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ABSTRACT
The article addresses philosophical and theological reflections inspired by the cosmological models of the origin of the universe from the quantum vacuum (through quantum tunneling) and through a spontaneous emergence from an a-temporal initial state of non-being. A thesis about the possibility of cosmogenesis ex nihilo without the need of God the creator—inspired by these models—is put into question. Its philosophical and theological presuppositions are verified in reference to the classical thought of Aristotle and Aquinas and the categories of potency and act, causality and chance, and metaphysically defined nothingness.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of both the original Polish and the present English versions of this article for their valuable comments on the text, both in terms of presenting scientific concepts as well as philosophical and theological arguments. I also thank Mariusz Stopa, O.P. for the consultation concerning the physical models described in the paper.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Abbreviated References to the Works of Aristotle and Aquinas
Aristotle
De gen. an.—De generatione animalium (On the Generation of Animals), trans. Arthur Platt. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 665–680.
De gen. et corr.—De generatione et corruptione (On Generation and Corruption), trans. Harold H. Joachim. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 465–531.
De part. an.—De partibus animalium (On the Parts of Animals), trans. William Ogle. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 641–661.
Meta.—Metaphysica (Metaphysics), trans. W. D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 681–926.
Phys.—Physica (Physics), trans. R. K Gaye. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 213–394.
Thomas Aquinas
De prin. nat.—De principiis naturae. Vol. 43 of Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita (Rome. Typographia polyglotta, 1976), 39–47. [English translation: The Principles of Nature. In Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. and trans. Robert P. Goodwin (New York: Bobbs–Merrill, 1965), 7–28.]
In meta.—In Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1926). [English translation: Commentary on The Metaphysics of Aristotle. 2 vols., trans. John Rowan (Chicago: Regnery Press, 1961).]
In phys.—In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis expositio (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1965). [English translation: Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1999).]
Q. de pot.—Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1965). [English translation: On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952).]
Q. de an.—Quaestio disputata de anima, ed. J. Robb (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968). [English translation: Quaestions on the Soul, trans. James H. Robb (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1984).]
SCG—Summa contra gentiles. 3 vols. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1961–1967). [English translation: On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles. 4 vols., trans. Anton C. Pegis et al. (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1955–1957).]
ST—Summa theologiae (Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962). [English translation: Summa Theologica. 3 vols., trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1946).]
Super Boe. De Trinitate—Super Boetium De Trinitate. In Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, 50:75–171 (Rome and Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992). [English translations: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason, and Theology. Questions I-IV of His Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, trans. and annot. A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987).]
Notes
1 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 174.
2 Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010), 5.
3 Ibid., 180.
4 See Adam D. Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say about Creation from Nothing?,” in Creation “Ex Nihilo”: Origins, Development, Contemporary Challenges, ed. Gary A. Anderson and Markus Bockmuehl (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 319–345, at 336.
5 Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (New York: Atria Books, 2012), 147.
6 Ibid., 191.
7 See, e.g. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), chapter 7: “Scientific Evidence for Creatio ex Nihilo,” 219–248; Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say”; John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? (Oxford: Lion Books, 2011).
8 My account of the Vilenkin and Hartle-Hawking cosmological models follows closely the one presented in Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say” and Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking. It is also grounded in a more general exposition of contemporary cosmology offered in Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). I am indebted to all three authors.
