CREATION. – The production of a being from absolute nothingness.
**OUTLINE:**
I. The Catholic dogma of creation
II. Christian iconography of creation.**I. THE CATHOLIC DOGMA OF CREATION**
**OUTLINE:**
I. Notions and opinions
II. The dogma
III. Real relation in the creature
IV. Freedom of creation
V. End of creation
VI. Creation in time
VII. The creating Trinity
VIII. Creation as God’s proper act
IX. The mode of creation.I. Notions and opinions
The word “creation” is often used to signify a production in which the dependence of the effect upon the producer is emphasized: one creates a literary genre, a character in a play or novel, a fashion, a philosophical system, etc. This usage is an extension of the technical and proper meaning given to the word “creation” to express the Catholic doctrine on the origin of the universe. In this strict, philosophical, and theological sense, creation is the production of a being from nothing, “ex nihilo,” meaning that such a being, before it was produced, did not exist as such, nor did its physical constituents exist: “ex nihilo sui et subiecti,” according to the classical scholastic expression. Thus, a statue is the effect of a production, but not of creation, since it results from the transformation of pre-existing matter; nor is it the generation of a living being, since it derives from the substance of the generator.The expression “production from nothing,” “ex nihilo,” must not be misunderstood. It does not mean that nothingness served as prime matter in the production; rather, it signifies the exclusion of any matter or subject. “From nothing” means “not from something,” “non ex aliquo.” If one wishes to give the preposition “ex” a sense of temporal or ordinal succession, it means that a being is produced when no constitutive element of it existed.
The same concept can be expressed positively as follows: creation is the production of a thing in its entire substance. If, indeed, the entire reality of the thing is produced, then beforehand no element of this reality existed. When applied to the universe, creation means that the entire reality of the universe was produced by its author without any presupposed matter or subject.
The question arises whether the idea of creation was unknown to ancient philosophy or was introduced by Christianity or Judaism. In particular, the thought of Plato and Aristotle is debated. St. Augustine admits that the Platonists knew the metaphysical concept of creation (De Civitate Dei, I, 8, chaps. 6–10). St. Thomas reports a contrary opinion (Sum. Theol., I, q. 15, a. 3 ad 3), but he names Plato among those who say God is the author of the being of all things (De pot., q. 3, a. 5). Today, scholars are not in agreement: A. E. Taylor, among others, holds that Plato’s demiurge is “creator in the full sense of the word” (Plato, London 1926, p. 444). In favor of this interpretation, one may consult:
815
CREATION – Separation of light from darkness. Miniature from the Octateuch, 12th century – Vatican Library, cod. Graec. 747, f. 15f.
Tim. 28 c.; Resp. VI; Symp. 211 b. St. Thomas found the metaphysical concept of creation (though “from eternity”) in Aristotle’s doctrine; similarly, in modern times, P. Brentano (Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des mensch. Geiste, Leipzig 1921) and A.-D. Sertillanges (S. Thomas d’Aquin, I, Paris 1928, p. 28 et seq.). Others think differently. It is certain that the Stagirite enunciated principles that logically lead to creation: cf. Met. I, 2, chap. I, 993 b; chap. I, 1003 a; De caelo I, 1, chap. 9, 278 b, etc.
This uncertainty among critics at least demonstrates that in ancient philosophy the idea of creation held little prominence. Indeed, no philosopher of that time expressly denied the eternity of the atoms, as upheld by the school of Abdera and later celebrated by Lucretius in De rerum natura.
Conscious opponents of creation begin from the time of the Manichees (3rd century A.D.). These, conceiving evil as a physical reality, indeed as a material substance, came to admit two supreme principles, one for good substances and another for evil substances. The Church has often condemned them, including at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Various forms of pantheism, which explain the world as an emanation, an evolution, or a modality of the divine substance, all exclude creation as we have defined II. Modern thinkers, from Giordano Bruno to the present day, have proposed many monistic systems and, consequently, pantheistic ones, the principal and still influential among which are Spinozism and Hegelianism. For Spinoza, the world results from the attributes and modes of the single substance; for Hegel, all that is real is a becoming necessarily constituted and rigidly unified by the laws of thought. Little following has been given to the materialist movement of P. H. Holbach, L. A. Feuerbach, L. Büchner, and E. Haeckel. More recent idealists, especially those in Italy, having excluded all transcendence and denied the possibility of the perfect (see G. Gentile, I problemi della scolastica e il pensiero italiano, Bari 1913, pp. 146–47), refuse to seek the cause of this world or to speak of its origin.
