Article 1: The Divine Idea of the Cosmos as the Exemplary Cause of Creation

Pohle, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, Part I, Chapter I, §2, Article 1 (pp. 32–35)

1. The Divine Idea of the Cosmos

Reason tells us that the Creator must have designed the created universe in accordance with some pattern or archetype. As an artist cannot produce a work of art unless he has previously formed some idea of it in his mind, so God must have had a definite conception of the cosmos before He proceeded to mould it.

Metaphysicians are agreed that the idea, or causa exemplaris, is a necessary condition for setting to work all those efficient causes which are endowed with understanding and free will. No intelligent cause proceeds blindly or at random.

God’s idea of the cosmos may be regarded either subjectively or objectively. Subjectively it is God’s creative Wisdom or practical Knowledge, and as such identical with the Divine Essence itself. Objectively, or with regard to content, it is the ideal representation of whatever is to become actual, or, in the words of St. Thomas, the outward imitability of the Divine Essence considered as purely conceptual.¹

This definition makes it quite clear that God’s idea of the cosmos is neither a creature, nor a metaphysical entity existing outside of, or side by side with God,² nor yet the Divine Essence itself. God’s idea of the cosmos must consequently be the possible essence of the created universe, in so far as that essence is rooted in the Divine Substance and conceived by the Divine Intellect from all eternity.³ If we are careful to guard against the Platonic mistake of conceiving the archetypes of things as individual existences extraneous to God, we may safely adopt Clement of Alexandria’s distinction⁴ between an ideal world (κόσμος νοητός) and the really existing world (κόσμος αἰσθητός). The former is necessary and eternal, the latter contingent and temporal.

May we speak of divine ideas of created things in the plural number? We may, but only in regard to the multitude of created things. In the Divine Intellect itself there is but one absolutely simple idea, as simple and indivisible as the Divine Essence with which it coincides. This distinction furnishes the key for the correct interpretation of the plural phrase rationes rerum, or λόγοι οὐσιώδεις, which occurs in the writings of the Fathers and theologians.

2. The Teaching of Revelation

While the Church has never formally defined her teaching with regard to the divine idea of the cosmos, Holy Scripture does not permit us to doubt the actual existence of such an idea.

a) Of the various Scriptural texts which may be cited in this connection,⁵ the most luminous perhaps is Gen. I, 26: “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” Here God appears in the role of a thoughtful artificer, who works out the concept of man in his own mind before he proceeds to create him. He is an intelligent Creator who follows a well-digested plan.

This view is utterly incompatible with the theory of atheistic Darwinism, which attributes the creation of things to “chance.” It is developed in the Sapiential Books of the Old Testament and forms the necessary substratum of St. John’s Logos-doctrine. According to the punctuation of some manuscript codices of the Fourth Gospel, John I, 3 sq. reads as follows: “Et sine ipso factum est nihil. Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat,” i.e., that which was created sprang from a vital idea in the Godhead, namely, the Logos. St. Augustine beautifully develops this thought in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John,⁶ but the punctuation on which it is based has not stood the test of modern criticism.

b) The Fathers developed the teaching thus adumbrated in Sacred Scripture, some of them explaining it in consonance with, others in opposition to, the Platonic philosophy.⁷ It remained for the medieval Schoolmen to give it its final polish. The most brilliant exponent of the doctrine of the Divine Idea is St. Augustine.⁸ From him the Schoolmen received it and unfolded it dialectically.⁹

Notes