AQUINAS ON CREATION: SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND MATTERS OF FACT

William A. Wallace, O. P.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

WERE ONE to search for a central teaching of Thomas Aquinas that most characterizes his contribution to theology, he would do well to find an exposition more notable than Aquinas's analysis of the problem of creation. Historians of medieval philosophy, seconded by present-day scholastics attracted to existentialist thought, have focused on Aquinas's real distinction between essence and existence as his greatest contribution to metaphysics.¹ The abundance of literature on this subject attests to its key role in Aquinas's philosophy, and yet this distinction itself has deeper roots in his theology. It has been argued, for example, that the Common Doctor's concern with the " I Am Who Am " of Exodus gave basic inspiration and ultimate precision to his distinctive treatment of esse or existential act.² A similar case can be made, perhaps with even fuller historical documentation, for Aquinas's continued concern with the arguments over creation that were being agitated during his lifetime. Whether or not creation is indeed so pivotal a doctrine for him, however, there can be little doubt that his treatment of the problem it poses is most typical of his style of theologizing. And just as, several decades ago, when metaphysics had fallen into desuetude and was given new life through Aquinas's " authentic existentialism,"³ so today,

¹ Notably Étienne Gilson and his school; see the writings of James F. Anderson, Charles A. Hart, and Joseph Owens, among others.

² See Gilson's Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960), pp. 104-135, for a clear exposition of this teaching; Gilson also considers the relation of essence and existence to the Thomistic treatment of creation, ibid., pp. 164-183.

³ The expression is Jacques Maritain's in his Existence and the Existent, Eng. tr. by L. Galantière and G. B. Phelan (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1957), p. 13; it has been used by Leo Sweeney in the title of his textbook, A Metaphysics of Authentic Existentialism (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965).

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when speculative theology is in similar straits, his teaching on creation can perhaps be re-examined, and re-asserted, for the assistance it may give to contemporary theology.

Such an aim is the main burden of this essay. It proposes to achieve that objective by examining one aspect of Catholic teaching on creation, an aspect that has been questioned recently by some theologians,⁴ that, namely, of creation in time. This topic is of particular interest for the light it can shed on the relationships between reason and faith or, more precisely, between science and theology, and this in the context of present-day discussions of man's knowledge of " matters of fact." To appreciate Aquinas's contribution in this area, however, it will first be necessary to set up the contemporary problematic. This can be done most expeditiously by examining the origins and development of the science-religion controversies of the nineteenth century, for these, as we shall see, have had serious and debilitating influences on recent theologies of creation.

1. Science, Theology, and Matters of Fact

The year 1584 marks a convenient starting point for this account, for it was in that year that the young Galileo Galilei is said to have penned a series of student notes on the origin of the universe. Galileo's professors were apparently good scholastics in the Thomistic tradition,⁵ for he affirms in the notes the necessary existence of some first " uncreated and eternal being, on whom all others depend, to whom all others are directed as ultimate end," and who is " the efficient cause of all existence in an unqualified way."⁶ This first uncreated cause is God,

⁴ Protestant as well as Catholic, viz., Langdon Gilkey, John Macquarrie, Robert Guelluy, Donald Ehr, etc., as will be detailed infra.

⁵ For documentation, see my study, " Galileo and the Thomists," in St. Thomas Aquinas Commemorative Studies 1274-1974, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), Vol. 2, pp. 293-330.

⁶ Antonio Favaro, ed., Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale, 20 vols. (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890-1909, reprinted 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 24-25.

Galileo explains, who " not only could, but actually did, create the world de novo," as can be readily known " on the authority of Sacred Scripture and from the determination of the Lateran Council." ⁷ This creation, Galileo goes on, took place in time. Indeed, " no one has been found among writers worthy of credence," he writes, " who affirms that the world existed previous to six thousand years ago." ⁸ He himself can provide a more precise date:

To anyone asking how much time has passed from the beginning of the world I reply . . . that the figure we give is most probable and accepted by almost all educated men. The world was created 5748 years ago, as is gathered from Holy Scripture: for between Adam and the Flood 1656 years elapsed; from the Flood to the birth of Abraham, 322; from the birth of Abraham to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, 505; from the exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the building of the temple of Solomon, 621; from the building of the temple to the captivity of Sedechia, 430; from the captivity to its dissolution by Cyrus, 70; from Cyrus, who began to reign in the 54th Olympiad, to the birth of Christ, who was born in the 191st Olympiad, 560; the years from the birth of Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem, 74; from then up to the present time, 1510.⁹

This text turns out to be extremely important for Galileo scholars, for not only does it give clear indication of the young Pisan's Catholic orthodoxy, but, by supplying information for dating the time of composition of the notes, gives one of the few guides to the chronology of his early education.¹⁰

⁷ Ibid., p. 26.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid., p. 27.

¹⁰ Favaro (ibid., p. 12) calculates that they were written in 1584, simply adding the 74 and the 1510 in the last sentence of the text just cited. According to this calculation, which has been accepted uncritically by most Galileo scholars, the notes would have been written by Galileo when twenty years of age while a medical student at the University of Pisa. A difficulty with this computation, however, is that it neglects the fact that the destruction of Jerusalem took place, not in A. D. 74, but in the year 70. If to this 70 is added the 1510 years said to have elapsed, the time of composition of the notes would be 1580, a full year before Galileo had even begun his studies at the university. Such a circumstance makes it unlikely that the text is based on Galileo's own computation and is more probably something he found in a source composed in 1580 but which he copied at a later date.

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A quarter of a century later, now a professor at the University of Padua, Galileo made his famous discoveries with the telescope, confirming him in his suspicions that the geocentric theory of Ptolemy would have to be abandoned in favor of the Copernican world system. This, in turn, set in motion a sequence of events that led him into Biblical exegesis,¹¹ specifically on how the account of the creation of the world in Genesis was to be interpreted, and ultimately to his condemnation by the Inquisition.¹² Thus was started what has been referred to as " the warfare between science and religion," a warfare that was to continue for almost four centuries, wherein scientifically-inspired arguments over creation would recur down to our own day.¹³

Galileo, in point of fact, never renounced the beliefs detailed in his student notebooks with regard to creation in time or the date of the world's origin. He held only that revisions would be required in the interpretation of Genesis so that the sun, rather than the earth, would be located in the center of the universe. But his very insistence on this interpretation reveals a deeper conviction on his part, namely, that the growth of scientific knowledge must have important consequences for Christian theology. Once a person knew, by reason, the details of the structure of the solar system, he could no longer accept on faith an interpretation that failed to take that structure into account. The interpretation of Scripture, in other words, from

¹¹ See Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, " Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Science " (1615), translated by Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957) pp. 175-216.

¹² For a good account of the condemnation and the events leading up to it, see Jerome J. Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1971).

¹³ E. g., Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1896, Dover reprint) ; it is noteworthy that the index of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1959) contains no entry for creation.

now on would have to respect " matters of fact " as these were established by science. As a corollary to this, theology could no longer stand in independence of science. There would henceforth have to be continuous dialogue between scientist and theologian, the former supplying knowledge of "matters of fact," the latter using these for the fullest possible understanding of divine revelation.

These ideals notwithstanding, Galileo's personal dialogue with Bellarmine and other Roman officials, as is well known, proved nothing less than disastrous. But three quarters of a century later, in the year 1692, another dialogue occurred that seemed more promising for realizing the Italian physicist's ideal. This took place in Protestant England between the great Isaac Newton and a young Anglican theologian, Richard Bentley, who was about to inaugurate a series of lectures under a bequest " of the great and pious Christian philosopher," Robert Boyle.¹⁴ Pursuant to Boyle's intentions, Bentley proposed to use Newtonian science as a defense of Christianity against the attacks of atheists and first focused on the problem of the world's origin. He felt that Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy could be used to support Christian belief in creation and wrote to Newton himself for assistance in showing this. In reply, the great English scientist wrote four letters that explained, in some detail, how his laws of mechanics failed to account for certain aspects of the solar system's structure and how it therefore seemed necessary to invoke God as a further explanatory principle. In what was later to be identified as a " God-of-the-gaps " doctrine, Newton saw God, in a vast creative act at the beginning of time, orienting the planets in space and impelling them by forces exactly calculated to put them in elliptical orbits around the sun. And parenthetically, his calculations showed that this momentous event took place in the year 3988 B.C., thus making the universe

¹⁴ For details see the essay, " Newton, Galileo, and Plato " by Alexandre Koyré in his Newtonian Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 201-202.

