rantes. Creatures have been from the beginning of time, as The eternity of creation was a leading principle Plato saw (Timaeus 37, 38), but they cannot be argued with that master of thought in St Thomas's day, and to have been from eternity, eternally coexistent with for many succeeding centuries, Averroes the Com- God, unless they be argued to be necessary to God, mentator, of whom we shall have much to say pre- in which case they cease to be creatures, sently. t This argument, which is indeed the whole # It is now generally recognised that the stellar argument of the chapter, does not bar the possibility universe, inconceivably vast as are its dimensions, of a ' consequent,' or hypothetical, necessity, that if nevertheless is limited in space: whence it may plau- God wills creatures to be at all, He must will them sibly be argued to be limited in duration also, in the always to have been, sense of not having existed from eternity. Where 97 upon the understanding and will according to the determination of the under- standing and the command of the will. But as by the understanding there is determined the produftion of the thing, and its every other condition, so there is also prescribed for it the time at which it is to be; just as any art deter- mines not only that a thing be of this or that character, but also that it be at this or that time, as the physician fixes the time for giving the medicine. Thus, assuming God's will to be of itself effectual for the produftion of an effe6t, the effeft would follow fresh from the ancient will, without any fresh aftion coming to be put forth on the part of God.
Arg. 3. Given a sufficient cause, the effeft will ensue: otherwise it would be possible, when the cause was posited, for the effeft either to be or not to be. At that rate, the sequence of effeft upon cause would be possible and no more. But what is possible requires something to reduce it to aft: we should have therefore to suppose a cause whereby the effeft was reduced to aft, and thus the first cause would not be sufficient. But God is the sufficient cause of the produftion of creatures: otherwise He must be in potentiality, and become a cause by some addition, which is clearly absurd.
Reply. Though God is the sufficient cause of the produftion and bringing forth of creatures into being, yet the effeft of His produftion need not be taken to be eternal. For, given a sufficient cause, there follows its effeft, but not an effe6t alien from the cause. Now the proper effeft of the will is that that should be which the will wants. If it were anything else than what the will wanted, not the proper effeft of the cause would be secured, but a foreign effeft. Now as the will wishes that this should be of this or that nature, so it also wishes that it should be at this or that time. Hence, for will to be a suffi- cient cause, it is requisite that the effeft should be when the will wishes it to be. The case is otherwise with physical agencies: they cannot wait: physical a6tion takes place according as nature is ready for it: there the effeft must follow at once upon the complete being of the cause.* But the will does not a6t according to the mode of its being, but according to the mode of its pur- pose; and therefore, as the effeft of a physical agent follows the being of the agent, if it is sufficient, so the effe6t of a voluntary agent follows the mode of purpose.
Arg. 4. A voluntary agent does not delay the execution of his purpose except in expectation of some future condition not yet realised. And this unfulfilled futurity is sometimes in the agent himself, as when maturity of aftive power or the removal of some hindrance is the condition expefted: sometimes it is without the agent, as when there is expefted the presence of some one before whom the action is to take place, or the arrival of some opportune time that is not yet come. A complete volition is at once carried into effe6t by the executive power, except for some defeft in that power. Thus at the command of the will a limb is at once moved, unless there be some break-down in the motor apparatus. Therefore, when any one wishes to do a thing and it is not at once done, that must be either for some defeft of power, the removal of which has to be waited for, or because of the incompleteness of the volition to do the thing. I call it ' completeness of volition,' when there is a will absolutely to do the thing, anyhow. The volition I say is ' incomplete,' when there is no will absolutely to do the thing, but the will is conditioned on the^existence of some circumstance not yet present, or the withdrawal of some present impediment. But certainly, whatever God now wills to be, He * The eruption takes place the instant the volcano is ready for it.
98 has from eternity willed to be. No new motion of the will can come upon Him: no defe<5t or impediment can have clogged His power: there can have been nothing outside Himself for Him to wait for in the produdtion of the universe, since there is nothing else uncreated save Him alone (Chapp. VI, XV).* It seems therefore necessary that God must have brought the creature into being from all eternity.
Reply. The objeft of the divine will is not the mere being of the creature, but its being at a certain time. What is thus willed, namely, the being of the creature at that time, is not delayed: because the creature began to exist then exa&ly when God from eternity arranged that it should begin to exist, t Arg. 5. An intellectual agent does not prefer one alternative to another except for some superiority of the one over the other. But where there is no difference, there can be no superiority. But between one non-existence and another non-existence there can be no difference, nor is one non-existence preferable to another. J But, looking beyond the entire universe, we find nothing but the eternity of God. Now in nothing there can be assigned no difference of instants, that a thing should be done in one instant rather than in another. In like manner neither in eternity^ which is all uniform and simple (B. I, Chap. XV), can there be any difference of instants. It follows that the will of God holds itself in one unvarying attitude to the production of creatures throughout the whole of eternity. Either therefore His will is that creation never be realised at all under His eternity, or that it always be realised.
