Why Something Out of Nothing? A Defense of Creatio ex Nihilo
Per request from a member of my philosophy Discord server (link to which is in the above description of my blog), I will provide a brief defense of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, the doctrine that the act of creation lacks a material cause, drawing primarily from St. Thomas' Summa Contra Gentiles. Ultimately, the reason it must be true is God's nature as actus purus, so, the first order of things is to establish the existence of God as actus purus, and I will do this through my own rendition of Aquinas's First Way which gives a metaphysical analysis of change.
It is certain and evident to the senses that there is motion in the world, motion meaning change, but change analyzed with respect to being or ens can only be understood as an actualization of potential, for act and potency are the principles of being. Now, whatever potential is actualized must be actualized by something already actual. Thus, something actually hot has the capacity to make something which is potentially cold become actually hot, as fire does to wood. Potencies cannot actualize themselves, since if it had the actuality to actualize itself, it would already have been something actual and not potential at all. Consequently, potency being devoid of the relevant actuality implies the real distinction between the potency for some act and the act, i.e. the real distinction of potency and act, so any potential that is actualized is in possession of actuality per accidens. If the being which actualizes the potential in question only has the relevant actuality because it was an actualized potential, then it is in the same position as the potential it actualized, meaning that it was actualized by another and possesses that actuality only per accidens. This causal series cannot descend infinitely, as any being which possesses some actuality per accidens only does so in virtue of a per se cause of that actuality; otherwise, there would be no series, since to possess something per accidens is to possess it in a manner borrowed or participated from that which has it in itself, just as fire, which possesses heat per se, is the per se cause of the heat in the wood, which possesses that heat per accidens. Thus, we must arrive at a per se cause of the actualization of potential simpliciter, which must needs be a being who possesses actuality per se and so is in no way actualized. This is actus purus, the absolute per se cause of all actuality and thus of being or ens, who all men know to be God.
Now that the existence of God and His nature as something without potentiality has been demonstrated, the second order of things is to illustrate how God's simple existence renders creatio ex aliquo impossible.
A principle necessary to understand the creative consequences of God's nature is agere sequitur esse, or the principle that action follows being. Put simply, it means that a thing acts in the way it does because it is the kind of being it is. This entails that a thing's nature serves to determine and limit the scope and method of a thing's acting capacities. An important epistemological consequence of this principle is that action is the self-revelation of being, as it allows us insight to the kind of being something is. It is precisely because action is self-revealing that we are able to arrive at the existence of God through analyzing ordered causes, as we deduce from certain effects that their causes must be this or that way (the essence of demonstratio quia). The negation of this principle, that the kind of being a thing is does not in any way determine its causal capacities or is relevant to its action, is absurd, as it would make inexplicable why beings act in the way they do and not in other ways. For example, why cannot pigs fly?
This principle further leads us to the principle that everything acts according as it is actual, or omne agens agat secundum quod actu est. Given agere sequitur esse, if a thing's nature is its primary principle of action, then a thing can only act inasmuch as its nature bestows actuality upon it; so, for a thing to act in a way greater than it is actual is for a thing to act beyond its nature, which is absurd, for if it could act in such a way, it would simply have had the kind of nature that bestows the capacity for that action upon it to begin with.
Application of these principles to the created order and its relation to God as pure act reveals how God creates:
Firstly, a being which requires pre-existent matter for its action is a being that acts by causing a form in matter; therefore, such a being acts by informing matter because it itself is a material being. However, God is pure act, as I have shown, and thus is beyond any composition of matter and form or of form and esse, and so does not act by informing pre-existent matter.
Secondly, an agent which acts by causing or actualizing a form in matter is itself a being who is made actual by a form in matter as its principle of actuality. To the contrary, God is not actual by a form inherent as a principle of actuality but is actual by His whole substance, since in something purely actual, there is no real distinct principle of potency receiving the form (like matter). Thus, it is proper to God to act by actualizing a being as a whole as opposed to by a part; but, to actualize a being as a whole is to actualize a being without actualizing any prior potency in the being, for a being must first exist in order to have potencies to actualize, since before a being exists it is nothing; yet, to act by using pre-existing matter is to actualize a being's prior potency. Therefore, God does not act by using pre-existing matter.
Thirdly, the form produced in matter as the effect of an efficient cause is also the final cause of that action, for an agent's end motivates the agent to act. However, a form is a particular species, while being or ens is not a particular species. Thus, if action that requires pre-existing matter is the action of an agent that aims at a particular species, and if God does not aim at a particular species in His action as the per se cause of being, then God's action does not require pre-existent matter.
Finally, a being which acts only by causing change in another is itself a mutable (changing) being, and to act by forming pre-existing matter is to act by causing change in another, as change is the transition of one form to another in a thing. God, however, is immutable, as change is fundamentally a result of the real distinction of act and potency in things (as the above argument demonstrates), and God is devoid of potency as a pure act of existence. Therefore, God must be able to act without forming pre-existing matter.
Aside from this latter point of immutability that is my own, the prior three points are explicit in Aquinas' work, and he also provides more arguments than these. However, I believe these are the most clear and persuasive arguments relevant to God's nature as actus purus, so for brevity's sake, I will leave my defense of creatio ex nihilo here. Any further interest in this topic, or interest in Aquinas' other arguments, should be directed to the works in the bibliography. Please leave your feedback in the comments, and thank you for reading.
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. “Summa Contra Gentiles.” Aquinas, aquinas.cc/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2024.
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