FIRST ARTICLE: WHETHER TO CREATE IS TO MAKE SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

This article is a search for the real definition of creation with respect to the terminus a quo and it is an application of the conclusions arrived at in the first and second articles of the preceding question.

State of the question. It seems that to create is not to make something out of nothing, 1. because to create is sometimes used in another sense, for example, to create a bishop or elevate him to a higher position; 2. because the "from nothing" designates a material cause, and nothing cannot be a material cause.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative.

1. Proof from Scripture. We read, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth."[762] The word bara (created) in the forms kal and niphal in Sacred Scripture is never used except for the operation that is proper to God, and therefore it is best suited to designate production from nothing, that is, from no presupposed subject, and this is an action proper to God.[763] The fact that this word bara in this instance signifies creation in the proper sense is clear from other words in the text, namely, "in the beginning," which indicate that the text refers to the first origin of all things, and "heaven and earth" signify the universe of things. No pre-existing matter is mentioned from which all things were made, whereas somewhat later we read that man was made "of the slime of the earth."

In speaking of the creative power of God, the prophets exclude any kind of dualism,[764] and the Psalmist says that all things were made simply by the word of God.[765] The same teaching is found in the Sapiential Books.[766] Lastly, the mother of the Machabees, prompted by the spirit of God, says to one of her sons, "I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing."[767] And only God is able to say, "I am who am,"[768] that is, not from another.

In the New Testament we read, "All things were made by Him (the Word): and without Him was made nothing that was made."[769] Therefore, all things have their origin from God and are out of nothing, not out of pre-existing matter that was not produced, otherwise things would be something out of themselves, they would not be totally from God and to God, nor would they be totally subject to God's dominion.

The first Christians professed, "Lord, thou art He that didst make heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them."[770] St. Paul declares, "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things";[771] "One God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him";[772] "For in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all, and by Him all things consist."[773] Finally, God is "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," of all things.[774] Such was the consistent Judaic and Christian tradition. Nor is there any contradiction in the words, "For Thy almighty hand, which made the world of matter without form,"[775] since from the context it is clear that God made the sensible world out of unformed matter which He himself had produced before.

The Fathers of the early Church say without hesitation that God is the one and only Creator of all things;[776] and against the heretics they reject any unproduced or eternal matter,[777] asserting that things were produced from nothing,[778] and that this doctrine pertains to faith.[779]

Journel arranges the texts of the Fathers under the following headings: "God created all things," "out of nothing," "He alone created," "He created freely," "according to, the divine ideas," "out of His goodness," "that He might make known His perfections," "the Trinity creates," "the world (matter) is not eternal," and "God is not the author of evil."[780]

St. Augustine in particular says: "The angels can in no way create a nature; the one and only Creator of every creature, whether it be great or small, is God."[781] He explains that God created all things out of nothing, saying: "not of Himself, for then (created being) would be equal to the only-begotten Son,"[782] "but out of nothing" He made that which He created.[783]

The councils often define that the triune God created the world out of nothing, when He willed and not from eternity, but freely because of His goodness.[784]

Errors. In the judgment of the Church creation was erroneously explained by the following.

The Origenists,[785] who taught the pre-existence of the human souls prior to the generation of the bodies with which the souls were united; Eckhard, who admitted creation from eternity;[786] the ontologists,[787] Rosmini,[788] the pantheists,[789] and the emanatists.[790]

The Gnostics also erred by saying that matter is eternal; the Manichaeans, who admitted a twofold principle of things, one good the other bad; and the Albigenses revived this error. Abelard held that God created things neither freely nor for His own glory, and this error was accepted by Wyclif, Hermes, Guenther, and Rosmini.[791]

In recent times the theosophists taught an evolutionistic pantheism, and Bergson thought he could explain everything by a creative evolution. According to this theory nothing is (exists) properly speaking, all things are becoming, all things and all minds are in a perpetual flux or in a perennial evolution, and Bergson often speaks as though God Himself were becoming.[792]

2. Proof from reason. The body of the article does not contain an illative process, that is, one that deduces a new truth from another, but an explicative process, in which there is a transition from the confused notion of creation to an explicit notion with respect to the terminus a quo. Hence we do not arrive at a new truth, but the same idea and the same truth is explained. This explicative argument is an example of the evolution of dogma or the evolution of some revealed truth. The argument can be reduced to the following.