Reply. It is impossible to mark any difference of parts of any duration antecedent to the beginning of all creation, as the fifth objection supposed that we could do.§ For nothingness has neither measure nor duration, and the eternity of God has no parts, no before and no after. We cannot therefore refer the beginning of all creation to any severally marked points in any pre- existing measure. || There are no such points for the beginning of creation to be referred to according to any relation of agreement or divergence. Hence it is impossible to demand any reason in the mind of the agent why he should have brought the creature into being in this particular marked instant of # The objection may take this form: God must act at once in the production of the universe; because, with blank nothingness before Him, and infinite power at His control, He has nothing whatever to wait for, noconceivable motive for delay. — But neither has He any constraining motive for aclion outside Himself; and therefore, if He acls outside Himself, He acts as and when He pleases: there is nothing to force His hand or anticipate His hour.
t St Thomas could scarcely accept the whole account, given by the opponent, of an ' incomplete volition/ notably the statement that a volition is in- complete, " when there is expected the arrival of some opportune time that is not yet come": otherwise, antecedently to creation, God's volition of creating would be incomplete. St Thomas's use of ' at that time ' (tunc)y speaking of creation, has this difficulty, that time began only with creation. There is nothing to mark creation starting at one point of time rather than at another, looking at the eternal novr of God. We can only measure the date of creation backwards, and say that infinite time has not elapsed since crea- tion; and that doubtless is what St Thomas meant, as his next answer shows.
t This is not altogether true. One non-existence may have a possibility at the back of it, another an absurdity. Possibilities differ from one another and 99 even absurdities, things being absurd in divers ways, as mathematics show. There is a calculus of negative quantities. This however docs not make against the value of the objection.
§ There seems to be some mistake here. Any careful reader of the Contra (gentiles will find in it (e.g., Chapp. LXI, 1: LXXVI, note) indications of the want of the author's final revision, a task much more difficult with a manuscript than with a printed work. Every modern author finds sundry small corrections necessary as he is going through the press. The facl is that the objection is based upon the self-same principle which St Thomas invokes in his reply to it, namely, that neither in nothingness nor in the eternity of God can there be assigned any difference of instants. From this admitted principle the opponent argues that God must have created from all eternity. St Thomas in reply allows that eternity affords us no means of fixing the date of creation: still, he contends, we have a measure of the date in the time that has elapsed since, which, even though we do not know it, is a knowable finite quantity.
II Even so, going outside the whole universe, we cannot localise the universe as occupying any special place in space, as St Thomas presently remarks. Sup- pose the universe, as a whole, to be in rectilinear motion, there is nothing to measure the motion by.
duration rather than in that other instant preceding or following. God brought into being creation and time simultaneously.* There is no account to be taken therefore why He produced the creature now, and not before, but only why the creature has not always been. There is an analogy in the case of place: for particular bodies are produced in a particular time and also in a particular place; and, because they have about them a time and a place within which they are contained, there must be a reason assignable why they are produced in this place and this time rather than in any other: but in regard of the whole stellar universe {ccelum), beyond which there is no place, and along with which the universal place of all things is produced, no account is to be taken why it is situated here and not there. In like manner in the. produ<5tion of the whole creation, beyond which there is no time, and simultaneously with which time is produced, no question is to be raised why it is now and not before, but only why it has not always been, or why it has come to be after not being, or why it had any beginning.
Arg. 6. Means to the end have their necessity from the end, especially in voluntary a&ions.f So long then as the end is uniform, the means to the end must be uniform or uniformly produced, unless they come to stand in some new relation to the end. Now the end of creatures proceeding from the divine will is the divine goodness, which alone can be the end in view of the divine will. Since then the divine goodness is uniform for all eternity, alike in itself and in comparison with the divine will, it seems that creatures must be uniformly brought into being by the divine will for all eternity. It cannot be said that any new relation to the end supervenes upon them, so long as the position is clung to that they had no being at all before a certain fixed time, at which they are supposed to have begun to be.
