Does creating mean making something from nothing?

Article I. does creating mean making something from nothing?

Next we discuss how things flow from their original source. On this, which is called creation, there are eight points of inquiry:

1. what is creation?

2. whether God can create something;

3. whether creation is something in reality;

4. what exactly is produced by creation?

5. whether God alone can create;

6. whether creating is common to the whole Trinity or proper to one Person;

7. whether it leaves any trace of the Trinity in things created;

8. whether the work of creation mingles in the operations of nature and will.

article I. does creating mean making something from nothing?

THE FIRST POINT: I. Apparently not. For according to St Augustine,

Making is of a thing that did not exist at all, while creating is to fashion it by bringing it forth from what already existed.

2. Then also, you assess the value of an action or motion from whence it comes and where it goes. So an action which is from good to good or from being to being is worth more than one from nothing into something. Of all action creation would seem to be the chief and best, and consequently is not from nothing into something but rather from being into being.

3. Moreover, the preposition 'from' implies a causal relation, especially that of a material cause, as when we say that a statue is cast from bronze.

But 'nothing' is neither the material of being nor its cause in any way at all.

Therefore to create is not to make something from nothing.

ON THE OTHER HAND, On Genesis, In the beginning God created the heavens and earth, the Gloss comments that to create is to make something out of nothing. 

REPLY: As already remarked, it is not enough to consider how some particular being issues from some particular cause, for we should also attend to the issuing of the whole of being from the universal cause, which is God; it is this springing forth that we designate by the term 'creation'.

Now when a thing makes its first appearance according to a particular system of reference you do not presume its presence there already; a man does not exist before he is begotten, but becomes a man out of what was not a man, like a thing becoming white from a being not white. So then if we consider the coming forth of the whole of all being from its first origins we cannot presuppose to it any being. But no-being and nothing are synonymous. As therefore the begetting of a human being is out of that non-being which is non-human being, so creation, the introduction of being entirely, is out of the non-being which is nothing at all.

Hence: I. St Augustine is using the word 'creation' in an equivocal sense, not as we have explained it.He speaks of things being created when promoted to a higher position; so we speak of someone being created a bishop.

2. Changes get their meaning and value from their point of arrival, not from their point of departure. The better and more important the stage they reach, so also are the changes themselves, whatever the incompleteness of the stage they start from. For instance the plain coming to be of a thing is a greater achievement than its becoming altered, since the shaping principle of a thing's substance is more capital than a shaping principle which modifies it, despite the fact that the opening condition of the first change, namely the privation of the substantial form in question, is emptier than that of the second, namely the contrary of the property in question.

And, to deepen the comparison, creation is more complete and comes before either, for it achieves a thing's entire substance, although its starting-point is conceived as non-being utterly.

3. When he speak of something being made from nothing, the preposition 'from' signifies a sequence, not a material cause; as when we say that noon comes from the dawn we mean that it follows after. Yet appreciate that the preposition 'from' can inflect or be inflected by the negation the term 'nothing' expresses. In the first case the sequence is stated by showing the relationship of what is now to the preceding non-being. In the second case, where the negation governs the preposition, the sequence is denied, and being made from nothing means not being made from anything, as when we remark of somebody that he speaks of nothing, because he does not speak of anything. 'From' has both senses when we say that something is made from nothing; the first expresses sequence, as we have noted, while the second expresses and denies relationship to a material cause.