9 See Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 329, 334.
10 See Ibid., 334.
11 See Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 271. Among the authors relating the standard cosmological model to creatio ex nihilo, we find, inter alia, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler who state: “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo” (John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], 442). Christian Baptist analytic philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig states: “This event that marked the beginning of the universe becomes all the more amazing when one reflects on the fact that a state of ‘infinite density’ is synonymous to ‘nothing’. There can be no object that possesses infinite density, for if it had any size at all it could still be even more dense. Therefore, as Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang Theory requires the creation of matter from nothing. This is because as one goes back in time, one reaches a point at which, in Hoyle’s words, the universe was ‘shrunk down to nothing at all’. [Fred Hoyle, From Stonehenge to Modern Cosmology (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1972), 36.] Thus, what the Big Bang model of the universe seems to require is that the universe began to exist and was created out of nothing” (William Lane Craig, “The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe,” accessed May 30, 2024, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/the-existence-of-god/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe/). It is worth adding that in Hoyle’s approach, the assumption about the necessity of the emergence of the world from nothing becomes an argument against the truth and legitimacy of the Big Bang theory. According to Craig, the truth of the Big Bang theory entails the truth of the concept of creatio ex nihilo. The tendency of a rather too hasty and unjustified identification of the Big Bang with creatio ex nihilo can be seen in the comments made by Pius XII. In 1951—referring to the achievements of modern cosmology—the Pope stated that “it seems that the science of today, by going back in one leap millions of centuries, has succeeded in being a witness to that primordial Fiat Lux, when, out of nothing, there burst forth with matter a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and reunited in millions of galaxies” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, year 44, series 2, vol. 19 [Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1952], 41). In response to these words of the Holy Father, the author of the Big Bang theory, a Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, in a lecture delivered at the XI Solvay Conference in Brussels in 1958, said that in his opinion the theory of the primordial atom was completely beyond any metaphysical or religious position. It left a materialist freedom to reject the truth about the existence of the transcendent Being while in the case of a believer it did not allow for too hasty a reference to God.
12 See Alexander Vilenkin, “Creation of Universes from Nothing,” Physics Letters B 117:1 (1982), 25–28. His model is largely based on the description of the cosmological evolution of the universe, which was proposed in 1973 by Edward P. Tryon. In this description, the assumption was made for the first time that the universe could emerge from the quantum vacuum, but without reference to the tunneling phenomenon (see Edward P. Tryon, “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?,” Nature 246:5433 [1973], 396–397).
13 This reaction, depending on the temperature, can take place in three ways, involving various intermediates: deuterium 2H, helium 3He, beryllium 7Be, beryllium 8Be, lithium 7Li and boron 8B.
14 See Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 334. Just as we are not able to accurately determine the position of an elementary particle in quantum mechanics, we can talk about the uncertainty of energy, which is not balanced in the phenomenon of quantum tunneling. The tunneling phenomenon takes place in many systems at the level of the order of magnitude from 1 to 3 nm. At the same time, it influences many macroscopic phenomena. For example, quantum biology indicates that the electron tunneling phenomenon is crucial in reductive reactions in photosynthesis, cell respiration and enzymatic catalysis, while the proton tunneling phenomenon underlies spontaneous DNA mutations. Moreover, the same phenomenon of electron tunneling (consisting in the passage of electricity carriers through a narrow layer at very low voltage) is used in the construction of a tunnel diode, the smallest known integrated circuits (used, for example, in modern cell phones), or a scanning tunneling microscope which became the first tool of nanotechnology, making it possible to obtain an image of the surface of conductive materials with a resolution of a single atom (0.001 nm).
15 See Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 272–274.
16 Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 334–335.
17 See J. B. Hartle and S. W. Hawking, “Wave Function of the Universe,” Physical Review D 28:12 (1983), 2960–2975.
18 John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 66–67.
19 Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 138–139.
20 Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 121. On another occasion Hawking makes a similar remark: “I … am a positivist who believes that physical theories are just mathematical models we construct, and that it is meaningless to ask if they correspond to reality, just whether they predict observations” (Stephen Hawking, “The Objections of an Unashamed Positivist,” in Roger Penrose et al., The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, ed. Malcolm Longair [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 169–172, at 169).
21 See Michał Heller, Czy Fizyka Jest Nauką Humanistyczną (Tarnów: Biblos, 1998), 163–168.
22 Hawking and Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, 83.
23 Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 227. One of the anonymous reviewers of the article pointed out that yet another non-singularity point model of the beginning of the universe was suggested that goes beyond quantum cosmology. It states that in reference to neutrosophic logic and material point method it can be shown that “our universe in some respect could have both a beginning and an eternal existence. Therefore, paradoxically, there might have been a time before time or a beginning of time in time” (Florentin Smarandache and Victor Christianto, “Remark on Vacuum Fluctuation as the Cause of Universe Creation: Or How Neutrosophic Logic and Material Point Method May Resolve Dispute on the Origin of the Universe through Re-Reading Gen. 1:1-2,” Asia Mathematika 2:2 [2018], 11–12).
