Theological Tidbits

In creating human beings and angels, God establishes their value creating them in His own image. As images of God, they are persons—i.e., they have the faculties of thinking and choosing, minds and wills. Unlike human persons, the angels are pure spirits. As pure spirits, they do not have bodies and therefore are more like God than are human beings. However, they still are not God because they are not the source of their own being. Rather, God created them.

In creating persons, God gives Himself to them—i.e., He loves them. God’s love establishes a value—i.e., a goodness, in those He creates. Without God’s love, there would be no value or goodness outside of God because nothing outside of God would exist. Clearly, then, God’s love is not a response to an already existing value because His love is the source of all value. However, the self-gift of created persons does not establish value in others as God’s love does. Instead, the love of created persons is a response to the value they discover in others.

The creation of persons out of nothing is a stupendous act of power. We, as powerful as we are with all our advanced technology, cannot create. We cannot call things, not to speak of persons, into being from nothing. In creating persons from nothing, God shared His power. However, the creation of persons also reveals God’s wisdom—divine self-knowledge—because God makes Himself known in a unique way through persons who are made in the image and likeness of God. Further, the creation of persons is an act of love because in creating persons, God shared existence. Since He is existence—Being—itself, God gave Himself when He gave existence to persons. In other words, He loved. Thus, the creation of persons was not only an act of power and wisdom, it was also an act of love.

Since there is no necessity in God or for God, His creative acts are not necessary. Still, He does create angelic and human persons. However, it is fairly clear that many of those God has created have turned their backs on Him. He knew this would happen. Since He does not “have to” create, one might well ask: Why does He bother?

God is Power, Wisdom, and Love. Human beings possessing these attributes give them to others. Power is meaningless if it is not exercised. For example, what benefit does bodily strength have if it is never used in work or in play? Wisdom is useless if it is not shared. For instance, why would a scholar spend years studying if he never intends to transmit his knowledge either in teaching or in writing? Love is a self-gift of one person to at least one other person. Thus, how can one love without giving oneself to another? As human persons, we share our strength, our wisdom, and our love. God is like us. As Power, Wisdom, and Love, God seeks to share Himself. He does not create out of any necessity, but rather out of a burning desire to give His power, His wisdom, and His love to others.

God lacks absolutely nothing. In other words, God does not need anyone or anything outside of Himself to fulfill Himself. It was not in any sense necessary for Him to create anything. In fact, God is completely free of any and all necessities. If something were necessary in Him or for Him, there would obviously be some cause outside of Himself responsible for the necessity. Since He is the uncaused cause, there can be no outside cause acting upon Him. Therefore, there is no necessity in God or in any of His actions.

When God shares His life—grace—with human beings, it is not only an act of His love, it is also an act of His power. In giving Himself to us, God gives us new life. Just as God’s gift of human life in His creative act is an act of power, the giving of His divine life is also an act of power. God’s caring for those He has blessed with His grace is also an act of His power. He not only gives His divine life, He cares and nurtures that divine life in all those who share it. The awesome number of people who share God’s own life indicate the scope and magnitude of His omnipotence exercised through the gift of His own life. All those who share God’s life have “Put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). They are other “Christs” because they live God’s own life.

God carries on the work of sanctification by giving human beings His very own life—grace. This self-gift of God is clearly identified with the Holy Spirit. Just as it is fitting for the Son, Who is the Wisdom of God, to reveal the truths about God to us, so it is fitting for the Holy Spirit, Who is Love, to sanctify us by giving us God’s life. Love unites persons. In the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit—Love unites Father and Son. In the world, the Holy Spirit through His gift of divine love—i.e., divine life or grace, unites human beings in the union of all those who share God’s grace.