II. THE DOGMA
The Catholic faith teaches that God is the sole principle of all things and that He has properly created every being distinct from Himself, whether spiritual or material, through a free act that had its effect in time. This dogma of creation, already contained in the Symbols, was precisely defined against the Manichees and Albigensians at the Fourth Lateran Council, which professes one “principle of the universe,” creator of all visible and invisible things, spiritual and corporal, who, by His omnipotent power, likewise made both creatures, the spiritual and the corporal—that is, the angelic and the terrestrial—from nothing at the beginning of time, and then the human creature, constituted of both spirit and body (Denz.-U., 428). At the Vatican Council, the errors of materialists and pantheists were addressed, and in the final canon, the error of Anton Günther (q.v.) was especially condemned: “If anyone does not confess that the world and all things contained in it, whether spiritual or material, have been produced by God from nothing, or says that God did not create with a will free from all necessity but with the same necessity with which He loves Himself, or denies that the world was made for the glory of God, let him be anathema” (Denz.-U., 1855). This definition summarizes in precise words the teaching of Sacred Scripture and tradition.1. Sacred Scripture
The first verse of the Bible constitutes the classic argument for creation, one that appears to have been decisive in the formation of the doctrine. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). To read in this text that God produced all things, drawing them from nothing, one must consider not only the word “created” (in Hebrew, *bara’*), which may and indeed is understood in the same chapter in a broader sense (vv. 21, 27), but the entire proposition. What did God “create”? The heaven and the earth, that is, according to the constant usage of Scripture, our world, all things. Now, he who makes the whole of this world necessarily creates, that is, presupposes nothing in His production, because anything that would be presupposed would not be made in this production. When, therefore, God made all things, He created. Moreover, the natural sense of the opening words “in the beginning” is that of an absolute beginning, the instant of the origin of things; and this sense does not change if “in the beginning” is connected with what follows, because the beginning of heaven and earth is always the beginning of all things.We speak of “every thing,” but it is possible—and indeed permissible—to understand the text as referring only to the visible and earthly world, not to the angels. In this case, Genesis would speak of the origin, in the manner of a true creation, of all sensible things; and this can easily be extended, on the basis of other texts, to spiritual things. But excellent interpreters (even among Protestants, such as F. König) hold that in the first verse, “caelum” (hassāmajim) signifies all the upper regions with their inhabitants, as in “caelum caelorum,” and thus includes the angels. In the second verse, the earth is presented in a chaotic state: “And the earth was without form and void (tōhū wā-bōhū), and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” From this, the obvious assumption is that the object of the creation affirmed in the first verse is the formless earth. Yet one cannot exclude with certainty the interpretation of D. Petavio, accepted by many (De opere sex dierum, I, 1, cap. 2, n. 10), which regards the first verse as a general statement of the origin of all things from the creative power of God, while the following verses explain the particulars and stages of this creation.
On the other hand, the interpretation attempted by the Rabbi Rashi in the 11th century and revived by some moderns, such as Loisy, must be rejected. The sense would no longer be: “In the beginning, God created...,” but rather: “God began His work by saying, ‘Let there be light.’” Creation, according to Rashi, would thus not be affirmed in the text but only presupposed; and according to A. Loisy, it would even be denied. As proof, it is argued that bērē’šît (in the beginning), being in the construct state, requires what follows as its complement: “in the beginning of creating...,” so that the first main clause of the passage would be: “God said, ‘Let there be light.’” But this interpretation is ruled out by all versions, by the Masoretes, and by excellent recent exegetes, even non-Catholic ones, such as J. Wellhausen, S. R. Driver, S. Perowne, E. König, and others. To confirm that the first verse of Genesis asserts creation in the proper sense, many reasons may be adduced. The manifest intention of the sacred author, who seeks to teach the supreme dominion of the one God over all things, excludes any admission of dualism. The sublime simplicity and absolute mastery with which God brings forth all beings from formless matter would not be intelligible if He were not also the author of that matter itself. The Jewish tradition understood it in this way, as seen in the Psalms, the sapiential books, and the famous words of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs (2 Macc. 7:28): “I ask you, my son, to look at heaven and earth and all that is in them, and to understand that God made them out of nothing.” The very name of Jahweh, revealed to Moses (Ex. 3:14) and meaning “He who is,” would not truly belong to God if there were an entity that had not received its being from Him and existed by its own nature. In the New Testament, St. John and St. Paul clearly teach creation. In the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, it is said of the Word: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). Now, when all things are made, they are created. St. Paul is familiar with the doctrine that all things come from God (cf. Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6). Speaking of Christ, he says that in Him all things were created, even all the angels: “For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16–17). The same apostle taught the Athenians: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:23–25).
