Catholic Apologetics

CONTENTS


Creation is reflecting God's perfect Essence

Saint Thomas often calls God summus Artifex, the greatest Artist, and nature ars divina, divine art.
We have every reason to compare our Creator with an artist, and creation with a work of art. Because, as a genius elaborates his work of art according to a plan he made before, so the Creator brings about in the masterpiece of nature a certain plan He's imagining in his intellect.
The visible world isn't an emanation from divine substance that couldn't but come about by its very character. It isn't a product of any blind and ungovernable force of nature, either. It is a work full of sense, brought about by the Creator with his high intellect, who knows what he's effectuating and consciously regulates things to direct them to their purpose.
The purpose of visible nature is the glory of its Maker, and its inner direction to the purpose has been realized in time according to the example our Creator is perpetually seeing in his mind. Boethius said:
"God, you deduce everything from the highest example: being the most beautiful yourself, you imagine a beautiful world in your mind; and, according to this image, you also call it to existence."
In what sense, and to which extent, can we speak of God's ideas?
In the first place, we must say God can't derive his plan of creation from any reality existing outside him. Indeed, we can't deny there isn't existing any reality outside divine Essence before creation. Furthermore, God can't be dependent on anything in his efficacy. So our Creator derives his ideas from himself. He is his own idea.
Furthermore, although the forms of God's efficacy and his ideas may seem very distinct in our imagination, it's certain they all are identical to God's unique Essence.
The ideas necessarily include a relation to intellect. Thus, they are not only distinct from the things that are "ideally" brought about in concrete existence, but also from the essence of these realized things. The essence of a thing is its full being, even if we don't in fact know it. But the idea is, as Saint Thomas says, apparently true again to Aristotle: "the essence of a thing, in so far as intellect is knowing it".
So, since God finds all knowledge inside himself, the idea or plan of creation can't be anything else but divine Essence itself, in so far as God's intellect is perceiving it can somehow be represented in creature, if only by participation.
Saint Augustine says: "The ideas are like the first forms of being that have not yet been realized and are included in God's intellect, and according to which, so to speak, all things are formed that originate and perish".
We could think, as several theologians repeatedly thought in the past, there can only be one idea in God, because divine Essence as the object of God's intellect is necessarily one and undivided.
Yet this opinion can't be the right one. Because God's idea isn't simply divine Essence, but divine Essence in so far as God's intellect sees it can be imitated in a certain finite way in creature. Now God can be represented in distinct creatures in several ways and in various degrees, in spite of the perfect unity of his Essence. Because God's intellect completely fathoms his incorporeal Essence, it recognizes it can be imitated in several ways. Therefore, a certain distinction as to God's ideas is necessarily lying at the base of the essential distinction between created things. This distinction doesn't divide God's Essence, nor his intellect, which isn't dependent on the things, but makes things dependent on itself. The distinction between the ideas in God consists of the ways God is seeing himself as imitable in creatures on the level of a different, contingent order of being.
The only explanation for the multiplicity of created things is lying in the multiplicity of God's ideas.

In his work of art, nature, our Creator realized an ideal He had in mind from perpetuity. However, although God's plan of creation may as an example coincide with his Essence, yet, as eleborated in creation, it has a composed character, because unity in nature is only relative and the parts that constitute it are distinct according to their species and number.
God's perfection can't find expression in one single creature. Nor can an infinite number of creatures fully represent it, because the perfection of creatures can't ever rise above participation, so it can't ever be a full likeness of God's transcendental perfection, either.
However, whereas one single creature can't ever suffice to represent a bit of a likeness of God, several creatures together can give a more perfect image. Saint Thomas says:
"Since a single creature can't represent God's goodness, because it's too far apart from God, several things together were meant to represent it, so that each single thing could complete what was lacking in an other one. Yet, all creatures together can't represent God's goodness at his own level, either, but only in so far as the perfection of a creature allows it."
Thus, God's act of creation brought about an infinite diversity of likenesses to God, and each of them is expressing some feature of God in a restricted way. These finite manifestations of God's perfection are, together, forming the rich spectrum of nature, wherein things are ranging from simple formless matter, along lifeless beings, plants and animals, to the reasonable creature named 'man'.
Each separate thing has its own likeness to the divine Example. The lifeless things participate slightly in being, so they resemble in a very restricted measure the Creator who is Being itself. The plants don't only exist, but they are also alive. Hence they share a more perfect form of being, which belongs to God in an infinite measure: Life itself. The animals aren't tied to a place and they have some knowledge. Therefore, they display an activity that's relatively independent. So they remotely make us think of the first Cause, which is independent Efficacy itself. Finally: man. He is a reasonable creature, and by his spirit he can rise above matter, and he can form a concept of divine Essence, which may be imperfect, but is true. Hence, man more than any other visible creature, resembles God who's knowing everything and fathoming his own Essence.
So, from a natural standpoint, it isn't reasonable to despise the world as very imperfect and bad.
It's no wonder that a sincere religious man who's able to think deeply about the sense of world and life, is always a lover of nature.

