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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.
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