2. The Christian tradition
From the outset, Christian tradition interpreted Scripture as teaching the doctrine of the creation of the world by God “ex nihilo.” The few Fathers whose use of Platonic formulas has led some to suspect that they admitted an eternal matter—such as Athenagoras, St. Justin, and perhaps Clement of Alexandria (accused of this by Photius)—can easily be interpreted otherwise. All the others express themselves clearly on this point, so that the unanimity of the Fathers in favor of the dogma of creation is truly impressive. Already St. Clement of Rome insists upon it (1 Corinthians 19:33), and Hermas exhorts belief in the creator God who “made all things out of nothing” (Shepherd, Mandate 1:1). Among the apologists, Theophilus explicitly states that the matter with which God made the world was itself created by God (To Autolycus 1:2, n. 10), and Tatian writes similarly: “Matter is not without beginning like God... but was created, and was made by no other than the author of all things” (Oratio ad Graecos, n. 5: PG 6, 814–18).
The fables of the Gnostics gave later Fathers occasion to insist on the doctrine that all things were produced by God Himself. “Men,” says St. Irenaeus, “cannot make anything out of nothing, but only from some pre-existent matter; God, however, is superior to men in this, for He found the matter for His work which previously did not exist” (Against Heresies 1:2, cap. 10: PG 7, 736).
Tertullian is no less explicit: “For us,” he says, “there is one God and one earth, which God made in the beginning, and of which Scripture, beginning to describe the process, first says that it was made, and then describes its state” (Against Hermogenes, cap. 26: PL 2, 220). Origen marvels that great philosophers could have dreamed of a matter “unbegotten” and confused (in principiis 1:2, cap. 1, nn. 3–4). To St. Athanasius, the pure concept of creation serves to distinguish the origin of things from the procession of the Word (cf. Oration 2 contra Arianos, n. 1: PG 26, 147). St. John Chrysostom presents this fundamental dogma by saying that Moses “uproots all the heresies that were to spring up in the Church, inasmuch as he says: ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth.’ If, therefore, a Manichean comes to you and says that matter pre-existed, or if it is Marcion or Valentinus, or a pagan, answer them: ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth’” (Homily 11 on Genesis 1:3: PG 53, 25–30). And St. Augustine with perfect precision: “Thou, O Lord, didst make the world out of formless matter, that almost nothing which Thou didst make out of nothing, to make thereof the great things which we, the sons of men, admire” (Confessions 12:8).
### Proof of Rationalism.
Creation is therefore a revealed truth. All Catholic doctors admit that it is also a truth which reason can demonstrate, at least after it has been learned from Revelation. For if the world did not come from God by creation, there would be in it something—a final subject, any matter independent of God—and this is evident, since one can speak of creation only when all the physical constituents of a thing are produced. Now it is impossible for anything to exist independently of God. Otherwise, this thing would exist by its own nature, that is, it would be Being itself, the *Ipsum esse*, which has no limits and can only be unique: in other words, it would be identified with God. Therefore, it is evident that the world, distinct from God, has been created.
