FIRST ARTICLE: WHETHER THE WORLD OF CREATURES WAS ALWAYS

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.