A question about Thomism

[Belacqua]

No, just some general questions about how time complicates things like Thomistic conceptions of cause.  It seems that when it comes to a cause, either it/they must come / exist before the caused effect, or it is not necessary that it/they comes before the effect.  But if a cause is timeless, how do we make sense of the questions?  And it isn't aimed exclusively at Aquinas.

Remember that in Thomas Aquinas as in Aristotle, "cause" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in English. It would lead to less confusion if we could just leave in in the original Greek and refer to an αἰτία.

What they're talking about here is not only the efficient cause (which is what we modern people mean by "cause") but all the things that must be the case in order for something to be the case. 

So when we're talking about "what caused our sun?" the answer would include the materials necessary to make it, and the laws of nature necessary to bring it about, and the time involved -- any and every thing that had to be true in order for our sun to exist. 

When we're thinking of examples, most causes are temporally prior to the effect. So the existence of the laws of nature, and of hydrogen, happened in time before the sun was made. Though of course to be the cause of the ongoing existence of the sun, the laws of nature and hydrogen must continue to exist simultaneously with the sun.

But not all causes in this sense have to be temporally prior. Some things which are essentially prior could begin to exist at the same moment as the things they cause. In other words, there could be a chain of essential causation, and the whole chain could begin to exist at the same moment. Or it could be eternal, with no beginning in time, and no time at which the cause hadn't yet been caused. 

So let's say that the universe started at a certain point. At the same moment the universe came into being, the laws of nature came into being as well. Though the universe is essentially prior to the laws, they are temporally simultaneous. 

For Thomas, God the Father is essentially prior to the Logos, but there was never a time when the former existed and the latter didn't. In fact Thomas thinks that we can't prove that the universe had a temporal beginning. But even if it had no start point, the Logos would still be essentially posterior to the universe.

For Augustine, the Universe began to exist at a certain point, and time began at the same moment. But the universe is essentially prior to time, even though there was never a time when the former existed and the latter didn't.