It is not useless to observe the difference between the demonstration of the existence of God and that of creation, although the two processes are connected. To ascend to God, it suffices to note that in our world some beings are subject to movement, or are caused, or are corruptible, or have the same perfection in different degrees, or are ordered, and then to seek a proportionate cause for this. Each of these ways, which are the five of St. Thomas’s *Summa*, leads us to a First, which is Being by essence, Unparticipated Being. Instead, to prove creation, one must consider that the only possible modes of existence are two: either by one’s own nature or by dependence on others, and that existence by one’s own nature cannot belong to more than one being, simply because, otherwise, there would have to be two infinites, neither of which would lack any perfection possessed by the other, and yet one of them would have to lack one in order to be distinguished from the other. The argument directly excludes atheistic or dualistic positions in the manner of the Manichees; it excludes pantheism and every monism, inasmuch as the existence of finite and multiple beings is a given of experience that compels the intellect to find in a perfect Being the reason from which all imperfect beings proceed.
For the evidence of the reasoning made, one must deny the absolute need for Revelation to conceive and affirm creation. Therefore, it does not seem accurate to say, with some (H. Pinard de la Boullaye, *Création*, in DTHC, III, cols. 2034-2201), that the power of reason to demonstrate the origin of things by creation *proprie dicta* is a theological conclusion. They say: it is of faith that reason can know the existence of God, and since without admitting creation one does not know the true God, it necessarily follows that reason has the power to know creation as well. Here is the theological conclusion from a first premise, which is of faith. The argument would hold if it were true that to know God it is necessary to know creation in the strict sense. But it is precisely this that the history of philosophy seems to contradict.
The fundamental difficulty usually raised against the doctrine of creation is this: how can something come from nothing? The answer is first that we do not say the world comes from nothing in the sense that nothingness was the matter that would have transmuted into the things of the universe, but only in the sense that the creative act of God made to be what in no way was. We have nothing similar in our experience; every time we see the appearance of a new effect, it is only a transformation. Thus the mystery of causality, although not suppressed, is concealed. In the case of creation, when the entire substance of a being is produced, the mystery appears in all its depth. But a truth can be mysterious and at the same time evidently necessary. Since the world exists and cannot exist without being created, creation is certain.
To penetrate more deeply into the question, consider created causality: if from a flame another flame can arise, if from a plant another plant can germinate, if from a man a man is generated, that is, if each nature can communicate its own form or essence, one does not see why God, who is Pure Act of being, cannot communicate, albeit in a degree infinitely inferior to His own, being itself, to which nothing can be presupposed. Now, when the effect of being is caused directly, the other objections or difficulties no longer have grounds: since no effect precedes, the production of the new being is not a change, is not done by any kind of movement, is not the overcoming of a distance to be traversed (the distance from nothingness to being); it is only what changes, what moves, what proceeds toward a term, which requires a subject distinct from the term. What is simply placed in being supposes no prior subject, and it is only by metaphor that one speaks of change, passage, and any kind of motion in this regard.
---
### III. Real Relation in the Creature.
Once creation is admitted, one may ask whether it implies a real addition to God or whether it results, in the creature, in something more besides the being received. In the Creator, the most simple essence, in which there can be no distinction between substantial being and acts, it is evident that the creative act is God Himself and is therefore perfectly immanent; but this immanent act has the power to make to be what is willed in II. To the interior and secret “Fiat lux” corresponds the fact: “Et facta est lux.”
In the creature, according to the common opinion of the Scholastics, there results a relation of dependence with respect to the Creator. Duns Scotus, however, and with him many other doctors, deny that this relation is distinct from the being of the creature itself. St. Thomas, instead, posits it as distinct (*Contra Gentiles*, I, 2, ch. 18) and with good reason, since the being of the created thing cannot have toward God either the relation of act or that of potency; now only potency and act are transcendental relations, that is, relations identical with the things referred. The relation of creatures to God is therefore real. On the other hand, the fact of being Creator does not add a real relation in God. A real relation orders the thing really to the correlative term, and God, being supremely independent, cannot be ordered to the creature.
**CREATION** — Episodes of creation, frieze of the Bible of Lobbes, illuminated by the monk Goderan (1084) — Tournai, Seminary.
---
### IV. Freedom of Creation.
Very important for having a correct concept of creation and of the relation of the creature to God is the question of the freedom of creation.