180 years younger than it would be according to the figures recorded over a century earlier by Galileo!¹⁵

Had Newton stopped there the concordist dialogue between science and theology could have remained on safe ground for another century and a half. Unfortunately, however, he did not, for he wished to show how God's intervention was necessary not only at the beginning of time but also to conserve the planets in their continuing orbital motions. According to his calculations, the effects of the planets' mutual gravitational attractions should result in a basic instability of the solar system whereby they would all ultimately fall into the sun, if corrections were not continually introduced to preserve them in stable orbits. Newton saw the necessity of such interventions as a new proof of God's existence, for, in his mind, God's action could be conceived as the requisite physical force, steadily applied to the planets, maintaining the stability of the solar system. Newton's arch-rival, Leibniz, was quick to point out that this was not a particularly complimentary estimate of God and his handiwork, for he seemingly had produced a clock-work universe that ran so poorly it had to be continually adjusted in order to be kept going.¹⁶ Yet others, like Bentley, were willing to take this type of argument and use it as a new proof for the existence of God.

The success of this proof, however, was short-lived. Continental physicists, following up Leibniz's criticism, were soon able to point out the inadequacy of Newton's calculations; specifically, they showed how the perturbing effects of planets on each other would cancel out, thereby preserving the stability of the solar system without the necessity of a special divine intervention. The net effect of the Newton-to-Bentley correspondence,

¹⁵ See William Hales, A New Analysis of Chronology and Geography, History and Prophecy, 4 vols. (London: C. and F. Rivington, 1830), Vol. 1, p. 233. Newton's letters to Bentley are contained in I. Bernard Cohen, ed., Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).

¹⁶ Koyré has an interesting account of this interchange in his From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), pp. 235-272.

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on this account, proved quite detrimental for the science-theology dialogue. By the time its full consequences had come to be realized the Enlightenment was well underway, and even religious-minded people were inclined to place less credence in Scriptural belief than in rationalist-inspired argumentation. As soon as Laplace had succeeded in showing that the " gaps " Newton saw in his system no longer existed, there was a strong temptation to make the " God of the gaps " disappear along with them. Like Galileo, Newton had thought to place his science at the service of religion, but in so doing he had unwittingly prepared the way for a rejection of God in the name of science. Such a repudiation of God as an explanatory factor, of course, was not complete and unequivocal; it was meant to apply only to the present universe and to the causes effecting its daily operation. At this stage in science's history there was little suspicion that arguments of Laplace's type could be extended back into history, that God might become a superfluity even there. In the eighteenth century men were content to limit God's activity in the universe to his creative acts at some remote epoch at the beginning of time. But as far as present " matters of fact " were concerned, these had now become matters for scientific inquiry alone, and theology would have nothing further to contribute towards their explanation.

The foregoing has been concerned solely with the impact of astronomy and celestial mechanics on theological reasoning. As the eighteenth century wore on, and extending well into the nineteenth, discoveries in other scientific disciplines led to yet further retrenchments in matters of religious belief. Scientists turned their attention to the bowels of the earth, and men began to dig in earnest. A great variety of fossil remains were uncovered and the stratification of the earth's crust was revealed in ever greater detail. With this it began to dawn on men's minds that the earth too had a history.¹⁷ Such a realization,

¹⁷ The story of this awakening is told graphically by John C. Green, The Death of Adam. Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1959), pp. 39-127.

coupled with geographical exploration of the earth's surface and the eventual cataloguing of all its extant flora and fauna, prepared for even more startling disclosures. For strata and fossils were uncovered revealing not only that vast changes had occurred in the earth's structure, but that still more radical changes had taken place in the plant and animal types inhabiting its surface.

Such discoveries were of immediate and momentous importance for the dialogue between science and theology. With regard to the geological changes, granted that these had indeed taken place in the course of the earth's history, how were they to be explained? Were they caused by " mighty acts of God," analogous to creation, whereby catastrophes such as the Flood had been caused in ancient times? Such questions were not considered irrelevant in the early history of geological science, when Neptunists and Vulcanists vied with each other for satisfactory explanations of the upheavals that had altered the earth's surface.¹⁸ Cataclysmic geology then found a ready ally in Scriptural geology, and once more scientists and theologians saw their disciplines united in a common search for the factors that would render the earth's history intelligible to mankind.

But again the cooperation was to be short-lived, for another great scientist soon appeared on the scene, Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology. Lyell's major program, known as uniformitarianism, consisted in showing that all geological changes in the earth's history could be explained by causes similar to those known still to be acting, according to physical laws that remain uniform throughout time. The systematic application of this principle of explanation quickly ruled out God's intervention as an explanatory factor in geology. It did not, to be sure, entail an actual denial of the Biblical Flood but only the acknowledgement that, if such a flood did take place, it would now require explanation along lines similar to those accounting for floods in more recent history.

¹⁸ See Charles C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology. A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), esp. pp. 41-120.

Thus was Lyell effectively convinced that theology had no place in geology, just as Laplace had been convinced that it had no place in celestial mechanics. Yet Lyell was not rejecting God entirely; he still allowed that the divine creative act was the only way of explaining how man had come into existence on the earth's surface. Like Newton before him, he did not quite anticipate how his methodology might be used to undermine even this personal religious conviction. Uniformitarianism, as it turned out, could be applied in the biological sciences as well as in the geological, and when this was effected by Charles Darwin, the way had finally been prepared for the rejection of divine intervention even in the matter of man's origins. The full story of that development cannot be gone into here; suffice it to mention only that Darwin took Lyell's Principles of Geology with him while on the voyage of the Beagle and later felt that he had successfully applied its uniformitarian doctrine to biology, initially to explain the origins of all sub-human species, and finally even to account for the " descent of man " himself.¹⁹

With Darwin's work, the dialogue between science and theology inaugurated by Galileo was in reality reduced to a monologue. In the early seventeenth century, of course, science was in its infancy and theology reigned supreme as the queen of the intellectual disciplines. By the end of the nineteenth century the tables had been turned completely. " Matters of fact " had by then come to embrace not only the state of the present universe but all knowable events throughout its long history. If such events were to be explained, they could now be explained uniquely by science; theology was no longer necessary or even relevant for their understanding. Moreover, as evolutionary doctrine continued to be refined and clarified, the time scale for its application came to be expanded exponentially. The age of the earth had been revised upward, from Archbishop Ussher's estimate of 5654 years in the mid-seventeenth century,

¹⁹ A good account is Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century. Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1958).

to Lecomte de Buffon's " rash guess " of over a hundred thousand years in the late eighteenth, to Lord Kelvin's calculation of some ten million years in the mid-nineteenth, to current estimates of five billion years in the mid-twentieth.²⁰ Naturally, the thought would have to suggest itself that time too might be unending, that creation, if still a matter of religious belief, could be postponed indefinitely, and that even the ancient view of creation at the beginning of time might prove incompatible with the ever advancing knowledge provided by science.

The adjustments of theologians to these developments were quite predictable. In a battle wherein they were constantly being defeated, not surprisingly many decided either to join forces with the enemy or to change the ground of battle entirely, so that theological discourse would remain forever unaffected by subsequent advances in science. Protestant theologians, true to their Lutheran and Kantian heritages, were the first to offer such agnostic alternatives, but in an ecumenical age they could not be expected to remain completely alone, and so a few Catholic theologians have been attracted to their style of reasoning also.

The first such movement to be discussed here, liberal theology, in effect joined forces with science by assimilating all of its discoveries within a weakened religious context. Theologians in this movement were content to relinquish God's transcendence and to see him as immanent within nature, as part of its evolutionary process. Man they viewed as essentially sinless, proceeding from an undeveloped and imperfect state traditionally associated with " original sin " but ever progressing and working toward a state of perfection. Again, they did not think of Christ as divine and thus as radically different from other human beings; rather they saw him as an outstanding man, providing inspirational leadership and an excellent example of human goodness, certainly someone to be imitated and followed. Finally, for them God was not to be discovered through his activity in the physical universe but rather within

²⁰ See Eiseley, op. cit., pp. 35-42, 233-241.

man and particularly through religious experience, through the " miracles " he works in the lives of individuals.²¹

Such a radical adjustment to the scientific world-view still has some appeal for Unitarians and Universalists, but most religious thinkers find this progressivist and optimistic doctrine incomprehensible in the face of two World Wars and the many disorders plaguing modern man and society. A typical reaction is that of Karl Barth, a seminal thinker within neo-orthodoxy, who was taught liberal theology in his youth and later came to reject practically all its teachings. Instead of seeing God as immanent within nature or cosmic process, Barth strongly affirmed God's transcendence and the fact that he is " wholly Other." Rather than share the liberals' view of man as sinless and ever-progressing he stressed that man is blinded by sin, is so sinful in fact that his reason is powerless to understand the world as God's handiwork. Again, Christ is not like other men; for Barth, he is radically dissimilar, being the primary revelation of God, the Word made flesh. And finally, the sovereign and transcendent God is separated from sinful man by a gulf so vast that it can never be crossed by man through moral consciousness, religious experience, or any philosophical reflection based on his own initiative. God can only be known when he chooses to reveal himself, and this primarily through Jesus Christ.²²

Part of God's revelation to man, for Barth, is the fact of creation, which he sees as an actual historical event that took place in time. Knowledge of this event, however, will always remain inaccessible to science or to man's unaided reason and thus no truly scientific problems can arise in relation to the creation account. Barth did not agree, for this reason, with other Protestant thinkers who had ceased to regard creation as an historical event and were interpreting it as God's timeless relation to creatures and their existence.²³ As neo-orthodoxy developed,

²¹ For a summary, see Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), pp. 101-108.

