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State of the question. We are inquiring what is the
formal cause of creation taken passively in the creature
and here we will show what creation is, taken actively.
First difficulty. Creation taken passively does not
appear to be anything, because creation taken actively is
not anything, for if it were it would be something
temporal in God.
Second difficulty. If creation taken passively were
anything, it would be created, that is, a creature, and
to produce it we would have to posit another creation and
so on to infinity
Third difficulty. If creation taken passively were
something, it would be an accident of a created
substance. But this is impossible, because the created
substance is prior to the accident and it cannot be prior
to passive creation, of which it is the terminus.
The argument sed contra is rather an argument in the
opposite sense than a proof. St. Thomas says that if
generation taken passively is something in the one
generated, then creation taken passively is something in
the creature. The difficulty remains, however, for
generation is a change and, as we have said, creation is
not a change.
Reply. Creation in the creature is nothing more than a
certain relation to the Creator, namely, a real relation
of dependence.
This is proved in the body of the article and in the reply
to the third difficulty. St. Thomas says that "the
creature is the subject of creation inasmuch as it is a
relation and prior to the relation in being as the subject
is prior to an accident." The proof in the body of the
article can be reduced to the following. If we prescind
from motion in action and passion, nothing remains but the
relation of the effect to the agent.[803] But
creation, since it is out of no presupposed subject, is
without motion or change. Therefore creation in the
creature is nothing but a certain relation to the Creator
This syllogism may be said to be illative and not only
explicative inasmuch as we are no longer treating of the
definition of active creation and inasmuch as the major of
the syllogism is from reason and not from revelation. The
minor is clear from what we have said earlier. The
conclusion, however, is not admitted by all theologians.
The major is verified in the Incarnation[804] and is
explained in the reply to the second difficulty of the
preceding article, where it is said: "Since action and
passion agree in the one substance of motion (that is, in
the one reality of the motion itself) and since they
differ only with regard to different relationships, it is
proper that, after we have subtracted the motion, nothing
remains except different relationships in the Creator and
the creature."[805]
This is to say that "motion is the mobile act as mobile,
for example, the motion of heating is the act of the
wood, not inasmuch as it is wood but as it is heatable and
not yet heated."[806] The transitive action
inasmuch as it is received terminatively in the patient is
the motion proceeding from the agent, and the passion is
the motion as it is in the patient. Action is the motion
as from this one and passion is the motion as it is in this
one with a relation of dependence on the agent. This is
Aristotle's reasoning.
If, then, we subtract the motion from action and
passion, nothing remains except the relation of dependence
on the agent.
Objection. Durandus and Suarez, on the other hand,
held that creation is an influence received in the
creature, something as actual grace is a created influence
received in the will so that the will can vitally elicit
its act.
Reply. The difference is that when God gives actual
grace the soul and the will pre-exist as the subject which
God applies to action; such also is the action and
passion by which the will is applied to elicit its act.
Hence actual grace is received as an accident in the soul
and it preceded the salutary act by a priority of
causality. On the other hand, in creation no subject
pre-exists, and therefore no influence is received in the
creature to produce it. Such an influence ought to
precede the created substance and still be received in it
as an accident. This is impossible.
St. Thomas' solution, which is accepted by all
Thomists and many other theologians, is confirmed by the
solution of the objections.
Reply to first objection. St. Thomas explains that
creation taken actively is an action formally immanent in
God and virtually transient. It is called formally
immanent inasmuch as it is identified with the divine
substance, since it is not an accident and it certainly is
not a temporal accident in God, who is subsisting being
itself, the ultimate actuality, to which no addition can
be made. Nothing is made from the divine entity;
Parmenides understood this somewhat vaguely, when he said
that being is not made of being, confusing universal being
with divine being.
The creative action is said to be virtually transient
inasmuch as it posits an effect ad extra, and thus this
action has the perfection of a formally transient action
without its imperfections. The imperfection of a
transient action arises from the fact that it is an
accident proceeding from the agent and received
terminatively in the patient.