When in pantheistic or emanationist systems one speaks of creation, it is most often understood as a process of the world necessarily originating in the divine substance itself. Plotinus as well as Spinoza, John Scotus Erigena as well as Hegel, see in the existence of the universe, or of being as nature, a necessity as strict as logical or mathematical necessities. Others, who rightly distinguish God from the world and derive the latter from the divine will, nevertheless hold that God could not have abstained from creating, nor could He have made a world different from the one created. Being perfect, God always acts for the best end. What is or will be is therefore the best and could not but be. Thus already Abelard, then Malebranche, Leibniz, and in the last century the German theologians Hermes and Günther (v.).
The doctrine of the Church on this point is not obscure. Abelard was condemned in the Council of Sens (in 1140; cf. Denz-U, 374), and the Vatican Council declared that creation was effected by God “with most free counsel” and anathematized “whoever would pretend that God does not create with an absolutely free will and that He wills the world as He wills Himself” (Denz-U, 1805).
Indeed, Scripture extols the dominion that God has over His creative act in such a way that every necessity is excluded. God “has done all that He willed” (Ps. 113:11; 134:6), and St. Paul teaches that God does all things “according to the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11).
The Fathers have sometimes insisted on the reasons of expediency for creation. St. Augustine, for instance, writes that if God, having the power to create, had not done so, He would have been envious (De Genesi ad litteram, bk. 4, ch. 16, no. 27: PL 34, 307). But these are Platonic reminiscences that do not signify a true necessity. The same Augustine writes that to one who asks why God made heaven and earth, the answer must be: because He willed II. “But if one asks why He willed to make heaven and earth, he seeks something higher than God’s will: and there is nothing such” (De Genesi contra Manichaeos, bk. 1, ch. 26, no. 4: PL 34, 175).
God’s freedom in creating, however, is one of those many truths that reason sees it must affirm but finds difficult to conceive in its mode. On the one hand, it is clear that God’s will finds its adequate object in the infinite perfection of the divine nature, and that consequently nothing else can be necessary to His happiness or even add to II. It is therefore manifest that God is free either to will or not to will creatures, and to will in the world whatever degree of perfection He chooses. But when one seeks to understand the realization of this freedom, difficult questions arise, particularly that of reconciling God’s freedom with divine immutability. God created the world by an act of His will; yet He could have not created the world, and yet in Himself nothing would have changed. It is certainly a great mystery, before which one can only say that the very divine act, identical with God, can, by reason of His infinite power, either posit or not posit the existence of the world, or the existence of this world or of another. In God there is the power that, without any change in Himself, causes or does not cause the effect: agens in quantum agens non patitur; the change lies in the second term, which is or is not posited.
V. END OF CREATION
To the doctrine of free creation is connected that of the end of creation. God, in creating, does not pursue an end that imposes itself upon Him, but in His wisdom He must have an end that befits His creative act. The Vatican Council anathematized whoever denied that the world was made for the glory of God (Denz.-U., 1805).With this definition, the Council Fathers excluded the position of Hermes and Günther, who held that God had created solely for the happiness of creatures and in no way for His own glory. To seek glory, they said, even if legitimate, is the work of the ambitious, not of God. Nor is what Laberthonnière has said on this point very different (cf. Études sur Descartes, II, Paris 1935, p. 370). But the doctrine of the Council is that of Scripture, which always places in God the end of things as of actions. God is at once the principle and the end (Apoc. 1:8); St. Paul wishes that all we do be for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31) and writes: “For of Him, and through Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever” (Rom. 11:36).
All tradition has repeated this inspired word. In the Didache a prayer begins thus: “O Lord Almighty, Thou hast created all things for the glory of Thy name” (ch. 10, no. 3). “The whole universe,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “is like a book written that gives thee matter to celebrate the glory of God” (Orat. II in verba: Faciamus hominem: PG 40, 281). St. Augustine, after affirming that God orders us to Himself and that without any need He makes use of us, gives this explanation: “That use which God makes of us, and by which He makes use of us, does not redound to His advantage, but to ours, and only to His goodness” (De doctrina christiana, bk. 1, ch. 32, no. 36: PL 34, 32). This concept then passed into the doctrine of St. Thomas (cf. Summa Theologiae, q. 44, a. 4; Contra Gentiles, bk. 1, chs. 24–25).
