the means to the end.

Reply Obj. 3: All things desire God as their end, when they desire
some good thing, whether this desire be intellectual or sensible, or
natural, i.e. without knowledge; because nothing is good and
desirable except forasmuch as it participates in the likeness to God.

Reply Obj. 4: Since God is the efficient, the exemplar and the final
cause of all things, and since primary matter is from Him, it follows
that the first principle of all things is one in reality. But this
does not prevent us from mentally considering many things in Him,
some of which come into our mind before others.
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QUESTION 45

THE MODE OF EMANATION OF THINGS FROM THE FIRST PRINCIPLE
(In Eight Articles)

The next question concerns the mode of the emanation of things from
the First Principle, and this is called creation, and includes eight
points of inquiry:

(1) What is creation?

(2) Whether God can create anything?

(3) Whether creation is anything in the very nature of things?

(4) To what things it belongs to be created?

(5) Whether it belongs to God alone to create?

(6) Whether creation is common to the whole Trinity, or proper to any
one Person?

(7) Whether any trace of the Trinity is to be found in created things?

(8) Whether the work of creation is mingled with the works of nature
and of the will?
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FIRST ARTICLE [I, Q. 45, Art. 1]

Whether to Create Is to Make Something from Nothing?

Objection 1: It would seem that to create is not to make anything
from nothing. For Augustine says (Contra Adv. Leg. et Proph. i): "To
make concerns what did not exist at all; but to create is to make
something by bringing forth something from what was already."

Obj. 2: Further, the nobility of action and of motion is considered
from their terms. Action is therefore nobler from good to good, and
from being to being, than from nothing to something. But creation
appears to be the most noble action, and first among all actions.
Therefore it is not from nothing to something, but rather from being
to being.

Obj. 3: Further, the preposition "from" [ex] imports relation of some
cause, and especially of the material cause; as when we say that a
statue is made from brass. But "nothing" cannot be the matter of
being, nor in any way its cause. Therefore to create is not to make
something from nothing.

_On the contrary,_ On the text of Gen. 1, "In the beginning God
create