But it still remains a mystery how this action, which is
eternal, has an effect only in time. St. Thomas
explains this to some extent in the Contra
Gentes,[807] as follows: "God acts voluntarily in
the production of things but not in such a way that He has
a mediating action, as in our case the action of the
motive power is the middle between the act of the will and
the effect, as has been shown in the preceding—but (with
God) it is fitting that His intellection and willing be
His acting An effect, however, follows from the
intellect and the will according to the determination of
the intellect and the command of the will. Now, when the
making of a thing is determined by the intellect, the
intellect prescribes all the conditions and also the time
of the making; in art not only is it determined that a
thing shall be thus but also that it shall be then, just
as the doctor prescribes not only that this medicine be
taken but also that it be taken then. If God's will is
per se able to produce an effect, a new effect could
follow from the former (and continuing? will of God
without any new action (of the will). Nothing prohibits
us from saying that God's action is from eternity and
that the effect is not from eternity but at that time when
God from eternity arranged and freely disposed it to be.
Hence there is a newness of effect without a newness of
action. Aristotle did not understand this because he did
not consider the divine liberty.
According to revelation,. God said, "Be light made.
And light was made."[808] He said from eternity,
"Be light made," and the light was made at the time
determined from eternity so that there was a new effect but
no new action. We should add that God is the most free
cause of the creature, of its movement, and of its time,
because time is the measure of the movement with regard to
earlier and later, for example, time is the measure of
the apparent movement of the sun according to the
succession of days.
In the reply to the first objection, St. Thomas says
that there is no real relation of God to the creature,
whereas there is a real relation of the creature to God.
Why? As was explained earlier,[809] all creatures
are ordered to God and depend on Him, but God is in no
way ordered to creatures nor does He depend on them.
Thus the senses are ordered to a sensible thing, but
sensible things are not ordered to the senses; so also our
science is ordered to knowable things, but the things are
not ordered to science, and therefore the things do not
acquire anything by the fact that they are seen or known,
whereas the cognitive faculty is perfected by things when
they are known.
Objection. But the father does not depend on the son,
and yet there is a real relation of the father to the son.
Reply. This is so because active generation is a
formally transient action which is ordered to the passive
generation of the son. On the other hand, active
creation is not a formally transient action ordered to
created being. God is in no way ordered to creatures,
but creatures are ordered to God.
Reply to second objection. Creation taken passively is a
real relation in creatures, but this relation does not
require a special passive creation to exist, because "the
relations, since the very thing that they are is
predicated to another, are referred by some other
relations," that is, there is not a relation of the
relation itself.
Reply to third objection. "In creation, inasmuch as a
change is signified (although there is no change in
creation), the creature is the terminus; but inasmuch as
it is a relation, the creature is the subject of creation
and prior to the relation in being, as the subject is
prior to the accident. But creation has a certain aspect
of priority on the part of the object of which it is
predicated, which is the principle of the creature."
Hence this relation according to its "esse in"
follows the substance, and according to its "esse
ad" in some sense precedes it.
First doubt. This doubt concerns the last reply. Is
creation, taken passively, a predicamental relation and
an accident or is it a transcendental relation, that is,
the created substance itself as related to God the
Creator, just as a science is essentially and
transcendentally referred to the knowable?
Scotus held that it is a transcendental relation, because
it could not be conceived as an accident, for, while a
created substance can be conceived without an accident, it
cannot be conceived without the dependence on the
Creator. Thomists, like Cajetan and John of St.
Thomas, commonly hold that passive creation is a
predicamental relation and an accident and inseparable from
the creature, namely, a predicamented accident (like the
intellective faculty in the rational soul), and not a
predicable accident (like the color of the hair), that
is, it is a property of an existing creature.
The Thomists hold this opinion for the following
reasons. 1. St. Thomas in this article says that
"creation is truly a relation, the creature is the
subject of the relation and prior to the relation in being
as the subject is prior to the accident."[810] 2.
Moreover, a contingent being is defined, not as a being
caused by God, but as a being that can be or not be.
St. Thomas says: "Although the relationship to the
cause does not enter into the definition of the being that
is caused (man, for instance), yet this relationship
follows those things that are of the nature of the being.
. . . Such a being cannot be unless it is caused, just
as there cannot be a man unless he possesses the quality of
risibility."[811] Therefore passive creation is a
property and not the essence of the existing creature. A
science, however, is related by its essence to what is
knowable by a real transcendental relation; so also is
matter to the form, the form to the matter, and essence
to being.
Second doubt. But what is the foundation for this
predicamental relation? John of St. Thomas replies:
"it is the creature's existence as participated, just as
the movement in a mobile being is the foundation of the
mobile being to the mover. This existence, however, as
produced by God, depends essentially on God the
Creator.
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