24 Watt Nick, “Stephen Hawking. Science Makes God Unnecessary,” ABC News, September 7, 2010, https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/stephen-hawking-science-makes-god-unnecessary/story?id=11571150 (access May 30, 2024).
25 See Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 337.
26 Krauss and Dawkins, A Universe from Nothing, xvi.
27 Ibid., xiv. On another occasion, referring to Steven Weinberg, Krauss states that “science … does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God. Without science, everything is a miracle. With science, there remains the possibility that nothing is. Religious belief in this case becomes less and less necessary, and also less and less relevant” (Ibid., 183). Hincks rightly points out that Krauss’s position is an example of radical scientism and reductionism (see Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 337).
28 William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 135.
29 Ibid. It is worth adding that the attitude of Hawking, Mlodinow and Krauss toward philosophy (their approach to theology is most likely the same) stands in opposition to that of Albert Einstein, who in an unpublished letter to Robert A. Thornton, dated December 7, 1944, wrote: “I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today, and even professional scientists, seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is, in my opinion, the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth” (Albert Einstein, “A. Einstein to R. A. Thornton, Unpublished Letter Dated 7 December 1944 (EA 6-574),” Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Cited by Don Howard, “Albert Einstein as Philosopher of Science,” Physics Today [2005], 34–40, at 34).
30 Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 181. See Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 337.
31 Barr notes that we can imagine a quantum system in which emerging universes have seven dimensions rather than three (assuming our universe has three spatial dimensions). According to him, the state of a system “without” a universe with seven dimensions will be mathematically different from the state of a system “without” a universe with three dimensions, which would be crucial for the possibility of a universe with a certain number of dimensions. Most importantly, “[I]f one can talk about different kinds of no-universe states … one is clearly not talking about ‘nothing’” (Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 276–277).
32 Joseph Silk, On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 62.
33 Krauss and Dawkins, A Universe from Nothing, xv.
34 Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 336–337.
35 See Krauss and Dawkins, A Universe from Nothing, 174. It is worth noting that Krauss, referring to Frank Wilczek, speaks of “nothingness producing a Big Bang,” and adds that “nothing” referred to in the theory of quantum gravity is “unstable” (see Ibid., chapter 10). This lack of caution in the selection of terms describing nothingness makes Krauss's position vulnerable to the accusation of reifying it and assigning to it a causal potential.
36 It is important to remember that creatio ex nihilo does not need to be associated exclusively with the biblical view. Moreover, the Genesis account of creation can be seen as asserting that there was a primordial matter (stuff) out of which the universe was brought into existence. The philosophically informed and inspired clear conviction that creation is ex nihilo is the outcome of the theological reflection within the Christian community in the second century AD. It is this notion that was challenged by the physical models discussed in this paper.
37 John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? (Oxford: Lion Books, 2011), 29.
38 A physicist and theologian, William Stoeger, emphasized on numerous occasions that the laws of nature are epistemological descriptions rather than ontological prescriptions: “Although the laws of nature reveal and describe fundamental patterns of behavior and regularities in the world, we cannot consider them the source of those regularities, much less attribute them the physical necessity these regularities seem to manifest. Nor can we ascribe to them an existence independent of the reality whose behavior they describe. Instead I claim that they are imperfect abstract descriptions of physical phenomena, not prescriptions dictating or enforcing behavior. Thus, a Platonic interpretation of these laws is unjustified” (William R. Stoeger, “Contemporary Physics and the Ontological Status of the Laws of Nature,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, ed. Robert J. Russell et al. [Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory & Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 2001], 207–231, at 208).
39 Lennox mentions in his book the claim of Wittgenstein, who said that the “delusion of modernism” is the belief that the laws of nature explain the world to us, when all they do is describe its structural regularities.
40 On Aquinas’s interpretation of the concept of primary matter see also John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 312–327. He notes (Ibid., 312–313) that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, representatives of the Franciscan school of the English Province (John Pecham, Richard of Middletown, William of Ware, John Duns Scotus, and William Ockham) were inclined to say that primary matter had some degree of actuality, which they saw as necessary to support the thesis that God could keep it in existence as not actualized by any substantial form. It seems that this position was also indirectly supported by Bonaventure. Numerous fragments of the corpus of the works of Aquinas prove that he radically opposed this idea (see, for example, ST I, 7, 2, ad 3; ST I, 44, 2, ad 3; ST I, 66, 1, co.). According to him, primary matter is pure potentiality which exists only as formed (actualized) by some substantial form. It is worth remembering that the elementary level of actualization of primary matter, as perceived by the representatives of the Franciscan school, was certainly understood as still far from the status of physical objects available to our sensory perception.