The glory of God consists in the manifestation of His perfections; a manifestation that God can will, since it pertains by itself to the love of the supreme good. Now God manifests His perfections by communicating them, so that the higher, more ordered, more perfect, and consequently happier the creatures are, the more is the divine goodness made manifest, communicated, and glorified. Every creature that tends to its own good tends at the same time, indeed primarily, to participate in and to manifest the perfection of God (cf. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 24).
It belongs to rational creatures to conform freely to the natural tendency toward their own perfection or happiness, which constitutes their ultimate end. Yet necessarily implied in happiness is the reference to the glory of God, inasmuch as happiness is an accumulation of perfections and every perfection that is participated by men is a similitude of the divine perfections. Scholastic philosophers express all this by calling the primary ultimate end the glory of God and the secondary ultimate end the happiness of man. In short, the glory of God is not an increase of happiness that the Creator seeks in the praise of His creatures, but is the natural reference that His gifts have to His essence, which they reflect, and without which He Himself could not love them.
VI. CREATION IN TIME
Once it is clear that God is free in His creative work, it follows at once that creation was not necessarily from all eternity. Aristotle held that the world was eternal and probably that it could not but be so. As for Plato, there is doubt about what he thought on this point. Some attribute to him the doctrine of the eternity of the world (A. E. Taylor, Plato, London 1926, p. 442). St. Augustine attributes to the Neoplatonics the doctrine of creation necessarily eternal (De Civitate Dei, bk. 11, ch. 4, no. 2: PL 41, 319). But since God is absolutely free in producing the world, it is clear that He can give to it whatever duration He pleases, and nothing obliges Him, if He wills the world, to will it to exist always.Could God have created from all eternity, ab aeterno? St. Thomas denies that this can be excluded with certainty, since, on the one hand, God could always have willed creation, and on the other, nothing determines the essence of things to be in a determined time; and if it be said that, assuming eternal creation, there would result, for example, an infinite number of generations, it is answered that a number supposes two terms and that in the hypothesis of “ab aeterno” creation there would be only the term a parte post. Reason does not demonstrate that an eternal world, eternally created, is impossible. Nor let it be said that the tradition of the Fathers has unanimously excluded the possibility of ab aeterno creation. Many texts deny only the fact of ab aeterno creation, not its possibility, or they deny to the creature an eternity resembling that of God. St. Augustine, disputing against the Neoplatonics, does not argue from the impossibility of ab aeterno creation; he contents himself with saying that it is barely intelligible and demonstrates only that it is not necessary (De Civitate Dei, bk. 11, ch. 4, no. 2: PL 41, 319).
But faith teaches us that, in fact, creation is not ab aeterno, and that it took place in time. This does not mean that time existed before creation. Time is the measure of motion, and where there is no creature, there is no motion. But creation made in time means solely that there was a beginning of time and that, going back through the time elapsed, one would arrive at a first instant. Both the Fourth Lateran Council and the Vatican Council affirm that God created at the beginning of time, “ab initio temporis.” Already the word of Genesis: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” ill befits a creation without a beginning in time; and Jesus Christ has clearly shown that He excluded the idea that the world has always existed, when He says:
CREATION — Scenes of creation, work of L. Maitani and collaborators (14th cent.) — Orvieto, detail of the relief on the façade of the Cathedral.
“And now, glorify Thou me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17:5) and elsewhere: “Thou hast loved me before the creation of the world” (John 15:25).
VII. THE CREATIVE TRINITY
Thus far what has been said abstracts from the Trinity of persons in God. How, then, should the action of each of the divine persons in the creative work be conceived? Some, seeking to demonstrate the existence of the Trinity, wished to find in creatures an effect proper to each person; thus in the 19th century the theologian Günther (v.) did so; which would imply that each of the divine hypostases made only a part of things. The Catholic doctrine on this point is clear. The Fourth Lateran Council teaches that the one true God “Father and Son and Holy Spirit... is the one principle of the universe, creator of all” (Denz-U, 428), and the Council of Florence more explicitly states: “The Father and the Son are not two principles of the Holy Spirit, but one, just as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creatures, but one” (Denz-U, 704). The creative work is therefore common to all three divine persons.
