Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

Creation can be taken in a threefold way: 1° broadly, for any production whatsoever of any thing¹: in which sense Eccli., I, 4, it is said of Wisdom that she was created from the beginning; 2° equivocally, for an elevation to a higher grade: in which sense someone is said to be created bishop; 3° strictly, for the production of the whole being from nothing.

For which reason it must be observed that the preposition ex does not import a relation of affirmative causality, as though nothing were the matter of that thing which is produced, as when it is said, “A sword is made from iron;” but it imports the relation of a cause that is denied, so that ex nihilo is the same as non ex aliquo.

And so creation is the emanation of the whole being from the universal cause². For just as a particular emanation is from a particular non-being, as the production of fire from non-fire, so the universal emanation is altogether from non-being, and consequently from nothing.

I say: God produced things in being from nothing, that is, created them ³.

It is de fide; for we say in the Apostles’ Creed: « I believe in one God..., the Creator of heaven and earth. »

In the council Lateran. under Innocent III it is defined that “God created from nothing both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, namely the angelic and the worldly.”

This definition was renewed more at length and more expressly by the Vatican council, where one reads⁴

The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and every perfection; who, since he is one singular, altogether simple, and immutable spiritual substance, must be proclaimed as distinct from the world in reality and essence, most blessed in himself and from himself, and ineffably exalted above all things which besides him are and can be conceived.

This one true God, by His goodness and omnipotent power, not to increase His own beatitude, nor to acquire it, but to manifest His perfection through the goods which He imparts to creatures, by a most free counsel, at once from the beginning of time, created from nothing both kinds of creature, the spiritual and the corporeal, namely the angelic and the mundane, and thereafter the human, as it were constituted in common from spirit and body.

Canons. — « 1° If anyone shall have denied the one true God, Creator and Lord of visible and invisible things, let him be anathema.

» 2° If anyone should not be ashamed to affirm that there is nothing besides matter, let him be anathema.

» 3° If anyone shall have said that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same, let him be anathema.

» 4° If anyone shall have said that finite things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual things, have emanated from the divine substance; or that the divine essence by the manifestation or evolution of itself becomes all things; or finally that God is universal or indefinite being, which by determining itself constitutes the totality of things distinguished into genera, species, and individuals; let him be anathema.

» 5° If anyone does not confess that the world and all things contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced by God out of nothing according to their whole substance; or shall have said that God created, not by a will free from every necessity, but as necessarily as He necessarily loves Himself; or shall have denied that the world was established for the glory of God; let him be anathema. »

It is proved. First from Sacred Scripture. Genesis, I, 1, says: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Judith, XIII, 24: Blessed be the Lord, who created heaven and earth. Ps. CXLVIII, 5: He commanded, and they were created. Wisdom, I, 14: He created all things that they might be. II Maccabees, VII, 28: I beg you, son, to look upon heaven and earth and all that are in them, that you may understand that God made them out of nothing, and the race of men.

It is proved. Secondly, by a twofold argument. The first:⁵. If God had not made

if he were able to make something from nothing, he ought to produce all things from some presupposed thing. But the consequent is false. Therefore the antecedent also. — Proof of the minor. If God did not act except from something presupposed, that presupposed thing would not be caused by him; just as when an artisan makes a statue from wood, the wood is not caused by him. But the consequent is false, both because God is the universal cause of the whole of being, as is clear from the first article preceding; and because, if there were some being not caused by God, it would be a being from itself, consequently God, as being infinitely perfect. For by what could it be limited in its perfections? Not by another, since it would depend on no one, nor even on God; not by itself, since, being a necessary being, it would exclude from itself no perfection.

The second argument. Either something pre-existed for the things that God produced, or it did not. If the latter, we have what was intended. If the former, since one must not proceed to infinity, it is necessary to come to some first thing for which nothing pre-exists, and yet it was made by God, consequently made ex nihilo.

You say firstly: Among the ancient philosophers this axiom was commonly accepted: “From nothing, nothing comes to be.” Therefore.

I answer that this axiom is true concerning the emanation of particular effects from particular causes, which alone the ancient philosophers considered, but not concerning emanation from a universal principle⁶.

You will press the point: Between being and nothing there is an infinite distance. But an infinite distance is impassable. Therefore.

I respond. I distinguish the major⁷. Between being and nothing there is an infinite distance positively, I deny; negatively, I concede. And in this sense, the minor having been distinguished, I deny the consequence. Therefore between being and nothing there is not an infinite distance thus positively, such that there is some infinite medium which must be traversed; but only thus, that not-being simply tends to being simply. Moreover, just as it can come about by a finite power that a transition be made from not-being in a certain respect to being in a certain respect, for example, from the not-being of fire to the being of fire; so it can come about by an infinite power that a transition be made from not-being simply to being simply.

You will press the point: What is coming to be has not yet been made. Therefore coming-to-be precedes having been made. Therefore a subject must be assigned in which that very coming-to-be is sustained. — I subsume: But in that which is created, a subject cannot be assigned in which the coming-to-be or being created is sustained, since it is from nothing. Therefore something cannot come to be from nothing.

I respond. I distinguish the antecedent.⁸. What comes to be by a successive action is not yet done, I concede; by an instantaneous action, I deny. Thus, for example, while the air is being illuminated, it is illuminated; while the word is being formed in the mind, it is formed. Creation, however, is an instantaneous action; and thus, when something is created, it is created, and the term of creation is the created thing itself produced by that creation. — By this the other objection is anticipated.

You say 2°: in Wis. XI, 18, God is said to have created the orb of the earth, that is, the world, from invisible matter. Therefore, not from nothing.

I respond: I deny the consequence. By unseen matter, in Greek unformed, there is not understood matter stripped of every form; for thus it cannot exist, and in Genesis, I, 1, it is said: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. But by this there is understood a body then invisible and unformed; because on the first day, before light came to be, it was not visible to sight, nor was it adorned with plants, animals, men, etc. Therefore the sense of Holy Scripture is that from this body or unformed matter God produced distinct beings, plants, animals, man, etc. But God did not produce this matter from another matter, but from nothing, as St. Augustine, to be cited below, expressly asserts.

Hence you will infer that God did not, strictly speaking, create or produce all things out of nothing, seeing that both from the cited authority and from the first chapter of Genesis it is established that from pre-existing matter He produced plants and animals, and also formed man from the slime of the earth; likewise also that daily He produces many things, not out of nothing, but from a presupposed subject: but that He properly created, and creates, only certain things, such as heaven and earth, angels, and rational souls.

Yet in some sense, not altogether improper, it could be said that God created or made all things from nothing, insofar as He makes them, either wholly according to themselves, or according to their intrinsic and essential part, namely matter, from nothing. Hence St. Augustine, in book XII of Confessions, c. 8, says: “You, Lord, made the world from unformed matter, which You made from no thing, an almost nothing, whence You might make the great things which we sons of men marvel at.” And in book I of On Genesis against the Manichees, c. 6, n. 10: “God is most rightly believed to have made all things from nothing; because although all formed things were made from that matter, yet that very matter itself was made from absolutely nothing.” But if creare is taken generally, as being the same as to make or to produce, it is evident from the preceding first article that God in this sense created all things.