The production of the entire being of any thing is from no being just as the production of a man is not from a man. But by creation we understand the production of the entire being of some thing.[793] Therefore by creation we understand the production of a thing out of nothing.

We have here not only a verbal advance but a conceptual advance, not however from one concept to another but from a confused concept to a clear concept, for the concepts in our minds are representative qualities or habits, which can be vitally augmented, as a plant grows.

The primitive concept of creation is expressed in Sacred Scripture, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[794] Hence God produced whatever is outside Him, the whole being of all things that are produced. Therefore this production was out of no presupposed subject but out of nothing, just as the generation of man is out of no man, that is, out of the seed, which is not yet man. For if a man were already generated then he would not now be generated, because that which is generated was not before. The same notion of creation is developed, the same truth, "God created all things," is explained; now we add "from nothing." This is not the deduction of a new truth but an explanation of the same truth, as in the search for a real definition which begins with the nominal definition, since the question, "What is it called, what is its name?" tells vaguely what the thing is without determining the genus and difference.

This inquiry into the real definition is not, therefore, a demonstration. As Aristotle explained, the definitions of things are not demonstrated; they are sought out by a descending division of the highest genus and by an ascending comparative induction of the specific difference. The direction of this search is from the confused concept expressed in the nominal definition to a distinct statement.[795] Sometimes the definition of a thing is from the aspect of the end from which a definition can be deduced defining the form; thus if a saw is intended to cut, it should be made with teeth from some durable metal. If we are dealing with a definition based on the formal cause, which is at first confused and later becomes distinct, the transition is not a demonstration, nor is it an objectively illative syllogism, although there may be a noticeable conceptual advance in the same concept, for example, from the vulgar concept of the human soul to the explicitly defined concept found in the Council of Vienne: the human soul is truly per se and essentially the form of the body.[796] The same progress can be made in the concept of the personality of Christ, of the consubstantiality of the Word, and now in the idea of creation.

Hence in the first four articles of this question we have the search for the real definition of creation, beginning with the nominal definition.[797] This search is confirmed by the solution of the objections.

Reply to first objection. Sometimes St. Augustine uses the word "creation" equivocally, for example, to create a bishop. But in its proper sense "creation" signifies the production of a thing from nothing.

Reply to second objection. A change receives its species and dignity not from the terminus a quo but from the terminus ad quem, for it has a reference to that toward which it tends. Thus creation, which produces the total being of a thing, is more perfect than generation, which produces the one begotten from a presupposed subject.

Reply to third objection. "Out of nothing" can be understood in two ways: 1. as "after nothing" and then it does not designate a material cause but only an order; 2. "more profoundly," as out of no presupposed subject, and then it designates a negated material cause, that is, something is created when it is produced not out of anything. In this second acceptation, St. Thomas points out, the expression "out of nothing" implies the condition of a material cause, which is denied.

If Bergson had studied the teaching of St. Thomas, he might perhaps have refrained from saying that the concept of creation out of nothing was a pseudo-idea, because we cannot have an idea of nothing. We cannot, of course, positively conceive nothing, but it can be conceived negatively with reference to being as the absolute negation of being. In order to conceive creation we need not first conceive nothing and later the appearance of the thing produced; it is more profound to conceive creation as the production of a thing out of no presupposed subject, and this concept is verified even though creation from nothing should be from eternity.

Before this man is generated he was not and therefore he is generated from no man; similarly the entire being of things is produced; the things were not and therefore they are produced from no thing or from nothing. This is not a pseudo-idea but the true idea of nothing, a negative idea, it is true, obtained by the negation of being.

First doubt. Why do the Scholastics say that creation is the production of a thing "out of nothing of itself or of a subject"? They mean that what is properly created, before it was created was entirely nothing in itself and moreover did not have a subject out of which it became. On the other hand, what is created, before it was generated was nothing in itself, as the generated cow, but there was a subject from which it became.

Objection. But before creation, at least the possibility of the thing to be produced is presupposed, and this possibility is not only something logical or a being of the mind, which can be conceived but not realized, as a predicament, a universal, a syllogism, or the syllogistic laws, but it is a possible real being or a being really possible outside the mind.

