THIRD ARTICLE: WHETHER CREATION IS ANYTHING IN THE CREATURE

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.