Prominent among the ‘errors of Aristotle’ was the Philosopher’s teaching that the world has always existed. In the following opusculum, Thomas defends the Aristotelian teaching from the charge that it makes no sense, denying that there is a contradiction in terms involved in saying that the world was created and that it has always existed.
Thomas, as a Christian believer, had no doubt that the claim that the world had always existed is false. It is false because it contradicts the true statement in Genesis that ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth.’ But Thomas is not sure that the claim could be proven false by any philosophical argument.
In reading this short work, we can perhaps understand why many grew impatient with the Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas. He spends a good deal of time showing that there is nothing internally inconsistent in talking of a created eternal world. Not only that, he invokes the authority of Augustine and Anselm to the same effect, and denies that the other Christian thinkers invoked by his opponents provide much support for their view.
Who were these ‘murmurers’ who were unwilling to make their case in public disputation? It is no secret that it was the Franciscans who led the charge against the influence of Aristotle at Paris. They were provoked by the Latin Averroists, no doubt of that, young men who seemed blissfully unconcerned that a philosophical position might conflict with a truth of the faith. But clearly Thomas was anything but a Latin Averroist. He occupied a position between what Canon Van Steenberghen called the ‘heterodox Aristotelians,’ on the one hand, and the Franciscans, on the other. The latter are often referred to as the Augustinian school, but Thomas’s opusculum makes clear that he will not concede that Augustine is on their side.
St Bonaventure, in his commentary on the Sentences, developed a number of arguments meant to show that it simply makes no sense to say that a created world has always existed. One of the arguments is like that alluded to by Thomas, that there would be an actual infinity of souls if the world had always existed. Still, it seems doubtful that it was Bonaventure himself that Thomas had in mind. The ironic digs at his opponents would have been inappropriate if used against the esteemed Bonaventure. But the Franciscans who rose up against Aristotle saw Bonaventure as their leader and doubtless employed some of his arguments.
In the short term, the anti-Aristotelians prevailed, at least locally. In 1270 and again in 1277, three years after the death of Thomas, there were Parisian condemnations of questionable propositions, some of them, in the case of the condemnation of 1277, teachings of Thomas Aquinas. It is frightening to think what the history of the west would have been like if the obscurantists had won. But it is equally frightening to imagine the triumph of the Latin Averroists. In the long run, it was the principled Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas that prevailed.
ON THE ETERNITY OF THE WORLD AGAINST MURMURERS
If we suppose, in agreement with the Catholic faith and contrary to what some philosophers mistakenly have thought, that the world has not existed eternally, and that its duration has a beginning, as Holy Scripture which cannot deceive attests, a doubt arises as to whether it could always have been.
In order to get to the truth of the matter, we should first set down wherein we agree and wherein we disagree with our opponents.
Were it to be supposed that the world could always have been independently of God, as if something apart from him could be eternal and unmade by him, this would be an abominable error, not only in the eyes of faith, but also among the philosophers who maintain and prove that whatever in any way exists must be caused by him who fully and most truly has existence. However, we must ask if it could be maintained that something always existed and yet is wholly caused by God.
Were this to be judged impossible, this would either be because God could not make something that always was or that it could not come to be even if God could make it. All would agree on the first point, namely, that given his infinite power, God can make something that always was. But it remains to be seen whether it is possible for something to come to be that always was.
The claim that it is not possible can be understood in two ways, that is, as being true for one of two reasons, either on account of the removal of passive potency or because it is conceptually incoherent.
In the first way, it could be said that before an angel was made, the angel was not able to come to be, because no passive potency preceded its existence, since it was not made from any underlying matter. Nevertheless, God was able to make the angel and was able to bring it about that the angel came to be, because he did it and it is. So understood, it must simply be granted that according to the faith something caused by God could not always be, if this is tantamount to holding that a passive potency always existed, for that is heretical. But it does not follow from this that God cannot bring it about that some being should always be.
In the second understanding, something is said not to have happened because it involves conceptual incoherence, on the order of an affirmation and its denial not being able to be simultaneously true, although there are some who claimed God could bring this about. Others say that he cannot because it is a nullity. It is, of course, clear that he could not effect this, because if he could he could not. Should someone say that God can do this, the view may not be heretical but it is in my opinion false, in the way that the claim that the past was not involves a contradiction. Thus Augustine, in Against Faustus, writes, ‘Whoever says, “If God is omnipotent he can make the things that were such that they were not,” does not see that he is in effect saying, “If he is omnipotent he can make what is true, as true, be false.”’ ‘None the less there have been those who with great piety said that God can make the past not to have been past and it was not judged heretical.
