Annotatio XX

”To the image of God he created him.” — Genesis 1:27

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, in the book On the Creation of Man, chapter 28, examining an opinion of this kind, says that, if the first parents had not sinned, the generation of offspring and the propagation of the human race would not have been by coitus, but by a certain most perfect manner of multiplication, by which the Angels are multiplied;¹ for this generation, which comes about by intercourse, was introduced through sin. These are Gregory’s words: “Although among the Angels, as has been said, there are no marriages, yet they exist in infinite thousands of hosts of Angels, as the prophet Daniel intimates in his visions. Therefore, in the same manner, if no excess of sin had drawn us away from that angelic dignity, marriages would in no way have been proved necessary for us for the multiplication of the human race; but by a motion of nature — whatever it be, most perfect indeed — by which the Angels are multiplied, the Creator’s will would have multiplied the human race up to the number of the predestined.” And after a few words about generation introduced through sin, he added: “That great David seems to me, having compassion on human misery, to bewail his nature in such words: ‘That man, when he was in honor, did not understand’² — calling it ‘honor’ that he had been like to the holy Angels in conversation and in that most sublime manner of multiplication. Therefore he was compared to the senseless beasts, and made like to them. For truly he was made like to a beast, who took upon himself, in his own nature, this animal generation, on account of the fall of his conversation, which befell him from the conformation of matter.” Subscribing to this opinion, John Damascene, in the fourth book of the Orthodox Faith, chapter 25,³ put forth in writing these things: “Wherefore, lest the human race be exterminated and consumed by death, marriages were instituted, so that by the procreation of offspring the race of men might be preserved. But perhaps they will say: What then does this mean, ‘male and female’? What this, ‘Increase and multiply’?⁴ To which we shall say that this ‘Increase and multiply’ does not at all signify the multiplication [that comes] by the nuptial association. For God could have multiplied this race in another way too, if they had kept his commandment, and preserved it unbroken to the end; but God, knowing by his foreknowledge — which knows all things before they come to be — that they would be transgressors and to be condemned by death, anticipating [this], made male and female, and commanded [them] to be increased and multiplied.” Thus Damascene: before whom Augustine wrote this very thing (on Genesis, ch. 1), Chrysostom, and Procopius (on Genesis, ch. 4); and after him Euthymius, on Psalm 50.

Weighing this opinion, St. Thomas, in the first part of the Summa Theologica, question 98, article 2, writes thus: “But this is not said reasonably: for the things which are natural to man are neither withdrawn from man nor given to him by [reason of] sin.⁵ Now it is manifest that, for man according to the animal life which he had even before sin (as was said above), it is natural to generate by coitus, just as for the other perfect animals; and the natural members, appointed for this use, declare this. And therefore it must not be said that the use of these natural members would not have existed before sin, any more than [that of] the other members. There are therefore two things to be considered in coitus, according to the present state: one, which is of nature, namely the union of male and female for generating — for in every generation an active and a passive power is required, and since in all [creatures] in which there is a distinction of sexes the active power is in the male, and the passive in the female, the order of nature requires that for generation male and female should come together by coitus. But the other thing that can be considered is a certain deformity of immoderate concupiscence, which would not have existed in the state of innocence,⁶ when the lower powers were entirely subject to reason. Whence Augustine says in the 14th book of The City of God: ‘Far be it that we should suspect that offspring could not have been produced without the disease of lust: but those members would have been moved by the same nod of the will as the other members, and without ardor and enticing stimulus, with tranquillity of soul and of body.’” Read the following Annotation, together with Annotations 63 and 80 of this book.