|
State of the question. In the "Contra
Gentes" and the Opus de aeternitate mundi, St.
Thomas wrote at length on this question. To show the
difficulties connected with this question, he presents the
arguments of Aristotle and Averroes for the eternity of
the world.[858]
The principal objection is: Everything that is made is
made from prime matter, which cannot exist without a
form. Therefore the world was from eternity. This
difficulty is proposed in different ways in the first and
third objections: in the first, real potency and the real
possibility presupposed by creation are identified; in the
third objection it is stated that matter as the first
subject of generation is ungenerated and ungenerable and is
therefore eternal.
In the second objection it is stated that there are in the
world incorruptible beings, at least the intellectual
substances if not the heavenly bodies. But an
incorruptible being has the power to be always, it will
always be in the future. Then, why not always in the
past? It appears to be its nature to be above time. The
other difficulties pertain more to the imagination.
The fourth objection points out that the vacuum was
always, and vacuum appears to be something real, as
Spinoza said, space is something real, existing from all
eternity.
Fifthly it is objected that motion was always because
anything that begins to move is moved by another who began
to move and this mover began to move when it was moved,
and so on. Hence the absolutely immovable cause cannot of
itself alone produce the initial movement but only
permanence, or the sempiternal duration of movement.
Thus Aristotle thought that every man was generated and
presupposes a generator and so into the past. He was not
able to understand that there could be a new effect without
a new action in any mover. In Aristotle's mind the
first mover moves from eternity always in the same way,
drawing all things to Himself, just as the sun always
illuminates and heats; any variety in movement was
explained by subordinate movers, especially by the
successive generations of plants and animals.
Sixthly: if the first eternal mover moves by a necessity
of nature, he moves from eternity; if he moves through
his will, why does he begin to move at this particular
moment rather than earlier or later? Such a choice seems
to have no reason, no motive, and therefore the movement
is from eternity.
Seventhly: time cannot have a beginning because its
entire reality is the instant, the present fluent instant
which is the terminus of the past and the beginning of the
future.
Eighthly: if God is prior to the world according to
duration, then time was before the world because time is
that duration in which earlier and later are
distinguished.
Ninthly: if you posit a fully sufficient cause, the
effect will follow accordingly; but God, the cause of
the world, is eternal and therefore His creative action
is eternal. So also His effect is eternal because there
is no new effect without a new action.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the negative and it
is of faith. It is of faith that the universe was not
created from eternity. The Fourth Council of the
Lateran declared: "By His omnipotent power in the
beginning of time and at the same time God made from
nothing both the spiritual and corporeal creature,
namely, the angelic and mundane creature, and then He
made the human creature, as it were, a composite creature
composed of spirit and body."[859] The same
expressions are used by the Vatican Council.[860]
Many of Eckhard's propositions have been condemned in
this matter, such as the following: "As soon as God
was He created the world"; "It can be conceded that
the world was from eternity"; "At one time and only
once, when God was and when He generated His Son,
coeternal and coequal in all things to God, He also
created the world."[861]
The foundation for this doctrine is found in Sacred
Scripture: "In the beginning God created heaven and
earth."[862] These words are generally understood
as referring to the beginning of time."[863] "The
Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before
He made anything from the beginning. The depths were not
as yet, and I was already conceived, neither had the
fountains of waters as yet sprung out:. . . before the
hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the
earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the
earth."[864] "And now glorify Thou Me, O
Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had,
before the world was, with Thee. . . . Thou hast
loved Me before the creation of the world."[865]
"As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world."[866]
With regard to the declaration of the Fourth Lateran
Council, some discussion exists whether the words "at
the same time" signify simultaneity of time, which is
commonly accepted, or only a simultaneity of ordering, as
some Fathers thought who held that the angels were created
before matter.[867] St. Thomas replies that it is
more probable that the angels were created at the same time
as bodies.[868]
In the body of the article St. Thomas does not prove
from reason that the world began to be or that it ought of
necessity to begin; he merely proves this negative
proposition: it is not necessary that the world be always
and therefore it is not impossible that the world began,
as we are taught by revelation. The argument is
apodictical.
The possibility of mysteries that are essentially
supernatural cannot be proved apodictically, it is true,
but we are here concerned with the non-repugnance of a
contingent fact which does not pertain to the order of
grace.
The proof may be reduced to the following. Since the
will of God is the cause of things, it is not necessary
that anything be unless it be necessary that God wills
them. But it is not necessary that God will anything
except Himself. Therefore it is not necessary that the
world be always, but only at that moment which God
determined from eternity.
The major and the minor were proved in the question on the
free will of God.[869] There it was shown that God
wills other things besides Himself freely since His
goodness can be without other things and since nothing of
perfection accrues to Him from other things. It was also
shown that God is the cause of things by His will and
that He differs from man, who generates freely indeed but
not by his will but by his generative faculty inasmuch as
he possesses a certain nature, and therefore man can
generate only a man because his generative power is
determined to one result.