Holy Scripture does not reserve the creation of the world to the Father alone, but explicitly involves the Son as well, with St. John saying of the Word: “All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing” (Jn 1:3). Jesus Himself insists on affirming the unity of operation as of nature between the Father and Himself (Jn 5:17-21; 10:38, etc.). The same must be extended to the Holy Spirit, who lives in the unity of the divine nature and is explicitly said to operate with the Father and the Son in supernatural works (2 Cor 12:4-6). St. Augustine expressed the tradition thus: “The Catholic faith does not say that God the Father made some things, and the Son other things, but that what the Father made, the Son also made, and the Holy Spirit also made” (In Io., tr. 20, n. 3: PL 35, 1558).
The reason for this is easily seen. Creation in God is an act of intellect and will. Now the three persons share the intellect and will, that is, the one divine nature, and therefore they necessarily share the creative act. The mode or form according to which the Creator exercises His influence is the mode or form of being. Now being in God is the divine essence or nature itself, numerically one and common to the three persons. It is therefore impossible for the creative activity of one person to exist without that of the others.
This does not preclude observing in the active creation the order of the divine processions. The very act of creation inheres in the Son as communicated by the Father and through the Son, so that, in the proper sense, God the Father creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit, according to the customary language of Scripture and the Fathers. When, however, creation is attributed outright to the Father, this is done only by appropriation and by analogy with the property of the first Principle in the Trinity.
VIII. CREATION AS GOD’S PROPER ACT
A discussion arises as to whether, besides God, creatures can create, at least as instrumental causes. To clarify this point, a proper distinction must be made. That God is the one Creator, at least as the principal cause, of all existing beings is a truth of faith: the same that was defined above by the councils. If God has created all things, no other has created; thus are rejected both Manichaean dualism and the multiple subordinate causes that the Gnostics posited between the ultimate creator of the world and the first principle. Moreover, the texts of Scripture so emphasize the freedom and independence of the creative act that any collaboration of instruments is excluded. Creation is the work of God alone.
Furthermore, tradition and Scripture have demonstrated the divinity of Christ from the fact that the Word created all things (Jn 1:3-4; Heb 1:2; St. Athanasius, Oratio II contra Arianos, n. 21: PG 26, 190); but the argument would be without value if a creature could create. As to the possibility of creatures serving as instruments of God in creation, theologians are divided: the latter opinion seems more consonant both with the texts of the Fathers and with reason. For the effect produced by the instrument presupposes the causality of the principal agent, whereas in creation no effect precedes that produced by the Creator.
It has already been noted that the concept of creation is inescapable, and at the same time the mode by which it was effected remains mysterious. Yet the first chapters of Genesis give a very detailed description: one must know what value to assign to the Mosaic narrative. It must be borne in mind that the work of creation strictly so called, that is, without any presupposition, appears completed in the first verse of Scripture, and its effect is described in the second. What follows, namely the work of the six days, is called “second creation” and is creation in a broad sense, as in Wis 11:18, since it presupposes as its subject the earth primordially created. In this second creation the work of distinction unfolds in the first three days, by which the heaven, the earth with plants, and the sea are formed and separated; and the work of adornment in the last three days, by which the stars, animals, and man are produced (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 69, a. 1).
Exegetes and theologians today agree in saying that by distributing the production of things over six days the sacred author did not intend to include the creative work within six days of twenty-four hours. Whether by “day” he meant an indeterminate epoch, or whether he used the framework of the week to illustrate his narrative, it is always a division made, not to indicate a precise duration, but to order the operation according to the increasing perfection of its effects.
There has always existed in the Church, with agreement on essential points, a very wide variety of interpretations of the work of the six days. St. Augustine, led to this by some texts poorly transcribed or misunderstood in their true sense, especially Ecclesiasticus 18:1, maintained that the entire work distributed over six days was accomplished in a single instant, so that no temporal significance remained to the enumeration of days. Yet this interpretation, so different at first glance from the others, did not differ greatly in reality from them, since the bishop of Hippo explained that, although all things were created together, they were not all created in their perfect state; many were made then only in their seminal reasons or causes, to appear later when time had matured those germs initially hidden.
In developing this theory, St. Augustine had occasion to enunciate principles of exegesis and theology that are highly suggestive.
CREATION — The creating hand of God, sculpture by A. Rodin (d. 1917) — Paris, Musée Rodin