²² Cf. ibid., pp. 116-119.

²³ For an analysis of Barth's views on creation, see Thomas E. Hosinski, " Creation and the Origin of the Universe: I," Thought, Vol. 48, No. 189 (1973), pp. 222-226.

however, Barth's literal appraisal of the creation event fell out of favor and in its place was substituted a more mythical interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Langdon Gilkey is the best spokesman for this newer interpretation, which has come to be widely accepted in Protestant circles, and which, far more effectively than the Barthian solution, removes belief in creation from any possible attack by modern science.²⁴ As Gilkey sees it, the revealed doctrine of creation has nothing whatever to do with the temporal origins of the universe or of man but is merely a symbolic way of teaching man's complete ontological dependence on God. So viewed creation is not an event but a relationship, which would be true whether time were finite or infinite, although in the creation story proposed to primitive peoples only the former possibility is envisaged. In Gilkey's words:

The myth of creation does not tell us about the first moment of time, any more than the myth of the Fall tells us about a first human being. What it does tell us is that every moment of time, likely every contingent thing, comes to be from the creative power of God. The question of the first moment of chronological time is a question for the astrophysicist, not for the theologian, just as the question of the first Homo sapiens is a question for the anthropologist, not for the biblical scholar. The event of creation of which we speak in theology is not just an initial event within a first moment of time: rather it points to the relation of all events to their eternal source. It is a theological myth which speaks to us of God and of his deeds not ultimately of the universe and its workings.²⁵

This citation not only makes precise Gilkey's position on creation in time but supplies some indication of his reason for adopting it. Just as he would leave to science answers to questions about man's origins, so he would vacate the field of cosmogenesis entirely and not presume to commit himself as to when creation

²⁴ See Gilkey's Maker of Heaven and Earth. The Christian Doctrine of Creation in the Light of Modern Knowledge (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1959); Gilkey's main thesis is summarized by Hosinski, loc. cit., pp. 226-231.

²⁵ Maker of Heaven and Earth, pp. 317-318.

took place, or even whether belief in creation is reconcilable with a universe of infinite duration.

Other prominent Protestant theologians, such as Paul Tillich and John Macquarrie, are in substantial agreement with Gilkey's analysis. "The doctrine of creation," writes Tillich, " is not the story of an event that took place ' once upon a time.' It is the basic description of the relation between God and the World." ²⁶ Macquarrie is no less explicit:

The exposition of creatureliness in terms of dependence puts to the side the question about creation as a beginning in time, . . . [a] problem that nowadays must be turned over to scientific cosmology. . . . In principle [it] is capable of being settled by empirical observation, and . . . probably will be settled as, by radio-telescopes and other means, science probes further into the remote history of the universe. We shall then learn whether there was a time when the cosmic process began, or whether it has always been going on much as we see it now. Theology can have nothing to say on this matter, and, on the other hand, whatever answer science may produce, this would not affect the doctrine of creation, as it is expounded here. For this doctrine is not an assertion that things began at a given time in the past, but is an attempt to describe the characteristics of creaturely beings. If this is the true purpose of a doctrine of creation, then we see once more the value of an existential approach, and the corresponding danger of an approach through nature, since the latter can so easily become the question of how things began and can trespass into an area that properly belongs to science.²⁷

This development within Protestant theology is not to be unexpected in the light of higher Biblical criticism, which made greater advances in Protestant circles than in Catholic, and in Protestantism's non-acceptance of the conciliar teachings set forth in the Fourth Lateran and First Vatican Councils. Because of the authoritative interpretation given these sources of revelation by the Catholic Church, Roman Catholic theologians have generally been less fearful of the so-called advances

²⁶ Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951-1963), Vol. 1 (1951), p. 252.

²⁷ John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966), p. 199.

of science and have continued to proclaim creation as an historical event that took place at the beginning of time. Recently, however, some Catholic theologians have questioned whether this teaching is truly authoritative and so have moved closer to the newer Protestant position. Among the first to initiate the move in this direction was the Dominican theologian, A. D. Sertillanges. Discussing the question as to whether a teaching on creation in time is explicit among the Church Fathers Sertillanges writes:

The Councils of the Lateran and of the Vatican, true to say, seem to be more explicit. They speak clearly of creation as having taken place at the beginning of time, ab initio temporis. But it remains to find out if the intention of the text actually bears on this particular circumstance, or does not simply mean to exclude errors which would equate the creature with God in the matter of duration, or particularly those that would take something away from the creator's domain, such as the eternal matter of the ancients.²⁸

Having previously mentioned that Aquinas had held that philosophers could never prove, one way or another, whether the universe had a beginning in time, Sertillanges goes on:

If the position that St. Thomas says is tenable in philosophy had been mentioned in our religious documents and excluded, then there would not be any further room for doubt. Lacking that, I am hesitant, and for myself I would not condemn a physicist who might say: there is no stopping point in the regress from the course of phenomena; because every phenomenon is explained by an antecedent from whence it proceeds.²⁹

Other Catholic scholars have taken up this questioning attitude³⁰ with the result that Donald Ehr, when writing the article on creation for the New Catholic Encyclopedia, decided against the traditional position on the matter of creation in

²⁸ Antonin G. Sertillanges, L'Idée de création et ses retentissements en philosophie (Paris: Aubier, 1945), p. 19.

²⁹ Ibid.; it is difficult to see, of course, how the Fourth Lateran Council could have discussed and excluded Aquinas's opinion, since it was held in 1215 before he was born.

³⁰ Notably Robert Guelluy, La Création. 2 ed. (Tournai: Desclée, 1963).

time. Inquiring whether the world actually did begin in the sense of having " a first moment," Ehr notes initially that philosophical arguments seem unable to provide a definitive solution.³¹ He continues:

Moreover, it also seems difficult to assert that revelation gives the answer with the certitude of faith. Scripture, the creeds, the councils speak unanimously of the beginning of the world and contrast strongly creatures, which began, with God, who alone enjoys the privilege of being eternal. But perhaps one sufficiently maintains what the texts intend to affirm if he distinguishes eternity, in its transcendence with regard to time and temporal duration, from the creature that receives its total reality from the eternal.³²

Apparently not wishing to depart more explicitly from tradition, Ehr then resorts to rhetorical questioning:

Is it contrary to revelation to think of a world always dependent on God, that has received from Him a duration without beginning? Does this alter what one knows about the history of salvation from revelation? It is important to stress that this point is secondary in the doctrine of creation. The essential thing is that at every moment the universe has been in the same need of God and has always received its reality from the absolute free liberality of God, who is entirely transcendent and above its work.³³

The mention of transcendence in the last citations echoes a theme of Barthian theology and its radical separation of the domains of science and religion. This is not the only movement within Protestantism, however, that would so dispose of the science-religion controversy. Existential theology and linguistic analysis, each in its own way, adopt similar stances with respect to scientific discourse. Existentialists such as Martin Buber and Karl Heim distinguish science from religion on the basis that the former's concern is objectivity whereas the latter's is subjectivity.³⁴ For a thing to be objective, and thus characterized

³¹ " Creation," The New Catholic Encyclopedia, gen. ed. W. J. McDonald, 15 vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967), Vol. 4, p. 423.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid; cf. Peter Schoonenberg, God's World in the Making (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 28.