Ifyply. Though the end of the divine will can be none other than the divine goodness, still the divine will has not to work to bring this goodness into being, in the way that the artist works to set up the produdt of his art, since the divine goodness is eternal and unchangeable and incapable of addi- tion. Nor does God work for His goodness as for an end to be won for Himself, as a king works to win a city: for God is His own goodness. He works for this end, only inasmuch as He produces an effe6t which is to share in the end. In such a produdtion of things for an end, the uniform attitude of end to agent is not to be considered reason enough for an everlasting work. Rather we should consider the bearing of the end on the effe<5t pro- duced to serve it. The one evinced necessity is that of the produftion of the effedt in the manner better calculated to serve the end for which it is produced. J *Arg. 7. Since all things, so far as they have being, share in the goodness of God; the longer they exist, the more they share of that goodness: hence also the perpetual being of the species is said to be divine.§ But the divine * Matter (in motion), time, and place, all began t The end to which creation is subservient as a together. Tlace (t6wos) to the schoolmen and Aristotle means, is not the divine goodness absolutely, but the is the shell of space (x®Pa) marking the outline of a communication or diffusion of that goodness. This corn- body. If tl^e body were suddenly annihilated, all but munication again is not exhaustive, but limited; and the indefinitely thin film of its outer surfaces, that one of the limitations is the finitude of creation in film would mark the place which the body had point of time.
occupied. In motion, bodies do not carry their place § Etymologically, species (m-spicere) is what ctSos with them, but go from place to place. This conception (i&uv) is in Greek. Species is scholastic Latin for of place is to be borne in mind in reading the words cISos. Now ctSos meant one thing in Plato, and that follow immediately in St Thomas. another in Aristotle. Species labours under a similar t That is to say, it is necessary to take the means, ambiguity. In the objection now under consideration, if the end is to be gained: otherwise there is no the words of which are esse perpetuum speciei dicitur necessity. You must eat, if you are to live; but there divinum esse, the language is rather Platonic than is no absolute necessity of your doing either. Aristotelian. Individual men, John, Peter, Martin, IOO GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES goodness is infinite. Therefore it is proper to it to communicate itself infinitely, and not for a fixed time only.
Reply. It was proper for the creature, in such likeness as became it, to represent the divine goodness. Such representation cannot be by way of equality: it can only be in such way as the higher and greater is represented by the lower and less. Now the excess of the divine goodness above the creature is best expressed by this, that creatures have not always been in existence: for thereby it appears that all other beings but God Himself have God for the author of their being; and that His power is not tied to producing effedts of one particular character, as physical nature produces physical efFe&s, but that He is a voluntary and intelligent agent.
CHAPTERS XXXIII, XXXVI-Reasons alleged fir the Eternity of the W irld on the part of Qreatures^ with answers to the same ARG. i. There are creatures in which there is no potentiality of not being (see Chap. XXX): it is impossible for them not to be, and therefore they always must be. Reply (Chap. XXXVI). The necessity of such creatures being is only a relative necessity, as shown above (Chap. XXX): it does not involve the creature's always having been: it does not follow upon its substance: but when the creature is already established in being, this necessity involves the impossibility of its not-being.* Arg. 3. Every change must either go on everlastingly, or have some other change preceding it. But change always has been: therefore also change- able things: therefore creatures.
Reply. It has already been shown (Chapp. XII, XVII) that without any change in God, the agent, He may aft to the production of a new thing, that has not always been. But if a new thing may be produced by Him, He may also originate a process of change. t Arg. 5. If time is perpetual, motion must be perpetual, time being the c record of motion.' J But time must be perpetual: for time is inconceivable without a present instant, as a line is inconceivable without a point: now a present instant is always inconceivable without the ending of a past and the beginning of a future instant; and thus every given present instant has pass away: but the species, or idea, of ' man * is per- I say, we have been and are uncreated, in whom, or petual and divine, an abiding type of possible creation, in whose knowledge, all thing* eternally live and founded upon the divine essence and known in the arc life. In the essence of God therefore there are divine understanding eternally. These archetypical exemplars of all things; and the same divine essence ideas, — inte&gibUia St Thomas calls them, — have been is the one exemplar and the one idea of all. For all discussed already (B. I, Chapp. LI-LIV). The follow- the multiplicity- of creatures is reduced to unity in the ing account of them will commend itself to all Chris- sheer, simple, and supcresscntial essence of God; and tian lovers of Plato. all things in God are one. There are therefore in " God contains in Himself in exuberant fulness God most true and perfect exemplars of things, which all that delights or can give pleasure. All the perfection remain incorrupt forever: whereas the things that that is divided among creatures, is found united in we sec in this sensible world are mere symbols and Him; and He is all things, He is the uncreated signs of reality, that pass away with time and perish " being of all things, inasmuch as He is the archetype (Blosius, i.e. Louis of Blois, O.S.B., Institutio Spirtand exemplar of them all. He had in His eternal totalis % Opera Omnia, Cologne, 1571, p. 423).
knowledge the divine plans and ideas of the things * An impossibility in the physical order, inasmuch that He made; and whatever was created by Him as there is no agent in nature capable of breaking was for ever known by Him, has always lived in His that substance up.
mind, and always shall live there. Hence the Gospel t If God can create a nebula, He may also set it says: What was made, in bim nas life (John i, 3, 4, as spinning, with no more change in Himself on the one read by many of the Fathers). Hence we too from account than on the other, eternity have had an ideal existence in God: in Him, X apiO^oq Kwi/crctos, Aristotle, Thysics, iv, 11.
before it a time preceding and after it a time succeeding, and so there can be no first or last time. It follows that created substances in motion have been from eternity.
