Chapter 18 — How to solve the objections against creation

From this we may see the vacuity of those who gainsay creation by arguments taken from the nature of movement and change, such as that creation must take place in some subject (like other movements and changes) and that it implies the transmutation of non-being into being (like that of fire into air).

For creation is not a change, but the very dependence of created being on the principle whereby it is produced. Hence it is a kind of relation. Therefore, nothing prevents its being in the creature as its subject.

Nevertheless, creation seems to be a kind of change only according to our way of understanding: insofar, to wit, as our intellect grasps one and the same thing as previously nonexistent, and as afterwards existing.

It is clear, however, that if creation is a relation, it is a thing, and neither is it uncreated, nor is it created by another relation. For, since a created effect depends really on its creator, this relation must be some thing. Now everything is brought into being by God. (Ch. 15.) Therefore, it receives its being from God. And yet it is not created by a different creation from the first creature which is stated to be created thereby. Because accidents and forms, just as they do not exist by themselves, so neither are they created by themselves (since creation is the production of a being), but just as they are in another, so are they created when other things are created.

Moreover. A relation is not referred through another relation—for in that case one would go on to infinity—but is referred by itself, because it is essentially a relation. Therefore, there is no need for another creation by which creation itself is created, so that one would go on to infinity.