Is there then some conceptual incoherence, an incompatibility, between something’s being caused by God and always having been? However this comes out, it is not heretical to say that something caused by God has always been. I none the less believe that if there is incoherence (self-contradiction) in the claim, it is false. If there is no incoherence, not only is it not false, it could not be otherwise, and to say so is erroneous. Since it pertains to God’s omnipotence to exceed all understanding and power, one who said that something that could come about in creatures cannot be brought about by God would derogate from God’s omnipotence. (Sins are not a counter-example, since as such they are nullities.)
The whole question then comes down to this: whether or not to be created by God in its complete substance is incompatible with not having a beginning of its duration. That they are not can be shown in this way. There could be only two reasons for their incompatibility, whether the one or the other, or the two together: either because the efficient cause must precede its effect in duration, or because non-existence must precede existence in duration, which is why it is said to be created from God from nothing [ex nihilo].
The first thing to show is that it is not necessary that the efficient cause, namely God, precede his effect in duration, should he so will.
The first, then. No cause which produces its effect immediately [subito] need precede its effect in existence. But God produces his effect immediately, not through motion. Therefore, it is not necessary that he precede his effect in duration.
The first premiss is inductively evident from all immediate changes, such as illumination and the like. None the less, it can be proved as follows.
In any instant in which a thing exists, the principle of its action can be posited, as is clear in all generable things since in that instant in which fire begins to be, heating begins. But in immediate activity, its beginning and end are the same, as is the case with all indivisibles. Therefore, in any instant in which an agent producing its effect immediately is given, the term of its action can also be posited. But the term of its action is simultaneous with the things having been made. Therefore, it is not incoherent to posit a cause producing its effect immediately and not preceding it in duration.
It would be incoherent to say this of causes which produce their effects through motion, because the beginning of motion must precede its end. Because we are accustomed to makings that involve motion, the claim that an efficient cause need not precede its effect in duration is not easily grasped. So it is that many unlearned men, taking into account only a few things, arrive at easy answers.
The fact that God is a voluntary cause presents no difficulty, because it is not necessary that the will precede its effect in duration, nor the voluntary agent, unless because he acts on deliberation, something we should not attribute to God.
Furthermore, the cause producing the whole substance of the thing is no more restricted than the cause producing the form in the production of the form, indeed much less so, because it does not produce by educing it from the potentiality of matter, in the way the one producing form does. But an agent which produces form alone can so act that its effect exists whenever it does, as is the case with the sun shining. Much more, then, can God, who produces the complete substance of the thing, bring it about that his effect exists whenever he exists.
Moreover, if there should be a cause whose effect does not immediately proceed from it in any instant in which the cause exists, this can only be because the cause lacks something of its perfection: a perfect cause and its effect exist simultaneously. But God is lacking in nothing. Therefore his effect can always exist when he exists and he need not precede it in duration.
Moreover, the will of one willing does not lose its power, particularly in God. But all those attempting to refute the arguments of Aristotle by which he proves that something always was from God because a thing always produces its like, say that this would follow if he were not a voluntary agent. But even given that he acts through will, it none the less follows that he can make something be caused by him that might always be.
It is clear, then, that it is not incoherent to say that an efficient cause need not precede its effect in duration; if it were conceptually incoherent, God could not of course bring it about.
It remains to be seen whether it is repugnant to reason that something made should always exist because as a thing made from nothing it is necessary that non-existence precede its duration.
That it is not repugnant is shown by the remark of Anselm in the Monologion 8, where he is discussing how the creature is said to be made from nothing. He writes, ‘The third interpretation of what is meant by saying something is made from nothing is when we understand it to be made and yet there is nothing from which it was made. Something similar in meaning seems involved when a man grows sad without cause and it is said that nothing saddens him. On this understanding, remembering what was said above, apart from the highest essence, all the things that are from him are made from nothing, that is, not from something else. There is nothing absurd in that.’ On this exposition what is made is not ordered to nothing as if, prior to its being, nothing existed and only afterwards something exists.
Furthermore, let it be supposed that the relation to nothing implied in the preposition is positive, in this sense that for the creature to be made from nothing means to be made after nothing, the preposition ‘after’ implying an order absolutely. But there is order and order, namely that of duration and that of nature. If then the proper and particular does not follow from the common and universal, it would not be necessary that from the fact that the creature is said to exist after nothing that nothing should have been prior in duration and afterwards there was something. It suffices that nothing is prior to being in nature. That in a thing which belongs to it of itself is prior to that which it owes to another. But existence is something the creature has only from another; considered as left to itself it is nothing. Thus in the creature nothing is naturally prior to existence.
