Angels; Man in the Image of God

Catechism paragraphs 325 – 384

“The Apostles’ Creed professes that God is ‘Creator of heaven and earth.’  The Nicene Creed makes it explicit that this profession includes ‘all that is seen and unseen.’  325   The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God ‘from the beginning of time made at once out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body.’”  327

THE ANGELS

“The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls ‘angels’ is a truth of faith.  328   St. Augustine says: ‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature.  If you seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit;’ if you seek the name of their office, it is ‘angel’:  from what they are, ‘spirit,’ from what they do, ‘angel.’  With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God.  329   Christ is the center of the angelic world.  They are his angels.  They belong to him because they were created through and for him: ‘for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.’ (Col 1:16) 331   In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God.  She invokes their assistance.  Moreover, in the ‘Cherubic Hymn’ of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels).  335   From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession.  Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.”  336

THE VISIBLE WORLD

“Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator.  The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event.  338   Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection.  ‘And God saw that it was good.’ 339   God wills the interdependence of creatures.  No creature is self-sufficient.  Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.  340   The beauty of the universe: The order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from the relationships which exist among them.  Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature.  The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man’s intellect and will.  341   Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures. 343   The eighth day.  But for us a new day has dawned: the day of Christ’s Resurrection.  The seventh day completes the first creation.  The eighth day begins the new creation.  Thus, the work of creation culminates in the greater work of redemption.”  349

(I like that last paragraph, linking creation to Redemption.  It all fits together as part of God’s Plan.)

MAN

“Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is ‘in the image of God’; (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created ‘male and female’; (IV) God established him in his friendship.  355   Of all visible creatures only man is ‘able to know and love his creator.’  He is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,’ and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and dignity. 356   Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.  He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.  357   Because of its common origin the human   race forms a unity.”  360  

“In Sacred Scripture the term ‘soul’ often refers to human life or the entire human person.  But ‘soul’ also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: ‘soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in man.  363   The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.  365   The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God --- it is not ‘produced’ by the parents --- and also that it is immortal:  it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be united with the body at the final Resurrection.”  366  

MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM

“Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman.  369   In no way is God in man’s image.  He is neither man nor woman.  God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes.  370   Man and woman were made ‘for each other’ --- not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate.’  By transmitting human life to their descendents, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.”  372 

“The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him.  374   The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original ‘state of holiness and justice.’  This grace of original holiness was ‘to share in divine life.’  375   As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.  (cf Gen 2:17, 3:16, 19) 376   The ‘mastery’ over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self.  The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.  377   The entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.”  379

Which I will read and write about next time …

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.  Each of us is the result of a thought of God.  Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.   Pope Benedict XVI, 4/24/05

Why does the Book of Genesis depict creation as “the work of six days”?  From the symbolism of ‘the work of six days’ we can derive important principles: (1) Nothing exists that was not called into being by the Creator.  (2) Everything that exists is good in its own way.  (3) Something that has become bad still has a good core.  (4) Created beings and things are interrelated and interdependent.  (5) Creation in its order and harmony reflects the surpassing goodness and beauty of God.  (6) In creation there is an order of complexity: man is superior to an animal, an animal is superior to a plant, a plant is superior to inanimate matter.  (7) Creation is heading for the great celebration when Christ will bring the world home and God will be everything to everyone.  YOUCAT Q46          

The Mystery of God, The Creator

Catechism Paragraphs 279 – 324

“The mystery of Christ casts conclusive light on the mystery of creation and reveals the end for which in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  280  It will be the definitive realization of God’s plan to bring under a single head ‘all things in (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth.’ (Eph 1:10) 1043   Catechesis on creation is of major importance.  It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves: ‘Where do we come from?  Where are we going? What is our origin? What is our end?’  The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable.  They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions.  282   It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called God?  284   Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins.  The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error.  This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of the truth: ‘By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.’ 286   God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation.  287   Creation is revealed as the first step toward this covenant (with the Jewish people), the first and universal witness to God’s all-powerful love.” 288  

