FOURTH ARTICLE: WHETHER TO BE CREATED IS PROPER TO COMPOSITE AND SUBSISTING BEINGS

State of the question. It appears that what is properly created is prime matter, which is presupposed by generation, for the composite subsistences, like plants and animals, are generated now and are not created.[812]

Moreover it appears that sanctifying grace is created in the baptized child, just as the spiritual soul is created in the body. Indeed, St. Thomas says, "When grace is destroyed it returns at once to nothing."[813] And what ceases by annihilation begins by creation. Therefore it appears that grace is created, although it is an accident.

Reply. The things that are properly created are subsisting beings, not accidents, or prime matter, or the forms of sensible things.

1. Proof from Sacred Scripture. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth,"[814] that is, subsisting beings. We are still explaining the same text, the same truth, not a new truth.

2. Proof from reason. Being properly belongs to subsistences whether they are simple or composite. But becoming and creation belong to those things to which being belongs. Therefore becoming and creation properly belong to subsistences, whether they are simple or composite.

Explanation of the major. A subsisting being is that which is, or that which has being; forms and accidents are not that which is but that by which something is such, for example, that by which something is the earth or that by which something is hot.

Explanation of the minor. Becoming is ordered to the being of a thing, and what becomes is that which will be, for example, this cow, not the form of the cow.[815] To be created is in a sense a becoming, or being produced, although properly it is not a becoming, which presupposes a subject.

Corollary. We should say that forms and accidents are concreated rather than created, just as they are rather coexistences than beings.

Reply to third objection. Prime matter cannot be produced except by creation, but it is not created without a form, for creation is the production of the whole being and not of matter alone. Hence matter is concreated.

Indeed, according to St. Thomas, prime matter cannot exist without a form because prime matter is not that which is but that by which something is material. That which exists is the composite of matter and form, and here we see the real distinction between essence and existence, for the essence of a sensible thing is composed of matter and form, while its being or existence is not a composite.

Scotus and Suarez, on the contrary, held that prime matter could exist without the form, because they conceived prime matter not as pure potency but as the most imperfect kind of act. This is a distortion of the idea of potency. Potency is not even the most imperfect kind of act; for example, before the movement there is a real potency to movement, and not until the movement begins is there even an imperfect act, which presupposes potency. Potency is merely the real capacity for producing or receiving inasmuch as the potency is active or passive. Moreover, what would this matter without the form be? It would not be something spiritual because it is matter nor would it be corporeal because the corporeity is a determination depending on the form.

First doubt. Is the human soul properly created? The human soul is created in the proper sense because it is a subsisting form, that is, intrinsically independent of the copy in its specific act of intellection and therefore also in its being and becoming.[816]

Second doubt. Whether grace is created in the soul?

Reply. Grace is not created in the soul because it is an accident by which a person is pleasing to God; to be created is a property of a subsisting being. The infusion of grace presupposes a subject upon which grace, as an accident, depends in its becoming and later in its being. Hence St. Thomas says that grace and the infused virtues are educed from the obediential potency of the soul.[817]

The difference between St. Thomas and Suarez on creation. The truth of creation is demonstrated by St. Thomas from the fact that no being existing outside of God is its own being, or from the fact that everything outside of God is really distinct from its being. "God is being subsisting in itself, and subsisting being can only be one. It follows, then, that all other beings besides God are not their own being but participate in being,"[818] and are caused according to their whole being by God. Here we see the connection between the doctrine of creation and the real distinction between created essence and being.

Those who deny this real distinction are forced to find another way to prove the truth of creation, namely, by induction, as Suarez did, by showing the contingency of things.[819] But if this contingency is shown from experience from their generation and corruption, it will be quite difficult to show by induction that the angels were created and do not exist of themselves from eternity. How can this be proved conclusively if we deny in the angels the real distinction between essence and being and if therefore the angels' essence is their being?[820]

When we deny the real distinction between created essence and being, and between a created person and being, we deny what St. Thomas laid down as the basis for the infinity of God and for the distinction between God and creatures. If we say, "The being in creatures is the essence and substance itself," how shall we reply to Spinoza when he says, "Existence pertains to the nature of the substance," since then there can be but one substance as there is only one subsisting being, as Parmenides taught?