Monday, September 18, 2006

Q44 A1: Whether it is necessary that every being be created by God?

Yes. All things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly because all beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation.

Though the relation to its cause is not part of the definition of a thing caused, still it follows, as a consequence, on what belongs to its essence; because from the fact that a thing has being by participation, it follows that it is caused.

Hence such a being cannot be without being caused, just as man cannot be without having the faculty of laughing.

But, since to be caused does not enter into the essence of being as such, therefore is it possible for us to find a being uncaused.

The science of mathematics treats its object as though it were something abstracted mentally, whereas it is not abstract in reality. Now, it is becoming that everything should have an efficient cause in proportion to its being. And so, although the object of mathematics has an efficient cause, still, its relation to that cause is not the reason why it is brought under the consideration of the mathematician, who therefore does not demonstrate that object from its efficient cause. Thus the demonstration of God's efficient causality belongs not to mathematics but to physics.