Hence if God acts with the greatest freedom "ad
extra" and through His will by saying, "Let the
world be," it follows that the world began at that moment
which God had determined from eternity, or as revelation
teaches, in the beginning of time.
Among the modern philosophers, Leibnitz admitted this
teaching, but he sought for some morally necessary motive
on account of which God willed the world to begin at this
time rather than earlier. In this he was limiting the
liberty of God.
For St. Thomas particularly the beginning of the world
depends simply on the will of God. St. Thomas says:
"Why this part of matter is under this form and that
matter under another form depends on the simple will of
God just as the fact that this stone is in this part of
the wall and that stone in another part depends on the will
of the workman, although it is of the nature of the art
that some stones be here and others there."[870]
Hence the Vatican Council declared: "By His
omnipotent will in the beginning of time and at the same
time God made from nothing both the spiritual and
corporeal creature,"[871] and "God created by a
will free from all necessity,"[872] that is,
without any metaphysical, physical, or moral necessity.
In the second part of the article St. Thomas tries to
show that Aristotle did not intend to give demonstrative
reasons for the eternity of the world, because in another
place Aristotle says expressly, "There are certain
dialectic problems for which we have no reasons, as
whether the world is eternal," or rather
sempiternal.[873] In yet another place, however,
it seems that Aristotle tried positively to prove the
sempiternity of movement and of time and from this the
infinite power of the first mover.[874]
The conclusion of the article is confirmed by the solution
of the difficulties, of which these are the more
important.
Reply to first difficulty. Before the world was it was
possible, but this real possibility is not real passive
potency, like prime matter. It is only a non-repugnance
to being.
Reply to second difficulty. When incorruptible beings
exist they are always, but they receive their existence
from God's free will.
Reply to third difficulty. It is true that prime matter
is ungenerated and cannot be generated, like an
incorruptible being, and thus it begins not by generation
but by creation and can be annihilated.
Reply to fourth difficulty. Before creation there was no
vacuum because the vacuum is a place for a body; even a
vacant place supposes certain corporeal beings between
which there are unoccupied places. Hence before creation
there was only a real possibility of corporeal beings as
there was a real possibility of spirits; but this real
possibility is not some being outside of God, it is
merely a non-repugnance to being. This non-repugnance
to being, however, is distinguished from simple
conceivability, for the being of the mind is conceived but
it cannot be produced outside the mind; it is conceivable
but not realizable.
Reply to fifth difficulty. Is it true that every
movement presupposes another movement, that every man
presupposes a man who generates, and that the first
immovable cause cannot of itself produce incipient movement
so that a new effect follows without a new action in God?
St. Thomas replies that the first mover is always the
same (that is, he has no new actions), but the first
thing moved begins to move not by movement but by
creation. Thus the first man was created, not
generated. St. Thomas explains: "If the first mover
were an agent acting only through his nature and not by
intellect and will, the effect would follow necessarily;
but because the first mover acts through his will, he can
by his eternal will produce a non-eternal effect just as
with his eternal intellect he can understand a non-eternal
being."[875] "From the eternal free action of God
there does not follow an eternal effect, but whatever
effect God wills."[876]
This eternal divine action, formally immanent and
virtually transient and transitive, is at once most free
and of itself and immediately efficacious; therefore it
produces its effect when it wills, that is, at the time
determined from eternity. This is somewhat similar to the
physician who in the morning prescribes a dose of medicine
to be taken in the evening; if the doctor were able to
administer the medicine without any intermediate action,
the will he had in the morning would be like God's will.
The will of God created the world without any
intermediary through His omnipotence, which is not really
distinct from God, and thus the eternal and free action
of God produces its effect in time so that there is a new
effect in time without any new action in eternity.
Eternity is to time as the stationary apex of a cone is to
the circular base of the cone, which is described
successively, and as the apex goes around and is above the
base so eternity is above time.
Reply to sixth difficulty. "A particular agent
presupposes time as it presupposes matter..., but the
universal agent produces both the thing and the time….
And the world more clearly leads to the knowledge of the
divine creating power if it is not always," for in this
way it is manifest that a world that has a beginning needs
a cause.
Reply to seventh difficulty. When the world began, the
beginning of movement and the first present moment were not
the terminus of time past, for the time began with the
movement itself of which it is the measure, then, for
example, the first circular movement of the sun began.
Reply to eighth difficulty. Before this first instant
there was nothing but imaginary time just as above the sky
there is nothing but imaginary place, that is, something
that can be imagined, the mere non-repugnance to the
localization of corporeal beings. The conclusion,
therefore, stands that it is not necessary that the world
be always.
Doubt. Is it congruous that the world began, in the
sense that it would be incongruous that the world was
created from eternity?
Reply. It is congruous that it might appear more clearly
that God alone is eternal and that God most freely
created the world. Nevertheless, as we shall see in the
following article, creation from eternity does not seem to
be positively incongruous; God is most free to have
created eternally, and in those things which God does
freely the thing which God actually did is, of course,
congruous but the opposite would not be incongruous.
|
|