When God creates, He does so because He is good and his love is communicative.
Love is always communicative. But we can hardly think of a way love could reveal itself more purely and disinterestedly than by a deed that doesn't presuppose anything and isn't demanded by anything. In the act of creation, God's goodness is giving everything and asking for nothing. God creates the world according to the example of his own Essence and for the glory of himself, but not to increase his own riches, but only to display this riches and to favour the creatures with it.
"Si Dieu ne nous crée pas, tout nous manque; en nous créant, il n'ajoute rien à son infinie béatitude. C'est à la créature que revient en définitive tout le bien communiqué par le créateur." (Monsabré OP)

Is the world we live in the best thinkable and, thus, possible?
The champions of philosophical Optimism answer in the affirmative.
When they don't advocate some pantheistic or emanatistic system, they usually do so to be able to explain God's actual choice as a reasonable one. They are convinced God wouldn't have chosen this world if it weren't preferable to any other possible world.

{{Optimism as an optimism of being is practically inherent to any philosophical system that follows the foundations of platonic-aristotelic metaphysics and starts from the principle that the concepts being and good are identical, and evil is just a negation of being.
Stoa, new-platonism and scholasticism all supported optimism in their own way. Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza and Nicole Male branche gave their philosophical considerations a very optimistic colour, and they were the first pioneers of classical optimism, of which Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz is the most important spokesman.

Leibniz advocated the opinion we have to seek the very base of the essence of things in God's intellect, and the very base of the existence of things in God's will.
God is seeing many possible worlds in his intellect, but He can only choose one of them: the best one. He only has freedom of deed, not freedom of choice. God isn't obliged to create. Without creation, He would have been as perfect as He is now. However, now that He actually wished to create and he couldn't have had any other motive but to create the best possible world, this cosmos of ours must be the most perfect we can think of.
Leibniz was full of respect for God's inexhaustible wisdom, which he loved to compare with mathematical science. Therefore, he wrote:
"In mathematics we can't find a greatest thing nor a smallest thing. However, nothing is completely distinguishing itself from all other things, but everything is given at the same time. Likewise, we can say with respect to God, whose perfect wisdom isn't less regular than mathematical science, that He gave in creation expression to all his ideas at the same time, thus producing the best among all possible worlds."
Of course, our world is still a creation, and hence imperfect. Only God is perfect. The metaphysical shortcomings in created nature, and hence also the physical and moral shortcomings, are necessary consequences of the original imperfection of each creature, which can't but be essentially limited.}}

We can't maintain philosophical optimism. It starts from the opinion God can't choose. He wouldn't be free if the object would determine the choice. In fact, He's free because He need not choose the most attractive object, but can choose a less attractive one.
It's true God can't improve a given nature. Man's nature, for example, is perfect in its kind. Each improvement would affect the nature itself, and make it something else. But God could have created a different and more perfect kind of beings. Indeed, He can represent his perfections in an infinite number of finite ways. Although no world can be so perfect that it would attain to the divine limit, still for any given world there is a better one thinkable.
Moreover, the reality of our world, as we're experiencing it, clearly contradicts radical optimism. Who can seriously maintain it's unsurpassible? Indeed, it has many shortcomings that could be absent in a different world.

Is this world perhaps the least perfect of all possible worlds?
Philosophical Pessimism answers this question in the affirmative.

