CREATION. - Production of a being from absolute nothingness.
I. THE CATHOLIC DOGMA OF CREATION.
I. NOTIONS AND OPINIONS
The word c. is often used to mean a production in which one wishes to emphasize the dependence of the effect on the producer: one creates a literary genre, a theatrical or novel character, a fashion, a philosophical system, etc. This use is an extension of the technical and proper meaning given to the word c. to express the Catholic doctrine on the origin of the universe. In this strict, philosophical and theological sense, c. 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 classic scholastic expression. Thus a statue is the effect of a production, but not of a c., since it results from the transformation of pre-existing matter; nor is the generation of a living being a c., 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 means the exclusion of any matter or subject; from nothing means "not from something," "non ex aliquo." If, moreover, one wishes to give the preposition ex a sense of succession in time, or in order, it means that a being is produced when there was no constitutive element of it.
The same concept can be expressed positively as follows: c. is the production of a thing in its entire substance. If indeed the whole reality of the thing is produced, then previously no element of this reality existed. Said of the universe, c. means that the whole reality of the universe was produced by its author, without any matter or subject presupposed.
The question is raised whether the idea of c. was ignored by ancient philosophy or was introduced by Christianity or by Judaism. In particular, the thought of Plato and Aristotle is debated. St. Augustine admits that the Platonists knew the metaphysical concept of c. (De Civitate Dei, l. 8, chs. 6-10). St. Thomas knows of a contrary opinion (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 15, a. 3 ad 3), but he names Plato among those who say God is the author of the being of every thing (De pot., q. 3, a. 5). Today interpreters disagree: 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:
Tim., 28 c.; Respub., VI; Symp., 211, b. St. Thomas found the metaphysical concept of c. (though "ab aeterno") in the doctrine of Aristotle; so too in our times F. Brentano (Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des mensch. Geiste, Leipzig 1921) and A.-D. Sertillanges (S. Thomas d'Aquin, I, Paris 1928, p. 28 etc.). Others think differently. It is certain that the Stagirite more than once enunciated principles that logically lead to c.: cf. Met., l. 2, ch. 1, 993 b.; ch. 1, 1003 a; De caelo, 1, 1, ch. 9, 278 b, etc.
This uncertainty among critics demonstrates at least that in ancient philosophy the idea of c. had little prominence. Indeed, no philosopher of that time expressly denied the eternity of atoms admitted by the school of Abdera and later celebrated by Lucretius in the De rerum natura.
Conscious adversaries of c. begin from the time of the Manicheans (3rd century A.D.). These, thinking of evil as a physical reality, indeed as a material substance, came to admit two supreme principles, one for good substances, another for evil substances. The Church has often condemned them, including at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The various forms of pantheism, explaining the world as an emanation or an evolution or a modality of the divine substance, all exclude c. as we have defined it. The moderns, from Giordano Bruno to our own day, have proposed many monist and consequently pantheist systems, of which the principal ones, still quite influential today, are Spinozism and Hegelianism. For Spinoza the world results from the attributes and modes of the one substance; whereas for Hegel the whole of reality is a becoming necessarily constituted and rigidly unified by the laws of thought. The materialistic monism of P. H. Holbach, L. A. Feuerbach, L. Büchner, E. Haeckel has had little following. The more recent idealists, and especially the Italian ones, 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 and to speak of its origin.
II. THE DOGMA
The Catholic faith teaches that God is the sole principle of all things and that he properly created every being distinct from himself, whether spiritual or material, and this by a free act that had its effect in time. This dogma of creation, already contained in the Creeds, was defined with precision against the Albigensian Manichaeans at the Fourth Lateran Council, which professes one sole "principle of the universe, creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal, who, by his almighty power, made equally from nothing, in the beginning of time, both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then the human, constituted together of spirit and body" (Denz-U, 428). At the Vatican Council the errors of the materialists and pantheists were targeted, and in the last canon the error of Anton Günther (v.) was especially targeted: "If anyone does not confess that the world and all the things that are contained in it, whether spiritual or material, have been produced by God from nothing, or if he says that God did not create with a will free from all necessity, but with the same necessity with which he loves himself, or if he denies that the world was made for the glory of God, let him be anathema" (Denz-U, 1805). This definition summarizes in precise words the teaching of Sacred Scripture and of tradition.
