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Question Four. Whether the Creation of an Angel is the same as the Angel
179. Fourth I ask whether the creation of an angel is the same as the angel.
180. That it is not:
Because according to Avicenna Metaphysics 5.1 (f. 86va), “horse-ness is just horse-ness, neither one thing nor many;”9 therefore, by parity of reasoning, an angel is just an angel, and no respect is the same as it.
181. Second thus: there is creation of an angel only in the first instant of nature, when the angel receives being; but an angel persists after the first instant, and nothing persists without that which is really the same as it; therefore etc.
182. Third thus: because if creation were the same as the angel, God could not renew de novo one and the same - annihilated - angel in number; the consequent is false, therefore so is the antecedent. Proof of the consequence: God cannot renew the same creation in number (so it seems) because neither can he renew the same motion in number (according to some), for the interruption would prevent the motion from being the same in number.
183. Fourth thus: ‘generated fire’ is from some other fire that causally generates it (and consequently the generated fire has its nature from the other fire); and yet creation -in a causally generated fire - is not from a generating fire; therefore etc. The proof of the minor is that then the generated fire would have from the generating fire the fact that it is a creature, because the fire is created by whatever agent creation in the fire is from - but this consequent seems false, because ‘being a creature’ states only a respect to the Creator.
184. Fifth thus: change differs from the term to which; creation is change; therefore etc.
185. Proof of the major [n.184]: both because change precedes the term, and because change is in the genus of undergoing (for motion is too), according to the Commentator, Physics 5 com.9; but the intrinsic term is of the same genus as the thing it is the term of (as point is of the same genus as line), but the form to which there is motion or change is not of the genus of undergoing (from Physics 5.2.226a23-25).
186. Proof of the minor: first, because a new relation does not come to a thing without change of some extreme; through creation there is a new relation of the creature to God, because something new is said of the Creator but only because of a new relation in that to which he is said [sc. to be Creator]. There is confirmation from Augustine On the Trinity 5.16 n.17: “Those things are relative to God that exist with a change in that of which they are said.” Second, because “in every genus there is some one thing that is the measure of all other things that there are in that genus” (Averroes, Metaphysics 10 com.2); but the first thing in the genus of changes does not seem it can be set down as generation, because generation is not the idea of change in all changeables, for not all changeable things are generated - likewise the opposition between the terms of generation, which are privation and form, is not the greatest; but there is a greater opposition between the terms of creation, which are contradictories, as being and nothing; therefore creation is the first change.
187. To the opposite:
If the creation of an angel is other than the angel, then either it is the Creator -which is not the case because creation is new; or it is a mean between the Creator and the creature - which is not the case, because nothing is the mean; or it is posterior to the created thing - which is not the case because creation is as it were the way to the being of a creature. Therefore creation is the same as the angel.