CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 1:

• God and His Attributes
  • 1. Sacred Doctrine
  • 2. The Existence of God
  • 3. The Simplicity of God
  • 4. The Perfections of God
  • 5. Goodness
  • 6. The Goodness of God
  • 7. The Infinity of God
  • 8. The Existence of God in Things
  • 9. The Immutability of God
  • 10. The Eternity of God
  • 11. The Unity of God
  • 12. How We Can Know God
  • 13. The Names of God
  • 14. God's Knowledge
  • 15. Ideas in God
  • 16. Truth
  • 17. Falsity
  • 18. The Life of God
  • 19. The Will of God
  • 20. God's Love
  • 21. The Mercy and Justice of God
  • 22. The Providence of God
  • 23. Predestination
  • 24. The Book of Life
  • 25. The Power of God
  • 26. The Beatitude of God
• The Blessed Trinity
• Creation
• The Angels
• The Days of Creation
• Man
• The Divine Government

18. The Life of God

1. Things have life when they have the perfection of self-movement. In the world around us, this perfection is manifested by plants, animals, and human beings. Other bodily things (called, in general, minerals) have not this perfection. Therefore, not all things are alive; some things have life, some lack it.

2. Life is primarily the substantial principle or source of self-movement. Secondarily, it is the operation of self-movement.

3. Plants have vegetal life with the operations of nutrition, growth and development, and reproduction. Animals have vegetal life and also sentient life with its operations of sensing, appetizing, and local movement. Human beings have vegetal and sentient life and also rational life with its operations of understanding and will. Rational life is far superior to the other forms of life. Yet in earthly man, rational life is bound up with bodiliness. Even in angels it seeks a goal outside itself. Pure and perfect rational life is self-sufficient; its movement is not change; it tends to no goal outside itself; its activity is identified with its essence. Such rational life is all-perfect life, absolute life. It is pure perfection. Now, all pure perfection belongs to God eminently. Therefore, God is life.

4. God is life. God is knowledge. In the divine simplicity, the perfections of life and knowledge are one. Hence all things that are in God's knowledge are in God's life, and therefore we have the saying, "All things are life in God".

"The name of Jesus, pronounced with reverence and affection, has a kind of power to soften the heart. "
St Philip Neri

* * *

"To do God's will -- this was the goal upon which the saints constantly fixed their gaze. They were fully persuaded that in this consists the entire perfection of the soul. "
St Alphonsus de Liguori

* * *

"The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit, but now that the face of evil bares itself more and more, so does the Lord bare his treasures more."
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

* * *

Copyright