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lmelahn
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Right. Eternity is not a constitutive principle of God. God simply is eternally.
Which is precisely what Aquinas means when he says that God is His own eternity. There is no distinction between Himself and His Being (and in particular, between Himself and His Being always).
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thinkandmull
Guest
Where has the Church said that God positively keeps all created things in existence?? If this is true, I would then have to argue that when someone does something evil like rape, God ceases to keep in existence the bodies in that moment and that the devil takes over and does this. I know this sounds rather un-Thomistic, and actually contrary to Descartes too, but I see now way it would be moral (let alone "fitting) for God to be holding and sustaining in existence the child molester’s hands as he does his foul deed
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thinkandmull
Guest
I would admit to you that there is a problem with the Biblical account when it comes to prophecy. How can “the Beast” for example have free will if it is prophecies what he will do? I’ve had no little trouble with that question today will I was driving out of town
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Vico
Guest
Vatican I, Session 3 : 24 April 1870
Chapter 1 – On God the creator of all things
4. Everything that God has brought into being he protects and governs by his providence, which reaches from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well [11]. All things are open and laid bare to his eyes [12], even those which will be brought about by the free activity of creatures.
11 Wis 8, 1.
12 Heb 4, 13.
Canons 1. On God the creator of all things
5. If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: let him be anathema.
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oldcelt
Guest
Thank you for that admission. Please believe me, I still struggle with many issues related to the creator. If I was absolutely certain, I seriously doubt that I would be here.
John
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thinkandmull
Guest
It doesn’t say anything about “sustaining” once in existence in those paragraphs
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thinkandmull
Guest
If God knows what the day to day future will be as He acts in it, and thus can tell us what will happen on so and so days in the future (prophecy), then why create those whom He knows will reject Him and remain in that rejection for eternity? Could God, in that case, be held partially responsible for the result? Look at a baby… would you create it knowing it will end up in hell? Or, however, is it *more important *that the moment to be saved foever be given, that every be done in time to give the former baby (now adult) the opportunity to be saved? Although having nothing to do with Banez’s or Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange’s idea that punishment can be an end for God, is personal good shown still in this scenario?
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thinkandmull
Guest
Commenting on Matthew 11, Aquinas wrote:
“Augustine gives a further explanation, namely, that the Lord foreknew that if they had believed, they would not have persevered at the time of the passion; therefore, he did not send to them.”
If God knows what we would hypothetically do, why preordain this world history? Is this the best one that could be created with the humans chosen for creation? Is it just that God loving us **within history ** is that which is ontologically first in importance, instead of the end of some of those people (eternal separation from paradise)?
“Augustine gives a further explanation, namely, that the Lord foreknew that if they had believed, they would not have persevered at the time of the passion; therefore, he did not send to them.”
If God knows what we would hypothetically do, why preordain this world history? Is this the best one that could be created with the humans chosen for creation? Is it just that God loving us **within history ** is that which is ontologically first in importance, instead of the end of some of those people (eternal separation from paradise)?
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Vico
Guest
The word sustains is not used literally, but the concept is there. Ludwig Ott (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 87) writes:
Against Deism, according to which God, the Creator, having created it, leaves the world to run itself, the Church declares that God continuously preserves in existence created things. The Vatican Council teaches: “God, by His Providence, protects all that He has created,” that is, He preserves it from relapsing into nothingness. D 1784. Cf. Cat. Rom. I 2, 21: “If His Providence did not preserve all things with the same power with which they were created in the beginning they would fall back into nothingness immediately.”
Denzinger 1784 reference is what I posted before, Chapter 1, No. 4.
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oldcelt
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oldcelt
Guest
However, if you ever notice…there is not one scintilla of evidence for any of these proclamations. They are entirely a matter of faith. I exist because my parents created me through a simple biologic function…and I will die when my body is no longer able to function.
Those are apparent…no need for revelation, supernatural intervention, etc,…therefore, fact.
Truth, is another issue entirely.
