FIRST ARTICLE: WHETHER IT IS NECESSARY THAT EVERY BEING BE CREATED BY GOD

In other words, as St. Thomas himself says in the prologue, whether God is the efficient cause of all being.

State of the question. The title is clear. Every being stands for everything that can properly be called being, namely, every substance and every suppositum of which we can say that it is what it is. In the following question we will ask whether prime matter is from God, because prime matter is not properly being or that which is; it is a part of material being, namely, that by which a thing is material.

At the moment the word "created" in the title signifies only what is effectively caused, because we are not yet considering the mode of this production, namely, from nothing; this will be considered in a following article. The question now is, whether God is the efficient cause of all being.

The state of the question will become clearer from the difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article: it appears that there are many things absolutely necessary in the world, for example, the circle is a circle of itself and of itself possesses such properties. But what is absolutely necessary requires no efficient cause.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative: God is the efficient cause of all being. This truth is of faith.

1. Sacred Scripture clearly affirms it: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[714] Here the word "heaven" includes all heavenly beings, and "earth" includes all inferior beings. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them";[715] "I am the Lord that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth";[716] "Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them";[717] "All things were made by Him";[718] "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things";[719] "God, who made the world, and all things therein."[720]

2. In the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds we read: "I believe in one God,. . . maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible."[721] "We believe that the one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are one principle of all things, the creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporal."[722]

3. Theological proof. Before we begin this proof it should be remembered that this problem has received three solutions: dualism, pantheism, and the revealed doctrine of creation.

Dualism says that the world came from an eternal prime matter, which is necessary, as God is, and which is coordinated to God rather than subordinate to Him.

Pantheism holds that God is one and the same substance with the world so that the things in the world are quasi-accidents or finite modes of God, whether the world became God by ascending evolution, as modern pantheists say, or whether God became the world by descending evolution, which the Neoplatonists have in mind when they talk about emanation.

The revealed doctrine of creation holds that the world and whatever is in it is the effect of God.

We have already refuted pantheism above,[723] by showing that God must be the first, immovable, most simple, efficient cause since He is His own action and also His own being, and therefore He is distinct in fact and in essence from the mutable and composite world. Moreover, an efficient cause is extrinsic and does not enter into the composition of its effects. Again, as has been said,[724] God cannot have accidents, for He would be perfected and actuated by them and this is impossible, since He is pure act, subsisting being itself, the ultimate unreceived actuality, to which no addition can be made; God is indeed the fullness of being. Dualism will be refuted in the second article.

The demonstration given in the body of the article is the fourth argument for demonstrating the existence of God,[725] but in reverse, that is, the argument does not ascend but it descends. Hence this article is a commentary of the fourth argument for God's existence. The fourth argument can be reduced to the following.

Whatever is in anything by participation is caused by that being to whom this thing belongs essentially. But in things we find participated being, for being is predicated of them in a greater or lesser degree. Therefore there exists a being who is such essentially, the cause of all things, and this being we call God.

The major is the very principle of causality, namely, whatever is such not of itself is such by another that is such essentially. The minor is evident from the grades of perfection in the world, for every multitude presupposes a superior unity, because the multitude does not account for the unity of likeness that is in it; as St. Thomas says, "those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in any one thing except by some cause that unites them."[726] Thus every imperfect thing is composed from perfection and the restricted capacity for this perfection, and every composite requires a cause for this same reason, since those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in any one thing except by some cause that unites them. In other words, the union that is found in the composition of two things and in the multitude of diverse and similar things depends on a superior unity. The union participates in the unity, and the unity, therefore, is the principle of the union, as St. Thomas frequently points out. We cannot conceive a union unless we first have the concept of the unity; the converse is not true. Unity is the most simple of ideas; but in the union we already have composition or multitude. Hence the principle: an uncaused union of diverse things is impossible.[727]

In this article we use the same argument in reverse. That which is in anything by participation is efficiently caused in it by the being that has this thing essentially. But God and God alone is being essentially, since He is subsisting being itself, which cannot be other than one. Therefore God is the efficient cause of all being.

The major is evident since it is a form of the principle of causality. Cajetan notes that "this proposition is accepted both by the Platonists and by the Peripatetics, if the participated thing is found to exist essentially, "as without repugnance." For sometimes there is a repugnance, for example, man as an essence, separate from individuals cannot exist, since man by his very definition must have common matter, bones and flesh. But bones and flesh cannot exist unless they are these bones and this flesh, because they imply quantity whose parts extend beyond other parts and are individuated.[728] Man can be conceived essentially as an idea but he cannot exist as an essence; thus the idea of man is in God, and the divine essence contains man only virtually, inasmuch as it can produce a man. But the major is to be understood of a participated perfection which in its concept does not involve common matter or an imperfection, that is, some perfection like being, living, and intellection.

On the supposition that God is subsisting being itself, the minor is evident, as was proved elsewhere,[729] as follows: the first mover must be His own action and His own being. For, since being is predicated with respect to the actual being and since it is that whose act is being, if God is subsisting being itself it follows that God is being essentially. Moreover, being itself, if it is received, is received in some essence, for example, in man, a plant, a stone; but if the being subsists as unreceived then it is being essentially and it is also unique, just as whiteness, if it were subsisting, would be the one and only whiteness. A perfection is never multiplied except by the capacity for perfection in that in which it is received. Thus St. Thomas resolves the question from an analysis of the things involved in the question, because a more proper cause of beings inasmuch as they are beings cannot be assigned than that which is being essentially. We are certainly dealing with the efficient cause, since that which is by participation is efficiently from that which is being essentially.

Reply to first objection. Relationship to a cause is a property of contingent being, which is defined as being which is able to be or not to be. Therefore it follows that contingent being does not exist of itself but by another.

Reply to second objection. The objection is that many things exist in the world that are absolutely necessary and do not require an efficient cause. The reply is that there are in the world certain absolutely necessary things which still have a cause for necessity, like demonstrated conclusions.

Reply to third objection. The objection is that those things that are mathematically true do not require an efficient cause. Reply. The science of mathematics abstracts from an efficient cause but it does not deny it. It abstracts from an efficient cause only because it considers the essence and not the existence of numbers and geometric figures, nor does it consider motion but only the formal cause of numbers and figures.

On this matter the reader is referred to St. Thomas' article in the De potentia.[730] The article in the Theological Summa is shorter but more sublime in its simplicity. Its sublimity does not appear until we study the complex article in the De potentia; then we understand the superior unity and what it contains in its virtuality.

In this first article we consider the historical question, whether Plato and Aristotle, who are quoted by St. Thomas, affirmed that the multitude of beings in the world depend on God as on an efficient cause or that the dependence is only on a formal and final cause. St. Thomas replies to this question in the following article. We shall see that these great philosophers explicitly affirmed the formal and final dependence, but much less explicitly did they speak of a dependence on an efficient cause, because they had not yet attained to an explicit idea of creation from nothing and a fortiori they had not understood free creation or creation from eternity.

When St. Thomas quotes Plato and Aristotle he does not intend to imply that they formulated the conclusion of the article but that they laid down the principles, showing that the multitude does not account for the unity of likeness that is found in the multitude; that is, the multitude presupposes a superior unity, and perfection with an admixture of imperfection presupposes a pure unparticipated perfection, for, as St. Thomas says, "those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in some one thing except through some cause that unites them."[731] That is, many things do not agree in some perfection except through some cause that unites them, and the diverse things that constitute a composite, as a perfection and the capacity in which it is received, do not agree and become one except through some cause uniting them.