Explore how this concept explains the dependence of creation on God, distinguishing the Creator from the created order.
Quick Summary
Material causation is the philosophical concept describing the substance or "stuff" from which a thing is made. In Christian theology, it highlights that all created things are dependent on God for their existence, as only God is uncreated and self-sufficient. This distinction affirms creation ex nihilo ("from nothing") and ensures that matter is neither eternal nor divine, but a gift upheld by God's power (Hebrews 1:3).
Material causation answers the most basic question we can ask about any created thing: what is it made from. It concerns the reality out of which something exists, the “stuff” that makes its existence possible. In classical thought this is not merely a physical description, but an ontological one. Material causation speaks about dependence. Whatever has material has received it. Whatever is made from something is not self-originating.
In theology, this immediately separates God from everything else. God is not material. He is not composed of parts. He is not made from anything. Creation, by contrast, is always material in this sense. Even what we call immaterial realities such as souls or angels are still created and therefore dependent. Material causation does not simply describe physical composition; it reveals that all created being is borrowed being.
Scripture consistently presents creation as contingent upon God’s will and provision. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” establishes that nothing stands on its own (Genesis 1:1). Creation is not the rearrangement of pre-existing matter independent of God, but the result of divine initiative. Paul deepens this when he says, “From him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). Material causation here is not neutral. It points directly to God as the source from whom all material reality flows.
schoolTheological & Historical Analysis
Frequently Asked Questions
Scholarly examination of the primary theological, historical, and biblical inquiries addressed in this guide.
What is "material causation" in Aristotle’s classical doctrine of the Four Causes?
In his Physics (II.3) and Metaphysics (V.2), Aristotle formulated the doctrine of the Four Causes to explain the nature, change, and existence of physical things: Material Cause (causa materialis: that out of which something comes to be and persists, such as bronze in a statue); Formal Cause (causa formalis: the form, structure, or essence); Efficient Cause (causa efficiens: the primary agent of change); and Final Cause (causa finalis: the end or telos for which the thing exists). Material causation specifically addresses the underlying matter or substrate (hyle) that receives form and undergoes change.
To say that something has a material cause is to say that it is not self-sufficient. It exists because it has received existence. This is why Scripture repeatedly rejects any attempt to treat creation as ultimate. “The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). Matter does not own itself. It belongs to the one who gave it being.
Modern thought often reduces material causation to chemistry or physics. It asks what elements compose an object, how particles interact, and how structures form. These questions are legitimate but incomplete. They describe how matter behaves, not why matter exists at all. Material causation in its theological sense addresses a deeper issue: why there is something rather than nothing. Physics can analyze matter. Only theology can account for its existence.
When material causation is detached from God, matter begins to look self-sustaining. It appears eternal or autonomous. This is why materialism easily becomes a rival worldview. It treats the material world as the final explanation of itself. Scripture refuses this logic. “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). Matter is not ultimate. It is summoned.
This has direct theological implications. Creation is not an accident, not a necessity, and not self-generated. It is a gift. Everything that exists materially exists because God wills it to exist. Material causation therefore preserves the Creator-creature distinction. God is being itself. Creation has being.
Material causation and the doctrine of creation
Material causation protects the doctrine of creation from collapsing into pantheism or deism. If matter is eternal, God becomes unnecessary. If matter is divine, God becomes identical with creation. Scripture rejects both.
Isaiah records God saying, “I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:5). This statement is not only about worship. It is about ontology. Only God exists in Himself. Everything else exists by participation, by reception, by dependence. Material causation is the philosophical expression of this truth.
Creation “from nothing” does not mean that God shaped emptiness into matter as if nothing were a substance. It means that creation has no independent source. It means that before God acted, nothing existed that could explain existence. Material causation therefore points beyond itself. It cannot close the circle. It opens it toward God.
This is why Scripture repeatedly emphasizes God’s sustaining power. “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). Material causation is not only about origins but about continuation. Created matter does not merely begin in God; it remains dependent on Him. If God withdrew His sustaining will, matter would not persist.
This reshapes how we understand reality. The material world is not self-grounded. It is not neutral. It is not autonomous. It is held. It exists within divine generosity. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Material causation and human humility
If our very material existence is received, then self-sufficiency is an illusion. The modern mantra that humanity is enough collapses at the most basic level of being. We are not enough even to exist without God, let alone to redeem ourselves or define our own meaning.
Material causation places humanity where Scripture always places it: as dependent creatures before a sovereign Creator. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). This is not only moral humility. It is metaphysical humility. We did not generate our own substance. We did not author our own being.
At the same time, material causation elevates creation’s dignity. What God creates, He wills. What He wills, He values. Matter is not insignificant because it is dependent. It is significant because it is chosen. Creation is not disposable. It is intentional.
This becomes essential for Christian theology. The incarnation itself assumes the goodness of material causation. The Son of God took real flesh, real matter, real created substance. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). If matter were evil or meaningless, redemption could not enter it. Material causation makes incarnation possible because it affirms creation as genuinely real and genuinely good.
In this sense, material causation is not a minor philosophical category. It anchors creation, incarnation, and redemption in the same theological soil. Everything that exists materially stands as a witness to divine generosity. Matter does not explain itself. It testifies to its Maker.
To ask what something is made of is finally to ask why it exists at all. And the answer Scripture gives is consistent and unambiguous: it exists because God willed it into being and continues to uphold it.
How did Christian theology radically modify Aristotle’s material causation through the doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo?
Aristotle and classical Greek philosophy believed in the eternity of matter; they held that matter was uncreated and that the gods were merely craftsmen (demiurges) shaping pre-existing chaotic material. Early Christian theologians (such as Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Tertullian) decisively broke with this pagan cosmology by formulating the biblical doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo ("Creation out of nothing", Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 11:3). In the absolute beginning, there was no pre-existing material cause. God did not fashion the cosmos out of existing stuff; by His sovereign, omnipotent Word, God created both the form and the very matter itself from non-existence.
How does the concept of material causation refute both Gnostic dualism and Materialistic naturalism?
Material causation in Christian theology guards against two opposing heresies: Gnostic / Manichaean Dualism (which posited that physical matter is inherently corrupt, evil, or a cosmic mistake created by an inferior evil deity; Christianity affirms that God created the material order and pronounced it "very good" in Genesis 1:31, honored in the Incarnation and redeemed in the bodily resurrection) and Materialistic Naturalism (which asserts that matter is all that exists, self-originating and autonomous; Christian theology demonstrates that matter is contingent, mutable, and dependent, incapable of explaining its own existence without an uncreated Efficient and Final Cause).
How does material causation relate to the theological doctrine of divine preservation (conservatio)?
In Christian metaphysics, because matter was created ex nihilo, it possesses no independent power to sustain its own existence from moment to moment. Left to itself, created matter would instantly collapse back into sheer non-existence. Therefore, God’s relationship to creation is not merely that of an initial clockmaker (Deism), but an active, continuous Preserver. As Colossians 1:17 and Hebrews 1:3 proclaim, Christ "upholds all things by the word of His power." The material causes of the universe operate with real secondary causal integrity, but only because they are upheld, energized, and sustained at every millisecond by the sovereign primary power of the living God.