{{As a outlook on life and world, Pessimism is more disputable and for the practice of life much more dangerous than Optimism .
Pessimism is a mix of platonic, kantian and buddhistic ideas. It propagates Lebensverneininug as the highest law of life. Its spiritual father is Arthur Schopenhauer.
As contrasted with the philosophers who sought the essence of things either in the object outside the intellect only or in the intellectual perceiver only, Schopenhauer starts from the standpoint that the only way to completely fathom full reality is lying in an immanent contemplation of oneself. In this way, he thinks, we learn in a methodically right way to know our own essence as an inner urge, a longing, a will. Our body is only the outer objectivation of this will. All bodies are revelations of an urge of will that can eventually only turn out to be one and undivided, despite of all its multiple and manifold manifestations.
The world isn't good. It's even thoroughly bad!
Indeed, every separate thing has in itself the inclination to behave like an independent entity, but it's only a partial objectivation of the one and undivided principle of will. So it necessarily conflicts with the universal will of the world and it irresistably calls down every kind of disaster. This holds for anorganic beings, for plants, for animals. It especially holds for man, because man has a striking sense of independence. It would be most sensible to suppress any personal inclination, just for the benefit of the ideal urge of will of the world, which is independent of space and time.
The most suitable means to free oneself, at least for a moment, from one's deplorable conditions of existence, is esthetical delight, especially music, because man frees himself most thoroughly by the pleasure of music. However, this redemption can't be lasting. A sufficient and permanent redemption can only be brought about by a full elimination of one's own personality, so by a complete will-lessness.
Eduard von Hartmann, Schopenhauers disciple, thinks the primitive will finds its full happiness by the objectivation of oneself in visible nature. But it's deceiving itself. Because the pain of humiliation and misfortune is making human existence a permanent torture, despite of rare pleasures, which are only partial and don't last long. The worst thing is man can't escape this pain. He has many ideals and expectations, but they are only illusions. Happiness is nowhere to be found.

Later on, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Scheler, Nico Hartmann and Martin Heidegger were the foremost advocates of philosophical Pessimism.
The last one, one of the most important representatives of Existential Philosophy, thinks the essence of man is lying in his passing lifetime. Man clings to everything to stretch the duration of his temporary existence, consciously or inconsciously. However, he doesn't succeed in giving his existence the desired infinity.
Therefore, the best attitude man can have before the shortcomings of his difficult existence, is superior contempt, whereby he can feel elevated above all difficulties and needs of life.}}

Pessimism as a scholarly system is much more absurd than Optimism, and it is much more dangerous for the practice of life.
In the first place, it affects a reasonable concept of God.
If God would voluntarily or involuntarily communicate himself to and in a world which isn't good in any respect, but only bad , he would not be God. He would be an essence suffering from the same fate as man, according to Pessimism.
Furthermore, the Pessimistic view on life is full of inner contradiction.
A will that as a necessary derivation from the general will of the world is trying to reconcile to this will of the world by committing suicide, is nonsense. A divine power that is dividing itself in the distinct things of nature to be able to dissolve in nothingness, is nonsense, too. And a conscious attempt of a man to escape his inevitable destruction, is sheer nonsense. These consequences of Pessimism are a hundred times more difficult to understand than the questions of life they are meant to elucidate.
It's true our world has many big imperfections. A different world could surely have been better than this one. But this doesn't mean our creation is worst possible. As little as any creation could ever attain to the limit of God's perfection, can any creation attain to the opposite limit: absolute evil, that is absolute absence of being. Indeed, the world we live in could be even less perfect; it isn't the limit of badness!
After all, Pessimism is contradicting our experience, even more so than Optimism.
This our cosmos has many shortcomings but also many good properties. To be sure, visible nature does display the characteristics of finiteness and transitoriness; nevertheless, it is a finite and transitory good, and it still develops a riches of harmony and beauty in the manifold revelations of its essence. Although earthly life is burdened with countless difficulties, and doesn't suffice to find full happiness in its short duration, it still is a good everybody desires.

