Creatorem Coeli et Terrae

It seems necessary, in order to obey the most fundamental principles of Metaphysics (also called first philosophy by Aristotle) to hold that earth, water, air, and fire, which includes light—in other words, to hold that all of matter, here Prime Matter, and the first substantial form were the one, entire Universe created on day one and described in Genesis One, verses 1 through 5.

            On day three, God created the various kinds of plants and in these were included the bara-min or created kind taxonomists now specify as trees bearing fruit.

            But as I have tried to explain in previous studies, all substantial forms of the plant, animal, and even mankind, are not substantial in an absolute sense because of their necessary dependence upon the earth and earth’s atmosphere of sunlight and hear for their very life.

            So there are substantial forms and necessarily so, and as we know with certitude by the Principle of Identity (with all the other First Principles); but these substantial forms are only relatively so; whereas the Universe of Prime Matter and First Form is absolutely so but under God’s domain.

            The Angelic Hierarchy is even more substantial in its angelic specific forms than the universe because all the angels are totally free of all the constraints of matter. They are closest to God in the Hierarchy; and yet, they too are absolutely dependent upon God for their very existence—as is every other creature created during the first Six Day of the world.

            I hope the reader sees from this brief exposition how it is that every miracle, and even every thing now in existence, presupposes the entire natural order created from the beginning.  It may seem odd to think of earth, water, air, and fire—light, as mere accidents of a larger substance, the Universe; but the metaphysical necessity for it becomes clear when they are analyzed in terms of their atomic elements.

            This is a marvelous field of study and contemplation, increasing one’s appreciation of God as Creator and the attributes that necessarily flow from His very existence.  Just to see the intricacy of the cycles of the elements from earth—water to the celestial realms of light and heat, both before and after the universal Flood, is marvelous beyond human understanding.

            And yet, it is the established natural order of all things created during the First Six Days of the world.  It is this established order that miracles temporarily suspend, or, as in the case of cures and healings, speed up to an instantaneous process, and so presuppose the creation of perfect forms.

             Creation is, therefore, something infinitely greater than a miracle. And in fact, everything, even our very existence, presupposes creation by God; therefore, to live in denial as God’s Act or Creation—for creation by God is not a process but an instantaneous, rather atemporal, i.e., absolutely transcendent act—to live in denial of God’s gift of existence as well as of essential identity (essence) is to live in denial of reality—and that is insanity.

            Secondary Causality is so named because it always and absolutely, which is to say necessarily presupposes God’s First and Primary Efficient and Final (purpose) causality.  All of this is so true indeed, infallibly and at the highest level explained by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Five Was for proving God’s existence (ST, I, q. 2, a 3).  There is simply no better and no other way of doing this necessary task, given St. Paul’s remark in Romans 1:20—that men are without any excuse for denying God’s existence and His attributes, because the things that God has made, speak of Him by their very made-ness.

            No one in St. Paul’s time or in any other time after the first week of the world was present for Creation, that is, to witness God’s acts of Creation, and an act is not a process. And we insist on the literal twenty-four-hour day, the days that have continued sense. 

            Except for the angels who, as several Scriptural verses attest, were most probably present for days two through seven on onward, in their special domain of aeviternity; therefore, even though the first and primary causality (efficient and final) is always necessarily present by His power of maintaining creatures in existence, still the evidence of a Creator—God—is plain, is clearly seen, as St. Paul says, from “the things that are made.”  And such things were and still are, the products—not of Creation ex nihilo and in toto, during the Six Days but of secondary causes, that is, of creatures that are substantial (not accidental) forms given the power of agency by the Creator when He said, “According to its kind” for every living form, to “increase and multiply” (Genesis one, verses 22, 28); that is, to transmit the given and created and immutable substantial form of the created kind—to transmit it by generation, that is, by reproduction. And this is the work of secondary causes.