³⁴ See Karl Heim, Christian Faith and Natural Science (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), pp. 35-150; note also the " existentialist approach " advocated by Macquarrie in the text cited supra, p. 497.

by the " I-It " relationship, is for it to be " out there," something in the past, something that already " has been." As opposed to this, subjectivity, operating within one's interior and putting him in contact with the moment " now," defines an area of personal communication and understanding, characterized by the " I-Thou " relationship, that shows a person what really is, what is actually existent.³⁵ Linguistic analysts such as Frederick Ferré dissolve any conflicts between science and religion by showing that these use quite different languages, which in turn are characteristic of their mutually exclusive areas of concern. The language of science is instrumental, since it enables one to summarize data, make predictions about future events, and even control the course of nature. Religious language, on the other hand, orients a person's life in terms of matters of ultimate concern, worship, and devotion. For neither language, moreover, is it essential to make strong metaphysical commitments or even statements about the structure of reality.³⁶

This should suffice for a brief survey of the way in which contemporary theologians have reacted to the challenge posed by the advance of science. Rather than contest issues that share a common ground, they have left the arena entirely and attempt to define the theological enterprise in such ways that it can flourish in complete independence of any scientific discovery. The resulting solution, neat and tidy though it be, unfortunately will not stand close scrutiny, for like most such solutions it gives rise to more serious difficulties than those it was designed to solve, difficulties in fact that threaten to emasculate theology and religious belief entirely. Specifically, if the story of creation as recounted in the Scriptures is a myth that communicates a spiritual truth but in no way refers to an historical event described literally in the objective, space-time framework of scientific

³⁵ Ibid., pp. 104-105.

³⁶ See Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic and God (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961); also the summary in Barbour, op. cit., pp. 121-125.

language, then the way is prepared for the removal of all historical, not to say ontological, content from revelation itself. If creation in time is not a " matter of fact," to put it bluntly, then why not deny the same status to all the " mighty acts of God " and to every key belief in the Judaeo-Christian religion from the crossing of the Red Sea to the Resurrection of Christ? Protestant theologians and the neo-orthodox in particular, by zealously removing all " matters of fact " from religious discourse, have thus performed too radical a surgery on the body of religious knowledge. In a recent work Gilkey himself calls attention to the serious consequences of this move and lays its blame at the doorstep of the new hermeneutics which, although advertizing itself as a biblical theology, actually was dictated by a naive attitude towards modern science. In his words:

However biblical they tried to be, the acceptance by neo-orthodox theologians of the modern scientific world view forced on them a new form of hermeneutic, and as a consequence a radical transformation of their understanding of the whole bible story from Adam right through to eschatology. And what is important is that the way they told that refashioned story reveals their acceptance of scientific truth in every sentence.³⁷

The retelling of that story also showed its weaknesses and incongruities, as Gilkey goes on to detail:

God had acted, yes, but no longer had He acted upon the observable surface of nature history. Rather His activity was an incognito, an activity related, to be sure, in some manner to the observable events of space and time, but seen as God's activity only by the eyes of faith, since to the ordinary observer all this would have looked like ordinary events, like in fact the world pictured by naturalistic science and historical inquiry. . . . That activity was " there," and that activity was " real," but it could be seen only by faith. What that " there " was, if it was not in observable natural or human history, . . . was thus left a problem which has hounded biblical theology almost to its death.³⁸

³⁷ Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future. Reflections on Myth, Science, and Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 27-28.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 28.

Gilkey's point in calling attention to this situation, finally, is to stress that it had its source, and most basic explanation, " in the nineteenth-century history of the altercations of science and religion which forced theologians and biblical scholars to admit that religious language, and therefore biblical language, does not entail any affirmations of ' matters of fact.' "³⁹

This, then, is the contemporary problematic with respect to creation in time. Protestant theologians, followed now by some Catholics, have been so intimidated by scientific thought within the past century that they have effectively relinquished all claim to knowledge of " matters of fact." And because creation in time has traditionally been regarded as such a matter, they would delete it from the articles of faith and search for other interpretations, however bizarre, that might confer new meaning on this age-old teaching of the Church.

2. Aquinas on Creation in Time

It is in such a context that Aquinas's teaching on creation in time takes on new importance in the present day. Living as he did well before Galileo, Aquinas could not be expected to know the challenges modern science would present to religious belief. Yet even in his day there were strong reasons that might impel one to retrench on the matter of creation in time. Aquinas, as we shall see, did not do so, being firmly convinced that creation in time was an article of faith. His metaphysics of essence and existence, already alluded to, enabled him to work out a consistent position that preserved the article and still allowed full play to reason and faith, without imposing arbitrary restrictions on what one might be entitled to believe. Since that metaphysics has already been well worked over, the accent in what follows will be on Aquinas's hermeneutical procedures, since such procedures, as Gilkey has just reminded us, were the single most important factor in creating the impasse to which the " new orthodoxy " has come,

³⁹ Ibid., pp. 28-29.

in its abortive attempts to deal with challenges to faith arising from modern science.

The question of the world's eternity, and whether or not this can be proved or disproved by reason alone, occupied St. Thomas's attention from his earliest writings to the last years of his life. The reason for this is that it typified the oppositions between Averroist Aristotelians, who were convinced that the world's eternity could be demonstrated by reason alone, and traditional Augustinian theologians, who felt that they could demonstrate the world's creation in time. Steering a middle course between the opposed positions, Aquinas taught that it was impossible to demonstrate either that the world has always existed or that it had a beginning in time, but that the issue had been decided in favor of the latter by divine revelation.⁴⁰ Whereas his metaphysics enabled him to prove that the world must have been created, it did not force him to hold that it was created in time. To demonstrate the world's temporal origin, he explained, one would have to proceed either from an analysis of the world's essence or from a knowledge of the efficient cause placing it in existence. Questions of essence, however, abstract completely from the " here and now," and thus any analysis of the world in its nature (quod quid est) is powerless to shed light on when it came into existence. A consideration of the cause producing it could provide such knowledge, provided the cause were such that it acted necessarily, for then the necessity of its action would be open to demonstrative proof. If the cause acted voluntarily, on the other hand, knowledge of the circumstances of its operation would depend upon its will and how this might be made manifest. God's action in producing creatures, however, Aquinas has already shown to be voluntary.⁴¹ God may therefore reveal to man how and when

⁴⁰ Summa Theologiae, I, q. 46, a. 2. For an excellent account of the controversies and the basic documents necessary for its understanding, see St. Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, St. Bonaventure, On the Eternity of the World (De Aeternitate Mundi), translated from the Latin with an Introduction by Cyril Vollert, Lottie H. Kendzierski, Paul M. Byrne. Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 16 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1964).

⁴¹ Ibid., q. 19, a. 4.

the world were created, should he will to do so, but otherwise man can have no certain knowledge of the universe's beginning in time.

The first systematic exposition of this teaching is in the Commentary on the Sentences, written at the beginning of Aquinas's first Paris professorship circa 1256, wherein Aquinas acknowledges his debt to Moses Maimonides for the basic lines of his solution. After leaving Paris he took up the question again in the portion of the Summa contra Gentiles written in Italy. During the Italian sojourn he also devoted a question of De potentia to whether the world has existed forever and further wrote an exposition of the first Decretal bearing on this question, which will occupy us later. It was during this period that Aquinas wrote the first part of the Summa Theologiae, wherein his treatment of creation in time took definitive form. Then, recalled to Paris for an unprecedented Paris professorship from 1269 to 1272, he became embroiled in a series of controversies that forced him to reiterate his position and state it yet more clearly. This is apparent in his Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, in a Quodlibet where he explicitly states that creation in time is an article of faith, and again in a polemical treatise directed against the Augustinian traditionalists, De aeternitate mundi. Following these controversies Aquinas returned to Naples and there continued to reassert his teaching in his Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo and in two questions of his Compendium theologiae, probably his last work on systematic theology.

What is curious about all of these tracts is that they concentrate almost exclusively on the rationes that support Aquinas's conclusions but supply very little indication of the authoritative sources on which his doctrinal interpretation is based. Even when asserting that the world's beginning in time is an article of faith, he does not refer to conciliar teaching but gives only Scriptural passages in support of his assertion. For purposes of future reference, all of these statements will be listed here in their approximate chronological order, with statements

relating to " divine revelation," " Catholic faith," etc., being shown in italics:

1. Commentary on the Sentences (c. 1256) Bk. 2, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 5: ". . . Secunda positio est dicentium quod mundus incepit esse postquam non fuerat. . . ; volunt etiam quod mundum incepisse non solum fide teneatur sed etiam demonstratione probetur. Tertia positio est dicentium quod omne quod est praeter Deum incepit esse; sed tamen mundum incepisse non potuit demonstrari, sed per revelationem divinam esse habitum et creditum. . . . Et huic positioni consentio: quia non credo quod a nobis possit sumi ratio demonstrativa ad hoc, sicut nec ad Trinitatem, quamvis Trinitatem non esse sit impossibile. . . ." In support of this interpretation Aquinas here cites the authority of Gregory the Great, in his first homily on Ezechiel, where he mentions that prophecy, meaning by this divine inspiration, can concern the past, and instances Moses's revelation in Genesis 1.1, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."⁴² Aquinas further notes the weakness of the arguments offered by
those subscribing to the second position, and the fact that they expose the faith to ridicule when they employ such arguments to prove, against the philosophers, the newness of the world.

