Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Essay (2019) "What do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change?"

By Razie Mah

Mariusz Tabaczek, OP, publishes an essay in 2019 in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. The full title is “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformation from the Thomistic Perspective”. He wonders whether it is right to ascribe all causation in evolution to creatures, acting through secondary and instrumental causes. His answer builds a complementarity (or concurrence) between primary and secondary causation.
He chides evolutionary theists for not specifying the exact nature of the secondary and instrumental causes at work in evolution. Yet, from a category-based perspective, his essay confounds three complementary explanatory manifolds. One manifold goes with primary and secondary causation. Another works with the four causes. The third revolves around the contiguity between being (ens) and form.
Indeed, the category-based nested form translates Tabaczek’s argument into a postmodern framework, while at the same time, engaging mystery, mediation and the dyadic nature of actuality. There is more to theistic evolution than meets the eye.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Jul 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781942824763

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

Book preview

Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Essay (2019) "What Do God and Creatures Really Do

in an Evolutionary Change"

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2019

Notes on Text

This work comments on an article by Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., appearing in the Summer of 2019 in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. The complete title is What do God and Creatures Really Do in and Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformationism from the Thomistic Perspective. Thomism is a scholastic tradition. Biological evolution is the topic of interest. My goal is to comment on this work using the category-based nested form and other relational models within the tradition of Charles Peirce.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction and Comments on Carlos Blanco-Perez’s Essay (2018) On the Principles of Social Theory

Recommended: Speculations on Evolution and Thomism, Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome, Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings and How To Define the Word Religion

Table of Contents

Abstract & Introduction

Section Four

Sections One and Two

Sections Three, Ten, Seven and Eight

Mediation and Sections Seven and Eight

Sections Three, Four, Five and Six

The Art of the Differentiated Thing

Lifting the Veil

Abstract & Introduction

0001 What do God and creatures really do in an evolutionary change?

What does the scholastic tradition of Thomas Aquinas say?

Many schoolmen support the idea of theistic evolution.

What is theistic evolution?

0002 The primary cause of evolution is divine. Secondary causes, including instrumental causes, belong to living creatures.

Does this rule out divine intervention in the evolution of life on this planet?

Are secondary causes the same as instrumental