10.2 Must Creatures Always Have Existed? (SCG 2,31–38)
10.2 Must Creatures Always Have Existed? (SCG 2,31–38)
If there are necessary creatures caused to be by God, however, should we not suppose that at least some creatures have always existed? Aristotle held that the world had no beginning, and other philosophers, especially ancient ones, have argued to the same effect.4 So might we not indeed suppose that creatures have always existed, or that the physical universe, at any rate, never began to be?
Aquinas turns to these questions in SCG 2,31. To start with, he argues that it is not necessary for creatures always to have existed (SCG 2,31). In subsequent chapters he notes and comments on arguments for and against the conclusion that the universe has always existed (SCG 2,32–38). His overall view is: (1) it cannot be proved that the universe has always existed; (2) it cannot be proved that the universe began to exist; (3) God must account for the existence of the universe whether or not it had a beginning. As I noted in chapter 3, Aquinas did believe that the universe had a beginning since he took this to be taught by the Old Testament book of Genesis. However, in several of his writings, including the SCG, he views the teaching that the world began to be as a truth of faith, not something demonstrable as some of his contemporaries took it to be.5
When it comes to the thesis that it is necessary for creatures always to have existed, Aquinas’s position is that creatures only exist because God wills them to exist, implying that there might not have been any creatures at all, let alone ones always existing. This is the argument of SCG 2,31. Here Aquinas says:
Nothing proceeding from a will is absolutely necessary, except when it chances to be necessary for the will to will it. But, as we have shown [see SCG 2,23], God brings creatures into being not through a necessity of his nature, but voluntarily. Nor, as proved in Book 1, does he necessarily will the existence of creatures [see SCG 1,81]. Hence, it is not absolutely necessary for the creature to be, and therefore neither is it necessary for creatures to have existed always.6
Why might one think that the world has existed always and of necessity? Or why might one think that it cannot always have existed? With respect to the first question, Aquinas notes arguments of three kinds: (1) those taking their stand on what God is, (2) those taking their stand on what creatures are, and (3) those taking their stand on what is involved in making. Aquinas spells out these arguments in SCG 2,32–34, while replying to them in SCG 2,35–37. With respect to the question “Why suppose that the world cannot always have existed?” in SCG 2,38 Aquinas lists arguments in favor of the claim “The world is not eternal” while also maintaining that, though they are “not devoid of probability,” they “lack absolute and necessary conclusiveness.” In this chapter of the SCG, Aquinas insists on the fact that belief that the world began to be is to be held by faith alone.
So what are the arguments that Aquinas notes in favor of the claim that the world must always have existed? They run as follows. (And when reading my summaries of them, remember that they are arguments that Aquinas goes on to reject.)
10.2.1 Arguments Based on What God Is (SCG 2,32)
1. God is not moved at all. So he always acts in the same way. Since God and his will are eternal, God must therefore make creatures that always exist, since God is eternal, as is his will.
2. God’s action is eternal, so things created by God must always have existed.
3. God is a cause that has it in him to produce creatures and cannot be thwarted from doing so should he do so willingly. So, given that God causes creatures, and given that God is eternal, creatures will always exist.
4. Voluntary agents do not delay in carrying out their purposes unless they are prevented from doing so. But God is eternal, and nothing within himself or outside himself can impede his action. So if the eternal God wills creatures to exist, they will always exist.
5. Agents with intellect do not choose one thing over another unless motivated by preferable differences of some kind in what they might choose. But there is no difference between two things neither of which exist. So God cannot be motivated to produce creatures that begin to exist as opposed to creatures that do not begin to exist. Indeed, if God eternally wills that creatures exist, creatures always exist.
6. Creatures willed by God are directed to God as an end. They are directed to goodness that exists in God before it exists in them. But God’s goodness is unchangeable, so creatures are willed by God from eternity and must, therefore, always exist.
7. God’s goodness is infinite, so God must will some creatures always to have existed in order to share always in God’s goodness.
10.2.2 Arguments Based on What Creatures Are (SCG 2,33)
1. Some creatures are necessary beings (see SCG 2,30). So some creatures have always existed.
2. Some creatures have a power to exist forever, so they exist always, which means that they never began to exist.
3. When something begins to be changed there has to occur change of some kind either in what changes or in what is changed. So every change is either eternal or is preceded by some change, which means that change and things changed have always existed given that God is immutable.
4. Things that generate other things aim to keep their species in being. “Now, it is impossible that natural desire should be futile. The species of generable things, therefore, must be perpetual.”7
5. If time is everlasting, then so is change, and so are created substances. Yet time is everlasting since what is “now” is always preceded by a previous time, and since to deny that time always exists involves supposing a time before it existed and a time after it ceases to exist.
6. Some propositions are such that to deny them is to assert them. For example, to deny that truth exists is to assert that something is true. Yet such propositions and what follows from them are everlasting, which means that there is something other than God that is eternal.
10.2.3 Arguments Based on What Is Involved in Making (SCG 2,34)
1. If something is made, it has to be made from something. Now, God is not made. But everything that is made must be made from something, which means that something other than God is eternal.
2. “A movable subject must exist prior to anything made” and “since to proceed to infinity in this matter is impossible, we must come to a first subject not newly originated but always existent.”8
3. If something begins to exist, then before it existed it was possible for it to exist. So, before anything begins to exist, there must be something that is “potentially a being,” and since an infinite regress is impossible in this connection, there is some primary subject that did not begin to exist.
