Article 5: The Incommunicability of God’s Creative Power

Pohle, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, Part I, Chapter I, §2, Article 5 (pp. 54–60)

Revelation tells us that no creature ever exercised the creative power. Still the purely speculative question may be asked: Could God, if He would, communicate His creative power to a creature, e.g., an angel of the highest rank? Of course no angel could wield the creative power to the full extent of its infinite perfection, or independently of the preservative and concurring influence of the Divine First Cause. The meaning of our question is: Could any creature, as principal, or at least as an instrumental cause, produce anything (e.g., a blade of grass) out of nothing? A categorical denial of this possibility, it is easy to see, will redound to the glory of the Creator.

Thesis I: No mere creature ever created anything out of nothing.

This proposition embodies an article of faith.

Proof. The Fourth Lateran Council dogmatically declared the Blessed Trinity to be “unum universorum principium, creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium” — The one principle of all things, the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal.¹ This truth can be proved from Sacred Scripture by a twofold method: (1) by showing that Creation is never attributed to any one but God; and (2) by demonstrating that the Bible positively denies that any creature ever exercised creative power. Heb. III, 4: “Qui autem omnia creavit, Deus est” — He that created all things, is God. Apoc. IV, 11: “Tu creasti omnia et propter voluntatem tuam erant et creata sunt” — Thou hast created all things; and for thy will they were, and have been created. This truth is enunciated even more solemnly in Is. XLIV, 24: “Ego sum Dominus, faciens omnia, extendens coelos solus, stabiliens terram, et nullus mecum” — I am the Lord, that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth, and there is none with me. And in John I, 3: “Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est” — All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.

In the light of these and similar texts the Fathers of the Church did not hesitate to brand as heretical the proposition that the world was made by beings of an inferior order. “Those who allege,” says St. John of Damascus, “that the Angels are the creators of any substance whatever, are mouthpieces of the Devil, who is their councillor; for being themselves creatures, the Angels cannot be creators.”² This view is shared by all theological schools.

Thesis II: God cannot, even by way of grace, communicate His creative power to any creature.

This thesis merely represents a theological conclusion.

Proof. The Scholastics generally hold³ that no creature, how high soever its rank, is able, even with divine assistance, to create anything out of nothing.⁴ Holy Scripture, Tradition, and ecclesiastical teaching alike regard the power to create as the true criterion of omnipotence, and consequently as an exclusive and incommunicable divine attribute, which as essentially differentiates God from His creatures as His eternity or immensity. Theologically, therefore, it is quite consistent to conclude from God’s creative power to His omnipotence and, ultimately, to His self-existence. The notion of a “creating creature,” on the other hand, is as much a contradiction as would be that of a “created God.” Whenever, in fact, Holy Scripture wishes to exalt God’s omnipotence and to impress His creatures with their own impotence, it usually accentuates His creative power.⁵ Hence we may properly conclude that creative power is a mode of operation peculiar to God, qua God, distinguishing Him from the creature, qua creature.

This is most certainly the opinion of the Fathers, who hold that a “creatura creatrix” would involve an intrinsic contradiction. Thus St. Athanasius says: “All things were made through the Word, who would not have wrought all things, were He Himself a creature. Hence even the angels are unable to create, since they are themselves creatures.”⁶ Similarly St. Augustine: “An angel can no more create a substance than he can create himself.”⁷

The Scholastics tried to demonstrate the incommunicability of God’s creative power by various philosophical arguments. St. Thomas bases his demonstration on the fact that pure being (ens in quantum est ens), which is the terminus of creation, can be produced solely by the causa universalissima.⁸ Suarez starts from an analysis of the creative act, which of its very nature, he says, cannot be limited to this or that being (e.g., a grain of sand), but embraces all creatable things. A power that is able to create by a mere act of the will — so runs his argument — can meet with no material obstacle, and must therefore extend to all possibles. Now, such a power cannot be conceived except as actually infinite, and therefore cannot belong to any finite creature. Hence God alone can create.⁹

Thesis III: The Creator cannot employ a creature as an instrumental cause in creating.

This thesis may be qualified as highly probable (probabilissima).