John
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Vico
Guest
The essence of Christianity is faith, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and with faith the greatest merit occurs when it is a mystery which one assents to because it a revealed truth. Luke 16, from the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: 27And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send him to my father’s house, for I have five brethren, 28That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. 29And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 30But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance. 31And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.
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oldcelt
Guest
Mystery, revealed, revelation, etc…all words for, we don’t have anything tangible. Of course, I do not expect anything after my death, save for one distant possibility based on thermodynamics.
John
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Vico
Guest
The ascension of Jesus Christ had a profound impact on the disciples. “22 Who is on the right hand of God, swallowing down death that we might be made heirs of life everlasting: being gone into heaven, the angels and powers and virtues being made subject to him.” (1 Pet. 3:22).
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Aloysium
Guest
What is greater than the tangible is that which (he/she who) touches.
What impels us to communicate,
to reach out and touch the truth and each other?
We share in our participation within this world,
a world with its structure, including thermodynamics.
That isn’t what moves us,
although those physical properties are necessary
for our being here as part of all this.
If we think about the world of things, they appear to exist on their own.
At some point they were transformed from something else into what they are.
And, they continue to change into whatever they will be.
Interestingly, all this takes place in a moment.
This now is the centre of all that was and all that will be.
It is perpetually undergoing change.
What is this moment but who we are in relation to Reality
on our journey to God?
This moment exists because God brings it into being.
In this moment we are offered choices.
All existence comes into being as an expression of His love.
We were and are created to participate in that love.
We can only do so as beings with a free will to choose.
Some people will choose to love and they become heavenly.
Some people will choose to become spiritual black holes.
What impels us to communicate,
to reach out and touch the truth and each other?
We share in our participation within this world,
a world with its structure, including thermodynamics.
That isn’t what moves us,
although those physical properties are necessary
for our being here as part of all this.
If we think about the world of things, they appear to exist on their own.
At some point they were transformed from something else into what they are.
And, they continue to change into whatever they will be.
Interestingly, all this takes place in a moment.
This now is the centre of all that was and all that will be.
It is perpetually undergoing change.
What is this moment but who we are in relation to Reality
on our journey to God?
This moment exists because God brings it into being.
In this moment we are offered choices.
All existence comes into being as an expression of His love.
We were and are created to participate in that love.
We can only do so as beings with a free will to choose.
Some people will choose to love and they become heavenly.
Some people will choose to become spiritual black holes.
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thinkandmull
Guest
Well Dr. Ott claims a lot of things are Church teaching which are really just his private interpretation
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Richca
Guest
The preservation of creatures in existence is found in Sacred Scripture and it is explicitly taught by the Church.
How could a thing remain, unless you willed it;
or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? (Wisdom 11:25)
“who sustains all things by his mighty word” (Hebrews 1:3).
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. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence (CCC#301).
“God preserves His creation in being and sustains it, giving it the capacity to act and leading it towards its fulfillment through his Son and the Holy Spirit” (#54, Compendium, Catechism of the Catholic Church).
“We are not however to understand that God is in such wise the Creator and Maker of all things that His works, when once created and finished, could thereafter continue to exist unsupported by His omnipotence. For as all things derive existence from the Creator’s supreme power, wisdom, and goodness, so unless preserved continually by His providence , and by the same power which produced them, they would instantly return into their nothingness” (Catechism of the Council of Trent)
Creatures do not exist necessarily as God does. God’s existence is necessary; the existence of creatures is contingent as they have been brought into existence by God from nothing and they would vanish back into nothingness unless their existence is continually sustained by God’s almightly power for “without a Creator the creature vanishes” (CCC#308).
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Vico
Guest
Those are church teachings. We see in Vatican II Lumen Gentium that the providence of God is re-itereted:8. Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation (9*) through which He communicated truth and grace to all. But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element.(10*) For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him, serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ, who vivifies it, in the building up of the body.(73) (11*)
We read it in the Catechism:
**God upholds and sustains creation.
** 301 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. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence:
For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.160160 Wis 11:24-26.
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oldcelt
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