4. Nothing permanent exists while it is being made. Yet while something is being made, there must be something that is in process of being made. So “whatever is made has some pre-existing subject.”9 Since this cannot go on to infinity, there must be a first and everlasting unmade subject, and there must, in that case, be something other than God that is eternal, since God is not something being made and since God is not changed by anything.
10.2.4 Aquinas’s Responses to the Arguments Based on What God Is (SCG 2,35)
As I have said, Aquinas rejects all the above arguments, and in response to those found in SCG 2,32, he replies as follows (the numeration below corresponds to that in section 10.2.1).
1. God need not be changed in any way as his effects begin to exist; and something coming to be does not entail that there is any coming to be in God.
2. The fact that God is eternal does not mean that his effects are eternal. That is because God makes creatures voluntarily and can decide when something begins to exist. “Nothing, therefore, prevents our saying that God’s action existed from all eternity, whereas its effect was not present from eternity, but existed at that time when, from all eternity, he ordained it.”10
3. God may suffice to bring things into being, but the fact that God is eternal does not imply that his effects are eternal. God’s willing that something should exist does not mean that the thing has to exist eternally, as does God’s will.
4. “Within the scope of God’s will fall not only the existence of his effect but also the time of its existence.”11 The effects of God’s will are not delayed even though they do not always exist, and that a creature should exist at a certain time is not delayed even though God wills it to be from eternity.
5. “Nothingness has neither measure nor duration.”12 And there are no parts in God, who is immutable. So we should not think of the beginning of creatures as something God produced because he acts with an eye on what it would be good for him to produce in some context in which he finds himself. Nor should we think that the coming to be of creatures has to be related to time or place, as a thing coming to be in the world has to be related to a particular time and place since there has to be a reason why it comes to be at some particular time and in some particular place. So we do not need to seek a reason explaining why and when a creature came to exist. “We have only to ask why it was not always produced, or why it was produced after not being or with some beginning.”13
6. God eternally wills his own goodness, and he does not act so as to bring this about as we might act so as to bring about ends that we desire. God is eternal and immutable, so he gains nothing by his willing of creatures. Therefore, if God wills creatures to exist, he does so in order that they might somehow share in his goodness, and in doing this God does not have to create what has always existed.
7. In order to share his goodness with creatures, God does not have to create things that are eternal as he is. Indeed, God creating a world which has a beginning “makes it perfectly clear that all things other than God have God as the author of their being.”14
10.2.5 Aquinas’s Responses to the Arguments Based on What Creatures Are (SCG 2,36)
In response to the arguments summarized by Aquinas in SCG 2,33, Aquinas replies as follows (the numeration below corresponds to that in section 10.2.2).
1. Created necessary beings are created by God willingly, so they might never have existed.
2. Even if a creature has a power to exist always, it is still a creature that exists only by God’s will. Even a creature with a power to exist always might not be eternal.
3. Creatures do not exist because of a change in God, who can will something to begin to exist and can will that the thing in question is not eternal. Creatures exist by God’s simple will, which can extend to the bringing about of change having a beginning.
4. Natural agents may aim to perpetuate their species, but they have to exist in order to do that. So the argument from perpetuation of species does not settle whether or not there are creatures that have existed from eternity.
5. The fifth argument presupposes that change is eternal; it does not prove that change is eternal.
6. If time had a beginning, it would exist having previously not existed. Yet time might never have existed in the sense that there might never have been any change. So the fact that time might never have been does not entail that there have to be eternal creatures.
7. “The truth of propositions whose denial entails their affirmation … possesses the necessity of that order which obtains between predicate and subject. By such necessity, therefore, a thing is not compelled to exist everlastingly, except perhaps the divine intellect, in which all truth is rooted” (see SCG 1,62).
10.2.6 Aquinas’s Responses to the Arguments Based on What Is Involved in Making (SCG 2,37)
In response to the arguments summarized by Aquinas in SCG 2,34, Aquinas replies as follows (the numeration below corresponds to that in section 10.2.3).
1. “Nothing comes from nothing” is true in the sense that things in the world that arise over time depend on there being something that precedes them. Yet the existence of any creature at all derives from God considered not as a being in the world acting so as to modify things somehow but as the source of there being any creatures at all rather than nothing. “Now, in this production of all being from God it is impossible for anything to be made from some other pre-existing thing; otherwise, this procession would not consist in the making of all created being.”15 In general, making involves change; but we can extend the meaning of the word “make” so as to recognize that “anything at all whose essence or nature originates from something else is made.”16
2. “Since that which in no way exists is not in any particular state, the idea of motion used in the argument does not warrant the conclusion that, when a thing begins to be, it is in another state now than it was before.”17
3. There need be no passive potentiality preceding the existence of all created being. When things come about because of a process of change, there is something potentially able to be changed prior to the change in question. Yet creation is not a matter of a change occurring. Creatures, which might never have existed, were always able to be since God, from eternity, is able to make creatures. This, however, does not mean that creatures have always existed with a passive potentiality.
4. “In things made by way of motion, to be made and to be are not simultaneous, because the production of such things involves succession. But in things that are not made by way of motion, the making does not precede the being.”18