“The Old Testament suggests and the New Covenant reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, inseparably one with that of the Father.  This creative cooperation is clearly affirmed in the Church’s rule of faith: ‘There exists but one God … he is the Father, God the Creator, the author, the giver of order.  He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom,’ ‘by the Son and the Spirit’ who, so to speak, are ‘his hands.’  Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity.”  292  

“Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: ‘The world was made for the glory of God.’   St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things, not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it, for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness.  293   The glory of God consists in  the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created.  God made us ‘to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.’ (Eph 1:5-6)  The ultimate purpose of creation is that God  ‘who is the creator of all things may at last become all in all, thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and beatitude. (1Cor 15:28) 294   We believe (God’s creation) proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom, and goodness, ‘For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’ (Rev 4:11) 295   Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them.”  (Cf Ps 51:12)   298  

“Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work.  Because creation comes forth from God’s goodness, it shares in that   sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures inmost being: ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:28) 300   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.” 301  

“The universe was created in a state of journeying toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it.  We call divine providence the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward his perfection.  302   Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children’s smallest needs: ‘Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat?  Or What shall we drink? … Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things shall be yours as well’” (Ps 22; 32; 35) 305  

“God is the sovereign master of his plan.  But to carry it our he also makes use of his creatures’ cooperation.  This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God’s greatness and goodness.  For God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own … and thus of cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan.  306   God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: ‘For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’ (Phil 2:13)  Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.” 308 

“But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?  … With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’ toward its ultimate perfection.  In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature.  With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.  310   Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love.  They can therefore go astray.  God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.  He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good out of it.  311   God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures.  From the greatest moral evil ever committed – the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all men – God, by his grace that ‘abounded all the more’ (Cf Rom 5:20), brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption.  But for all that, evil never becomes a good.  312   We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him. (Rom 8:28) 313   Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God ‘face to face,’ will we fully know the ways by which --- even though through the dramas of evil and sin --- God has guided his creation to that definitive Sabbath rest for which he created heaven and earth.” 314

This last paragraph, above, is so well done.  The words I excerpted from the catechism tell clearly the Church’s teaching on the existence of good and evil in creation, a subject so confusing to so many --- especially at a time when evil or suffering enters their lives.  In their fears and sorrows, confusion reigns, but the catechism can clear the mists, for those who would seek to understand.

Can God do anything?  Is he almighty?  Anyone who calls on God in need believes that he is all-powerful.  God created the world out of nothing (science has never done this, nor ever will).  He is the Lord of history.  He guides all things and can do everything.  How he uses his omnipotence is of course a mystery.  Through the prophet Isaiah he tells us “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. (Is 55:8)”  YOUCAT Q40

Does science make the Creator superfluous?  The creation account is not a scientific model for explaining the beginning of the world.  “God created the world” is a theological statement that is concerned with the relation of the world to God.  God willed the world; he sustains it and will perfect it.  YOUCAT Q41

Can someone accept the theory of evolution and still believe in the Creator?  Yes, although it is a different kind of knowledge; faith is open to the findings and hypotheses of the sciences.  Theology has no scientific competence, and natural science has no theological competence.  Natural science cannot dogmatically rule out the possibility that there are purposeful processes in creation; conversely, faith cannot define specifically how these processes take place in the course of nature’s development.  A Christian can accept the theory of evolution as a helpful explanatory model, provided he does not fall into the heresy of evolutionism, which views man as the random product of biological processes.  EVOLUTION presupposes the existence of something that can develop.  The theory says nothing about where this “something” came from.  Just as “evolutionism” oversteps a boundary on the one side, so does CREATIONISM on the other.  Creationists naively take biblical data literally.  YOUCAT Q42

EVOLUTION: Viewed from a Christian perspective, evolution takes place as God’s continuous creation in natural processes. 

CREATIONISM: The idea that God himself by his direct action created the world all at once, as if the book of Genesis were an eyewitness account.