2. Summa contra Gentiles (c. 1260) Bk. 2, ch. 37: " Sic igitur evidenter apparet quod nihil prohibet ponere mundum non semper fuisse. Quod fides catholica ponit . . ." Here Aquinas again cites Genesis 1:1 and then adds the assertion from Proverbs 8:22-23: " The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made anything from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made."

Ibid. ch. 38: " Hae autem rationes quia non usquequaque

⁴² Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 217 vols. (Paris: 1878-1890), Vol. 76, col. 786.

de necessitate concludunt, licet probabilitatem habeant, sufficit tangere solum, ne videatur fides catholica in vanis rationibus constituta, et non potius in solidissima Dei doctrina."

Ibid.: " Ab omnibus enim his ponitur aliquid praeter Deum aeternum. Quod fidei catholicae repugnat."

3. De Potentia (c. 1265-69), q. 3, a. 17: " Dicendum quod firmiter tenendum est mundum non semper fuisse, sicut fides catholica docet."

4. Summa Theologiae (c. 1267), I, q. 46, a. 2: " Sed contra, fidei articuli demonstrative probari non possunt: quia fides de ' non apparentibus ' est, ut dicitur ad Heb. 11.1. Sed Deum esse creatorem mundi, sic quod mundus incoeperit esse, est articulus fidei: dicimus enim: ' Credo in unum Deum etc.' " Here Aquinas again cites Gregory on Genesis, and concludes " Ergo novitas mundi habetur tantum per revelationem."

Ibid., corpus: " Respondeo dicendum quod mundum non semper fuisse, sola fide tenetur, et demonstrative probari non potest, sicut et supra de mysterio Trinitatis dictum est." In addition to these statements it should be noted that Aquinas, in the Sed contra of art. 1, again cites Proverbs 8:22 and adds to this John 17:5, "And now glorify thou me, Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee, before the world was." Similarly, in the body of art. 3, where he gives a further exegesis of Genesis 1:1, he takes support from Psalms 103:24, " Thou hast made all things in wisdom. . . ," and from Colossians 1:16, "For in him [the Son] were all things created in heaven and on earth . . ."

5. Commentary on the Physics (c. 1270), Bk. 8 lect. 2:, n. 16: " Hae igitur rationes sunt ex quibus Aristoteles probare intendit motum semper fuisse et nunquam deficere. Quod quidem quantum ad unam partem fidei nostrae repugnat, scilicet quod ponatur motus semper fuisse. . . . Quantum vero ad aliam partem, non omnino

est contrarium fidei: quia ut supra dictum est, non agit Aristoteles de motu caeli, sed universaliter de motu. Ponimus autem secundum fidem nostrum substantiam mundi sic quandoque incepisse quod tamen nunquam desinat esse. Ponimus etiam quod aliqui motus semper erunt, praesertim in hominibus, qui semper remanebunt, incorruptibilem vitam agentes, vel miseram vel beatam."

Ibid. n. 17: "Sunt enim huiusmodi rationes efficaces ad probandum quod motus non inceperit per viam naturae, sicut ab aliquibus ponebatur: sed quod non inceperit quasi rebus de novo productis a primo rerum principio, ut fides nostra ponit, hoc iis rationibus probari non potest. . . ."

Ibid., lect. 21, n. 7: ". . .Quod patet esse falsum tam secundum opinionem ipsius quam secundum sententiam fidei christianae, quae ponit substantiam mundi in infinitum duraturam."

6. Quodlibetum tertium (c. 1270), q. 14, a. 2, Sed contra: ". . . Sed mundum ex quodam principio temporis esse creatum est fidei articulus, . . ." and here again Aquinas cites Gregory on Genesis as his authority.

7. De aeternitate mundi (c. 1271) : " Supposito, secundum fidem catholicam, mundum ab aeterno non fuisse, sicut quidam philosophi errantes posuerunt, sed quod mundus durationis initium habuit, sicut Scriptura sacra, quae falli non potest, testatur, dubitatio mota est utrum potuerit semper fuisse."

8. Commentary on the De caelo (c. 1272-1273), lect. 6, n. 7: " Non tamen dicimus secundum fidem catholicam quod caelum semper fuerit, licet dicamus quod semper sit duraturum."

Ibid., lect. 29, n. 12: "Nos autem secundum fidem catholicam ponimus quod incoepit esse, non quidem per generationem quasi a natura, sed effluens a primo principio, cuius potentia non erat alligata ad dandum ei esse infinito tempore, sed secundum quod voluit, postquam prius non

fuerat, ut manifestetur excellentia virtutis eius supra totum ens. . . ."

9. Compendium theologiae (c. 1272-1273), ch. 99: "Sed cum ostensum sit supra quod etiam materia non est nisi a Deo, pari ratione fides catholica non confitetur materiam esse aeternam, sicut nec mundum aeternum."

Ibid.: " Sic ergo fides catholica nihil Deo coaeternum ponit, et propter hoc ' creatorem et factorem omnium visibilium et invisibilium ' confitetur."

This series of texts reveals an interesting progression of thought, particularly when one focuses on the content of what Aquinas asserts to be of faith. Things that are known by divine revelation, for him, are equivalent to those assented to by " our faith," or "the Catholic faith," or "the Christian faith," by all of which expressions he mean nothing more than the faith of the Roman Catholic Church.⁴³ Apparently his reflection on that faith, as he interprets and explicates it with ever greater precision, enables him to see a certain equivalence in the following series of affirmations: (1) that the world began [nn. 1 & 4 of the texts cited above]; (2) that the world did not always exist [nn. 2 & 3]; (3) that nothing is eternal except God [n. 2]; (4) that motion did not always exist [n. 5]; (5) that motion began like something produced de novo by a first principle [n. 5]; (6) that the substance of the world is not of infinite duration [n. 5]; (7) that the world was created at a certain beginning in time [n. 6]; (8) that the world did not exist from eternity [n. 7]; (9) that the world had a beginning of its duration [n. 7]; (10) that the heavens have not always existed [n. 8]; (11) that the heavens began to exist [n. 8]; (12) that matter is not eternal [n. 9]; and (13) that nothing is coeternal with God [n. 9]. In these assertions Aquinas successively affirms the beginning, or non-eternal duration, of the world or the earth or the universe,

⁴³ Ludwig Schütz, Thomas-Lexikon (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1895, reprinted Stuttgart 1958), p. 305.

 page 509

the Latin mundus being the same for all; of motion; of the substance of the universe; of the heavens; of matter; and finally, of everything that exists apart from God.

The hermeneutical base preferred by Aquinas for all these interpretations of Catholic teaching is, as already observed, not very substantial. Apart from two references to the Nicene Creed [nn. 4 & 9], neither of which explicitly states the point at issue, Aquinas seems to rely most heavily on the first sentence of Genesis, which he regards as an inspired statement of Moses, and this merely on the authority of St. Gregory the Great, a pope who reigned at the end of the sixth century. What is most surprising is that Aquinas does not cite, nor do his words show an explicit awareness of, the teachings of the Fourth Lateran Council held in 1215, which could have given firm support to his interpretation.⁴⁴ Both Galileo and Sertillanges,