1. Sacred Scripture
The first verse of the Bible constitutes the classic argument and, as it seems, the one that was decisive for the formation of the doctrine. "In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram" (Gen. 1, 1). To read in this text that God produced all things, drawing them from nothing, one must not consider the word "created" alone (in Hebrew bāra), which can be understood and is in fact understood in the same chapter in its broadest sense (vv. 21, 27), but one must consider the whole proposition. What did God "create"? Heaven and 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, he presupposes no thing in his production, because the thing 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 first words "in the beginning" is that of an absolute beginning, of the instant of the origin of things; and this sense does not change, if "in the beginning" were connected with what follows, because the beginning of heaven and earth is always the beginning of every thing.
We say "every thing": it is however possible, and by most also granted, that in our text one can speak only of the visible and earthly world, not of the angels. In this case, Genesis would speak of the origin by way of true creation of all sensible things; which then is easily extended, on the basis of other texts, to spiritual things. But excellent interpreters (even among Protestants, such as E. König) think that in the first verse "caelum" had-kāmajūn signifies all the higher regions with their inhabitants, as "cæli caelorum," and therefore also with the angels. In the second verse, the earth is presented in a chaotic state: "And the earth was formless and void (tōhū teā-bhāhā) and darkness was over the face of the abyss." Hence the obvious supposition that the term of the creation affirmed in the first verse is the formless earth. One cannot however exclude with certainty the interpretation of D. Petavius, accepted by many (De opere sex dierum, l. 1, cap. 2, n. 10), which considers the first verse as the general affirmation of the origin of every thing from the creative power of God, while the following verses would explain the particulars and the stages of this creation.
On the other hand, one must reject the interpretation that the rabbi Iarchi attempted in the 11th century and that some moderns, such as Loisy, have taken up again. The sense would no longer be: "In the beginning, God created..."; but: "God began his work by saying: 'Let there be light.'" Creation would thus be, according to Iarchi, not affirmed in the text, but only presupposed; and according to A. Loisy it would even be denied. As proof it is adduced that kāreṭīth (in the beginning), being in the construct state, requires what follows as a complement: in the beginning of creating..., and thus the first principal clause of the passage would be: "God said: let there be light." But this interpretation is excluded by all the versions, by the Masoretes and by excellent recent exegetes, even non-Catholic, such as J. Wellhausen, S. R. Driver, S. Perovine, E. König and others. To confirm that in the first verse of Genesis creation in the proper sense is asserted, many reasons can be adduced. The manifest intention of the sacred author, which is to teach the supreme dominion of the one God over every thing, excludes the admission of any dualism. The sublime simplicity and absolute mastery with which God makes the formless matter produce all beings would not be intelligible, if he were not the author of matter itself. Jewish tradition understood it in the manner here indicated, as is seen in the psalms, in the wisdom books and in the celebrated words of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs (2 Macc. 7, 28): "I beseech you, my son, to look at the heaven and the earth and all that is in them and to understand that God made them out of nothing." The very name of Yahweh, taught to Moses (Ex. 3, 14) and which means: "He who is," would not truly be proper to God, if there were a being that had not received being from him and existed by virtue of its own nature.
In the New Testament, St. John and St. Paul clearly teach creation. In the prologue of the fourth Gospel one reads, said of the Word: "All things were made through him and without him nothing was made of what was made" (Jn. 1, 3). Now, when all things are made, there is creation. The doctrine that all things come from God is familiar to St. Paul (cf. Rom. 11, 36; 1 Cor. 8, 6). Speaking of Christ, he says how in him all things were made and also all the angels: "In him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers: all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things and all things subsist through him" (Col. 1, 16-17). And the same apostle taught the Athenians: "What therefore you worship without knowing it, I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples built by human hands and cannot be served by human hands, as though he needed anything, he who gives to all life, breath and all things" (Acts 17, 23-25).