So we now have refuted both the Optimistic and the Pessimistic view on the world. But we didn't explain at all why there should be evil in the world.
Why do so many big imperfections cling to our little earth?
If the earth has come about from God's goodness by creation and according to the example of God's perfect Essence, how should we explain all those disasters of nature: earthquakes, vulcanic eruptions, avalanches, hurricanes, heavy weather, freshets, floods?
And if human life is the highest possible expression of God's life, why is it exposed to so many big dangers: miscarriage, corporeal accidents, spiritual sorrow, poverty, epidemics, illness, death?
Natural reason can't sufficiently answer these questions. That is to say: human intellect can't completely know the sense of a concrete instance of evil, because of its accidental character, but only suspect it. In any separate case, evil is a mystery of nature. Any particular disaster of nature or illness or death is a fact we can only explain from God's providence, in so far as it doesn't depend on man's free will.
But we surely can explain evil in general, as a universal phenomenon.
Evil isn't something positive, it's not a 'being' or a bad 'thing'. It's the negation or absence of a being that should be present in a thing to make it more perfect. Evil is, in the strict sense of the word, a 'shortcoming'.
Therefore, evil as such can't be the object of an act of creation, and doesn't participate in any perfection that belongs to God in an infinite degree. As Saint Thomas says: "for we call something evil in so far as it doesn't participate in God's perfection".
Evil is a natural consequence of the restrictions of essence that adhere to every creature. These restrictions make the creatures stand apart from each other in a certain degree, so they take an own place and time and develop an activity of their own. They make them dependent on influences from outside and vulnerable by their mutual causality. The explanation of the general phenomenon of evil in nature is thus lying in the essence of nature itself, which is restricted and can't but be restricted.
Evil can't exist without good. It's presupposing a good it's detracting from. The reason of its existence is lying in the character of created and finite good itself.

The vocation of the cosmos

Among the created things as finite images of divine goodness there is a huge diversity.
Between first matter, which is susceptible to everything, but in itself completely amorphous, and the reasonable being called man, there is an interminable sequence of beings that are distinct according to species and number, and each one of them is representing divine perfection in some respect and in a finite way.
The perfection of creation must of necessity be relative, but this relative perfection will appear to more advantage in the multitude of created things than in one single creature that can't but be a very onesided reflection of God's perfection. One single flower or animal or man can't ever represent divine good in the same measure as all flowers or animals or men together. That's why Saint Thomas says that "the cosmos would be imperfect if good would be represented by the things in only one degree".
Every thing in the cosmos develops its own original efficacy. Thereby it bespeaks its essence. We recognize the character of the lily in the way it's growing and blooming, and the character of the tiger in the way he's reacting to external stimuli. The characteristic human deeds give us some insight in human nature. Yet, the lilies don't all bloom in the same way; each tiger is displaying his own behaviour; and each man acts in his own way. Furthermore, the lily is only one species of flower among many other species, and the tiger has a nature that numerous other animals are representing otherwise. Although one man may be very brilliant and active, all men together are more briliant and active and can represent the manysided riches of human nature more perfect than one single man.

Omnia intendunt assimilari Deo - All things are striving to resemble God.
The efficacy of all creatures is revealing that their essences are aimed at the highest possible perfection of themselves and, thus, trying to attain as near as possible to divine perfection.
There is not only an actual resemblance to God, which we can only explain from God's act of creation, but also an intended resemblance which the creature is naturally striving after and which the first and intellectual Mover in the end turns out to be intending, when he's giving his necessary cooperation to any activity of a creature. Saint Thomas says:
"Because the purpose is corresponding to the principle, the last purpose must be identical to the first Cause of being, which is bearing in itself complete perfection. Some things are striving after the resemblance to the perfection of the first Cause with respect to being, other things with respect to life, and other things yet with respect to intellectual life."

