CREATION
472
CREATION
that the original creation of the world in its rude and
chaotic state was from nothing while the remaining
part of the chapter teaches the elaboration and distri-
bution of the matter thus created, the connection of
the whole section shows sufficiently clearly" (The-
saurus, p. 357 b). Miihlan and Volck in the new edi-
tion of Gesenius' "Handworterbuch" say: " Bara is
used only of Divine creation and never with an accusa-
tive of the material". Dillmann (Gen., c. i) notes:
"The Hebrews use only the conjugation Pjel (inten-
sativc) in speaking of human 'forming' or 'shaping',
while on the other hand they use only Kal in speaking
of creation of God". Delitzschsays: (Gen., p. 91) "The
word bara in its etymology does not exclude a previ-
ous material. It has, as the use of Kal shows, the
fundamental idea of cutting or hewing. But as in
other languages words which define creation by God
have the same etymological idea at their root, so bara
has acquired the idiomatic meaning of a divine creat-
ing, which, whether in the kingdom of nature, or of
history, or of the spirit, calls into being that which
hitherto had no existence. Bara never appears as the
word for human creation, differing in this from the
synonyms asah, yatzar, i/alad, which are used both of
men and of God; it is never used with an accusative
of the material, and even from this it follows that it
defines the divine creative act as one without any lim-
itations, and its result, as to its proper material, as en-
tirely new ; and, as to its first cause, entirely the crea-
tion of divine power." Again Kalisch observes
(Gen., p. 1): "God called the universe into being out
of nothing; not out of formless matter coeval with
Himself" (Geikie, Hours with the Bible, I, 16).
3. The patristic teaching as to the created origin of the world is too explicit and well known to require ci- tation here. The few ambiguous expressions occur- ring in the works of Origen and TertuUian are more than counterbalanced by other unmistakable declara- tions of these same writers, while their at most excep- tional divergencies are as nothing in comparison with the unanimous and continuous teaching of the other Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
4. Approaching the problem of origin from the pure- ly rational side, we find the field preoccupied almost from the beginning of the history of philosophy by two directly opposite solutions: one maintaining that the world-matter is self-existent, underived from any ex- traneous source, and hence eternal; the world has therefore attained its present complex condition by a gradual evolutionary process from an original, simple, undifferentiated state (materialistic Monism); the other asserting that the world is derived from an ex- traneous cause, either by emanation from or evolution of the Divine being (Pantheism) or by creation (Cre- ationism). Creationism, though an essentially philo- sophical solution, is never found divorced from Reve- lation. Materialistic Monism includes a varying number of philosophies ; but all agree in maintaining that the world-matter is eternal, unproduced, and abso- lutely indestructible. They differ in that some attrib- ute the formation of the universe to chance (the ancient Atomists), others to a sort of ubiquitous cos- mical life or world-soul (Anaxagoras, Plato, Pan- psychists, Feclmer, Lotze, Paulsen), others to forces essentially inherent in matter (Feuerbach, Buchner, Hiickel). Against materialistic Monism Catholic philosophers (Creationists) argue thus: The world- matter is not self-existent ; for what is self-existent is essentially necessary, immutable, .absolute, infinite. But the world-matter is not necessary; its essence as such furnishes no rea.son why it should exist rather than not exist, nor why it is definitely determineil as to number, extension, and space. It is not immuta- ble, for it undergoes incess.int change; not absolute, since it tiejjends upon the natural forces which condi- tion its states; not infinite as to extent, since, being extended, it is numerable, and hence finite; nor in-
finite in active power, since it is inert and essentially
limited by external stimulation. The aggregate of
natural forces must also be finite, otherwise there
could be no change, no laws of inertia, no con-
stancy and equivalence of energy. The world-sub-
stance is not eternal. For that substance must be
conceived either as possessing eternal motion or not.
If eternally active it would have passed through an
infinite number of changes, which is self-contradictory.
Moreover, the supposed evolutionary process would
not have begun so late as geology teaches that it did,
and would long since have come to an end, i. e. to a
static equilibrium of forces according to the law of en-
tropy. If the primal matter was not endowed with
an eternal activity, evolution could not have begun —
not from within, the law of inertia forbidding; nor
from without, since the materialistic hypothesLs ad-
mits no extraneous cause. Moreover, since chance is
no cause, but the negation thereof, some reason must
be assigned for the differentiation of the original
material into the various chemical elements and com-
pounds. That reason may be supposed either in-
trinsic or extrinsic to the primary matter. If in-
trinsic, it does not explain why just these elements (or
compounds) in kind and number become differenti-
ated ; if extrinsic, the supposition contradicts the very
basis of materialism which negates transmaterial
agency.
A similar line of argument may be used to prove the impossibility of explaining, on the materialistic hj-po- thesis, the order prevailing everywhere throughout the universe. To the counter argument that, given infinite series of atomic arrangements, the present order must needs result, it may be answered: (a) the origin of both atoms and motion still remains unex- plained; (b) an infinite series of combinations would demand infinite time, while geology indicates a limited time for the earth's formation; (c) some sort of order might result from a chance concurrence of atoms, but no constant and imiversal order ; (d) the present order presupposes some disposition of the elements for this rather than another order. Now the question still re- mains: Whence came precisely this disposition, and why did not the atoms concur in a way unfavourable to a continuous evolution, since the number of possible arrangements of an infinite nimiber of atoms must be infinite?
The hypothesis of a world-soul exhibits another group of inconsistencies. If the universe were " ' formed " by a principle of life, there would not be that essential difference between inanimate and animate bodies which both science and philosophy establish; inanimate bodies would manifest signs of life, such as spontaneous and immanent activity, organs, etc. The materialistic princiijle, " No matter without force, no force without matter" (Buchner), though, with some obvious qualification, true as to its first part, is untrue as to its second. Force is the proximate principle of action, and may be or not be, but it is not of necessity conjoined with matter. The principle of action in man is not intrinsically dependent on matter. — For the development of these and more serious arguments against materialistic Monism see " Institutiones Phil- osophi;r .Naturalis", by Willems or Pesch.
Pantheistic dilTers from materialistic Monism in as- serting a being, in some sense unitary, which unfolds itself in the material universe and in human conscious- ness. That such a being is called "God "is an obvious misuse of language. Moreover, God is indivisible, spiritual, eternal, nece.s.sary, immutable, omnipresent, absolute, and cannot, therefore, "evolve" into a uni- verse of matter which pos.sesses just the contrary attri- butes. For a like reason bodies cannot be modes, either real (Spinoza) or logical (Hegel"), of the divine substance. Since, then, the world-material is not self-existent, but produced, and that not from some antecedent material (for such a supposition would