2. Christian tradition
From the beginning it interpreted the Scriptures, reading in them the doctrine of the creation of the world, wrought by God "ex nihilo." The very few Fathers whom the use of Platonic formulas has caused to be suspected of having admitted an eternal matter, namely Athenagoras, St. Justin and perhaps Clement of Alexandria, accused of this by Photius, easily receive another interpretation. All the others express themselves with clarity on this point, so that the concord of the Fathers in favor of the dogma of creation is truly imposing. Already St. Clement of Rome insists on it (I ad Cor., 19, 33) and Hermas exhorts to believe in God the creator, who "from nothing made every thing to be" (Pastor, Mand., 1, 1). Among the apologists, St. Theophilus says explicitly that the matter with which God made the world was a thing created by God himself (Ad Autolycum, 1, 2, n. 10), and Tatian writes similarly: "Matter is not without a beginning as God is... but it was created, and it was made by none other than the author of every thing" (Oratio ad Graecos, n. 5: PG 6, 814-18).
The fables of the Gnostics gave the following Fathers the occasion to insist on the doctrine that all things were produced by God himself. "Men," says St. Irenaeus, "can make nothing out of nothing, but only from some matter; God, on the other hand, is superior to men in this, that he found the matter of his working, which previously did not exist" (Adversus haereses, l. 2, ch. 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, says first that it was made, and then expresses its state" (Adversus Hermogenem, ch. 26: PL 2, 220). Origen is astonished that great philosophers could have dreamed of an "unbegotten," uncreated matter (De principiis, l. 2, ch. 1, nn. 3-4). For St. Athanasius the pure concept of creation serves to distinguish the origin of things from the procession of the Word (cf. Oratio 2 contra Arianos, n. 1: PG 26, 147). St. John Chrysostom presents this fundamental dogma, saying that Moses "uproots all the heresies that were to spring up in the Church, in that he says: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' If therefore a Manichaean comes to you saying that matter pre-existed, or whether it be Marcion or Valentinus, or a pagan, answer them: in the beginning God made heaven and earth" (Homilia 11 in cap. 1 Gen., n. 3: PG 53, 25-30), and St. Augustine with perfect precision: "You, Lord, made the world from formless matter, that almost nothing which you made from nothing, in order then to make from it the great things that we, the children of men, admire" (Confessiones, l. 12, ch. 8).
3. Proof from rea-
son. — Creation is therefore a revealed truth. All Catholic doctors admit that it is also a truth that 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, an ultimate subject, some matter independent of God; and this is manifest, since one can speak of creation only when all the physical constituents of a thing are produced. Now it is impossible that something should 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 one: in other words, it would be identified with God. Therefore it is evident that the world, distinct from God, was created. It is not useless to observe the difference there is between the demonstration of God's existence and that of creation, however much the two processes are connected. To rise to God it suffices to establish that in our world some beings are subject to motion, or are caused, or are corruptible, or have the same perfection in different degrees, or are ordered, and then to seek the proportionate cause of this. Each of these ways, which are the five of St. Thomas's Summa, leads us to a First, who is Being by essence, unparticipated Being. To prove creation, on the other hand, one must consider that the only possible modes of existing are two, either by one's own nature or by dependence on another, and that existence by one's own nature cannot belong to more than one being, for the simple reason that, otherwise, there would have to be two infinites, neither of which would lack any perfection possessed by the other, and yet one of the two would have to have one less in order to be distinguished from the other. The argument directly excludes atheistic or dualistic positions in the manner of the Manichaeans; it excludes pantheism and every monism, inasmuch as the existence of finite and multiple beings is a datum of experience that obliges the intellect to find its reason in a
perfect being from which all imperfect beings come.