Proof. An instrumental cause is far inferior to a principal cause, because it is moved rather than moving (as, for instance, a saw in the hands of a carpenter). The absolute impossibility of God’s employing creatures as instrumental causes in the act of creation is, therefore, not quite so evident as the truth embodied in the preceding thesis. In fact, not a few Scholastics, following the lead of Peter Lombard,¹⁰ opposed the thesis we are here upholding. St. Thomas at first followed the “Master of the Sentences,” but later in life changed his opinion and admitted that it is impossible for any creature to create, even though it were only as an instrument in the hands of God: “Sic igitur impossibile est, quod alicui creaturae conveniat creare, neque virtute propria neque instrumentaliter, sive per ministerium.”¹¹

A transfer of the creative power to an instrumental cause, akin to the transfer of divine power to man in the working of miracles, the forgiving of sins, and at Consecration during Holy Mass, is inconceivable because of the absence of a materia circa quam; for, in the act of creating something out of nothing there is no subject to which the instrumental cause could be applied and on which it could exercise its causality. This consideration removes a difficulty raised by Oswald, viz.: that “a conversion of one substance into another (transubstantiation) would seem to postulate as great a power as the production of a substance out of sheer nothing.”¹² At the Consecration the priest takes bread and wine as a substratum upon which to exercise his ministerial powers; but Creation is the production of something out of nothing without a pre-existing substratum.¹³

Notes

Note on this transcription: footnotes 8–11 both draw on Summa Theologiae 1a, qu. 45, art. 5 — that is not a transcription error, but appears to be how the original cites the same Article of the Summa twice for two different points (once for the “causa universalissima” argument, once for Aquinas’s later, revised position on instrumental causes). As with the previous articles, the page-break footnote columns were interleaved by the OCR and have been hand-separated here; German titles (Möglichkeit, Münster, Schöpfung, über) had their umlauts restored.

Suggested Readings (end of §2, Creation)

The source text closes this section (covering all five articles, not Article 5 alone) with a bibliography. An asterisk in the original marks works the author considered especially clear or thorough — not a judgment that unmarked works, including St. Thomas’s own, are inferior.

• Palmieri, S.J., De Creatione et Praecipuis Creaturis, 2nd ed., Rome 1910.
• Mazzella, De Deo Creante, 4th ed., Rome 1908.
• Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. IV, §§ 257–263, Mainz 1885.
• Oswald, Schöpfungslehre, Paderborn 1893.
• Th. H. Simar, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, Vol. I, §§ 62–90, Freiburg 1899.
• G. B. Tepe, Instit. Theol., Vol. II, pp. 417 sqq., Paris 1895.
• Chr. Pesch, Praelect. Dogmat., t. III, ed. 3, Friburgi 1908.
• Pesnell, Le Dogme de la Création et la Science Contemporaine, 2nd ed., Arras 1894.
• L. Janssens, De Deo Creatore et de Angelis, Friburgi 1905.
• St. Thomas, S. Theol., 1a, qu. 44 sqq.
• Suarez, De Opere Sex Dierum.
• Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, Vols. I and II, 2nd ed., Freiburg 1892–1895.
• Vigener, De Ideis Divinis, Monast. 1869.
• Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. II, 134, Freiburg 1878 (Wilhelm-Scannell’s Manual, Vol. I, pp. 356 sqq., 2nd ed., London 1899).
• Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, Vol. I, 2nd ed., Münster 1867.
• Stentrup, Das Dogma von der zeitlichen Weltschöpfung, Innsbruck 1870.
• Kleutgen, Vom zeitlichen Anfang der Welt (Beilagen to the Theologie der Vorzeit, Heft 2), Münster 1870.
• Th. Esser, O.P., Die Lehre des hl. Thomas über die Möglichkeit einer anfangslosen Schöpfung, Münster 1895.
• St. Thomas, Opusc. De Aeternitate Mundi.
• Billuart, De Opere Sex Dierum, diss. I, art. 6.
• J. T. Driscoll, Christian Philosophy: God, pp. 179 sqq., 2nd ed., New York 1904.
• K. Gutberlet, Gott und die Schöpfung, Ratisbon 1910.
• W. Humphrey, “His Divine Majesty,” pp. 205 sqq., London 1897.