SEMINAL REASONS

Invisible principles inserted by God in the world during creation, which develop in time into all the plants, trees, birds, fishes, animals, and human bodies that will ever exist. Of Stoic origin, the notion passed from the Neoplatonists to St. augustine, who used it to explain certain scriptural passages. In medieval thought these reasons became instrumental powers for St. thomas aquinas and principles and terms of material souls for St. bonaventure. Since Augustine was the first to incorporate these reasons into Christian thought, his theory is detailed and criticized.

Augustine's Theory. By seminal reasons Augustine explains the OT stories of creation, of the instant change of Aaron's rod into a snake, and of the production of spotted sheep in Jacob's flocks. According to the first chapter of Genesis, God created plants and trees on the 3d day, fishes and birds on the 5th day, and animals and the human body on the 6th day. The second chapter relates how God created these same living things on these days. Why this repetition of the creation story? Augustine answers that the account in the first chapter means that God placed in the elements the invisible seminal reasons of all living beings below man and of all human bodies that would ever exist except the body of Christ. The second chapter then describes how God caused the seminal reasons of these living beings to develop into visible things. Similarly, Augustine explains that Aaron's rod turned into a snake because, in conformity with God's will, angels arranged the elements in the rod so that a seminal reason would suddenly change into a snake. Again, Jacob was able to increase the number of spotted sheep over what his father-in-law had promised to give him by a like application: the seminal powers of the offspring were modified when the pregnant sheep looked at the white and green sticks Jacob placed in the water trough.

In his literal commentary on Genesis Augustine envisions the eternal reasons as causes of the seminal reasons, the seedlike powers themselves as principles of the living being, and creatures as conditions of the development of these seminal qualities. For him, there is an eternal reason for every creature and for the seminal principles, and this reason is the exemplary cause of the seminal power. Thus, on the 3d day, when God created the seminal virtues of plants and trees in the earth, He made the unformed creature imitate the form of the Word. Likewise, on the 5th day the eternal reasons produced the seminal virtues of birds and fishes in the water. Again, on the 6th day God placed the seedlike qualities of animals and human bodies in the earth. In the time following creation these eternal reasons then conserve the seminal powers and cause them to effect the birth, growth, and death of the particular being.

Is the seminal principle itself a cause? The seminal reason is like a secondary efficient cause in the sense that it changes elements into a developed being. The seminal power of a tree changes the surrounding earth and water into distinctive characteristics, such as branches, leaves, and fruit (Gen. ad litt. 5.23; Patrologia Latina 34: 337). The seminal potency is also a kind of formal cause, for it is due to the seminal cause that one type of living thing develops and not another; under its influence, for example, a grain of wheat produces wheat and not beans (ibid. 9.17; Patrologia Latina 34:406). Obviously there can be no evolution of species in this explanation. Seminal principles develop at one time rather than at another only because a creature acts as a condition for the unfolding of the seminal cause. Conditioned on rainfall and the warmth of the sun, the seminal reason of a tree begins to evolve; but creatures themselves do not exert causality by educing a form from matter (see matter and form).

Critique. This theory has certain shortcomings. Although seminal reasons may account for the appearance of some things in the universe, they account neither for inorganic and organic change, nor for evolution. There is also no explanation of what happens to the seminal reason when the body carrying it dies. Because of such limitations, Augustine's theory has been relinquished by most scholastics in favor of Aquinas's doctrine on causality.

See Also: exemplarism.

Bibliography: É. h. gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, tr l. e. m. lynch (New York 1960) 197–209. a. a. maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New York 1962) 15–16. e. portaliÉ, A Guide to the Thought of Saint Augustine (Chicago 1960) 136–151. j. m. brady, "St. Augustine's Theory of Seminal Reasons," The New Scholasticism 38 (1964) 141–158.

[j. m. brady]