WOJCIECH P. GRYGIEL FSSP, Creation as the “Hewing’’ of Logos: The Bible, St. Thomas and Science

SUMMARY

The biblical account of the Divine act of creation, beginning with the first verse of the Book of Genesis, involves the Hebrew verb ברא (bara) (Gn 1,1). Its original meaning refers to the activity of “hewing’’ which implies imposing spatial limits or boundaries on the object in question. The presented paper aims at establishing the invariants of this meaning as the doctrine of creation has been absorbed into metaphysical doctrines such as the scholastic system of St. Thomas Aquinas and the mathematical environment of the contemporary physical sciences. It will be demonstrated that, despite the radical increase of abstraction as compared to the original concrete Hebrew term, the metaphor of applying certain limitations to Logos in the act of creation retains its adequacy, especially in the context of the panentheistic setting of the relations between God and the created order. Ultimately, a more objectivised understanding of creation and its specificity can be achieved.