God and the Four Causes: Are Things Preserved in Their Being by God? (Part I) 6/09/13

Four Causes

In the first article of the fifth question of St. Thomas Aquinas' De Potentia (On The Power of God), Aquinas asks the following question: "Are Things Preserved in Their Being by God?" He points out the key aspects of the issue: "The question at issue is about the preservation of things in their being by God: and the first point of inquiry is whether they continue to exist independently of all divine action: and seemingly they do." Aquinas wants to argue for God's creative acts of existence, claiming that the world would fall into nothingness if God were to withhold his preservative power: "On the contrary it is written (Heb. i, 8): Upholding all things by, the word of his power: and the gloss remarks 'Even as all things were created by him, so by him are they preserved unchangeable.'"

In order to fully understand and appreciate Aquinas' approach to this question, we need to learn more about his Aristotelian terminology (i.e. Aristotle's Four Causes: the material cause, the efficient cause, the formal cause, and the final cause). Aristotle believes that we need a sufficient grasp of a thing's underlying causes or principles in order for us to claim to have knowledge about a particular thing or a phenomenon in the world (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). These four causes, according to Aristotle, exhaust the possible answers to the "why-question" of a thing. The following x paragraphs will attempt to properly define the Four Causes and provide numerous examples to supplement our understanding of them.

Firstly, the material cause is the "that out of which" or "that from which" of a thing. The material cause points to the material components or parts of a thing. Take for instance Aristotle's example of the statue. What would be the material cause of the statue? Depending on what the statue is made of, one might say copper, marble, or iron. The material make-up of the statue would take the place of the material cause of the question, "Why is this a statue?", because bronze would answer to the substratum that the form actualizes. Moreover, the flesh and bones of a human being would also be material causes explaining why this thing is a human being and not anything other than a human being.

Secondly, the efficient cause answers to the "primary source of the change or rest" or "that by which" of a thing. It points to the cause of its becoming what it is, the cause being that by which the thing came to be (in philosophical jargon: the bodily agent whereby the form or the characterization of the bronze as statue becomes induced in the now properly disposed matter, the bronze then unshaped now shaped so as to contain the form of the statue). Take for instance Aristotle's example of the statue again. The sculptor would be the efficient cause of the statue because the sculptor transmutes the matter of the statue, the bronze, in such a way that would allow the form to actualize the bronze into a statue.

To be continued...