Piotr Roszak: Thomas Aquinas on Life in Paradise and Its Anthropological Significance
Although Aquinas did not write an entire commentary on the Book of Genesis, it is worth paying attention to the creation accounts in his systematic works, especially to his ideas of life in paradise. His doctrine on the original justice or the first state of man relies on the postlapsarian situation of humanity and stresses the continuities between both statuses. Life in paradise was essentially harmony and freedom. Aquinas’s description of paradise, however, must not to be misunderstood in a Platonic sense. Paradise does not indicate the ideal condition from which a man fell and to which he has to return. Instead, Aquinas emphasizes the progress of man, his journey to God as his first fundamental destination. For Thomas, death was not simply punishment, but a consequence of the natural subsequence of corruption and generation, embedded in creation. Man in paradise was immortal, not “naturally”, but on account of an extraordinary gift of God. Aquinas was anxious to describe paradise as much as possible in natural terms. Snakes in paradise were poisonous, animals included carnivores and thistles could hurt, but man possessed a certain protection against the noxious effects of these creatures. Aquinas’s creation accounts help to better understand his ideas on divine providence, grace and nature.
Keywords: evolution – original sin – Adam and Eve – nature and grace