Reply. This argument rather supposes than proves the eternity of motion. The reason why the same instant is the beginning of the future and the end of the past is because any given phase of motion is the beginning and end of different phases. There is no showing that every instant must be of this character, unless it be assumed that every given phase of time comes between motion going before and motion following after, which is tantamount to assuming the perpetuity of motion. Assuming on the contrary that motion is not perpetual, one may say that the first instant of time is the beginning of the future, and not the end of any past instant. Even in any particular case of motion we may mark a phase which is the beginning only of move- ment and not the end of any: otherwise every particular case of motion would be perpetual, which is impossible.* Arg. 6. If time has not always been, we may mark a non-existence of time prior to its being. In like manner, if it is not always to be, we may mark a non-existence of it subsequent to its being. But priority and subsequence in point of duration cannot be unless time is; and at that rate time must have been before it was, and shall be after it has ceased, which is absurd. Time then must be eternal. But time is an accident, and cannot be without a subje<5t. But the subject of it is not God, who is above time and beyond motion (B. I, Chapp. XIII, XV). The only alternative left is that some created substance must be eternal.
Reply. There is nothing in this argument to evince that the very supposi- tion of time not being supposes that time is (read, Si ponitur tempus non esse, ponatur esse). For when we speak of something prior to the being of time, we do not thereby assert any real part of time, but only an imaginary part. When we say, ' Time has being after not being,' we mean that there was no instant of time before this present marked instant: as when we say that there is nothing above the stellar universe, we do not mean that there is any place beyond the stellar universe, which may be spoken of as 4 above ' it, but that above it there is no ' place * at all.f CHAPTERS XXXIV, XXXVll- Reasons alleged for the Eternity of the World on the part of the Creative Process itself with Answers to the same ARG. i. It is the common opinion of all philosophers, and therefore it must be true, that nothing is made of nothing (Aristotle, ^Physics^ B. I, Chapp. VII, VIII). Whatever is made, then, must be made of something; and that again, if it is made at all, must be made of something else. But this process cannot go on to infinity; and therefore we must come to something that was not made. But every being that has not always been must have been made. Therefore that out of which all things are first made must be something everlasting. That cannot be God, because He cannot be * Even the motion of the whole universe may equilibrium of forces coming to obtain everywhere, be regarded as one stupendous particular case of This is an argument that motion and time must have motion. Left to physical causes alone, the universe had a beginning. Had the universe been at work from must run down like a clock, all positions of advan- eternity, its capacity of work would have been extage being lost, all potential energy being converted hausted ere now. into kinetic, one uniform temperature and one dead t See Chap. XXXII, notes.
the material of anything. Therefore there must be something eternal outside God, namely, primordial matter.* Reply (Chap. XXXVII). The common position of philosophers, that nothing is made of nothing, is true of the sort of making that they considered. For all our knowledge begins in sense, which is of singular objects; and human investigation has advanced from particular to general considerations. Hence, in studying the beginning of things, men gave their attention to the making of particular things in detail. The making of one sort of being out of another sort is the making of some particular being, inasmuch as it is 'this being,' not as it is 4 being* generally: for some prior being there was that now is changed into 4 this being.' But entering more deeply into the origin of things, philosophers came finally to consider the issuing of all created being from one first cause (Chapp. XV, XVI). In this origin of all created being from God, it is impossible to allow any making out of pre-existent material: for such making out of pre-existent material would not be a making of the whole being of the creature. This first making of the universe was not attained to in the thought of the early physicists, whose common opinion it was that nothing was made of nothing: or if any did attain to it, they considered that such a term as 4 making* did not properly apply to it, since the name 4 making' implies movement or change, f whereas in this origin of all being from one first being there can be no question of the transmutation of one being into another (Chap. XVII). Therefore it is not the concern of physical science to study this first origin of all things: that study belongs to the metaphysician, who deals with being in general and realities apart from motion. | We may however by a figure of speech apply the name of 'making' to creation, and speak of things as 4 made,' whatsoever they are, the essence or nature whereof has its origin from other being.
Arg. 2. Everything that takes a new being is now otherwise than as it was before: that must come about by some movement or change: but all movement or change is in some subject: therefore before anything is made there must be some subjedt of motion.
* Materia prima f see note, p. 86.
t The position supposed is this: * Nothing is made, manufactured, or concocted out of nothing: but something may be created out of nothing.' I am not aware however of any of the ancients having any idea of creation out of nothing. There is no word in classical (Jreek for * creation ' in the theological sense.