis in LS §§33, 69). The indefinite production of diversity is one of the two finalities of continuous creation. One can hark back to this ancient theological tradition present in Thomas Aquinas, indicating that the finality of creation is to reflect divine perfection (Summa Theologiæ, Ia, q. 47, a. 1; see also Aquinas , §§6, 11, 42). The unity, eternity, absoluteness, the necessity of this perfection can only be manifested in the order of creation according to modalities of multiplicity, of temporality, of relativity, and of contingency. For creation, to imitate divine perfection by indefinite and contingent production of diversity is something to realize through a long process of continuous creation, mediated by that of interactedness.

The second axis of continuous creation, but which is in fact the first in the order of ends, is that of the Incarnation of the divine Word in the person of Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:15–16). In the midst of this indefinite process of creation of diversity, according to the Scotistic vision (Delio , 10, 37–39; , 53–65) (and not the Eriugenian) there has to be one and only one path that could bear the promise of a creature that would be capax Dei, that is, both capable of welcoming God in the experience of its life, but also capable of welcoming God living the experience of humankind. It is through this second axis of continuous creation that we reconnect with anthropology. The project of Incarnation can be expressed as an engine of continuous creation in the form of an exploration of creative possibles that can make the required conditions for incarnation happen: the coming about of the human creature.

Trinitarian dimensions of continuous creation

In the footsteps of John Scot Eriugena and the Christian tradition of creation, I underscore the Trinitarian dimension of continuous creation by restating some of the points laid out. The Father is the ultimate source of creation from whom proceeds all that exists. By his creative will, which crosses the Word as model and archetype of all creation, he sees to it that primordial primary causes proceed in a first creative moment. Those organize themselves among each other through the action of the Holy Spirit creator, who acts on them as an incubator, to form the secondary primordial causes. By the same brooding of the Holy Spirit creator, these secondary primordial causes enter in the procession of the intelligible and the sensible worlds, in a second creative moment that is situated in time. The Holy Spirit plays the role traditionally ascribed to him of vivifier (Zôopoion, “Symbolum Constantinopolitanum”; see Denzinger and Schönmetzer , §150, 66) and of “diversificator” of forms of creatures, in a creative dialogue that implies the economy of creation and creatures in evolution.

The Trinitarian dimension can also be expressed in terms of the Trinitarian life present behind the process of continuous creation. In the Franciscan tradition, particularly in Bonaventure, one finds the traditional idea that nature is an open book where God is to be known to the observer paying attention to his traces in creation (Wisdom 13:5 and Romans 1:19–21) (see also “Dei Filius” in Denzinger and Schönmetzer , §3001–3007). This gives us a new path to think about those traces that the theological tradition calls the vestigia of the Trinity in creation (see Bonaventure , 61–62). The Trinitarian vestigium is in fact the vestigium of Trinitarian life. Continuous creation is a process grounded on an interrelation: of God with creation, of creatures with the Spirit creator, of creatures between themselves. To be created in relationality, in the midst of continuous creation, is the sign that God is himself relational, unity of three Persons defined by their subsisting relations. The notion is inherited from Thomas Aquinas (see Summa Theologiæ, Ia, q. 11, a. 3; q. 21, a. 1, ad 3; and q. 47, a. 3, references that Pope Francis uses as footnotes in LS §241, note 171). The theological source of this idea of “reliance” as sign of the Creator in creation is to be found in Denis Edwards (, 205). In the Trinity, God exists in an internal union. This expression identifies the seal of the creator, his trademark, and his signature in creation.

For example, as we have seen in the previous article, Teilhard de Chardin even says that God only exists when uniting (Crespy , 115–16; see Teilhard de Chardin , 194). By a boomerang effect, he notices this tendency to union in nature to form complexity by addition. And by another boomerang effect, Teilhard de Chardin thinks that the Trinitarian relations belong to the nature of God because they belong to the nature of being in general.

The relationship between transcendence and divine immanence in creation

This emphasis on the relational dimension of continuous creation allows us to put the emphasis on the idea that God is constantly present to creation, because constantly involved in the creative dialogue in a loving dialogue with creatures. Eriugena's approach of the concept of creation ex nihilo expresses the pole of transcendence of the subdivisions in relation to each other, but the fourth subdivision, which I have not said much about, has for its function to show the theophanic dimension of creation. It is through creatures that God manifests his glory, and can give something of himself to be known, thus complementing and recalling biblical revelation. This immanent side confirms the possibility of speaking of the true panentheism implied by continuous creation, because of the intensity that stems from creative relation. God is not mingled with creatures, but we can say with Jürgen Moltmann (, 212) that the spirit of God inhabits his creation as in an ecosystem with which he is in constant interrelation, with the reservation that here it is the habitat that depends on its inhabitant and not the other way around as in the normal functioning of an ecosystem. This reflection therefore sets itself in the pathway of an English author of the nineteenth century, Aubrey Moore (, 41–81), who welcome the novelty of evolutionary theory as a blessing for the Christian doctrine of creation. The evolutionary vision of the world, and in particular of the living, permits a real expression of the presence of God in the midst of natural processes in a way that the classical version of creation as separated species does not: “science has pushed the Deist's God farther and farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend” (Moore , 73).