Hello. Recently, during a philosophy lesson at my school, I, as a Catholic, was asked for some clarification about Catholicism. This was because the philosophy teacher himself did not understand a Christian concept on a logical level and, out of pure curiosity, wanted to understand it better.

I was therefore asked to ask any priest for an explanation of this concept.

So I am asking you my question, which concerns love in Christianity:

While the Greeks considered love to be a lack (and for this reason, according to them, God does not create), Christians do not believe it is a lack, thus explaining the reason that prompted God to create the universe.

My professor cannot understand on a logical level (I don’t understand it either, but I accept it on faith) how love can not be a deficiency.

What does the Church say about this?

Thank you, and I will pray for you.

Matteo

The priest’s answer

Dear Matteo,

1.the gods of Greece do not create because they are not pure act.

Precisely because there are so many of them, they are not and cannot be pure act because each of them lacks what distinguishes them from the others.

According to Aristotle, a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, there is only one pure act and immobile mover: the one we call God.

In him there is no incompleteness or potentiality.

2.Given this premise, we can understand St Thomas Aquinas’s great statement: “God, the first agent, who is pure actuality, cannot be attributed with the action of reaching a goal; because he aims only to communicate his own perfection, which is his very goodness” (Summa Theologica, I, 44, 4).

3.Acting out of necessity is only fitting for an imperfect being, who is inclined to actively perform his own act and undergo it (as a refinement of himself). But all this must be excluded in God. Consequently, he alone is supremely liberal, because he does not act for his own benefit, but only for his goodness’ (Ib., I, 44, 4, ad 1). And again: “God did not produce creatures out of some need or some other extrinsic cause, but out of love for his goodness” (Ib., I, 32, 1, ad 3). In his Commentary on the Sentences, St Thomas uses a very beautiful expression: “Aperta manu clave amoris creaturae prodierunt” (with a hand opened by the key of love, creatures came into being; In libros Sententiarum, 2, prol.). In other words, God created so that others might enjoy his perfection.

4.The First Vatican Council authoritatively confirmed this doctrine by teaching that God, ‘not to increase his own happiness, nor to acquire anything, but to manifest his perfection through the gifts bestowed on his creatures, in the full freedom of his will, at the beginning of time created from nothing creatures of both the spiritual and material order, that is, the angelic and the earthly world’ (DS 3002).

5.The Magisterium of the Church, in turn, has declared: ‘If anyone says that God did not create out of free will but out of the same necessity with which he loves himself, or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: let him be excommunicated’ (DS 3205).

The reason for this purpose is very simple: all created or creatable realities can add absolutely nothing to God in terms of his intrinsic life, because nothing is lacking or can be lacking in his infinite being. In drawing all things out of nothing, God did not add to himself something he did not have before, but only wanted to spread his goodness and infinite perfections. 

6.But since the end in the agent and in the recipient is identical, it follows that the divine goodness to be possessed and enjoyed is the end not only of the Creator but also of creatures in general and of man in particular.

7.Therefore, the reason why God created is to communicate his intrinsic perfection. This intrinsic perfection is called glory in biblical jargon.

Living for God’s glory means being made partakers of God’s own life, his holiness and his love.

For this reason, man’s goal is his sanctification, becoming by grace what God made man (that is, Jesus Christ) is by nature.

With the hope that you all understand the greatness of man’s vocation, I accompany you with my prayers and bless you.

Father Angelo

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