In view of the evidence of the arguments made, one must deny the absolute need of revelation in order to conceive and affirm creation. Hence it does not seem accurate to say, with some (H. Pinard de la Boullaye, Création, in DThC, III, coll. 2034-2201), that the power of reason to demonstrate the origin of things by creation properly so called is a theological conclusion. These authors 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 follows necessarily that reason also has the power to know creation. 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 strictly understood. But it is precisely this that the history of philosophy seems to contradict. The fundamental difficulty that is usually raised against the doctrine of creation is this: how can something come from nothing? The answer is first that the world is not said to come from nothing in the sense that nothing was the matter that would have been transformed into the things of the universe, but only in the sense that God's creative act made to be what was in no way. We have nothing similar in our experience; every time one sees the appearance of a new effect, it is merely a transformation. Thus the mystery of causality, although it is not abolished, is concealed. In the case of creation, when the whole 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 the question more deeply, consider created causality: if from a flame another flame can be born, if from a plant another plant can germinate, if from man man is begotten, that is, if each nature can communicate its own form or essence, one does not see why God, who is the pure Act of being, cannot communicate, even 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 any basis: since no effect precedes, the production of the new being is not a change, it is not brought about by motion of any sort, it is not the overcoming of a distance to be traversed (the distance from nothing to being); it is only that which changes, that which moves, that which proceeds toward a term, that requires a subject distinct from the term. That which is simply placed in being presupposes no prior subject, and it is only metaphorically that one speaks in its regard of change, of passage, and of any motion whatsoever.
III. REAL RELATION IN THE CREATURE
Once creation is admitted, one may ask whether it entails a real addition to God, or whether something more than the received being results in the creature. In the Creator, a 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 consequently perfectly immanent; but this immanent act has the power to bring about that which is willed in it. 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 very being of the created thing. St. Thomas, on the other hand, holds it to be distinct (C. Gent., I, 2, ch. 18), and rightly so, since the being of the created thing can have toward God neither the relation of act nor that of potency; now only potency and act are transcendental relations, that is, relations identical with the things related. The relation of creatures to God is therefore real. Instead, the fact of being Creator does not add a real relation in God. A real relation really orders to the correlative term, and God, supremely independent, cannot be ordered to the creature.
IV. FREEDOM OF CREATION
Quite important for having a correct concept of c. and of the relationship of the creature toward God is the question of the freedom of c.
When in pantheistic or emanatist systems there is talk of c., what is meant most of the time is a process of the world necessarily originating in the divine substance itself. Plotinus as well as Spinoza, Scotus Erigena as well as Hegel, see in the existence of the universe, or of being insofar as it is nature, a necessity as strict as logical or mathematical necessities are. Others, who rightly distinguish God from the world and who derive the latter from the divine will, nevertheless hold that God could not have refrained from c., nor 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 not be. Thus already Abelard, then Malebranche, Leibniz and, in the last century, the German theologians Hermes and Günther (v.).
The Church's doctrine on this point is not obscure. Abelard was condemned at the Council of Sens (in 1140; cf. Denz-U, 374), and the Vatican Council declared that c. was brought about by God "liberimo consilio" and pronounced anathema on "anyone who should claim that God does not create with an absolutely free will and that he wills the world as he wills himself" (Denz-U, 1805).
In fact Scripture extols the dominion that God has over his creative act in such a way that every necessity is excluded from it. God "has done all that he willed" (Ps. 113, 11; 134, 6) and St. Paul teaches that God does everything "secundum consilium voluntatis suae" (Eph., 1, 11).
The Fathers have sometimes insisted on the reasons of fittingness for c. St. Augustine, for example, writes that if God, having the power to create, had not done so, he would have been envious (De Genesi ad litteram, l. 4, ch. 16, n. 27: PL 34, 307). But these are Platonic reminiscences that do not signify true necessity. The same Augustine writes that to one who asks why God made heaven and earth, one must answer: because he willed it. "Whoever then asks why he willed to make heaven and earth, seeks something superior to the will of God: and there is nothing of such a kind" (De Genesi contra Manichaeos, l. 1, ch. 26, n. 4: PL 34, 175).