⁴⁴ There are, however, two pieces of circumstantial evidence that indicate such an awareness on his part and that, taken with the materials to be presented below, strongly support the conjecture that conciliar teaching was part of the hermeneutical base on which he erected his theological arguments. The first is the use of the word " firmiter " in text n. 3, which is also used to designate the decree of the Fourth Lateran bearing on creation in time, to be discussed infra. The second is an incident in the life of Aquinas reported by his biographer, William of Tocco, and graphically described by Fr. James A. Weisheipl, O. P., in Friar Thomas d'Aquino (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1974), p. 287 in the following words. "According to William, a certain religious held his vesperies for the magisterium in Paris and defended a view contrary to the position Thomas had determined in his school, but Thomas allowed the matter to pass unperturbed. On the return journey to Saint-Jacques, the students accompanying Thomas were most indignant that the new master should defend such a position contrary to Thomas's and that Thomas should have allowed such an injury to truth to go unchecked before all the masters of Paris. Thomas replied, more in effect than in words, ' Children, it seems to me that one should be indulgent to a new master at his vesperies, lest he be embarrassed in the presence of all the masters; so far as my doctrine is concerned, I do not fear contradiction from any doctor, since with the help of God I have established it firmly on the authority of the saints and the arguments of truth. However, if you think otherwise, I will try to make up for it tomorrow.' On the next day, in the aula of the bishop, the young master maintained the same position without any change. Then Friar Thomas got up and said modestly, ' Master, that opinion of yours, with all due respect to the truth, cannot be maintained, for it is contrary to such and such a Council, and if you do not wish to oppose the Council, you will have to take another stand.' But when the young master changed his wording, but not his opinion, Thomas again adduced the authority of the Council, and ' forced him to confess his error, and humbly ask the aforesaid doctor to elucidate the truth more fully,' which Thomas is supposed to have done."--Weisheipl then notes that " to this day no one has been able to name the Council in question or the point of the argument," but himself goes on to argue persuasively that the incident probably took place at the inception of the Franciscan John Pecham at Paris in the early months of 1270. Since one of the questions propounded by Pecham at his inception was concerned with creation in time, the Council whose authority was invoked by Aquinas in this incident could well have been the Fourth Lateran.

it may be recalled, point to this teaching as the major source (albeit thirteenth-century) of Catholic doctrine on creation in time.

Why Aquinas chose not to make explicit use of the Fourth Lateran in the texts cited is a problem in its own right that is best left to historians of medieval theological methodology. In any event, the decrees of the Fourth Lateran were not unknown to him, and in fact were probably the single most important factor shaping his foregoing interpretations of Church teaching on creation. Evidence in support of this thesis may be marshalled from a brief analysis of a work recently issued in critical edition by the Leonine Commission, namely, St. Thomas's Commentary on the First Decretal of Gregory IX.⁴⁵ This decretal contains the decree Firmiter of the Fourth Lateran, itself directed against the heretical teachings of the Albigensians and the Cathari. Aquinas composed the commentary probably at the instigation of Giffredus of Anagni, who was socius of the provost of Saint-Omer, Adenulf of Anagni, at whose request, in turn, Reginald of Piperno published St. Thomas's lectures on St. John's Gospel. Giffredus was archdeacon of Todi from 1260 onwards; as Adenulf's socius he was probably present with him in the curia of Urban IV, then residing at Orvieto. It is known that from 1261 to 1265 Aquinas, being on particularly friendly terms with Urban, was in residence at the curia during academic terms, and it is probable that Giffredus attended his lectures while there.⁴⁶ The time of composition is not certain,

⁴⁵ Expositio super primam et secundam decretalem ad Archidiaconum Tudertinum, in Opera Omnia, Tomus XL (Rome: Sancta Sabina, 1969), pp. E1-E50.

⁴⁶ For details on Giffredus, see A. Dondaine and J. Peters, " Jacques de Tonengo et Giffredus d'Anagni auditeurs de S. Thomas," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 29 (1959), pp. 52-72.

although it seems that Aquinas wrote the commentary for Giffredus when he returned to Rome to set up the Studium at Santa Sabina from 1265 to 1267, at which time he also began his masterwork, the Summa Theologiae.

Two decrees are commented on by Aquinas, the first Firmiter as already noted, and the second Damnamus, which refutes and condemns the libellus of Joachim of Flora directed against the Trinitarian doctrine of Peter Lombard. Aquinas treats the two quite differently, glossing over the second in summary fashion but analyzing the first precisely and completely, explaining it lemma by lemma with great care, and using all of the resources of the theologian in so doing. It is difficult to know what historical documents were available to him for this purpose, for these are not clearly indicated in the commentary, but some reconstruction will be attempted in what follows. The Leonine editors cite only the commentary of Henry of Susa (Hostiensis) on the first decretal, to which portions of Aquinas's exposition bear some resemblance and which they feel he may have used in preparing it.⁴⁷

The portion of the text of Firmiter that bears on the problem of creation in time is the following:

Firmiter credimus et simpliciter confitemur quod unus solus est verus Deus . . . , unum universorum principium, creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium: qui sua omnipotenti virtute simul ab initio temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam; ac deinde humanam, quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constitutam. Diabolus enim et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali. . . .⁴⁸

⁴⁷ Opera Omnia, Tome XL, p. E6. See Henricus de Segusio, In primum decretalium librum commentaria (Venice: Apud luntas, 1581) . A summary description of this work is given by Pierre Michaud-Quantin, " Commentaires sur les deux premières décrétales du recueil de Grégoire IX au treizième siècle," Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, ed. Paul Wilpert. Miscellanea Mediaevalia 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1963), pp. 103-109.

⁴⁸ Denzinger-Schönmetzer (hereafter abbreviated DS), 800.

Each of the phrases or lemmas after the ellipsis, beginning with " unum universorum principium," is the subject of comment by Aquinas and worthy of note for the conciliar hermeneutics it embodies. Before translating these portions, however, it may be mentioned that Henry of Susa is extremely brief when commenting on the above passage. At the phrase, "unum universorum principium," he merely notes that this is directed against the " Marchionistae," who hold for two principles, one good and one evil. From this he jumps to the phrase, " simul ab initio," where he writes, somewhat cryptically, that "the Church which will endure to eternity, created all things simul, wherefore in the beginning God created heaven and earth." He then goes on to note that God's creation " cannot be said to be simul " and summarily explains the creation of angels and men: " but he first created angels, and on the sixth day created men, quasi communem, i. e., as an intermediate between the angelic and the earthly. . . ,"⁴⁹ As opposed to this brief exposition, Aquinas's commentary is lengthy and proceeds articulatim, reading as follows for the successive lemmas indicated in italics:

unum universorum principium

The Son is not another principle of things as if he were inferior to the Father, but both are one principle. And what is said here of the Son is to be understood of the Holy Spirit also.⁵⁰

Instead of taking this phrase as part of the exposition relating to God the Creator, as Henry had done, Aquinas annexes it to the preceding portion of the decree treating of Trinitarian doctrine and sees it as directed against an Arian teaching to the

⁴⁹ Ed. cit., fol. 5v. The text reads as follows: [Universorum.] Contra Marchionistas, qui asserunt duo principia bonum et malum . . . [Simul ab initio] Inde ecclesia, qui manet in aeternum, creavit omnia simul, under in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram, [simul] et tamen simul dici non potest. [ Humanam] Sed primo creavit angelos et sexto die creavit homines. [Quasi communem], i. e., mediam inter angelicam et mundanam. . . ."

⁵⁰ E34.389-393. In this method of citation the figures before the period give the page number and those following it the line numbers in the Leonine edition.

effect that God operates through the Son as his instrument or minister. The passage is not otherwise noteworthy, merely showing that Aquinas does not follow Henry on the interpretation of this lemma, if indeed he used him as the basis for his commentary.

creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium

Some heretics like the Manicheans posited two creators, one good who created invisible and spiritual creatures, the other evil who they say created all visible and corporeal things. But the Catholic faith holds that everything apart from God, both visible and invisible, has been created by God. Whence Paul says in Acts 17:24, " God, who made the world and all things therein, he being Lord of heaven and earth, etc." and Hebrews 11:3, "By faith we understand that the world was framed by the Word of God, that from invisible things visible things might be made."⁵¹

The reference here to " two creators " occurs also in two of Aquinas's other writings.⁵² Of more interest is the identification of " the Manicheans," which might be taken to mean the ancient sect but more probably refers to the Neo-Manicheans against whom the decree was directed. It is difficult to document the teachings of the latter in detail, since most of their manuscripts were destroyed by the Inquisition. The essential elements, however, are recorded in an anonymous Liber de duobus principiis written around the middle of the thirteenth century, which incorporates a section " De creatione."⁵³ One of the adversaries of the sect was the Dominican master, Moneta of Cremona, who composed a lengthy Adversus Catharos et Valdenses Libri Quinque at about the same time. The first chapter of Bk. 1 of this treatise is devoted to a detailed

⁵¹ E34.396-407.

⁵² In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 1, and De potentia, q. 3, a. 6.