41 See Aristotle, Phys. II, 3 (194b 26), in Physica (Physics), trans. R. K. Gaye, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 213–394; Meta. V, 2 (1013a 27), in Metaphysica (Metaphysics), trans. W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 681–926.
42 See David Bostock, Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s “Physics” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 79–102. Bostock provides a detailed analysis of the various definitions of form in Aristotle’s writings. Even if it is justified to identify the form with the shape, proportion, principle of the inner purposefulness of a being, the principle of its causal activity, the final state towards which it is striving, or its essence, the first and most important meaning of form states it is the principle of actuality which makes a given entity be what it is.
43 See De prin. nat. II; ST I, 66, 1, ad 3. Thomas refers here to Phys. I, 7 (191b 8–12), where it is said that we know primary matter only by analogy, that is in the speculative analysis of the material entities.
44 See also Meta. VIII, 6 (1045b 18–21).
45 See Q. de pot. 3, 4, ad 7; 5, 1, co.; Q. de an. 9, co.; SCG III, 22, no. 7.
46 It is worth noting that both the quotation from Hawking and Mlodinow’s book mentioned in the introduction and arguments developed by Krauss use the categories of “creation,” “spontaneous creation,” and “self-creation.” However, their use of the category “creation” is inadequate since, as a traditionally theological term, it presupposes the existence of a Creator (an external cause). Hence, what contemporary cosmologists are talking about is spontaneous or self-instantiation, self-constitution, or self-determination of the universe, rather than its “self-creation.” Their introduction of the categories of “spontaneous creation” and “self-creation” is a clear example of trespassing the limits of their science.
47 The notion of causality, reduced in modern times to a physically defined efficient agency, then questioned by the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley and Hume and rejected by the supporters of the philosophical manifesto of the members of the Vienna Circle, has recently become the subject of an in-depth analysis at the intersection of philosophy and natural sciences. See, e.g. Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock, and Peter Charles Menzies, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Phyllis Illari and Federica Russo, Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo, and Jon Williamson, eds., Causality in the Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Among philosophers of science, we find those who strive to overcome the reductionist approach in defining categories that determine natures of things and their dispositions. Their approach builds on the work of Mario Bunge who, already in 1959, in his book Causality and Modern Science, suggested that causal determination (which he understood in terms of physical efficient agency) is only one type of determination among many others. In addition to it he mentioned quantitative self-determination, interaction, mechanical, statistical, structural (or wholistic), teleological, and dialectical determination—saying that the list he proposed was not conclusive (see Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, first published in 1959 [New York: Dover, 1979], 17–30).
48 For more on the classical view of teleology see Phys. II, 3 (194b 32–195a 2); Meta. V, 2 (1013a 32–1013b 3); De part. an. III, 2 (663b 12–14); IV, 5 (679a 25–30); De gen. An. II, 4 (739b 27–31); III, 4 (755a 17–30). It is worth noting that in Aristotle’s understanding of the final cause it has a normative aspect, i.e. it is related to the good proper to a given entity (see Meta. XII, 10 [1075a 12–22]). On this subject, see also Mark Bedau, “Where’s the Good in Teleology?,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52:4 (1992), 781–806.
49 A spontaneous motion of both an animate and inanimate thing certainly has a remote cause for Aquinas, i.e. respectively, “the generating cause and the cause removing impediments” (SCG I, 13, no. 8). Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that it may be actualized without a proximate efficient cause.
50 Naturally, both Aristotle and Aquinas do not restrict their analysis to proximate causes. On the contrary, when asking about the cause of the nature of every contingent being, they follow the path leading up in the chain of proximate and remote (efficient and non-efficient) contingent causes, reaching the first cause. The same strategy can be applied to the cosmological models analyzed here. Obviously, the question of the existence and nature of the first cause goes beyond the framework and methodology of natural science, becoming the subject of metaphysics and theology.