The regular process of change we perceive in every separate datum of experience, isn't only significant for the thing itself, in which the change is taking place, but it's also efficient in the greater context of the cosmos. It forms an essential part of the process of development of the universe.
The cosmos isn't an accidental grouping of countless celestial bodies, specific formations and material units that have nothing to do with each other. Under each separate striving of nature there is lying a further orientation to the good of the whole. On the strength of this finalistic connection, there is an essential cohaerentia, an organised cooperation of all parts that is directed to the perfection of the cosmos.
Rough matter, which is receiving its actual existence from the form of essence it takes onto itself, is of course displaying only few properties of its own. The most striking indeed is that it's striving after a form of essence. This appears from every change that's taking place in the world of our experience. An arbitrary corporeal thing that's changing, stops existing as it was. It dissolves, so to speak, into the two elements that composed it. It loses it's principle of form, which disappears without further preface, in so far as it's not an intellectual principle of form, and passes its matter to an other being that originates by the new composition. Matter is the thing that continues to exist under any change in visible nature. It doesn't decay, but in its actual existence it is fully dependent on the countless forms of being that are coming and disappearing in an unceasing procession and multifarious fluctuation. Matter itself is striving after continued existence, in any form: in water, fire, earth, anorganic beings, plants, animals, living bodies or dead bodies. The moment it loses its form of essence, it's already seizing another one. Materia appetit formam - Matter is striving after a principle of form.
In the regulation of things whereof the actual existence is composed of matter and a form of essence, we see that the less perfect thing is always striving to become more perfect. The lifeless things are subservient to the beings alive. Not in a sense they meet some arbitrariness by a purposeless sacrifice of their own existence, but so that they're offering their activity to the organic beings or try to maintain themselves in higher species by changing their form. For example, the sun with its warmth and light, the athmosphere with its physical composition of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxyde and hydrogen, the earth as a fruitful soil and the rain with its beneficient influence on the condition of soil and athmosphere, are the natural sources from which the organic beings are drawing strength for their durable existence and renewed activity.

Is it only the realm of plants that's deriving benefit from lifeless nature?
The plants certainly participate in enjoying the natural riches that surrounds them. But, in their turn, they are subservient to the higher life of man and animal. The trees and flowers, leguminous and tuberous plants, corn and grass, form a sort of natural paradise in which animal life is as safe and sure as possible.
Yet, maintaining animal life isn't the ultimate purpose of the service rendered by plants. The vegetable kingdom gives its fruitfulness, shelter and beauty to animals and people. And, apparently, the animals are also striving after a higher ideal than they can realize in themselves. The animals are subservient to man. Some animals are so immediately, because people can dispose of the nutritive power of animal meat and the animal power of work as much as necessary. Other animals are subservient to man in a more indirect way. They hamper the natural plagues that may make human life difficult, or render services to other animals which in their turn are serving man.

Thus, man is the crown of creation. Everything is serving and honouring him ... and helping him to attain to the highest possible perfection of his nature, which is a reasonable nature.
Now what should man be subservient to?
To any creature or created spirit?
To any force of nature?
In the history of philosophical and religious thought, man's imagination has indulged in a lot of fancies. Here he ventured to imagine an enormous polytheism, which is suffering from the same shortcomings as mankind; there he ventured to dream the terrifying nightmare of a mysterious gnome; and only after a lot of trial and error he recognized that the final object of the cosmos and of man himself isn't some creature, but Him who is bearing and leading all creation as the Esse Subsistens: God, "from Whom, through Whom and unto Whom all things are existing".
In fact, man is only a part of the created whole. Although his intellectual abilities may be very great, and his natural forces may have a great influence on the world, yet man didn't bring about the existing nature, and hence he can't be the final object of creation. No creature could be this. For the final object is corresponding to the first principle. Both at the beginning and at the end of the created world, there is the bonitas divina - God's goodness.
We may justly think that each part of the universe is striving after its own perfection, but we shouldn't forget what Saint Thomas reminds us of: "that each part of the cosmos is aimed at the perfection of the cosmos".
And we may also rightly call the regulation of the cosmos a purpose of all separate strivings of nature, which are countless indeed, yet "the order of the cosmos is an object of the cosmos, but the final object is God".
God, who as a Creator called the world to existence according to the example of his own Essence, and gives it a certain durability as a Preserver, is directing nature with all it contains back to itself as the first and intellectual Mover. God has to do that, because He owes it his own honour. He wants to do that, because the creatures find their greatest blessing in the highest participation in God's goodness.
There is a circle of the things who all start from God and return to Him, the Alpha and the Omega.

It's all returning
Back to You
What You called to existence -
And You are bridling
Everything
While granting it assistance.

(Guido Gezelle, "Here I am")


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