J
JDaniel
Guest
“One other point of Catholic faith remains to be noticed before we pass from this consideration of creation as a whole and in general to the treatment of the various kinds of created things. This is the question whether God created the world from all eternity, or whether it had a beginning in time. It might seem at first that this is a question of a purely metaphysical character or of scientific interest, without any theological, moral, or dogmatic bearing whatever. What can it possibly matter to me whether the world has existed, in some form or another, from eternity or not? What bearing can it have on my life, provided that I acknowledge God as its Creator? Why should the Church go out of her way to define, as she has done, in the Fourth Lateran Council, and again in the Vatican Council, that the world is not coeternal with God, but that he created it in the beginning of time? Surely this should be left to the scientists to discover if they can, or to the metaphysicians to argue about as they will. In reality, however, though this matter may have no direct bearing on one’s spiritual life, it is closely connected with questions that have, and so it possesses a real theological importance. The doctrine of the non-eternity of the world is intimately bound up with that of God’s liberty in creating. For if he had created from some necessityarising from his own nature, the world must have been coeternal with him, since owing to his immutability such necessity would be eternal and eternally necessitating. But if he creates freely, simply from his own free predilection, then as he alone determines to create, and what to create, so also in his free determination lie all the circumstances of creation, among them being the moment of its realisation.
“Again the theory of a world existing from all eternity has been invariably in the history of thought bound up either with some sort of Manichean dualism, or else with some kind of materialistic evolutionism, or with some variety of pantheism. Hence the Church has had at different times to condemn the error and proclaim the truth.
“But although this clearly is the revealed truth, proclaimed, for example, by Jesus Christ himself (John xvii 5), it is a truth bristling with difficulties, which, were it not for the gift of faith, might easily result in doubt. For according to Catholic teaching God is from all eternity changeless, and not changeless inaction, but changeless activity and life. If, then, he is now actually creating, he must have been doing so from all eternity or there would have been a change in him; and if the result of the changeless of the changeless creative action is now the world, the same must have been the result from all eternity, or else you would have the same changeless action producing no result for a period and then at some determinate instant beginning to produce a result, which would be absurd and impossible. Nor does it seem any use to try to escape by saying that the world is created by God, not in so far as he is divine power or divine being, but in so far as his is divine will and freedom. For after all, these distinctions that we make between God’s power and his will, as between his justice and his mercy or any other attributes, do not correspond with any real distinctions in him, in whom, apart from the three Divine Persons, everything is supremely one and undifferentiated unity.
“The objection is undoubtedly serious, so much so, indeed, that to try to solve it, at least in such a way that the difficulty disappears, would be useless. The most we can do is point out wherein the fallacy lies, and to show how the difficulty arises, in part from comparing things that are not comparable, and in part from the fact that it involves two ideas, of which one is beyond our understanding and the other beyond our experience. It may help us also if we first note how the argument used in the objection proves too much, and therefore proves nothing at all. For if it is applicable to the creation of the world in general, it must apply with equal force to the creation of any individual thing – for example, to the creation of each and every individual human soul, each one of which is thereby shown to be eternal, which no Catholic and few Christians of any sort would allow. Or if the example seems to be a begging of the question, consider instead the Hypostatic Union of God and man in Jesus Christ. This was an event which, though not a creation, yet requires the direct exercise of changeless divine power as much as creation itself. Yet is took place, not from eternity, but at a definite moment in time. This consideration, however, does not take us very far. It shows, indeed, that the objection is invalid, but not only does it not help us to its solution, which I have said is beyond us, but it does not even help to show why it is beyond us. We can, however, see why this is so, and thus gain some relief, if not repose, for the mind, by a brief consideration of the ideas involved in the objection.
“One of them is wholly beyond our experience – namely, the idea of the first beginning of all things. We see many beginnings of things, but all of them take place in already existent time. They are all accompanied by and surrounded by movements, by noting which we can place them in their order and date them; thus when we say that one thing begins on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, what we really mean is that these two beginnings are dated or measured by different stages in the relative motions of sun and earth, stages that we make off as years, months, days, and so forth. Even if we could actually experience the absolute first beginning of a thing, as distinct from its development from something already in being, such as the creation of a human soul, we would still be able to place it exactly in its time position, to put it in its proper place in relation to some movement that preceded, accompanied, and followed it. We should still be able to say, supposing we had instruments accurate enough, that up to the end of the twenty-seven hundredth part of a second after six o’clock on such and such a date the soul did not exist, but before twenty-eight hundredth had gone by it was in being, therefore it was created in this twenty-eight hundredth of a second after six o’clock. But we cannot do this when dealing with the absolute first beginnings of all created things. We cannot date it by working backwards on any evidence. Geologists trying to date a geological period have to be content with approximations covering thousands of years. And if we try to work back in thought and imagination we soon find ourselves groping. All we can do is to say that if we go back so many thousands or millions of years we come to a time when the universe was only one day old, or what would have been a day, if there had been the sun, working as it is now, to measure it, of which we cannot be sure. We can now work backwards through this day to its first hour, its first minute, its first second, and then we drop off into a blank which leaves us baffled. We cannot say that we came to the beginning of time and find it dated by a fixed point in eternity. We cannot say that God had existed for so many ages of eternity and then created the world. We are brought up dead against this idea of eternity, which is the second idea involved in the objection, and which is beyond our comprehension. Time and eternity are no two similar and comparable sorts of duration differing only in having and not having a beginning and an end. There is no ratio, no proportion, no standard of comparison between the two. Time consists in motion, it is the measure of motion according to succession; without things moving, and so moving as to be relative to each other in their movements, there can be no time. But eternity is without movement or succession, it cannot be split up into periods, it has no measure, it overrides and embraces all time, it has no past and no future, it is all and always present. In fact, there is no such thing as eternity in the same sense as there is such a thing as time; there is Eternal, which is God, and eternity is a name we give to an abstraction when we wish to speak oof God under the aspect of duration. And God is incomprehensible. We can see then why it is impossible fully to understand this matter of the creation of the world in time: it is because it is simply a special aspect of the whole question of the relation between God and the universe, the Creator and the creature, the Infinite and the finite, and that must remain a mystery, or God would be no God.” - The Teaching of the Catholic Church, Vol. I, Ch. VI, pp 196 – 199, 1962.
