I don't see it that way, dear brother in Christ.
The way I see it is: God can never be "a successor creator." He is the uncaused cause of the Creation, its very BEGINNING, Who creates ex nihilio. He Creates by His creative Word, His Logos, His Son — Who is called Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. There is nothing "before" God to be a first creator (i.e., to be the creator or "cause" of God), for Him to succeed ("successor creator"). He is — in Aristotelian language — the "prime mover," the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause of everything, the First Cause.
Moreover, there is nothing until God makes it. But before He can make anything in particular, He has to make the "stuff" out of which its made. That would be space and time for openers. He made one single Creation embracing heaven and earth, in the Beginning, by His Holy Word — Who also turns out to be our Lord Jesus Christ — Who God our Father made plainly manifest in the Revelation of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who is not only our Truth (Logos) but our Savior and Redeemer.
To speak of "succession" at all, one must invoke Time. But God is not bound by this rule — He is not IN Time; only we are. Our "eternity" is His "all at once" — just to indicate the enormity of the "distance" between God and man.
I love Jacques Maritain. At the links, he is referencing Thomas Aquinas. From whom I took a page to clarify my own thinking on these points.
Indeed, the very title That Creation is not Successive is my very understanding of Genesis 1. Only its manifestation (i.e., Genesis 2) is successive; but even that not until after the Fall of Adam.
To put it very crudely (and may God forgive me), but He made the "whole ball of wax" out of nothing but His Will and Desire, towards His divine Purpose; He did all this out of nothing, for He hadn't created anything yet; He did it "all at once," in the Beginning; and He did it by His Holy Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, Logos.
I get the feeling, dear brother in Christ, that we agree more than we disagree about such matters. May God ever bless you and your dear ones!
Pax Christi
“”Genesis 2) is successive.””
Not to God(only in the minds of man)God cannot be moved and succession is not part of creation to Him .Thus, souls are not pre existent
The scriptures disagree (see Wisdom of Sirach aka Ecclasiasticus 18:1). Blessed Augustine translated the Greek text erronoeusly to read "Qui vivit in aeternum creavit omnia simul" to mean "He whol lives in eternity created everything at once." But the Greek text ὁ ζῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἔκτισεν τὰ πάντα κοινῇ doesn't say that. It sasy "the [one] living in eternity made all thing in common [or in general]." [here you have the word κοινῇ – koine – which certainly does not mean "at once"!]
Augustine devotes an entire book (de Genesi ad literrarum) on the origin of the human soul. By making a capital mistake in translation (his Greek was known to be marginal) Augustine falls into a theological error of asserting the Platonic (pagan) pre-existence of the souls, which he later recanted (see his Retractions, I.1.13), where he simply admits to not knowing (then or now): "nec tunc sciebam, nec nunc scio."
The issue is not simple, especially for Augustine, because he was searching for theodicy in condmening unbaptized infants:
He develops a double-life hypothesis, by which we have lived in and sinned in Adam and are not being punished (condemned) in this life, a strange Neoplatonic concept to say the least.
Perhaps this will help...
From Summa Theologica
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1090.htm
Article 4. Whether the human soul was produced before the body?
Objection 1. It would seem that the human soul was made before the body. For the work of creation preceded the work of distinction and adornment, as shown above (66, 1; 70, 1). But the soul was made by creation; whereas the body was made at the end of the work of adornment. Therefore the soul of man was made before the body.
Objection 2. Further, the rational soul has more in common with the angels than with the brute animals. But angels were created before bodies, or at least, at the beginning with corporeal matter; whereas the body of man was formed on the sixth day, when also the animals were made. Therefore the soul of man was created before the body.
Objection 3. Further, the end is proportionate to the beginning. But in the end the soul outlasts the body. Therefore in the beginning it was created before the body.
On the contrary, The proper act is produced in its proper potentiality. Therefore since the soul is the proper act of the body, the soul was produced in the body.
I answer that, Origen (Peri Archon i, 7,8) held that not only the soul of the first man, but also the souls of all men were created at the same time as the angels, before their bodies: because he thought that all spiritual substances, whether souls or angels, are equal in their natural condition, and differ only by merit; so that some of them—namely, the souls of men or of heavenly bodies—are united to bodies while others remain in their different orders entirely free from matter. Of this opinion we have already spoken (47, 2); and so we need say nothing about it here.
Augustine, however (Gen. ad lit. vii, 24), says that the soul of the first man was created at the same time as the angels, before the body, for another reason; because he supposes that the body of man, during the work of the six days, was produced, not actually, but only as to some “causal virtues”; which cannot be said of the soul, because neither was it made of any pre-existing corporeal or spiritual matter, nor could it be produced from any created virtue. Therefore it seems that the soul itself, during the work of the six days, when all things were made, was created, together with the angels; and that afterwards, by its own will, was joined to the service of the body. But he does not say this by way of assertion; as his words prove. For he says (Gen. ad lit. vii, 29): “We may believe, if neither Scripture nor reason forbid, that man was made on the sixth day, in the sense that his body was created as to its causal virtue in the elements of the world, but that the soul was already created.”
Now this could be upheld by those who hold that the soul has of itself a complete species and nature, and that it is not united to the body as its form, but as its administrator. But if the soul is united to the body as its form, and is naturally a part of human nature, the above supposition is quite impossible. For it is clear that God made the first things in their perfect natural state, as their species required. Now the soul, as a part of human nature, has its natural perfection only as united to the body. Therefore it would have been unfitting for the soul to be created without the body.
Therefore, if we admit the opinion of Augustine about the work of the six days (74, 2), we may say that the human soul preceded in the work of the six days by a certain generic similitude, so far as it has intellectual nature in common with the angels; but was itself created at the same time as the body. According to the other saints, both the body and soul of the first man were produced in the work of the six days.
Reply to Objection 1. If the soul by its nature were a complete species, so that it might be created as to itself, this reason would prove that the soul was created by itself in the beginning. But as the soul is naturally the form of the body, it was necessarily created, not separately, but in the body.
Reply to Objection 2. The same observation applies to the second objection. For if the soul had a species of itself it would have something still more in common with the angels. But, as the form of the body, it belongs to the animal genus, as a formal principle.
Reply to Objection 3. That the soul remains after the body, is due to a defect of the body, namely, death. Which defect was not due when the soul was first created.