God's freedom in creating is, however, one of those many truths that reason sees it must affirm, but whose manner it struggles to conceive. On the one hand it is clear that God's will finds its adequate object in the infinite divine perfection and that, consequently, nothing else can be necessary to his happiness nor even increase it. It is therefore manifest that God is free to will or not to will creatures, and to will in the world that degree of perfection that he chooses. But when one seeks to understand the actualization of this freedom, difficult questions arise, particularly that of reconciling God's freedom with the divine immutability. God created the world with an act of his will; but he could have not created the world, and yet in him nothing would have changed. It is certainly a great mystery, before which one can only say that the same divine act, identical with God, can, because of its infinite power, 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 change causes or does not cause the effect: agens in quantum agens non patitur; the change lies in the term according as it is posited, or not.
V. END OF CREATION
Connected with the doctrine of free c. is that of the end of c. God does not, in creating, pursue an end that is imposed upon him, but he must have in his wisdom an end that befits his creative act. The Council of the Vatican anathematized anyone who denied that the world is made for the glory of God (Denz-U, 1805).
With this definition, the Fathers of the Council excluded the position of Hermes and of 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 man, not of God. Nor is what Laberthonnière said more than once on this point very different (cf. Etudes 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 beginning and the end (Apoc. 1, 8); St. Paul wills that we do all things for the glory of God (I Cor., 10, 31) and writes: "for from him and through him and to him are all things: to him be glory for ever" (Rom., 11, 36).
The whole tradition has repeated the inspired word. In the Didaché a prayer begins thus: "Thou, Lord almighty, didst create all things for the glory of thy name" (ch. 10, no. 3). "The whole universe, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, is like a written book 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 needing us he makes use of us, gives this explanation: "That use which God makes of us, and for which he makes use of us, does not go to his utility, but to ours, and goes 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. Sum. Theol., 44, no. 4; Contra Gent., bk. 3, chs. 24, 25).
The glory of God consists in the manifestation of his perfections; a manifestation that can be willed by God, since it refers of 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 creatures are, the more the divine goodness is manifest and 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. St. Thomas, Contra Gent., bk. 3, ch. 24).
It is proper to rational creatures to conform themselves freely to the natural tendency toward their own perfection or happiness, which constitutes their ultimate end. However, the reference to the glory of God is necessarily implicit in happiness, inasmuch as happiness is an accumulation of perfections and every perfection shared with men is a likeness of the divine perfections. The Scholastic philosophers express all this by calling the glory of God the primary ultimate end and the happiness of man the secondary ultimate end. In short, the glory of God is not an increase of happiness that the Creator would seek in the praise of his creatures, but it is the natural reference that his gifts have with respect to his essence which they reflect and without which he himself could not love them.
VI. CREATION IN TIME
Once it is made 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, it is doubtful 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 Neoplatonists the doctrine of a necessarily eternal creation (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 it whatever duration pleases him and that nothing obliges him, if he wills the world, to will it as always existing.
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 exist at a determinate time; and if it is said that, granting an eternal creation, there would result, for example, an infinite number of generations, the answer is that a number supposes two terms and that on the hypothesis of creation "ab aeterno" 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 unanimously excluded the possibility of creation ab aeterno. Many texts deny only the fact of creation ab aeterno, not the possibility, or they rule out from the creature an eternity resembling that of God. St. Augustine, arguing against the Neoplatonists, does not argue from the impossibility of creation ab aeterno; he is content to call it 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 either. But creation made in time means only that there was a beginning of time and that, going back through the time that has elapsed, one would arrive at a first instant. Both the Fourth Lateran Council and the Vatican Council assert that God created at the beginning of time "ab initio temporis." Indeed the word of Genesis: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" would ill suit a creation that was without a beginning in time; and Jesus Christ has manifestly excluded that the world has always existed, saying:
"Now glorify me, Father, with yourself, with the glory that I had with you before the world existed" (Jn. 17:5) and elsewhere: "You loved me before the creation of the world" (Jn. 15:25).
VII. THE CREATING TRINITY
What has been said thus far abstracts from the Trinity of persons in God. Now how should the action of each of the divine persons in the work of creation be conceived? There were those who, seeking to demonstrate the existence of the Trinity, wished to find in things an effect proper to each person; thus in the 19th century the theologian Günther (v.): 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 things» (Denz-U, 428) and even more explicitly the Council of Florence: «The Father and the Son are not two principles of the Holy Spirit, but one only, just as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of the creature, but one only» (Denz-U, 704). The creative work is therefore common to all three divine persons.