⁵³ A. Dondaine, ed., Un Traité néo-manichéen du xiii^e siècle, le ' Liber de duobus principiis,' . . . (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1939), pp. 99-109.

exposition and refutation of their teaching on the two principles.⁵⁴ Both works accord with the brief description given above by Aquinas.

qui sua omnipotenti virtute

Another error was that of those holding that God is indeed the first principle of the production of things, but that he did not create this world directly but through the intermediary of angels. This was the error of the Menandrites, and to exclude this it adds " qui sua omnipotenti virtute," because, namely, it is only by the power of God that all creatures have been produced, according to the Psalmist 8:4, "I shall see the heavens, the works of your hands ..."⁵⁵

The reference to the Menandrites Aquinas might have gleaned from the exposition of the Decretals ascribed to Isidore; they are also discussed by Isidore in the Etymologia and by Augustine in De haeresis.⁵⁶

simul condidit utramque creaturam, scilicet spiritualem, et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam

Another error was that of Origen, holding that God at the beginning created only spiritual creatures, and afterwards because certain of them had sinned he created bodies to which he would bind their spiritual substances by some

⁵⁴ Moneta Cremonensis, Adversus Catharos et Valdenses Libri Quinque, ed. Thomas A. Ricchini, O. P. (Rome: Typographia Palladis, 1743), pp. 1-35. This edition contains an account of the life and writings of Moneta, as well as histories of the Cathari and Waldenses. Moneta is best known to Dominicans as the friar in whose cell at Bologna their founder St. Dominic died in 1221. Already a master of arts at the University of Bologna, Moneta became a Dominican in 1220 at the urging of Dominic and Reginald of Orleans. Dominic, of course, had preached against the Albigensians, Cathari, and Waldenses in Languedoc until 1217; then, in 1220 and 1221, enlisting the help of Moneta and others, he launched a similar mission in northern Italy. He had solicited Innocent III in 1215, precisely at the time of the Fourth Lateran Council, for confirmation of his new Order of Preachers, for which approval had been given the following year, on December 22, 1216.

⁵⁵ E34.410-418.

⁵⁶ See the references given by the Leonine editors at line 414.

kind of bond, as if corporeal creatures were not produced by God's principal intention because it was good for them to be, but only to punish the sins of spiritual creatures. For it is said in Genesis, 1:31., " God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."⁵⁷

This passage is extremely important for Aquinas's exegesis of the decree because of the way in which he divides the text. Instead of commenting on the entire lemma, " simul ab initio temporis utramque condidit creaturam," he deletes the phrase " ab initio temporis " so that the " simul " need not take on a strict temporal sense but instead is made to modify the verb " condidit." Possibly Aquinas here had his eye on the Greek text of the Septuagint, which translates the " simul " of Ecclesiastes 18:1, " Creavit omnia simul," with the word " koinē," thereby permitting a translation such as, " He created all things equally." This procedure allows Aquinas to avoid some of the difficulties regarding the teachings of the Fathers on the simultaneous creation of the spiritual and corporeal orders, on which there was far from unanimous teaching.⁵⁸ The exegesis given above, of course, still permits a temporal interpretation but does not highlight this as strongly as the text on which Aquinas is commenting with its immediate juxtaposition of " simul " and " ab initio temporis."

ab initio temporis

Another error was that of Aristotle, holding that all things were indeed produced by God but from eternity, and that there was no beginning of time. But it is written in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."⁵⁹

Here we are back to the key text and the Biblical support used so frequently by Aquinas. What is most noteworthy is the explicit

⁵⁷ E34.419-E35.428.

⁵⁸ For some details, see my introduction, notes, and appendices to Vol. 10, Cosmogony, of the new English translation of St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967).

⁵⁹ E35.432-436,

identification of Aristotle as the adversary behind the decree. Over a century earlier Peter Lombard had called attention to this " error " in distinction 1 of the second book of his Sentences, and already in his commentary on this work Aquinas had identified the opinion as " heretical."⁶⁰ The question that naturally suggests itself is whether Aristotle's teachings were being actively proposed by the Albigensians and the Cathari, and thus should be considered the object of ecclesiastical condemnation. Dondaine's study of the Liber de duobus principiis provides some evidence of Aristotelian influence in Neo-Manichean doctrines,⁶¹ but these are scant compared to Moneta of Cremona's Adversus Cartharos et Valdenses. In chapter 11 of book 5, entitled "De novitate mundi et de rationibus quibus philosophi probant mundum esse aeternum" and running to 34 folio pages in the edition of 1743, Moneta reveals the extent to which his adversaries were indebted to Aristotle and his various Arab commentators.⁶² Thus it is not unlikely that this teaching had been taken up by those against whom the decree was directed and hence was the object of its censure.

de nihilo

Another error was that of Anaxagoras who held that God made the world from some beginning in time, but that the matter of the world preexisted eternally and was not made by God. But the Apostle, [speaking of God,] states in Romans 4:17, " Who calls those things that are not, just as those that are."⁶³

The reference to Anaxagoras here is similar to that to Aristotle in the previous comment and is supported by other identifications in Aquinas's works, where he traces the teaching on the eternity of matter back to this Greek philosopher.⁶⁴ Again there

⁶⁰ In II Sent, d. 1, q. 1, a. 5.

⁶¹ Ed. cit., pp. 18, 50, 141.

⁶² Ed. cit., pp. 477-501.

⁶³  E35.437-443.

⁶⁴  In II Sent., d. 1, q. I, a. 1; In VIII Physicorum, lect. 1, n. 5.

seems little doubt that this was an Albigensian or Neo-Manichean teaching, for the Liber de duobus principiis teaches that creation does not take place " ex nihilo," but rather consists in a type of making (factio) from something as from a pre-existing matter.⁶⁵ Moneta touches on much the same material without addressing the speculative issue explicitly but concentrating on arguments to show that God actually did create the visible, corporeal, and material things of this world.⁶⁶

deinde humanam, quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constitutam

There was another error of Tertullian teaching that the soul of man is corporeal, but the Apostle says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, " Let your whole spirit and mind and body serve," and here he manifestly distinguishes soul and spirit from the body. To exclude this [error] the decree adds, " then " God created a nature that was " human, as constituted of both spirit and body " : for man is composed of a spiritual and a corporeal nature.⁶⁷

Aquinas's source for Tertullian's teaching is probably Isidore's Etymologia and the comments attributed to him on the Decretals.⁶⁸ As Moneta shows in detail, the " heretics " of his time had developed an elaborate doctrine proposing a traducianist explanation of the origin of the human soul along lines similar to that taught by Tertullian.⁶⁹ Thus Aquinas is probably correct in also seeing this ancient error, revived in the century previous to his writing, as a target of the decree.

diabolus autem et alii daemones quidem a Deo natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali

According to the aforementioned error of the Manicheans

⁶⁵ Ed. cit., p. 103; the title of the relevant section reads: " Quod creare et facere sit ex aliquo tanquam ex preiacenti materia."

⁶⁶ Ed. cit., Bk. 1, cc. 6, 8 & 9, pp. 69-104.

⁶⁷ E35.444-453.

⁶⁸ See the references given by the Leonine editors at line 444.

⁶⁹ Ed. cit., Bk. 2, ch. 4, pp. 129-138.

holding for two principles, one good and one bad, not only was a distinction made with respect to the creation of visible and invisible creatures, namely, that the invisible were from the good God, the visible from the bad, but also with respect to invisible things themselves. For they taught that the first principle was invisible and that certain invisible creatures were produced by it which they said were naturally bad; and so among angels there were certain who were naturally good pertaining to the good creation of the good God, who could not sin, and certain others who were naturally bad--whom we call demons-- who could not not sin. This is contrary to what is said in Job 4:18, " Behold those who serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness." ⁷⁰

With this Aquinas rejoins the Neo-Manichean doctrine with which he started this portion of the commentary. The teaching on the angels, of course, was a major issue with the Albigensians, and a considerable portion of the Liber de duobus principiis is devoted to this type of teaching.⁷¹ Similarly, this is a substantial matter for Moneta, who devotes chapters 4 through 7 of his first book to a refutation of the errors it contains.⁷²

The foregoing analysis, while far from complete, should serve to indicate Aquinas's general competence as a conciliar exegete and to fill in some of the authoritative sources on which he probably relied, but which he does not mention, in his various systematic treatments of creation in time. In presenting the text translated and annotated above the Leonine editors remark that the literary genre of the work is that of a summary exposition intended for private use and not a technical work intended for publication.⁷³ Even in spite of this circumstance, however, it is still possible to reconstruct some of the apparatus known in a general way to Aquinas and hence providing the documentary

⁷⁰ E35.454-470.

⁷¹ Ed. cit., pp. 82-98.

⁷² Ed. cit., pp. 44-80.