Being is divided into

real being
actual
by itself
by another
in itself
in another
really possible
mental being, that can be conceived but not realized

Reply. The possibility prerequisite to creation is not only a being of the mind, or of second intention like the laws of the syllogism, which cannot be effected or really produced but only conceived, I concede.

But this possibility is not something existing outside of God; it expresses that which can be produced by God ad extra. Hence that which is outside the mind is only a real possibility, not a real entity or a real potency like prime matter. This point is important inasmuch as the principle of contradiction is not only a law of the mind but also a law of being, for example, a square circle is not only unthinkable but really impossible, whatever the subjectivists say about it. The essences of things do not depend on the liberty and omnipotence of God, whatever Descartes says when he asserts that the principle of contradiction is true because God wills it that way; in that case this principle would be a contingent truth. The supposition underlying creation is the divine ideas, and thus creation is from the material nothing but not from the ideal nothing. Hence when we say that creation is out of nothing we do not mean out of the nothing of its own possibility, for this itself would be impossible, but out of no presupposed, preexisting subject.

Second doubt. What was Rosmini's error about creation? Rosmini erred in thinking that real being taken indeterminately (that which our intellect first apprehends and predicates of all things) is in itself something divine and that it has the same essence as God. He spoke as if a possible real being (not created) were already some kind of initial being common to God and creatures. Hence he said that this initial being is not created and that the essences of created things are not something positive but something negative, consisting in limits which God adds to the initial being. For Rosmini this limiting action of God is creation. (Cf. Denz., nos. 1903 f.) This initial being is for him the univocal minimum in the analogy between God and creatures, and it is positively determined by God and negatively by the created essence, which is a limitation or negation. The Deity is like a white light, and creatures are like the colors. For Rosmini the created essence is something negative, for us it is something potential.

Reply. Creation, as we have said, presupposes nothing else than the real possibility of creatures and this possibility is not a kind of initial being, it is merely the non-repugnance to being. Rosmini's teaching is an immoderate realism, which confuses being in common with the divine being.

Third doubt. In what did Victor Cousin's error on creation consist?[798] Cousin said that "we create whenever we produce a free act, that is, we produce this act from our real potency. Similarly, God in creating the universe educed it from Himself because He was not able to produce it from nothing since nothing is not, cannot be, and is purely a name." Bergson said almost the same thing: "creation out of nothing is a pseudo-idea, like the idea of nothing, and in its place we must have creative evolution."

Reply. Cousin and Bergson after him confuse creation with the production from some presupposed real potency, either material or spiritual, as when we produce a free act inasmuch as the will actually willing an end reduces itself to the act of willing the means. In the body of the article St. Thomas replies that as the eduction of the generated cow is from no generated being (but out of matter), so the production of total being is from no being, that is, from no presupposed subject. And for this it is not necessary that nothing be something or could be something.

Moreover, if God educed the universe not from nothing but from Himself in the same way that our will, actually willing an end, reduces itself to the act of the free choice of the means and thus educes a free act from itself as it is a determinable potency, then God would be in potency to another act and He would not be pure act.[799] Bergson's creative evolution is also objectionable because it posits a reality in potency until it is perfected by itself, and in this theory more is produced by less, the more perfect by the less perfect. There would also be motion without a mobile subject, without an extrinsic mover, and without an end understood beforehand, whereas every movement requires a mover and in the final analysis the prime mover who is his own action and consequently his own being, that is, pure act in no way in potency. Cousin, and Bergson to some extent, confused the material cause with the efficient cause. God, however, cannot be the material cause and therefore He did not make the world out cf Himself or of Himself but out of no presupposed subject. The Son of God, however, was begotten, not made from nothing.

Final conclusion. Such is the explanation of creation with regard to the terminus a quo; it is the production of a thing from nothing, that is, from no presupposed subject and from no real potency; it presupposes only a real possibility, which is entirely different from real potency, because a real possibility is merely the non-repugnance to being; real passive potency is the real capacity of receiving an act, for example, prime matter is real capacity for receiving the substantial forms of material things. Such real capacity, however, cannot exist without some form which is received and which limits and individuates the real capacity.

Objection. We read, "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things."[800] Therefore God created the world not from nothing but from Himself.

Reply. The "of Him" signifies not from God as from a material cause but by God's power.