Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/531

 CREATION

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CREATION

stream which is carried over to the new order by (he declaration of the mother of the Machabees: "Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing "(II Mach., vii, 28). One has only to conijiare the Mosaic account of the creative work with that recently discovered on the clay tablets unearthed from the ruins of Babylon to discern the immense difference between the un- adulterated revealed tradition and the puerile story of the cosmogony corrupted by polytheistic myths. Between the Hebrew and the Chaldean accoinit there is just sufficient similarity to warrant the supposition that both are versions of some antecedent record or tradition ; but no one can avoid the conviction that the Biblical accoimt re|3rcsents the pure, even if incom- plete, truth, while the Baliylonian story is both legend- ary and fragmentary (Smith, "Chaldean Accoimt of Genesis", New York, 1875). Throughout the New Testament, wherein God's creative activity is seen to merge with the redemptive, the same idea is continu- ous, now reaffirmed to the Greek pagan in explicit forms, now recalled to the Hebrew believer liy expres- sions that presuppose it too obvious and fully admitted to need ex]ilicit reiteration.

3. The extra-canonical books of the Jews, notably the Book of Henoch antl the Fourth Book of Esdras, repeat and expand the teaching of the Old Testament on creation; the Fathers and Doctors of the early Church in the East and West everj-^vhere proclaun the same doctrine, confirming it by philosophical argu- ments in their controversies with Paganism, Gnosti- cism and Manicha-ism; while the early Roman sjiiibols, that of Nica'a and those of Constantinople repeat, in practically unvarying phrase, the universal Christian belief " in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible".

4. After the controversy with Paganism and the Oriental heresies had waned, and with the awakening of a new intellectual life through the introduction of Aristotle into the Western schools, the doctrine of creation was set forth in greater detail. The revival of Manicha'ism by the Cathari (q. v.) and the Albi- genses (q. v.) called for a more explicit expression of the contents of the Church's belief regarding creation. This was formulated by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 [Denzinger, •'Enchiridion", 428 (355)]. The council teaches the miicity of the creative principle — units snhis Deus; the fact of creation out of nothing (the nature of creation is here for the first time, doubtless through the influence of the schools, designated by the formula, cnndidit ex nihiln); its object (the visible and invisible, the spiritual and material world, and man); its temporal character {nh initio icmporis); the origin of evil from the fact of free will.

5. The conflict with the false dualism and the ema- nationism introduced into the schools by the Arabian philosophers, especially Avicenna (1036) and Aver- rocs (1198), brought out the more philosophically elaborated doctrine of creation found in the works of the greater Scholastics, such as Blessed Albert, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure. The Aristotelean theorj- of causes is here made use of as a defining in- strument in the synthesis which is suggested by the well-known distich:^

Efficiens causa Deus est, formalis idea,

Finalis bonitas, materialis hyle (Albert . Magn., Summa. I, Tr. xiii ; "Q. liv. Vol. XXXI, p. 551 of Bosquet ed., Paris, 1805). On these lines the Schoolmen built their system, embracing the relation of the world to God as its efficient cause, the continu- ance of creation in Goil's conservation thereof .and His concurrence with every jihase of the creature's activ- ity; the conception of the Divine idea as the archetypal cause of creation; the doctrine that God is moved to create (speaking by analogv' with the finite will) by His own goodness, to which He gives expression in creation in order that the rational creature recognizing

it maybe led to love it and, by a corresponding mental and moral adjustment thereto in the present life, may attain to its complete fruition in the life to come; in other words that the Divine goodness and love is the source and final cause of creation both active and pas- sive. Thus the application, by a constantly sustained analogy of the three causes — efficient, final, and formal (archetypal) — results in the Scholastic philosophy of creation. There being no previously existing material cause (hylc) of creation, the application of the fourth cause appears ui the Scholastic theory on potency and 7naten'a prima, the radical and undifferentiated constit- uent of nature.

6. The idea of creation developed by the Scholas- tics passed without substantial change along that cur- rent of modern thought which preserved the essential elements of the Thcistic-Christian world- view — that of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz — and of course along the continuovis stream of traditional teaching within the Catholic Church. In the ojiposing current it dis- appears with Spinoza, and gives way to realistic Pan- theism; with Fichte, Schclling, and Hegel, its place is taken by some phase of vaiying idealistic Pantheism; while in our own day .^gnosticism (Spencer), material- istic Monism (Hilckel), and spiritualistic Monism (Neo-Hegelianism and the New Theology) have been put forivard as substitutes. Amongst recent Catholic theologians there is a practically uniform tendency to interpret the traditional and Scriptural data as postu- lating the creative act to account for the origin of vm- embodied spirits (the angels), of the primordial matter of the universe, and of the human soul. The develop- ment of the universe, the introduction of plant and animal life, the formation of the first human bodies can be explained by the administrative or formative activity of God, an activity which is sometimes called second creation (secunda creatio), and does not demand the creative act as such. Catholic philosophers de- velop the purely rational arguments for these same positions, except for the origin of the angelic world, which of course lies beyond the sphere of philosophy. The remainder of this article will offer a summary of the aforesaid theological and philosophical positions and their bases.

III. Arguments for Creation. — 1. For the doc- trine of the Church on the origin of the spiritual world the reader is referred to the article Angel.

2. That the material of which the imiverse is com- posed was created out of nothing is the implicit, rather than specifically explicit, statement of the Bible. The Scriptural teaching on God and the relation of the universe to Him unmistakably affirms creation. God alone is declared to be imdcrived, self-existent (Ex., iii, 14), and in comparison \\-ith Him all things else are as nothing (Wisdom, xi, 23; Is., xl, 17). God is said to be the beginning and end of all things (Is., xlviii, 12; Apoc, i, 8) ; all things else are from Him, and by Him, and in Him (Rom., xi, .36; I Cor., viii, 6; Coloss., i, 16). God is the absolute and independent sovereign (Ps.xhx, 12, andls.,xliv,24; Heb.,i, 10). Th.at those texts equivalently assert that God is the Creator of all things finite is too obvious to call for further com- ment. The most explicit Scriptural statement re- specting the created origin of the universe is found in the first verse of Genesis: " In the beginning God cre- ated heaven and earth ". Tlie objects here designated evidently comprise the material imiverse; whether the originative act is to be understood as specifically creative, depends upon the meaning of the Hebrew verb bara. On this point the following inter[)re- tations by imimpeachable authority may be ad- duced. Geseniua says: "The u.se of this verb [bom] in Kal, the conjugation here (>inployed, is entirely differ- ent from its i)rimary signification (to cut, shape, fjishion); it signifies rather the new production of a thing than the shaping or elaborating of the pre-exist^ ing material. That the first verse of Genesis teaches