ABSTRACT

The "thingification" of creation as a relation would add the absurdity of converting an accident into a substance. In this case, creation would be a pure "towards God" but not an order of things which was "towards God", pure dependence in being without any dependents in being. The con-created character of the relation of creation can permit Saint Thomas to say, in the Summa Theologiae, that creation "taken passively is in the creature and is the creature". Were creation as a relation a subsisting thing it could not simultaneously be in a creature, for creation, taken passively, is nothing other than the creature itself. The relation of creation appears to be truly a very odd relation indeed. Locating that relation within the total context of the relational order heightens the oddity. Creation is a production which is not an accidental act in the producer as it is in creatures, an act following on and somehow distinct from producing agents.