“Again the theory of a world existing from all eternity has been invariably in the history of thought bound up either with some sort of Manichean dualism, or else with some kind of materialistic evolutionism, or with some variety of pantheism. Hence the Church has had at different times to condemn the error and proclaim the truth.
“But although this clearly is the revealed truth, proclaimed, for example, by Jesus Christ himself (John xvii 5), it is a truth bristling with difficulties, which, were it not for the gift of faith, might easily result in doubt. For according to Catholic teaching God is from all eternity changeless, and not changeless inaction, but changeless activity and life. If, then, he is now actually creating, he must have been doing so from all eternity or there would have been a change in him; and if the result of the changeless of the changeless creative action is now the world, the same must have been the result from all eternity, or else you would have the same changeless action producing no result for a period and then at some determinate instant beginning to produce a result, which would be absurd and impossible. Nor does it seem any use to try to escape by saying that the world is created by God, not in so far as he is divine power or divine being, but in so far as his is divine will and freedom. For after all, these distinctions that we make between God’s power and his will, as between his justice and his mercy or any other attributes, do not correspond with any real distinctions in him, in whom, apart from the three Divine Persons, everything is supremely one and undifferentiated unity.
“The objection is undoubtedly serious, so much so, indeed, that to try to solve it, at least in such a way that the difficulty disappears, would be useless. The most we can do is point out wherein the fallacy lies, and to show how the difficulty arises, in part from comparing things that are not comparable, and in part from the fact that it involves two ideas, of which one is beyond our understanding and the other beyond our experience. It may help us also if we first note how the argument used in the objection proves too much, and therefore proves nothing at all. For if it is applicable to the creation of the world in general, it must apply with equal force to the creation of any individual thing – for example, to the creation of each and every individual human soul, each one of which is thereby shown to be eternal, which no Catholic and few Christians of any sort would allow. Or if the example seems to be a begging of the question, consider instead the Hypostatic Union of God and man in Jesus Christ. This was an event which, though not a creation, yet requires the direct exercise of changeless divine power as much as creation itself. Yet is took place, not from eternity, but at a definite moment in time. This consideration, however, does not take us very far. It shows, indeed, that the objection is invalid, but not only does it not help us to its solution, which I have said is beyond us, but it does not even help to show why it is beyond us. We can, however, see why this is so, and thus gain some relief, if not repose, for the mind, by a brief consideration of the ideas involved in the objection.
“One of them is wholly beyond our experience – namely, the idea of the first beginning of all things. We see many beginnings of things, but all of them take place in already existent time. They are all accompanied by and surrounded by movements, by noting which we can place them in their order and date them; thus when we say that one thing begins on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, what we really mean is that these two beginnings are dated or measured by different stages in the relative motions of sun and earth, stages that we make off as years, months, days, and so forth. Even if we could actually experience the absolute first beginning of a thing, as distinct from its development from something already in being, such as the creation of a human soul, we would still be able to place it exactly in its time position, to put it in its proper place in relation to some movement that preceded, accompanied, and followed it. We should still be able to say, supposing we had instruments accurate enough, that up to the end of the twenty-seven hundredth part of a second after six o’clock on such and such a date the soul did not exist, but before twenty-eight hundredth had gone by it was in being, therefore it was created in this twenty-eight hundredth of a second after six o’clock. But we cannot do this when dealing with the absolute first beginnings of all created things. We cannot date it by working backwards on any evidence. Geologists trying to date a geological period have to be content with approximations covering thousands of years. And if we try to work back in thought and imagination we soon find ourselves groping. All we can do is to say that if we go back so many thousands or millions of years we come to a time when the universe was only one day old, or what would have been a day, if there had been the sun, working as it is now, to measure it, of which we cannot be sure. We can now work backwards through this day to its first hour, its first minute, its first second, and then we drop off into a blank which leaves us baffled. We cannot say that we came to the beginning of time and find it dated by a fixed point in eternity. We cannot say that God had existed for so many ages of eternity and then created the world. We are brought up dead against this idea of eternity, which is the second idea involved in the objection, and which is beyond our comprehension. Time and eternity are no two similar and comparable sorts of duration differing only in having and not having a beginning and an end. There is no ratio, no proportion, no standard of comparison between the two. Time consists in motion, it is the measure of motion according to succession; without things moving, and so moving as to be relative to each other in their movements, there can be no time. But eternity is without movement or succession, it cannot be split up into periods, it has no measure, it overrides and embraces all time, it has no past and no future, it is all and always present. In fact, there is no such thing as eternity in the same sense as there is such a thing as time; there is Eternal, which is God, and eternity is a name we give to an abstraction when we wish to speak oof God under the aspect of duration. And God is incomprehensible. We can see then why it is impossible fully to understand this matter of the creation of the world in time: it is because it is simply a special aspect of the whole question of the relation between God and the universe, the Creator and the creature, the Infinite and the finite, and that must remain a mystery, or God would be no God.” - The Teaching of the Catholic Church, Vol. I, Ch. VI, pp 196 – 199, 1962.
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