Autor: Schindler, David C., Jun

Buch: The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: The Catholicity of Reason

Stichwort: Kausalität 6i; Ewigkeit der Welt (Aristoteles) - Thomas; Nicht-Sein nicht zeitlich "früher" als Sein (Ordnung der Zeit d. Natur); Substanz transzendiert Zeit: Th.: Ewigkeit unterschieden von Zeit durch Prinzip der Ganzheit

Kurzinhalt: Composite wholes — whether we call them substances in Aristotle's sense or subsistent beings in Aquinas's — remain absolute in the doctrine of creation, which means that this doctrine entails an integrated notion of causality.

Textausschnitt: 156b There are some who believe that Aquinas means to present this ancient view as a possibility for reason; guided by the Christian faith, however, which affirms the creation in time of all things and so denies the eternity of the world, we ought to reject this possibility in favor of the other reasonable possibility, namely, that all things come to be in time. If this were the case, one would wonder why he would write an entire treatise on behalf of a position he considers false.1 But there is another way to interpret Aquinas regarding this question. If we consider Aquinas's metaphysical exposition of creation in the Summa, we realize that, for Aquinas, this ancient philosophical notion regarding the eternity of the world is and remains in some respect true, even if this truth does not contradict the affirmation that all things have come to be. We are approaching the height of paradox here, but it is reason that is leading us to it. One of the constant themes in Aquinas's exposition of the notion of creation is that the proper terminus of God's creative act is the particular subsistent being, what Aristotle calls the substance: "Creation does not mean the building up of a composite thing from pre-existing principles; but it means that the composite is created so that it is brought into being at the same time with all of its principles."2 The reason for this is that we can attribute being to parts — for example, to form and to matter — only analogously insofar as they contribute to the reality of things. But being belongs in the proper sense "to that which has being — that is, to what subsists in its own being."3 Aquinas in other words affirms Aristotle's notion that it is wholes, composite beings, that are what is most real, and that other aspects of the world have their reality always relative to these wholes. In this respect, a human being would be more real, for example, than the genes that make him up. He is more real than an atom, or indeed even more than a rock or a tree, insofar as a human being has more independence than they. Composite wholes — whether we call them substances in Aristotle's sense or subsistent beings in Aquinas's — remain absolute in the doctrine of creation, which means that this doctrine entails an integrated notion of causality. (Fs; tblStw: Substanz, Zeit)

Fußnote 1 oben: 31. "Further, let us even suppose that the preposition 'out of' imports some affirmative order of non-being to being, as if the proposition that the creature is made out of nothing meant that the creature is made after nothing. Then this expression 'after' certainly implies order, but order is of two kinds: order of time and order of nature. If, therefore, the proper and the particular does not follow from the common and the universal, it will not necessarily follow that, because the creature is made after nothing, non-being is temporally prior to the being of the creature. Rather, it suffices that non-being be prior to being by nature. Now, whatever naturally pertains to something in itself is prior to what that thing only receives from another. A creature does not have being, however, except from another, for, considered in itself, every creature is nothing, and thus, with respect to the creature, non-being is prior to being by nature. Nor does it follow from the creature's always having existed that its being and non-being are ever simultaneous, as if the creature always existed but at some time nothing existed, for the priority is not one of time. Rather, the argument merely requires that the nature of the creature is such that, if the creature were left to itself, it would be nothing." On the Eternity of the World, trans. Robert T. Miller.

157a The question that arises, here, is whether this absoluteness of wholes presents a difficulty for the temporal coming to be of the world that is entailed in the Christian belief in creation in time. On the one hand, Aquinas affirms that substances as such imply the transcendence of time — "time does not measure the substance of things"4 — and for this reason, because demonstration concerns the essence of things (which represents their non-temporal aspect), creation in time cannot be demonstrated. This implies that a "supra-temporal" aspect of being is essential to its intelligibility, which is what we have argued with respect to the notion of causality. Indeed, Aquinas specifically distinguishes eternity from time by the principle of wholeness: eternity is simultaneously whole, while time is not.5 We may infer from this that, insofar as something is whole, and to that extent it represents something essentially greater than and irreducible to its parts, that thing transcends time. It is important to see the implication: it is not simply a part of a substance — for example, the abstract form or the "ideal" reality of the thing — that transcends time, but that each individual substance must transcend time precisely to the extent that the substance represents an irreducible unity. This does not mean the thing does not exist in time, but only that its temporal reality is not the whole of its reality. Again, it is just this transcendence of time that makes it intelligible. But faith does not contradict reasoning; the light of faith does not obscure the light of reason. This means that the new context into which faith introduces the being of the world preserves the intelligibility, and therefore the time-transcending character, of being even as it transforms it. The sharpest question we must ask, then, is how does the origin in time of things not eliminate the supra-temporal integrity of their intelligible reality? (Fs) (notabene)

158a We cannot here explore this question in all the depth that it demands, but we may nonetheless draw principles of a response to it from Aquinas. Precisely because substance necessarily has an "all at once" quality, it cannot as we said come into being incrementally. Moreover, insofar as creation is a divine act, it does not itself take place in time, as a movement or a change, which always implies the succession of moments. Thus, Aquinas affirms that the world is created simultaneously with time: "Things are said to be created in the beginning of time ... because together with time heaven and earth were created."6 Indeed, God does not "take time," as it were, to create, but rather "He must be considered as giving time to His effect as much as and when He willed."7 It is manifestly not the case that, for example, the matter is first created as a potential to receive at a later moment the form that actualizes it. This would leave form and matter extrinsic to each other in a way that would not allow us to make sense of organic beings, the epitome of the real. To the contrary, not only is no matter present prior to God's creation of subsistent beings, but no possibility is present — or rather, if there is a possibility it lies wholly in God's will.8 God does not operate within the limits of the conditions of possibility, but he gives those conditions in giving being. It is in this sense that each real, subsistent being is created "all at once," specifically as a whole. (Fs)