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14 Article 2 The second thing to be asked is whether creation is a change. And it seems that it is.1 obj. 1. The word “change” denotes that one thing comes after another, as is plain in Physics V.2 But this is true of creation, for being comes after non-being. Therefore creation is a change. obj. 2. Everything which is made, comes to be in some way from non-being, since that which [already] is does not come to be. Therefore just as generation (through which a thing is made with respect to part of its substance) is related to the privation of form (which is a kind of non-being), so is creation (through which a thing is made with respect to its whole substance) related to absolute non-being. But privation properly speaking is one term3 of generation. Therefore , absolute non-being also properly speaking is a term of creation. And so creation properly speaking is a change. obj. 3. The greater the distance between the terms, the greater the change. Indeed, the change from white to black is greater than the change from white to pale. But absolute non-being is further from being than contraries are from each other, or than relative nonbeing is from being. Therefore, since transition from contrary to contrary or from relative non-being to being is a change, much more is creation, the transition from absolute non-being to being, a change. obj. 4. That which is not in the same condition now as it was before4 is moved or changed. But that which is created is not in the same condition now as it was before, since before it was absolute nonbeing and then it became a being. Therefore that which is created is moved or changed. obj. 5. That which passes from potency to act5 is changed. Now that which is created passes from potency to act, since before creation it 1. For parallel discussions of whether creation is a change, see ST I Q. 45, a. 2, ad 2 and SCG II 17. 2. Aristotle, Physics, V 1, 224b35–225a3. 3. terminus. 4. I have been unable to trace this reference. 5. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, III 1, 201a10–201b5. Article 2 15 was only in the potency of the maker, but now it is in act. Therefore that which is created is changed, and so creation is a change. On the contrary, according to the Philosopher in the Categories, there are six kinds of motion6 or change, but none of these is creation, as is plain by taking them one by one. Therefore creation is not a change. I answer that every change requires some one thing common to both terms of the change. For if the opposing terms of a change had nothing in common, then it could not be called a change from one to the other. For the words “change” and “transition” signify that some one thing is otherwise now than before. Indeed the terms of a change are not themselves incompatible (as is required in relation to their being the terms of a change) except in reference to one thing. For two contraries, if referred to different subjects, may exist simultaneously . Therefore it sometimes happens that there is one common actually existing subject of both terms of a change, and then it can be properly called motion, as for example in alteration or in increase and decrease or in local motion. For in all of these motions some subject, [while] actually remaining one and the same, is moved from one contrary to another. Sometimes both terms have the same common subject, but instead of an actual being, it is only a potential being, as happens in simple generation and corruption. For the subject of the substantial being and its privation is prime matter, which is not actual being.7 Hence neither generation nor corruption is properly called motion, but each is a kind of change. And sometimes there is no common subject existing actually or potentially, but there is one continuous period of time, in the first part of which is one contrary and in the second the other, as when we say that this is made from that, i.e. after that, as for example noon comes from the morning. But this is not properly called change, ex6 . Aristotle, Categories, 14, 15a14. 7. For a discussion of prime matter in the context of contemporary understanding of matter, see W. Norris...

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