THE MYSTERY OF CREATION
There has been no mystery which has
intrigued man’s mind more than that of creation. How and even why did all
things, the whole world, come into existence? Was it through spontaneous means,
or was it predetermined? If it was spontaneous, was there a previously created
contributing substance? To cite chaos as the spring from which the world came
forth simply precipitates the question as to whether chaos had a quality in
itself. If it had, then what was its origin?
If one accepts the alternative, that
is, the concept of a predetermined reason, he enters the realm of teleology, or
mind as the motivating force of creation. This assumes that creation was a
primary idea, an objective to be attained; that it was predetermined.
This conception engenders the idea of an
embodied mind residing in a thinking, reasoning entity. The only parallel we
have for such a mental capacity is the human mind. Therefore, it is quite
understandable that men would think of such an infinite mind as an attribute of
a supernatural being.
If such being had the faculty of planning,
formulating ideas, it must also have other attributes similar to those of
mortals, such as the emotions, passions, and sentiments. Thus the notion of
gods was born.
At first these gods were
thought of as apotheosized humans; in other words, mortals who had attained a
divine status. Later, the gods were conceived as self-generated beings, and
eventually the belief in a monotheistic being, as sole God, was promulgated.
The sole God, too, was thought to have been self-generated, that nothing had preceded
such a deity. These notions aroused polemic theological and ontological
discussions; in other words, they centered on the enigma of the phrase,
“self-generated.” Did the term generation imply a creation from a pre-existing
“something” that was transmuted into deity? Or did it mean the God came into
existence from a void, a condition of non-existence? Even if the latter view is
accepted, there is the implication that this non-existence is a negative
reality. Once again we return to the repetitious question of “Whence came that
state or condition which is given the reality of a ‘non-existence’? “If it is
realized and if it is named, is it not, therefore, a “thing”?
THE METAPHYSICAL ASPECT OF CREATION
This brings us to another aspect of
creation –the metaphysical. Did the world pass through a nascent state, that
is, did it necessarily have a beginning? This question involves the profound
subject of causality. Are there actually such things as causes? Or are they but
a precept, a mere abstract idea, of human faculties? Aristotle, on his doctrine
of causality, set forth four types of causes:
1.
The material cause, of which something arises.
2.
The formal cause, the pattern or essence which
determines the creation of a thing.
3.
The efficient cause, or the force or agent
producing an effect.
4.
The final cause, or purpose.
We will note that the first and third
definitions imply a pre-existing condition; in other words, that something was,
out of which something else came into existence. In fact, the third definition
expounds that this pre-existing state, or force, brought a transition, a change
in itself, which then was the effect. The fourth definition strongly suggests
determinism, that is, that all being was self-designed to attain a particular
ultimate state or condition.
It is not possible that attributing a
cause to the world is due to man’s concept that for every positive state there
is an opposite one of equal reality? More simply, that non-being exists also?
That which is suggests non-existence as an opposite state out of which, it may
be imagined, came the substance, the cause of that which has discernible
reality. It is difficult to derive from common human experience the idea that
there has never been a primary cause of things.
As we look about us, we see what seems
to constitute a series of specific causes by which things appear as the
effects. However, what we observe as causes are in themselves but effects, too,
of preceding changes. Due to our limited faculties of perception, we are unable
to see an infinite number of apparent causes. We may presume that such do exist
or think that there was an initial, that is, a first cause, a beginning. In
drawing on our experience with natural phenomena, we thus imagine that the
cosmos had some beginning. To theorize about such beginning is only to return
to the original perplexing question, “Whence did it come?”
Ordinarily overlooked is an important
doctrine in connection with the subject of creation, and whether there was a
beginning –namely, the doctrine of necessity. From a point of ratiocination,
necessity is a state wherein a thing cannot be other than it is. Applying this
doctrine to the question of cosmos and creation, we must ask ourselves the
question: was a beginning necessary?” in other words, could there have been
anything other than the cosmos? Nothing is only the negation of what is; it has
no reality in itself. There can be nothing apart from what is. Since nothing is
non-existent, all else then is by necessity –it must be. Being is positive,
active, there is no absolute inertial.
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