Holy Scripture does not reserve the c. of the world to the Father, but explicitly has the Son intervene in it as well, St. John saying of the Word «All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing» (Io. 1, 3). Jesus then insists on affirming the unity of operation as of nature between the Father and himself (Io. 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 who is said explicitly to operate with the Father and with the Son in supernatural works (II Cor. 12, 4-6). St. Augustine expressed the tradition thus: «The Catholic faith does not say that God the Father made something, and the Son something else, 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).
And the reason for this is easily seen. The c. in God is an act of intellect and of will. Now, the three persons have in common the intellect and the will, that is, the one divine nature, and therefore they also necessarily have in common the creative act. The respect, moreover, or the form according to which the Creator exercises his influence, is the respect or the form of being. Now being in God is the same essence or divine nature, numerically one and common to the three persons. It is therefore not possible for one person to have creative activity without that of the others.
This does not prevent one from observing in the active c. the order of the divine processions. The same creative act is in the Son as communicated by the Father and by 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 of the Fathers. When, however, the c. is attributed unreservedly to the Father, this is done only by appropriation and by similarity with the property of the first Principle in the Trinity.
VIII. CREATION, PROPER ACT OF GOD
The question is discussed whether, besides God, creatures too can create, at least as instrumental causes. To settle this point, a proper distinction must be made. That God is the only Creator, at least by principal causality, of all existing beings is a truth of faith: the same truth that was seen above to be defined by the councils: if God has created everything, no one else has created; and thus both Manichaean dualism and the multiple aeons subordinated one to another, which the Gnostics arranged between the last one, creator of the world, and the first principle, are ruled out. Indeed, the texts of Scripture emphasize the freedom and independence of the creative act to such an extent that the collaboration of any instrument whatsoever is excluded. Creation is the work of God alone.
Furthermore, tradition and Scripture have demonstrated the divinity of Christ starting from the fact that the Word created all things (John 1:3-4; Heb. 1:2; St. Athanasius, Oratio II contra Arianos, n. 21: PG 26, 190); but the argument would be worthless if a creature could create. As for the possibility, for creatures, of serving as an instrument to God in creation, among theologians some affirm it and some deny it: the latter opinion seems more in conformity both with the texts of the Fathers and with reason. For the effect caused by the instrument is presupposed to the causality of the principal agent, whereas in creation no effect precedes that produced by the creator.
IX. THE WAY OF CREATION
Mention has already been made of the ineliminability of the concept of c. and at the same time of the mysteriousness of the manner in which it was brought about. But the first chapters of Genesis give a quite detailed description of it: we must know what value should be given to the Mosaic narrative. It should be borne in mind that the work of c. strictly so called, that is, without any presupposition, appears accomplished in the first verse of Scripture, and its effect is described in the second. What follows, that is, the work of the six days, is called c. second and is c. in the broad sense, as in Wis. 11:18, since it presupposes as its subject the earth first created. In this c. second there follow one another the work of distinction 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 of the last three days, by which the stars, the animals and man are produced (cf. Sum. Theol., I, q. 69, a. 1).
Exegetes and theologians today agree in saying that the sacred author, in distributing the production of things over six days, does not intend to include the creative work within six days of twenty-four hours. Whether by day he meant to signify an indeterminate epoch, or whether instead he made use of the framework of the week to illustrate his account, it is always a division made, not to indicate a precise duration, but to order the divine operation according to the increasing perfection of its effects.
There has always been in the Church, along with agreement on the essential points, a very great variety of interpretation of the work of the six days. St. Augustine, led to this by certain texts badly transcribed or not understood in their true sense, principally Eccl. 18:1, maintains that the whole work distributed over the six days was accomplished in a single instant, so that no meaning of time remained for the enumeration of the days. However, this interpretation, at first sight so different from the others, did not differ much from them as regards the reality of things, since the Bishop of Hippo explained that, if all things were created together, they were not all created in their perfect state, but many of them were then made only in their causes or seminal reasons, to appear later when the times would have matured those germs at first hidden.
