iwpoe wrote:

It occurs to me that God has two (which are possibly one) utterly unique powers: creation and the sustaining of being.

The question is whether either of these are properly any of the classical causes. The creation of matter from nothing cannot (on threat of heresy) be material, is not formal, is not efficient, is not final, is not paradigmatic, is not instrumental. So what is it?

Granted creatio ex nihilo is a unique form of casual relation that alone is no reason for us not class it as an act, the ultimate act, of efficient causation. Traditionally this is what it has been classed (later of course the very term 'causation' became synonymous with 'efficient causation').

There is a very bad atheist argument I've seen parroted out from time to time to the effect that creatio ex nihilo must be impossible because every instance of causation of which we are aware involves a material cause. Not only is it question-begging but it over-looks the fact that if the theist's proofs are cogent we know that of necessity there has to be at least one example of causation not acting on a prior material body (it's equivalent to the old Humean objection to the OA which was to claim there are no necessary beings despite the OAer having claimed not only that there are but that he/she can offer a proof for one).

Hmm. Let me think about that. I was leaning towards considering it its own kind of causation, utterly unique to God, but let me think about the possibility that it be final. The reason it won't work as an efficient cause is because it is not the change of anything into anything else. It cannot be material, unless you're a pantheist, because it is not done by virtue of the preexisting character of some substance: matter is not the extension of God's own substance.

The power to create matter is. I'm not an occasionallist.

Hmm, yes, classically that definition would have had to tacitly include "...brings something into existence (from out of what already exists)". You could consider it an efficient cause on Feser's definition, but having brought about its effect from nothing, it would be structurally different from all other efficient causes. (Unless I'm wrong about ex nihilo, but I always understood the doctrine to teach creation from literally not anything at all.)

For reference:

Effecent cause can be stated more formally on a classical view as:

X is the efficient cause of effect Y insofar as X interacts with material M to bring about Y.

This definition makes it clear why efficient and material causation are seperated classically (while modern accounts of causation often have a hard time making this seperation understandable). Strictly, I ought to formally include the final and the formal cause (as well as the paridignmiatic and instrumental) in the definition also, but it's unecessary for our purposes.

On that definition I could call God the efficient cause of matter only insofar as I ignore that mater itself has no material cause which God might come to and effect into matter. This is why I'm inclined to call God's creation a unique causal power. I suppose we could change the definition for the sake of this one, albeit importan, instance, but this would clearly disunify the causes. An important aspect about classical causation is that the analysis of causation is a literal analysis. Those are the four (or six) parts of causation, they are not four differnt causes that happen to come together sometimes.

I'll give a formal definition of material cause later, but I was not aware that creation was usually considered a miracle out right. Indeed, on what usual definition of miracle would creation be a miracle since it cannot be outside the natural order when there is none.

On my reading, creation is synonymous with God's sustaining of being, and is a continuous never ending cause of all events at all times and all places.