Is Coming Into Being an Act of Creation?

It would seem that the coming into being of a new material entity is necessarily creation today, i.e., here and now. How else but through creation could that which does not exist come into existence here and now, as a new entity, a new thing? Properties of material things change, but surely the coming into existence of a new material entity here and now must be an act of creation.

In a follow-up to my recently republished essay rejecting the serial causal argument for the existence of God (commonly presented as an analogy to trains and chains), I posted a lengthy article asking if God, as First Cause, is the numerical first of any regressive series. I argued for the negative. In this current essay, I address a more fundamental question: If God is the Creator of heaven and earth, then is not the coming into being of a new material entity here and now, such as this kitten, an act of creation? If this were not an act of creation, it would seem to be true that God, as First Cause, is the numerical first of a regressive series of causes, at least when it comes to mammalian generational reproduction.

The Basic Problem

It is not apparent. Nevertheless, the problem that underlies the dilemma of material creation’s continuation here and now is the compatibility between human intellectual knowledge, which is universal/generic, and human sense knowledge, which is particular/specific.

Sense knowledge is that of brute animals as well as man. It is particular. No one has ever sensed a generic kitten. Brute animals, because their knowledge is solely particular, can only be reactive to sense knowledge. They could not distinguish between sensing a material entity coming into existence within their range of sensation and an already existing one entering that range. In contrast, humans can intellectually reflect upon sense knowledge, thereby raising it, as an abstraction, to the operational level of the intellect, which is universal/generic. To humans, a newly created entity’s coming into existence in their range of sensation would be inexplicable.

The power to raise sense knowledge to the level of the intellect by way of abstraction is the contention of Aristotle. It was not that of his teacher, Plato. Plato proposed a real world of universals or ideas, which is reflected somehow by particular matter. The reflection itself, being material, remains below the level of the intelligible. Human knowledge is the recollection of the universals prompted by sensual stimulation.

Aristotle’s Lucid Explanation

Aristotle’s elucidation of human intellectual knowledge was based on his explanation of change, not at the level of properties but at substances, i.e., entities.

Aristotle claimed that no universal/generic form of a material entity could exist in itself. There was no world of universals as Plato had proposed. The universal form exists in the individual material entity because the individual material entity is a composite of substantial form and particular matter. Thus, when substantial change occurs, a new form replaces the prior form, but matter persists in existence. Further, the new form is the activation of a potency of the old form. Thus the new is fully explained by the prior. What we humans observe is substantial change, not creation. Aristotle’s analysis of substantial change implies that matter is neither created nor destroyed during the span of human existence. Substantial change and the persistence of matter are essential to the self-consistency of reality upon which rational human thought depends.

In What Sense is the Existence of Biological Progeny Attributed to Progenitors?

It is undoubtedly true that a kitten owes its existence to its sire and dam. The sire and dam are the efficient causes of their offspring. Can’t we trace this series of efficient causes regressively back to the Creator, Who alone, as the First Efficient Cause, explains His own existence? The answer is no. Claiming to trace the reproductive series of animal progeny regressively back to God as the First Cause of existence is based on the error of using two different meanings for existence.

God as the First Cause of every material entity is as its Creator, i.e., acting at the most basic level of efficient causality, existence itself. God (the I AM of Exodus), as that Being whose essence and being are identical, is alone capable of causing other entities to exist.

In what sense, then, can biological progenitors be identified as the efficient cause of their progeny’s existence? It is not at the level of existence itself but at the level of essence, which determines the outcome of substantial change at the level of substantial form. Further, through the efficient causality of local motion, there is the binary division of genetic material, forming germ cells, followed by the recombination of genetic material in new offspring (in higher plants and animals). Thus, progenitors are the efficient cause of the existence of their progeny by causing the motions involved in transmitting their generic substance (through the binary division and recombination of genetic material) to those offspring. God, as Creator of existence, does not do this.

The Human Knowledge of Entities in Their Individuality, i.e., in Their Act of Existence

First, we must acknowledge that there are at least four levels of existence of material things. The transition from a lower level to a higher level of existence would require an act of creation in the absence of an already existent higher form. These four levels of existence of material entities are divided into one level of the inanimate and three levels of the animate. The three animate levels are vegetative, animal, and human. (I judge that there are levels of existence within the vegetative and the animal, but not within the inanimate. That there is only one human level is known in recognizing one’s self and others as human. Catholic revelation also affirms this.)

We cannot distinguish one individual inanimate entity from another at the level of human sensation, although there must be such individuality. For example, we experience through human sensation the existence of the substance water, but we cannot sense the existence of water in the individuality of its existence as an entity. We sense water only as a group, as a cup, a pail, a pond, etc.

By contrast, we experience a mammal’s individuality as an entity. This dog exists as an integral whole. It is a singular being, an entity. Characteristic of a living material being is the power to act for its own good or the good of another of its own kind. It can assimilate, i.e., integrate other material into its own substance. Of its nature, it has the power to reproduce biologically.

Material Individuation in Levels of Being

This contrast in the integrity of being, observable at the level of mammals and not observable at the inanimate level, is evidence of levels of existence, requiring of the higher level an initiating act of creation distinct from the act of creation of the lower level. Genesis describes levels of creation as occurring in stages. However, Genesis also describes material creation as ceasing with the creation of man. Thus, the consistency of material reality was established prior to man, whose knowledge of material reality depends upon such consistency. Present material reality is explicable as change actualized through substantial change (or change in properties) fully in accord with the potency of what existed prior to change. This would not be so if material creation were presently occurring.

Nothing material is created during human existence. This is true of all levels of material existence, both the inanimate level of being and at every level of animate being. Continuing material creation, at any level of being, would render inexplicable within the scope of human knowledge, not only that which was presently being created but all of material reality. Thus, human knowledge requires consistency in the natures of material entities. Such consistency is maintained through Aristotelian substantial change, the transition of exiting potency to existent act.

That material creation ceased with the creation of man does not preclude the existence, in the geological record, of evidence of successive stages of material creation such as can be inferred from fossils, coal, and oil. That record is consistent with the staged creation of lower, then higher forms of material entities, as related in Genesis.

Summary

A fundamental premise, which underlies human intellectual understanding, requires that material creation has not occurred since the creation of man. For human intellectual knowledge to be possible, material reality, as it presently exists, must be entirely explicable by its former existence. Aristotle explained this as substantial change, in which the form of a substance yields existence to new substantial forms, while matter itself persists in existence. Implicit is that matter was initially created but has neither been created nor destroyed since that initiation.

God is Creator at the level of existence. Creation precludes all intermedia. God cannot be the First Cause of a regressive series of efficient causes. Although biological progenitors are properly identified as the efficient causes of the “existence” of their progeny and, as such, form a regressive series of efficient causes, this efficient causality is not at the level of existence itself. Such generated “existence” is posited at the level of substantial form and the efficient causality of motion. We observe: Like animate substantial form begets like animate substantial form in preexisting matter.

Such efficient causality is at the level of motion in which matter persists through substantial change. Thus, such efficient causality is not creation, and God is not the initiating terminus of such serial efficient causality.

Endnote: The Catechism of the Catholic Church indicates that each human soul is created at the moment of conception (q.v., 366). This, of course, is not material creation, although it results in a new individual who is a composite of body and soul. The particular matter, which the newly created soul informs as a new substance, preexists the soul. The particularity of the matter is determined by one’s mother and father, but not consciously by them.