Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective

by Mariusz Tabaczek

In this book, Mariusz Tabaczek develops a contemporary, re-imagined proposal of an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective on theistic evolution. Deeply rooted in classical philosophy and theology, the volume combines careful textual analysis of ancient, medieval, and contemporary literature with innovative, original, and constructive argumentation and modelling. Tabaczek offers a wide-ranging set of arguments on behalf of those who advocate for the relevance of classical philosophical and theological thought in the context of contemporary science and the dialogue between science and religion. Avoiding simplistic answers to complex questions concerning the origin of species, including the human species, his book inspires critical thinking and a systematic approach to all major philosophical presuppositions and both philosophical and theological repercussions of the theory of evolution. Without contradicting or abandoning the letter of the tradition, Tabaczek echoes the spirit of Aristotle's and Aquinas's philosophy and theology, moving them forward to embrace the evolutionary aspect of the contemporary view of reality.

Genres: Evolution

350 pages, Hardcover

Published November 2, 2023

About the author

Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. is a Polish Dominican and theologian. He holds Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and Church Licentiate from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. After his studies at the GTU and a fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies he returned to Poland. For three years he worked as a researcher at the Thomistic Institute in Warsaw (Poland), a lecturer at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw and the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Krakow, and a director of Studium Dominicanum in Warsaw. He then moved to Rome where he became a professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is also a researcher at the Thomistic Institute at the same University.

He is interested in the science-theology dialogue, especially in the issues concerning science and creation theology, divine action, and evolutionary theory. His research also goes to other subjects related to systematic, fundamental, and natural theology, philosophy of nature, philosophy of science (philosophy of biology, in particular), philosophy of causation, and metaphysics. His works address a whole range of topics, including: the notion of species, metaphysics of evolutionary transitions, concurrence of divine and natural causes in evolutionary transitions, definition and role of chance and teleology in evolution, classical and new hylomorphism, classical and contemporary (analytical) concepts of causation, emergence, science-oriented panentheism and its critique, and various aspects of divine action in the universe.He published a number of articles on metaphysics and the issues concerning the relation between theology and science in Zygon, Theology and Science, Scientia et Fides, Nova et Vetera, Forum Philosophicum, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Sophia, and Polish Annals of Philosophy. He coauthored two chapters in the second edition of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (ed. by Gary Ferngren) and has written the entry on “Emergence” for the PalgraveEncyclopedia of the Possible. He is also the author of two monographs. The first, entitled Emergence. Towards A New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, was published in 2019 and was announced as one of the best metaphysics books to read in 2019 by Bookauthority. The second book, Divine action and Emergence. An Alternative to Panentheism (published in 2021), offers a critical analysis of the theory of divine action based on the notion of emergent phenomena and provides a constructive proposal of a theological reinterpretation of divine action in emergence, from the point of view of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of philosophy and theology.