Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/534

 CREATION

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CREATION

latter term is thus explained by a philosopher who has drawn it out from the suggestion supplied by St. Thomas. (De Potentia, Q. iv.) Though God can operate as He does in the creative act, without the co- operation of the creature, it is absolutely impossible for the creature to elicit even the smallest act without the co-operation of the Creator. Now the Divine Admin- istration includes this and more, two things, namely, as regards the present subject. The one is the con- stant order, the natural laws, of the universe. Thus, e. g., that all living things should be ordinately prop- agated by seed belongs to the Divine Administration. The second, which may be called exceptional, relates to the initial organisms, the first plant, fish, bird, and beast, upon which hereditary propagation must have subsequently succeeded. That these original pairs should have been evolved out of the potency of matter without parentage — that the matter, otherwise in- capable of the task, should have been proximately dis- posed for such evolution — belongs to a special Divine Administration. In other words, God must have been the sole efficient cause — utilizing, of course, the ma- terial cause — of the organization requisite, and hence may strictly be said to have formed such pairs, and in particular the human body, out of the pre-existent matter (Harper, op. cit., 743). It need hardly be said that the distinctions between creation and co-opera- tion, administration and formation, are not to be con- sidered as subjectively realized in God. They are only so many aspects which the analytical mind must take note of in the fundamental and essential relation of de- pendence — contingency — in which the creature stands to the First Cause. For a sympathetic account of the relation of Evolutionism to Creationism, the reader may be referred to Muckermann (who has popularized Wasmann's technical illustrations of specific trans- formations among the ant-guests). Harper, Mivart, Guibert, Didiot, Farges, etc., mentioned in the bibli- ography below. A more vigorous criticism of Evolu- tionism is to be found in the works of Gerard, Gutber- let, Pesch, Willems, Hunter, Thein, and Hughes.

V. Final C.\use of Cre.\tion. — Since the produc- tion of something from nothing, the bridging of the ohasm between non-existence and existence demands infinite power, and since the reason for the action of an infinite being must lie within that being Himself, the primary subjective motive of creation nmst be the Creator's love of His own intrinsic goodness. The love of that absolute good is conceived by us as "in- ducing" the Creator to give it an extrinsic embodi- ment (creation in its passive sense, the universe). The type-idea according to which this embodiment is constructed must exist within the Creator's intelli- gence and as such is called the "exemplary" or arche- typal cause of creation (passive). The objective realization hereof is the absolutely final objective end, or final cause, of creation. In the material universe this realization, exhibited in the ]iurposiveness of each individual part conspiring to the purposiveness of the whole, remains imperfect and is but a vestige of the original design. In the rational creature it reaches a certain completeness, inasmuch as man's personality, with its intellectual and volitional endowments, is a sort of (analogous) "image" of the Creator, and, !is such, a more perfect realization of the creative plan. Moreover, in man's consciinisiicss the creative i)urpo.se comes to explicit manif(st:il imi :inil reflcctivr recogni- tion. His iiitelligoiit reaction tlicrcon by reverential attitude and onlerly conduct realizes the absolutely final pur|)ose of creation, the actual "formal glorify- ing" of the Creator, so far as that is possible in the present life. But even as the onlerly or normal activ- ity of the individual organisms and subordinate parts of the vmiverse develop and complete tlio.se org.anisms and parts, so man's rational condiU't perfects him and, as a consequence, results in a state of happiness, the fvill complement whereof is attainable, however, only

in a life beyond the present. This completion and happiness of man are said to be the relatively ultimate end of creation, and thereby the creative plan is ab- solutely completed, the Creator finally explicitly formally glorified by the return of the creation, carried up by and in man to conscious inter-communion with the Source and End of the creative act. Lactantius thus sums up the hierarchy of finality in creation: "The world was made that we might be born. We were born that we might know God. We know Him that we may worship Him. We worship Him that we may earn immortality. We are rewarded with im- mortality that, being like unto the angels, we may serve Our Father and Lord forever, and be the eternal kingdom of God" (Instit., VII, vi). When man issaid to be the (relatively) ultimate end of creation, this obviously docs not exclude other coexistent and sub- ordinate purposes.

VI. Creation the Prerogative of God Alone. — The Fourth Lateran Council defined that " God is the sole principle of all things visible and invisible, the creator of all" [Denzinger, op. cit., 428 (355)]; and the Bible throughout ascribes the creative act to Him alone: "I am the Lord, that make all things . . . and there is none with me" (Is., xliv, 24 ; cf. xl, 25; Ps cxxxv, 4). As to the question, whether it is intrin- sically possible for a creature to be endowed with crea- tive power, theologians answer with a distinction. (1) No creature can possibly be a principal cause of crea- tion. This is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers. The philosophical reasons are: (a) the creative act, being absolutely independent of material and instru- ment, supposes an absolutely independent subject (agent) ; (b) the term of the creative act is the com- plete substance of the effect (spiritual or material), and the act can extend indefinitely to whatever is intrinsic- ally possible, while the act of the created agent reaches only to the accidents, or partial constituents, of bod- ies, and is definitely limited in range; (c) the creative act produces its effects by will alone; it is immanent, while its term is extraneous; it is as unlimited as is the extent of will power; it is instantaneous. No finite cause can thus operate. (2) Some theologians (Peter the Lombard and Suarez) have thought that a creature might be used by God as an instrumental cause of creation. The general opinion, however, is to the contrary, on the ground that since creation ex- cludes inateria ex qud there is no subject whereon the dispositive influence of an instrument could be ex- erted.

God u-as absolutely free to create or not to create, and to create the present or any possible world. This is an article of Catholic Faith defined by the Vatican Council (Can., De Deo Creante, v). It is the explicit teaching of Scripture, Gotl " worketh all things accord- ing to the counsel of his will" (Eph., i, 11), and of the Fathers generally. It is an obvious rational deduc- tion from the infinitude and absolute self-sufficiency of God. The creative act, as a subjective aspect of the Divine Will, is necessary, but the external positing of a term is free. This doctrine of creative freedom ex- cludes the exaggerated optimism of Leibniz and others, who held that God was bound to create the best possi- ble world. The Divine act must be perfect, but the effect need not, and indeed cannot, be absolutely per- fect; the creature being necessarily finite, a more per- fect creature is always possible and creatable by in- finite power. The world is the very best possible for the Creator's purpose; it is relatively, not absolutely, * perfect. (See Optimlsm.)

VII. The Would was Cre.\.ted in Time, not from ' Eternity. — The Vatican Council defined that God 4 created ab initio temporis. The opening words of] Genesis, "In the beginning God created", are re-j echoed in similar ])hrases throughout the Bible. The ' Fathers reiterate the same teaching. .\s to the question, whether eternal creation is intrinsically pos- ii