⁷³ p. E6.

background for his commentary. When all this is taken into account it appears that, with one or two exceptions, his statement of the " Catholic faith " is quite consonant with the positive teaching and the censures of the Fourth Lateran Council.⁷⁴

Before returning to recent theologies of creation and their relation to problems raised by modern science, it may prove worthwhile to pursue briefly the question whether Aquinas had a true sensus ecclesiae and whether his reading of the Fourth Lateran still accords with Church teaching as developed since his time. The principal addition to that teaching came in the second half of the nineteenth century, when atheistic, materialistic, and pantheistic teachings were being propagated throughout Europe. The First Vatican Council, in its constitution Dei Filius, at that time reasserted the doctrine on creation defined by the Fourth Lateran.⁷⁵ The major part of the decree bearing on this subject is actually a verbatim repetition of the text from the Fourth Lateran beginning with the words " simul ab initio temporis " and concluding with " ex spiritu et corpore constitutam." The Vatican decree did, however, amplify the doctrine somewhat, for it added that the world was created by " God alone " (hic solus verus Deus), thereby excluding angels or devils acting as God's instruments in the creative act, and that God in so creating acted of his own free will (liberrimo consilio).⁷⁶ It also appended five canons condemning specific departures from the Catholic faith, including materialism, which would assert that nothing exists apart from matter⁷⁷ ; pantheism, which would identify the substance or essence of all things with God,⁷⁸ or would hold that such things emanated from the

⁷⁴ The exceptions would be the assertions regarding motion, which are made in the context of Aristotelian physics and thus are quite remote from the matters taught by the Fourth Lateran.

⁷⁵ DS 3002.

⁷⁶ Ibid.; note that these additions incorporate the teachings of St. Thomas, Summa Theol., I, q. 45, a. 5 and q. 46, a. 2, into the statement of the Fourth Lateran.

⁷⁷ DS 3022.

⁷⁸ DS 3023.

divine substance or are its manifestation in an evolutionary process, etc.⁷⁹ ; or some combination of the two that would deny that the world and all it contains, in both the spiritual and material orders, was produced by God from nothing " according to its entire substance." ⁸⁰ The final canon further condemned the teachings of Georg Hermes and Anton Günther, asserting explicitly that creation was not necessitated in any way but was a completely voluntary act of God ordered to the manifestation of his own glory.⁸¹

An interesting question arises as to whether, in reasserting the " simul ab initio temporis " phrase of the Fourth Lateran, the Fathers of the First Vatican Council intended to make any further precisions in this teaching. Among the documents of the Council is a disputation by the future cardinal, J. B. Franzelin, S. J., delivered before twenty-four deputed conciliar fathers and bearing on the schema from which the definition was finally made. ⁸² There were four different versions of the constitution Dei Filius, but each contained this very same expression.⁸³ Franzelin pointed out to the conciliar fathers that it was not completely certain that the word simul in the Lateran decree was meant to define the temporal simultaneity of the creation of the material and angelic orders. In substantiation of this he called attention to Aquinas's commentary on the Decretals and the way in which his exegesis of the text permitted a reading of simul in the sense of the Greek koinē to mean that all creation proceeded equally from a single divine plan. Arguing from this and similar documents, most theologians

⁷⁹ DS 3024.

⁸⁰ DS 3025; the Latin text reads " secundum totam suam substantiam," which echoes Aquinas's teaching in the Commentary on the Physics, Bk. 8, lect. 2, cited supra, p.

⁸¹ Ibid., cf. Summa Theol., I, q. 44, a. 4.

⁸² Document 554; see J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vols. in 60 (Paris: 1889-1927), Vol. 50, p. 337, n. 6.

⁸³ These are given in an appendix to Jean-Michel-Alfred Vacant, Études théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican d'après les actes du concile, 2 Vols. (Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1895), Vol. 1, pp. 686-687; see also pp. 690-693.

hold that Vatican I did not intend to go beyond the Fourth Lateran in making more precise the time at which angels and the material universe were created. They did intend to affirm, however, that such creation took place broadly at the beginning of time and that man was not created until some later period.⁸⁴ From this it should be apparent that Aquinas's exegesis of the decree Firmiter is not only consonant with the constitution Dei Filius but was possibly influential in the way in which the latter was formulated and hence can throw light on how it is to be understood. Moreover, that the teaching of the Catholic Church on creation in time has not changed since Vatican I is clear from the encyclical letter Humani Generis, which lists the denial of the world's having had a beginning (mundum initium habuisse) among theses contradictory to the decrees of the First Vatican Council.⁸⁵ Finally, in the preparatory schema for a dogmatic constitution of Vatican II to be entitled De deposito fidei pure custodiendo, it was proposed to devote chapter 8 to the creation and evolution of the world and therein to assert again and explain more fully the world's creation at the beginning of time.⁸⁶ Because of the decision to concentrate on pastoral rather than dogmatic matters, however, this schema was never adopted and thus did not become part of the Second Vatican's decrees.

*     *     *

From the foregoing it should be clear that Aquinas's teaching on creation in time is in continued accord with the Catholic faith as proposed by the magisterium. Apart from this it is of special value today, as already suggested, for the distinctive way in which it permits one to judge " matters of fact " vis-à-vis the science-theology controversies of the nineteenth century.

⁸⁴ E. g., Vacant, op. cit., pp. 221-227; see also the article on the angels by the same author in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant et al., 15 vols. (Paris: 1903-1950), Vol. 2, cols. 1267-1272.

⁸⁵ DS 3890.

⁸⁶ Schemata constitutionum et decretorum de quibus disceptabitur in Concilii sessionibus. Series prima, cap. 3, n. 12. Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum Secundum (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis, 1962), p. 33.

Recent theologians, as we have seen, have sought novel interpretations of the traditional doctrine on creation, but in so doing they have shown themselves naive in evaluating the force of objections arising from modern science. Not aware of the hidden presuppositions that colored their thought, they proceeded as if one could do exegesis, both Biblical and conciliar, in complete abstraction from any philosophical framework or context. Such a framework was, of course, there, and it was that provided by a nineteenth-century so-called " scientific " outlook. In their efforts to preserve the faith or to delineate an area of discourse in which faith commitments would be valid, they conceded too much to their supposed adversaries and as a result effectively denuded religious discourse of its factual and historical content.

Twentieth-century philosophy of science, by contrast, has developed mostly in a positivist or instrumentalist direction and has grown more and more agnostic with regard to its own ability to attain truth and certitude. As a consequence there has been a weakening of epistemological claims from two directions: neither scientists nor theologians are now prepared to take a stand on such important matters as those relating to the universe and its temporal origins. This, in turn, has led to a false irenicism, itself based on the weakness of all cognitive claims. There is no longer a warfare between science and religion, because neither pretends to have any final answers. The void thereby created is filled by a type of fideism or voluntarism that enables the interested party to believe or feel as he will. Even in Catholic seminaries the tract on creation is rarely taught, science no less than philosophy is shunned by seminarians, and emotional involvement is substituted for disciplined rationality in an absurd attempt to make religion " relevant " to modern man.

In such a situation Aquinas's distinctive teaching on creation in time has special significance. With his realistic philosophy of science Aquinas would never underestimate the power of the human mind to arrive at factual or historical knowledge relating to the cosmos. With his deep faith and profound theology

he would never fall into hermeneutical errors that deny the very possibility of man's knowledge in these fields being supplemented by divine revelation. The fact of the world's temporal origin, as has been explained, offers an excellent illustration of a teaching that embodies both these features of Aquinas's thought. The factual status of creation posed a problem that loomed very large in Aquinas's lifetime, to whose solution he devoted all his intellectual energies. In our day, admittedly, that solution is of secondary importance compared to other lessons that may be learned from the creation account.⁸⁷ But it and the polemics with which it was surrounded still provide a most interesting case history showing how the theologian can have something to say concerning " matters of fact," and indeed how he can enjoy some autonomy when so doing, despite the exorbitant claims made by some in the name of science. To deny such a possibility out of hand is one of those " little errors in the beginning "⁸⁸ that can have disastrous consequences for speculative theology and for religious discourse generally.

⁸⁷ And here we would express appreciation for the valuable insights provided by Gilkey and others for a deeper understanding of the traditional teaching on creation and its meaning for modern man. It is not a question of rejecting these insights, particularly when they seem able to give creation doctrine fuller significance for many individuals in the present day. They can do this, however, without placing undue restrictions on the very possibility of divine revelation relating to "matters of fact," and it is only such restrictive interpretations that are being implicitly criticized in this article.

⁸⁸ See the essay of this title by Mortimer Adler, The Thomist, Vol. 38 (Jan. 1974), pp. 27-48.