A. Solution

281. As to the fourth question, about creation [n.179], I say that creation seems to import not only relation to God in idea of efficient cause but also a respect to preceding not-being, and this in order of duration, as creation is properly taken. But this order can be understood to be either to immediately preceding not-being or to not-being taken indistinctly; and in the first way a thing is said to be created only in the first instant - in the second way a thing can be said to have always been created, as long as it persists.

282. If we speak of the first relation (namely to the efficient cause), the solution is plain from the preceding question [the fifth question, n.260].

283. If we speak of the second relation [sc. order to preceding not-being], the relation seems not to be the same as the foundation - and this follows from the first way [n.281], insofar as the relation belongs to the thing in the first instant, provided the respect to not-being persists only in that instant; but what is absolute persists after that instant, and what does not persist is not the same really as what does persist.

284. If we speak of the order to not-being taken indistinctly, the same conclusion seems to hold [sc. that the relation is not the same as the foundation], unless proof can be given that it is contradiction for the essence to be without a respect to a preceding not-being in duration. But if there be proof (in the third question asked [n.95]) that it is a contradiction for a stone to be without a respect to a preceding not-being in duration, then it could be said as a consequence that the respect does not differ from the foundation save in that the respect is not a dependence on something on which what has the foundation essentially depends; and it was said generally in the preceding question [the fifth question, n.260], not that ‘every respect is the same really as its foundation’, but that ‘every respect of dependence on something, without which the dependent thing cannot be, is the same as the dependent thing’ [nn.261, 263, 265, 278]. But if it is not a contradiction for a stone to be without such respect and order to not-being, then it is plain that the order is not the same as the foundation.

285. Thus, therefore, creation is the same as the foundation either, according to one opinion, as to both respects that it states [nn.282, 284], or, according to the first opinion, at least as to the first respect (though not as to the second [n.282]).