The Mystery of Creation

The Mystery of Creation
In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012

Excerpts from “The Catechism of the Catholic Church”
IV. The Mystery of Creation - God creates by wisdom and love

295. We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will, he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness.
296. We believe that God need no preexistent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely, “out of nothing.”

297. Scripture bears witness to faith in creation “out of nothing” as a truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them for martyrdom….
298. Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them….

God creates an ordered a good world
299. Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: “You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight.”… “And God saw that it was good … very good” for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him….

God transcends creation and is present to it
300. God is infinitely greater than all his works: “You have set your glory above the heavens.” Indeed, God’s “greatness is unsearchable.” …

God upholds and sustains creation
30l. With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end….

V. God Carries Out His Plan: Divine Providence
302. Creation has it own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the disposition by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:….

303. The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history.

304. And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes….
305. Jesus acts for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children’s smaller needs: ….

Providence and secondary causes
306. God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creature’s cooperation….
307. To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of “subduing” the earth and having dominion over it….

308. The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:…

Providence and the scandal of evil

309. If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, care for all his creatures, why does evil exist? … Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: … There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil…. ghk