51 Michael Heller, Philosophy of Chance: A Cosmic Fugue with a Prelude and a Coda, trans. Rafal Smietana (Cracow: Copernicus Center Press, 2013), chapter 5.
52 The account of Aristotle’s view on chance presented here is based on Mariusz Tabaczek, Emergence: Towards a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 16–17.
53 To give an example taken from Aristotle, the essential efficient cause of a statue is the sculptor. If he happens to be fair-skinned and musical as well, it seems just to say that a musician or a fair-skinned man made a statue. But his musical skills and the fact that he is fair-skinned are only incidental (coincidental, per accidens) causes related to the per se cause of his being a sculptor (see Phys., II, 3 [195a 34–195b 6]). Aristotle also uses a similar example of a house builder in Phys. II, 3 (196b 25–29). See also Phys. II, 3 (195b 24); II, 5 (196b 27–29).
54 “No incidental cause can be prior to a cause per se. Spontaneity and chance, therefore, are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence, however true it may be that the heavens are due to spontaneity, it will still be true that intelligence and nature will be prior causes of this all and of many things in it besides” (Phys. II, 6 [198a 8–13]).
55 Arthur Robert Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 119.
56 Ian G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (New York: HarperOne, 2000), 73.
57 Paul Davies, “Teleology Without Teleology: Purpose Through Emergent Complexity,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Robert Peacocke (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 95–108, at 100.
58 At the same time, we must not forget that—unlike a number of contemporary theologians discussing divine action in reference to natural sciences (including John Polkinghorne, Robert J. Russell, Nancy Murphy, and Thomas Tracy—see Mariusz Tabaczek, Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021], note 91 on pages 295–296)—Aquinas would disagree that the universe needs to include a certain level of indeterminacy for special divine providence to have a space for maneuver. Rather, he would say that God wants indeterminacy and contingency because a universe that includes all modes of being and acting is simply more perfect than a universe that lacks any of them: “It would be against the perfection of the universe if no corruptible thing existed, and no power could fail [in producing its effect]” (SCG III, 74, no. 3). On this topic see also Michael J. Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 216–225.
59 Michał Paluch, “Pojęcie nicości w koncepcji stworzenia z niczego świętego Tomasza z Akwinu,” Teofil 5:1 (1996), 16–34, at 28–29 (translation from Polish is mine).
60 “[P]rime matter in some way is, for it is potentially a being. But God is the cause of everything that is … Hence, God is the cause of prime matter—in respect to which nothing pre-exists” (SCG II, 16, no. 11). See also SCG II, 20, no. 7.
61 See also ST I, 45, 3, co.; ST I, 4, 2, co.; SCG III, 66, no. 7. Most importantly, the existence of creatures—being a participation in the divine esse—is not identical with it, but is predicated of creatures analogously. As such, it is not identical with the essence of a given being—as is the case with God—but corresponds to it, being its proper metaphysical correlate (the highest actualizing principle).
62 An interesting analysis of quantum models of “creation” from a philosophical and theological point of view can be found in the C. J. Isham, “Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, ed. Robert John Russell et al., Reprint edition (Vatican City State and Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 373–408, and C.J. Isham, “Quantum Theories of the Creation of the Universe,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, ed. Robert J. Russell, Nancey C. Murphy, and C.J. Isham (Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory & CTNS, 1993), 51–89.
63 One of the anonymous reviewers of this article notes that the main argument presented in it finds support in existentialist philosophy, which contrasts being (existence) with annihilation and total nothingness. Acknowledging a particular context of this distinction (defense of human freedom), we can refer to Jean-Paul Sartre, who states “But from the very fact that we presume that an Existent can always be revealed as nothing, every question supposes that we realize a nihilating withdrawal in relation to the given, which becomes a simple presentation, fluctuating between being and Nothingness. It is essential therefore that the questioner have the permanent possibility of dissociating himself from the causal series which constitutes being and which can produce only being” (Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes [London: Routledge, 1989], 23).
64 Hincks, “What Does Physical Cosmology Say,” 341.
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Mariusz Tabaczek
Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P., is a friar preacher, professor of theology, and member of the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He is the author of Emergence: Towards A New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (2019), Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism (2021), and Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective (2024).