Divine conservation
| Latin | Conservatio in esse |
|---|---|
| Principal locus | ST I, q. 104; CCC 301 |
| Related | Creation, concurrence, providence |
| Doctrinal standing | Creatures' dependence for continued existence is Catholic doctrine; the precise identity of conservation with creation in God is theological analysis |
Divine conservation is God's unceasing action by which creatures continue in being, so that without that action they would lapse into nothing rather than persist by a stored independence.[1][2]
Creatures do not keep themselves in being
The Catechism teaches that after creation God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act, and brings them to their final end. Conservation is that upholding. It is not a courtesy. It is the reason there is still a world this instant.[1]
Thomas argues in Summa theologiae I, question 104, that a thing is preserved per se when its being depends on the preserver such that it cannot exist without him. All creatures are in that condition. God alone is being by his essence. Every creature has being by participation. Withdraw the participated act, and there is not a leftover essence waiting in the dark. There is nothing. Hebrews 1:3, which Thomas cites, names the Son as upholding all things by the word of his power.[2]
Conservation and the act of existing
The argument hangs on the real composition of essence and existence in creatures. If a creature were its own existence, conservation would be at most the removal of threats, as a nurse keeps a child from the fire. Thomas admits that indirect preservation, but it is not the primary sense. Direct conservation is the continued gift of esse. The analogy of air lit by the sun is pedagogical: the illumination lasts only while the source acts.
Conservation is therefore not a physical energy supply that physics could detect as an extra force. Physics studies the operations of things that already are. Metaphysics asks why they are. A law of conservation of energy, even when true in its own order, does not replace the Creator, and it does not refute him. It describes quantities among existing things. It does not confer aseity on the universe.
One act in God, several effects in speech
In God, creating and conserving are not two successive labors, as if he first manufactured and then maintained. The distinction is on the side of the effect: a thing's beginning to be, and its continuing to be. Thomas can therefore say that conservation is the continuation of the creative action. Speech that treats conservation as a later hobby of a retired Creator is already Deist.[3][4]
Conservation also differs from concurrence in what we are attending to. Conservation answers why the agent is. Concurrence answers why the agent acts. A stone conserved but not applied to a motion would still be; a motion without a conserved agent would not be a created motion. Providence includes both, because the wise order of things to an end requires that they be and that they operate.
Catholic confession and school precision
That the world depends on God not only for its origin but for its continuance is Catholic doctrine, bound up with creation from nothing and with the denial of a necessary world. Lateran IV and Dei Filius close the path to a universe that exists of itself. The Catechism's language of upholding and sustaining is the ordinary magisterial form. Thomists specify that dependence as received existence. Other Catholic schools may phrase the same dependence with less of that vocabulary.[3][4]
The specification is precious and not defined word for word. It protects preaching: prayer is not an attempt to wake an absent God; thanksgiving is not a metaphor; annihilation, as a possibility of power, is the withdrawal of the gift, not a violent smash. It also protects science: secondary causes are real while they last, because God gives them. Conservation is the metaphysical face of both trust and empiricism.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 279–324 — Authoritative doctrine of creation from nothing, conservation, providence, and God's operation in and through secondary causes.
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 104 — That creatures are kept in being by God and would fall into nothingness without his conserving action.
- Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Fourth Lateran Council, Firmiter credimus — Conciliar confession of the one Creator, the Creator-creature distinction, and the greater unlikeness in every likeness between Creator and creature.
- Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 First Vatican Council, Dei Filius — Dogmatic constitution on God the Creator, the natural knowability of God, the distinction and harmony of the natural and supernatural orders, and the gratuity of revelation.