Abstract

In Western theological and philosophical tradition, God is conceived to be the Creator of all that exists. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) has longstanding centrality in this understanding, by the time of Aquinas, concerns over the possibility of the universe itself existing from eternity led to thinking of creation out of nothing as the generic category of which initial creation. This doctrine involves, by St. Thomas Aquinas, areas of philosophical concern of Aristotle’s theory of four causes and Plato's theory of the participation, and the relationship between each. For Aquinas, the act of creation includes God’s activity as the efficient, exemplar and final cause every contigential things. The creation is the act whereby God brings a things into existence from a state of non-existence, but what is peculiar to creation is the entire absence of any prior subject-matter - ex nihilo subjecti. It is therefore likewise the production totius substantiæ - of the entire substance. The preposition ex, “out of”, imply that nihil, “nothing”, is to be conceived as the material out of which a thing is made - materia ex qua. Moreover, the things or beings as an object of the creative act in its entitative dependence on the Creator, it follows that, as this dependence is essential, and hence inamissible, the creative act once placed is coextensive in duration with the creature’s existence and perfections. This is the participative dependence beings created on God. What makes possible coherence between theory of four causes and theory of the beings participation is Aquinas’ theory of analogy. This is general theory in Aquinas’ metaphysics. The analogy of beings allows to show as coexistences two difference aspects of the same created things: its dependence on God as Prima Causa and on God as being absolutely perfect (the created beings aren’t perfect, but they participate in its own act of existence and own perfections created by God). God as being absolutely perfect – fullness of perfection is the Self-subsistens Being itself – Ipsum Esse per se subsistens.