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.  Each of us is the result of a thought of God.  Each of us is willed; each of us is loves; each of us is necessary.”  Pope Benedict XVI (Apr 4, 2005)

Next week we’ll look at all that God created:  angels, the visible world, and man.

The Revelation of God as Trinity

Catechism Paragraphs 232 – 278

Last week we looked at the opening of the Creed: “I believe in God.”  This week we look at the catechism’s explanation of the subsequent words the substance of God:  The Trinity.

“Christians are baptized ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ (Mt 28:19) 232   The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.  It is the mystery of God in himself..  It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith.  234   The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the ‘mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.’  To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament.”  237  

“The Father revealed by the Son  By calling God ‘Father,’ the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children.  God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood.  We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes.  He is neither man nor woman: he is God.  He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard:  no one is father as God is father.  239   Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son who, reciprocally, is Son only in the relation to the Father: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.  (Mt 11:27) 240   Following this apostolic tradition, the Church confessed at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325) that the Son is ‘consubstantial’ with the Father, that is, one only God with him.  The Nicene Creed confessed ‘the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” 242

“The Father and the Son revealed by the Spirit  Before his Passover, Jesus announced the sending of ‘another Paraclete’ (Advocate), the Holy Spirit.  At work since creation, having previously spoken ‘all the truth.’ (Jn 14:17, 26; 16:13) The Holy Spirit is thus revealed as another divine person with Jesus and the Father.  343   ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.’  By this confession, the Church recognizes the Father as the source and origin of the whole divinity.  But the eternal origin of the Spirit is not unconnected with the Son’s origin: ‘The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is God, one and equal with the Father and the Son, of the same substance and also of the same nature.  The Creed of the Church confesses: ‘With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified.’” 245  

“The formation of the Trinitarian dogma  From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church’s living faith, principally by means of Baptism.  249   In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop its own terminology with the help of certain notions of philosophical origin: ‘substance,’ ‘person’ or ‘hypostasis,’ ‘relation,’ and so on.  In doing this, she did not submit the faith to human wisdom, but gave a new and unprecedented meaning to these terms, which from then on would be used to signify an ineffable mystery, infinitely beyond all that we can humanly understand.  251   The Church uses (1) the term substance (rendered also at times by essence or nature) to designate the divine being in its unity, (2) the term person or hypostasis to designate the Father , Son, and Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them, and (3) the term relation to designate the fact that their distinction lies in the relationship of each to the others.  252   The Trinity is one.  We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the ‘consubstantial Trinity.’  The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire.  253   The divine persons are really distinct from one another.  God is one but not solitary.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another.  254   The divine persons are relative to one another.  Because it does not divide the divine unity, the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another.”  255

“For as the Trinity has only one and the same nature, so too does it have only one and the same operation: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle.  However each divine person performs the common work according to his unique personal property.  Thus the Church confesses: ‘one God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are.’ 258   The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity.  ‘If a man loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.’ (Jn 14:23) 260   By the grace of Baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth in the obscurity of faith, and after death in eternal light.”  265

“The Father Almighty   Of all the divine attributes, only God’s omnipotence is named in the Creed: to confess this power has great bearing on our lives.  God’s power is loving, for he is our Father, and mysterious for only faith can discern it when it ‘is made perfect in weakness. (Jn 1:3) 268   God reveals his fatherly omnipotence by the way he takes care of our needs; by the filial adoption that he gives us (I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty) (2Cor 6:18): finally by his infinite mercy, for he displays his power at its height by freely forgiving sins.  271   Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power.  This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power.  The Virgin Mary is the supreme model of this faith, for she believed that ‘nothing will be impossible with God.’ 273   Anyone who calls on God in need believes that he is all-powerful.  God created the world out of nothing.  He is the Lord of history.  He guides all things and can do everything.  How he uses his omnipotence is of course a mystery.  Through the prophet Isaiah he tells us, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ (Is 55:8)  YOUCAT Q40   

Next week we move on to talk about God as Creator of heaven and earth.