In his essay Divine intervention and the conservation of energy, Robert Larmer claims that creatio ex nihilo contravenes the conservation of energy. This leads him to argue that the theologian is obliged to disagree with a strict interpretation of the conservation of energy, which prevents God from interacting with the universe. While this paper will not comment on Larmer’s proposed theory, it will seek to show that he is mistaken in supposing that creatio violates the principle. Drawing on scholastic distinctions between mutatio and creatio and between cause per accidens and cause per se, this paper will show that creatio ex nihilo has more in common with participation than a specific, identifiable act that may or may not have violated energy conservation. The paper will then argue that, somewhat counter-intuitively, the physical theory of «spontaneous self-creation» is consonant with creatio ex nihilo thus understood.
Introduction
In his essay Divine intervention and the conservation of energy, Robert Larmer claims that creatio ex nihilo contravenes the conservation of energy. Thus, he concludes (accepting creatio ex nihilo as an axiom) that this indicates a revision of the conservation of energy is necessary, and so other divine acts (however understood) must also be permitted. This paper is not concerned with the veracity of Larmer’s proposed solution (or with the question of the conservation of energy), but with the claim that «that energy can neither be created or destroyed...rules out...creation ex nihilo».
Creation, at least for the Thomist (following Aristotle), is sharply distinguished from change. If the conservation of energy is concerned with change, then creation is not. Thus, Aquinas writes that whereas for «every change or motion there must be something existing in one way now and in a different way before», this is not the same as when «the whole substance of a thing is brought into being». As there was nothing «before» creation in order for it to be a change, there is no prior energy to change and so nothing to «conserve». […]
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