Aquinas’ Concept of God’s Creative Power and Its Aristotelian Framework

Abstract

In the second book of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, he argues that God is engaged in a special kind of action: creation. The present paper points out that Aquinas’ concept of creation as God’s action generates problems with some of the notions central to Aristotelian metaphysics – from which Aquinas actually starts. With this in mind, it is possible to explain the progression as well as the structure of some arguments within Summa Contra Gentiles II, as they are motivated by Aquinas’ attempt to avoid disastrous consequences for his theory while trying to stay within Aristotle’s framework. Specifically, God’s potentia activa clashes with Aristotle’s notion of a dunamis. This has to be associated with potentiality, and the transeunt action of creation as something very different from an immanent action, as it typically involves a succession in time (movement and change). This essay critically discusses Aquinas’ solutions to the problems and the implications of this reading.