Chapter 98
one after another breaks. Thus it is accidental that any particular hammer should act after the action of another hammer; and likewise it is accidental that any particular man, in his capacity as begetter, should have been begotten by another man. He begets as a man, not as the son of another man; for all men who beget function as units in the order of efficient causes; each functions as a particular begetter.
Hence it is not impossible that man should be begotten by man in an infinite series. But such a state of affairs would be impossible if the generative action of this man depended on that man and on an ele mentary body and on the sun, and so on to infinity.
Reply to Ob). 8. Those who assert the eternity of the world evade this argument in various ways. Some of them think that the actual existence of an infinite multitude of souls is not an impossibility, as we learn from the Metaphysics of Algazel, who says that such infinity is accidental.43 But this contention was refuted above.44 Some say that the soul is corrupted along with the body.45 And some affirm that of all souls only one remains.46 Yet others, as Augustine reports, solved the difficulty by proposing a rotation of souls; that is, after definite periods of time, souls that have been separated from their bodies again return to bodies.47 These opinions will all be treated later.48
For the present, we may note that this argument is limited to a par ticular class of beings. Hence one might say that the world, or at any rate some creature, such as an angel, is eternal, even though man is not eternal. Our intention, however, was to discuss the general ques tion, whether any creature has existed from eternity.
St. Thomas Aquinas Compendium of Theology (Compendium Theologiae) Part One, Chapters 98 and 99 Chapter 98 Question of the Eternity of Motion some sort of motion would have We might imagine that, by His eternal and immutable will although God can produce a new effect 43 Metaph., I, tr. 1, div. 6, (ed. J. T.
Muckle, [Toronto: St. Michael's Col lege, 1933], p. 40 f.).
(PG, 83, 932).
46 Averroes, Tahafut al-Tahafut, I, 29 (Van den Bergh, p. 15).
47 Serm. 241, 4 (PL, 38, 1135); De civit. Dei, XII, 13 (PL, 41, 361).
48 Q. 75, a. 6; q. 76, a. 2; q. 118, a.3.
44 Q. 7, a. 4.
45 Thus Democritus, Epicurus, and others; cf. Theodoret of Cyrus, Graecarum affectionum curatio, serm. V [68]
to precede the newly produced effect. For we observe that the will does not delay doing what it wishes to do, unless because of some motive that is operative now but will cease later, or because of some motive that is inoperative now but is expected to become operative in the future. In summer a man has the will to clothe himself with a warm garment, which, however, he does not wish to put on at present, but in the future; for now the weather is warm, although it will cease to be warm with the advent of a cold wave later in the year. Accordingly, if God wished from eternity to produce some effect, but did not produce it from eternity, it seems either that some thing was expected to happen in the future that had not yet occurred, or else that some obstacle had to be removed that was then present.
Neither of these alternatives can take place without motion. Thus it seems that a subsequent effect cannot be produced by a preceding will unless some motion previously occurs. And so, if God's will rela tive to the production of things was eternal, and nevertheless things were not produced from eternity, their production must have been preceded by motion, and consequently by mobile objects. And if the latter were produced by God, but not from eternity, yet other motions and mobile objects must have preceded, and so on, in infinite re cession.
The solution to this objection readily comes to mind if we but attend to the difference between a universal and a particular agent.
A particular agent has an activity that conforms to a norm and meas ure prescribed by the universal agent. This is clear even in civil gov ernment. The legislator enacts a law which is to serve as a norm and measure. Any particular judge must base his decisions on this law.
Again, time is the measure of actions which occur in time. A par ticular agent is endowed with activity regulated by time, so that he acts for some definite reason now, and not before. But the universal agent, God, instituted this measure, which is time, and He did so in accord with His will. Hence time also is to be numbered among the things produced by God. Therefore, just as the quantity and measure of each object are such as God wishes to assign to it, so the quantity of time is such as God wished to mete out; that is, time and the things existing in time began just when God wished them to begin.
The objection we are dealing with argues from the standpoint of n agent that presupposes time and acts in time, but did not institute ime. Hence the question, why God's eternal will produces an effect now and not earlier, presupposes that time exists; for "now" and "earlier" are segments of time. With regard to the universal produc tion of things, among which time is also to be counted, we should not ask: "Why now and not earlier?" Rather we should ask: "Why did
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