It doesn’t follow from the fact that there is no priority in duration that nothing and being are simultaneous, for it is not maintained that, if the creature always was, at some time it was nothing, but rather that its nature is such that it would be nothing if left to itself. For if we were to say that the air is always illumined by the sun, we must say that air has been made lucid by the sun. And because whatever comes to be comes to be from the non-contingent, that is comes to be from that which does not exist simultaneously with what is said to come to be, it must be said that if it was made lucid from the non-lucid, or shady, not in the sense that it ever was non-lucid or shaded, but rather because it would be if the sun deserted it. This is crystal-clear in the stars and planets, which are always illumined by the sun.
It is clear, then, that when something is said to have been made by God and to have always existed, there is no incoherence. If there were, it is marvellous that it was not seen by Augustine, since this would be a quick way to disprove the eternity of the world. But he fashioned, in the eleventh and twelfth books of the City of God, many arguments to disprove the eternity of the world. Why would he have omitted this one [that is, that it is incoherent to say that the world is eternal]?
Indeed, he seems to imply that there is no such incoherence, for speaking of the Platonists in 10.31, he writes, ‘Their understanding of this does not seem to involve time but a principle of subordination. For they say, just as if a foot were eternally in the dust, its imprint would always be there, yet no one would doubt that it had been made by the foot, yet the one would not be prior to the other even though the one is caused by the other. So too, they say, the world and the gods created in it always were, since the one making them always exists, yet they are made.’ He never says that this cannot be understood, but proceeds otherwise against the position.
So too, in 11.4, he says, ‘One confessing that the world was made by God but wanting for there to be no beginning in time of its creation, such that in a manner scarcely intelligible it was always made, says something indeed (and wishes to defend God, as it were, from fortuitous rashness).’ The reason why it is scarcely intelligible was touched on in our first argument.
It is cause for wonder, then, why the greatest philosophers seem unaware of the supposed incoherence. For Augustine says in 11.5, referring to those mentioned in the previous text, ‘We now discourse with those who agree with us in saying that there are no bodies or natures of which God is not the creator,’ and later adds, ‘These philosophers surpass all others in nobility and authority.’
Anyone thinking seriously about it, then, must conclude that those who held that the world has always existed, but at the same time said that it was caused by God, are guilty of no conceptual incoherence. Those who detect this incoherence, therefore, must alone be men and wisdom must first have arisen with them!
Since some authorities seem to support them, however, we must show how weak that support is. St John Damascene, in On Orthodox Faith 1.8, says, ‘It is not in the nature of things that what is brought from non-being to being should be coeternal with him who is without beginning and always is.’
And Hugh of St Victor, at the beginning of On the Sacraments, writes, ‘The power of the ineffable omnipotence cannot have something beside itself and coeternal that it uses in making.’
But these and similar authorities can be understood by means of what Boethius says in the Consolation of Philosophy 5.6: ‘They are incorrect who, when they hear that Plato held that this world neither had a beginning in time nor will have an end, understand him to mean that this made world becomes coeternal with its maker. For it is one thing to endure through an unending life, which is what Plato says of the world, and another to be unending life whole and presently complete, which is clearly proper to the divine mind.’
So it is clear that what some maintain does not follow, namely, that creatures would be equal to God in duration. So understood, nothing can be coeternal with God because only God is immutable. This is clear from Augustine, City of God 12.15: ‘Time which runs on mutably cannot be coeternal with immutable eternity. Thus if the immortality of the angels does not traverse time nor have a past which no longer is nor a future which is not yet, their movements go through successive times and change from future to past. They cannot, then, be coeternal with the creator, of whom we cannot say that there is any movement which no longer is nor future that is not yet.’ So too in the Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.23, ‘The nature of the Trinity is wholly immutable and for this reason is eternal in such a way that nothing can be coeternal with it.’ And much the same can be found in the Confessions 11.30.
They [the murmurers] also adopt arguments from Aristotle, among which the most difficult has to do with the infinity of souls, because if the world has always been it would be necessary that there are now souls infinite in number. But this argument is not relevant, because God could make the world without animals and souls and make man when he did, the rest of the world being eternal, and thus an infinity of souls would not arise. Besides, it has not been proven that God could not create an actual infinite.
There are other arguments, but I will not refute them now, either because they have been dealt with elsewhere or because they are so weak that of themselves they render the opposite position unlikely.