FOURTH ARTICLE: WHETHER ANYTHING IS EVER REDUCED TO NOTHING

Reply. The reply is in the negative, based on the words of Holy Scripture, "I have learned that all the works which God made, continue forever."[961]

By His ordinary power God annihilates neither material beings, whose corruption is not annihilation since their matter remains, nor immaterial beings, in which there is no potency for non-being since they are incorruptible.

Neither by His extraordinary power, that is, miraculously, does God ever annihilate anything, because such annihilation does not pertain to the manifestation of His glory and grace. Hence there is never a motive for annihilation on the part of the end.

Some theologians, like Scotus, thought that by the Eucharistic consecration the substance of bread is annihilated when the body of Christ becomes present; but to preserve the proper use of the terms, the Councils of Florence and of Trent taught that the substance of bread is not annihilated but is changed into the body of Christ.

Reply to second objection. St. Thomas noted: "Those things that do not have a contrary, although they may have a limited power, perdure in eternity." Some thinkers have used this text to defend the principle of inertia, or the inertia of movement, namely, if some mobile thing, actually in motion, were to be deprived of every influence, it would persevere always in motion if it did not meet an obstacle. This cannot be proved "a posteriori" because we cannot isolate any mobile thing from every influence, especially every invisible influence, nor can we verify the statement that the movement would always perdure unless there were an obstacle. This principle of inertia is a postulate suggested by experience, but it is not evident, and it cannot be demonstrated "a priori" or "a posteriori", as the better physicists admit today.[962]

Reply to third objection. The forms of corporeal things, which cease to exist by the corruption of the composite, are not annihilated; they remain in the potency of the matter.

It is evident, then, that the conservation of things is the continuation of free creation from nothing. If the world had been created from eternity, God would have only a priority of causality and not of duration with regard to the world, but the unique, immobile instant of eternity would always be infinitely above time and it would embrace all time including that which might be infinite in its prior part.