Sect. 117The World the Realization of the Divine IdealThe World the Realization of the Divine Ideal
I. The world is the realization of an artistic ideal, because God created it according to a well-conceived plan, with the intention, not of deriving profit from it, but of producing a work good and beautiful in itself. But the Divine ideal is God Himself; its external representation is, therefore, the representation and image of the Divine Majesty and Beauty.
II. Hence all things bear some likeness to God, and possess some degree of goodness and beauty. In as far as they come from God, they must be good and beautiful; but as they also come from nothing, their goodness and beauty are necessarily imperfect; they are perfect only as far as God has endowed them with being.
III. No single creature can adequately express the Divine Ideal. Hence the almost infinite variety and multiplicity of created forms, each of which reproduces and manifests something of the infinite perfection of God. Of the fundamental forms of being known to us, viz. the spiritual and the material, the former are a real image of their ideal, whilst the latter only contain obscure vestiges of it. Moreover, spiritual creatures, unlike material ones, are conscious of their likeness to God. In man the two forms of likeness to the Divine ideal are combined and concentrated in such a manner that the lower is completed and perfected by the higher, and offers it a wide field for the display of its activities. The soul of man animating the body is an image of the action of God on the world; the fecundity of man, resulting in the construction of a new being like unto himself, represents the inner fecundity of God. In pure spirits the likeness to God is purer and more sublime, but in man it is more complete and comprehensive.
IV. Notwithstanding their immense multiplicity and variety, all created beings are bound up into one whole, tending as it were in a mass to the one final object of all, and together representing a harmonious picture of the Divine Ideal.
V. Is this world, taken as a whole, the best of possible worlds? In the treatise on God, we have already shown that God was not bound to create the best of possible worlds, and that a world than which no other could be more perfect is an absurdity. Still we may safely say that this world is better than any which a creature could excogitate; that, by means of the Incarnation, it affords God the highest possible glorification, and thus attains its end better than any other; and, lastly, that, given the final object preordained by God and the component parts of the world, the arrangement of things and their government by God are the best conceivable.
I. The world is the realization of an artistic ideal, because God created it according to a well-conceived plan, with the intention, not of deriving profit from it, but of producing a work good and beautiful in itself. But the Divine ideal is God Himself; its external representation is, therefore, the representation and image of the Divine Majesty and Beauty.
II. Hence all things bear some likeness to God, and possess some degree of goodness and beauty. In as far as they come from God, they must be good and beautiful; but as they also come from nothing, their goodness and beauty are necessarily imperfect; they are perfect only as far as God has endowed them with being.
III. No single creature can adequately express the Divine Ideal. Hence the almost infinite variety and multiplicity of created forms, each of which reproduces and manifests something of the infinite perfection of God. Of the fundamental forms of being known to us, viz. the spiritual and the material, the former are a real image of their ideal, whilst the latter only contain obscure vestiges of it. Moreover, spiritual creatures, unlike material ones, are conscious of their likeness to God. In man the two forms of likeness to the Divine ideal are combined and concentrated in such a manner that the lower is completed and perfected by the higher, and offers it a wide field for the display of its activities. The soul of man animating the body is an image of the action of God on the world; the fecundity of man, resulting in the construction of a new being like unto himself, represents the inner fecundity of God. In pure spirits the likeness to God is purer and more sublime, but in man it is more complete and comprehensive.
IV. Notwithstanding their immense multiplicity and variety, all created beings are bound up into one whole, tending as it were in a mass to the one final object of all, and together representing a harmonious picture of the Divine Ideal.
V. Is this world, taken as a whole, the best of possible worlds? In the treatise on God, we have already shown that God was not bound to create the best of possible worlds, and that a world than which no other could be more perfect is an absurdity. Still we may safely say that this world is better than any which a creature could excogitate; that, by means of the Incarnation, it affords God the highest possible glorification, and thus attains its end better than any other; and, lastly, that, given the final object preordained by God and the component parts of the world, the arrangement of things and their government by God are the best conceivable.
Seção 40% da obra, de A Manual of Catholic Theology (Wilhelm & Scannell, sobre a Dogmatik de Scheeben). Ver o original.