Lesson 41 –
Creation for God’s Presence

Building upon the insight that God created the world through his power and with his wisdom, which serve as a mediating principles between God and humanity, we can see that God’s creation, especially as it is depicted in Genesis 1—2, is fundamentally ordered toward an encounter with God’s presence.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae I q. 8, aa. 1-2 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae I q. 8, aa. 3-4 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from the Summa Theologiae I q. 8, a. 1:

God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing. Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

Course Listening

The Extraordinary Knowledge of Jesus: Prophecy in the Life of Christ | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

The Presence Of God: The Wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas | Fr. James Brent, O.P.