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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.
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