The creative power of God is common to the whole Trinity and belongs to the essence of God.
God is the Father of the Son from eternity; while He is the Father of the creature in time.
Reference: Summa Theologica Volume 1: Treatise on the creation: The mode of emanation of things from the first principle: Whether to create is proper to any person?
To the Father is appropriated power which is chiefly shown in creation, and therefore it is attributed to him to be the Creator. To the Son is appropriated wisdom, through which the intellectual agent acts; and therefore it is said “Through Whom all things were made.” And to the Holy Ghost is appropriated goodness, to which belong both government bringing things to their proper end, and the giving of life – for life consists in a certain interior movement.
“God is the cause of things by His intellect and will, just as the craftsman is cause of the things made by his craft. Now the craftsman works through the word conceived in his mind, and through the love of his will regarding some object. Hence also God the Father made the creature through His Word, which is His Son; and through His Love, which is the Holy Ghost.” [Page 510]
To create belongs to God according to his being, that is his essence and this is common to the three persons. Hence to create is proper to the whole Trinity, and not only to one of the Persons.
Reference: Summa Theologica Volume 1: Treatise on the Most Holy Trinity: Of the person of the Son:
Word implies relation to creatures. For God by knowing himself, knows every creature.
The knowledge of God is cognitive and operative of creatures “He spake, and they were made.” Because in the Word is implied the operative idea of what God makes.
A Beginning to Creation
Thomas Aquinas, along with all the other Church Fathers of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, believed that creation had a beginning. The beginning brought time into being.
Thomas Aquinas also shared the Evangelical Creationist belief that God created many forms of life and the substrate upon which they depend directly; he brought creatures into existence that had not previously existed.
While God’s sustaining of creatures is continuous, their creation refers to their origin in the beginning.
Aquinas’ explanation of creation is that it is to make things by combining form with matter. God created forms according to ideas in his mind, ideas which are perfect exemplars of forms; each idea is a concept and each concept is a word.
The specification of the form is from mind and from nothing; creatures are made out of matter, but matter does not dictate their original form. (Just as writing is in ink, but the ink does not determine what is written on the page).
Thomas Aquinas states that to create something from nothing shows infinite power.
What is Act?
Some theologians have said that Aquinas’ argument is not dependent on a past, but only on a present cause of being. It is true that ‘act’ is a continuous present. God is the continuous present of creation. What is made is maintained in actuality by God’s own existence.
Aquinas writes that creatures exist and live through their participation in God. This is one truth, but it does not discount the truth that God conferred existence upon them in the first acts of creation that brought their forms into existence.
Merry and True 