Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

Created things persevere in the existence they have received, as both external and internal experience establishes. This perseverance of things in existing, taken on the part of the principle by which things are kept so that they may persevere in being, is called conservation.

A twofold conservation is distinguished¹: one is called positive,

either direct, or per se; the other is called negative, or indirect, or per accidens. The former is had when the thing conserved so depends on the conserver that without its positive action it cannot of itself continue to exist; thus water is heated by heat, and only through that same action of heat does it remain hot. The latter is either the non-destruction of a thing, or an action removing the principle by which the thing could be corrupted or destroyed, which action is not directly borne toward the conserved thing itself, but toward the causes upon the positing of which the thing itself could be corrupted or perish; as if someone keeps watch lest a boy fall into the fire, he conserves the boy indirectly.

I say, first: It can be doubtful to no one that created things are necessarily conserved by God indirectly, in order that they may persist in the existence they have received. For they persist for this reason, that God does not destroy them, although He could reduce them to nothing if He willed, just as He was able to produce them out of nothing into existence. But this divine will of not destroying things is their conservation, at least indirectly. Concerning this, therefore, there is no doubt. Hence the whole question is whether creatures necessarily require that they be conserved positively by God.

I say secondly: For existing, creatures necessarily require that they be positively conserved by God. — It is against Durandus and others who stand for the necessity of negative conservation alone.

*It is proved, *first, from Holy Scripture. Wis., XI, 26: How could anything endure, unless thou hadst willed it, or be preserved if it had not been called by thee? Col., I, 16 and 17: All things were created through him and in him: and he is before all, and all things hold together in him. John, V, 17, Christ says: My Father works until now, and I work, namely by the operation whereby the world is preserved. And elsewhere.

*It is proved, *secondly, from the Fathers. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, c. 10, § 1: “He is called All-holder (God), because he is the seat of all things, containing and embracing all things, and stabilizing, founding, and constraining all things, and rendering the universe indissoluble in himself.” Origen, book II of the Periarchon, c. 1, n. 3: “How do we live, and move, and are in God, unless because by his power he constrains and contains the universe

the world?» And below: «He fills and contains the whole world with the fullness of his power.» Aug., book IV On Genesis according to the Letter, ch. 12, no. 22: «It can be understood that God rested from founding the kinds of creature, because beyond that he no longer founded any new kinds; but thereafter, up to now and beyond, he works the administration of those same kinds which were then established... For the power of the Creator and the virtue of the omnipotent and all-sustaining one is the cause of subsisting for every creature; and if this virtue were ever to cease from governing the things that have been created, at the same time their species would cease, and every nature would collapse.» Thus several authors, and unanimously.

It is proved, third, by reason. Creatures, in the existence they have received, endure contingently, nor do they exist independently of God, but depend upon his will in existing. Therefore they necessarily require the positive conservation of God. — The consequence is proved:

1° From contingency. For from the fact that creatures are contingent, they have the account of their own existence not in themselves but in another, that is, in God. But when they in fact exist, they do not on that account lose the account of contingency, but are such that they can not be, just as, before they were, they so were not that they could be. Therefore, just as by force of contingency they need positively to have existence from another, so by reason of that same contingency they need to be positively conserved in existence by another.

2° From dependence on God. It is repugnant to suppose creatures altogether emancipated from dependence on the Creator, who not only created things, but also continually orders all things to the end, which is the communication of his goodness and the manifestation of his glory. But if creatures, in the existence received, conserve themselves of themselves, emancipation or complete independence both in being and in acting must be conceded to them, nor is there any longer any reason by which it may be proved that the world is governed by God, even in the least things. This consequence is most absurd. Therefore creatures need to be positively conserved by God.

3° From the will of God. Therefore created things exist, because God willed them to be; which act indeed, posited from eternity

it endures, namely in such a way that creatures, just as they were created by the divine will, so by that same will persevere in the existence they have received. Therefore, just as the will creating things is something positive, so also the divine will itself conserving the things is something positive.

Hence St. Thomas rightly says²: “It is necessary to say, both according to faith and according to reason, that creatures are conserved in being by God;” namely, by a positive conservation, whereby creatures are so conserved by God that they depend altogether upon him conserving them and cannot remain in being without him. “For the being of any creature depends upon God, such that they could not subsist even for a moment, but would be reduced to nothing, unless they were conserved in being by the operation of the divine power.”

Hence it is clear in what sense the conservation of created things is a continued creation. This saying, commonly stated and properly explained, has truth, whatever Bayle and with him a few of the older and more recent writers may say. For in God two distinct actions are not to be conceived, one by which He creates and another by which He conserves created things; nor is the existence of a thing one in the beginning of its creation and another when it endures in the same existence. Consequently conservation, whether it is considered on the part of the principle or on the part of the term, does not differ from creation. Yet creation, formally taken in itself, presupposes nothing, since it is the bringing-forth of the whole thing from nothing; on the contrary conservation implies an already existing thing to be conserved, to which there is continued the influx by which it was brought forth from nothing. Under this second respect, therefore, conservation differs from creation.]