In developing this theory, St. Augustine had occasion to set forth principles of exegesis and theology that are quite suggestive.
Bibliography16 works
Carlo Boyer
II. THE CHRISTIAN ICONOGRAPHY OF CREATION.
The medieval iconography of c. is found in illuminated codices and in cycles of paintings and mosaics. It treats the first chapters of Genesis (v.), with the six biblical days of the divine work up to the expulsion of the first parents from the earthly Paradise. In the Greek codex of Genesis of the 5th century in the National Library of Vienna, the first folio has miniatures with the c. of heaven, of earth, of the waters, of the animals, of man, and with the depiction of Adam and Eve beside the tree. Another Greek manuscript, the Cosmas Indicopleustes (cod. Vat. gr. 699), from an original of the 6th century, has instead a different iconography, derived from Egyptian cosmography with exclusively astrological references. The biblical cycle is taken up again by all the other more recent manuscripts, among which are two Carolingian Bibles of the 9th century, one in the National Library of Bamberg, the other in Rome in the library of the monastery of St. Paul Outside the Walls, and the two exemplars of the Octateuch of the 12th century, contained in codd. Vat. gr. 746 and 747.)
In the sculpture of the early Middle Ages, interesting representations of the cycle of c. are found in a relief of the 8th century in the cathedral of Terracina, in the antependium of the cathedral of Salerno, of 1100, where there are also inscriptions referring to the division of light from darkness (Lux, Nox), in the capitals and reliefs of the facade of the cathedral of Modena, sculpted by Wiligelmo in 1106, in others of the same period on the facade of the cathedral of Cremona, in the bronze door jambs of the door of St. Zeno in Verona and in those by Bonanno Pisano at the cathedral of Monreale.
Among the mosaic cycles, those of the cathedral of Monreale and of the Palatine Chapel of Palermo (12th century) and those in the dome of the atrium of St. Mark's in Venice (13th century) are of particular importance, deriving from figurations in more ancient manuscripts. In the basilical paintings the cycle of c. appears with important figurations in Rome in the frescoes of St. John at the Latin Gate (1191-98), in those of the abbey of St. Peter at Ferentillo and in others of the grotto of St. Lawrence near the crypt of the cathedral of Anagni.
In the lower church of Assisi, in a fresco of the end of the 13th century, the c. is depicted with Christ in majesty at the center, enclosed in a nimbus of cherubim.
In the Gothic period, besides in miniatures, the episodes of the c. are found quite often in the ornamental sculptures of the northern cathedrals (Notre-Dame of Paris, Amiens, Chartres, Auxerre, Freiburg) and in the stained-glass windows, among which those of the cathedral of Ulm have an original iconography. In Italy: Lorenzo Maitani on the facade of the cathedral of Orvieto, Andrea da Pontedera and Giotto on the Florentine campanile, dedicate interesting reliefs to the c.
In the Renaissance the use of the entire episodic narrative is abandoned and one finds sculptures or paintings with individual scenes drawn from the cycle; thus in the reliefs of Jacopo della Quercia at St. Petronius in Bologna, in some of the second door of Ghiberti for the Florentine baptistery, in the frescoes of Paolo Uccello in the cloister of the Dead at St. Maria Novella and in those of Masolino and Masaccio, restricted to the sole depiction of original sin, in the Brancacci chapel at the Carmine in Florence. In the celebrated Bible of Borso d'Este (Modena, Este Library), illuminated by the Ferrarese Taddeo Crivelli, Franco de' Rossi and assistants between 1455 and 1461, scenes of the c. comment on the first pages of the Old Testament.
The c. finally finds its highest expression in art in the nine panels of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, and in the frescoes of the Vatican loggias, by Raphael and pupils, finished in 1519. A rare figuration in easel paintings is found in a painting by Lucas Cranach at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Subsequently, apart from certain representations of the c. of the animals and of the flood, a pretext for Flemish or German painters for painting a great crowd of animals, the scenes of the c. are rather rare. - See pl. XLIX.
