CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 1:

• God and His Attributes
• The Blessed Trinity
• Creation
• The Angels
• The Days of Creation
  • 65. The Creation of Bodies
  • 66. The Order of Bodily Creation
  • 67. Light: Work of the First Day of Creation
  • 68. Work of the Second Day of Creation
  • 69. Work of the Third Day of Creation
  • 70. Work of the Fourth Day of Creation
  • 71. Work of the Fifth Day of Creation
  • 72. Work of the Sixth Day of Creation
  • 73. The Seventh Day
  • 74. Meaning of the Seven Days
• Man
• The Divine Government

65. The Creation of Bodies

1. God is the source of being, bodily and spiritual, substantial and accidental. God is therefore the Creator of bodies as well as of spirits. And while some bodies can propagate and reproduce their kind, God had to give first beginnings and the power to propagate; God must also support the process of propagating in its being and effectiveness. Scripture says (Ps.145) that God is the Creator "who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them."

2. The entire universe, bodily and spiritual, is the work of God's goodness. All creatures manifest the divine goodness and tend to it as to their goal or final cause.

3. The theory that God made the angels, and then the angels made the bodily world, cannot stand. For, as we have seen elsewhere, only God can create. No secondary cause (that is, no creature) can produce anything without having something to work on. But creation is total production of a thing from nothing.

4. A body is made of primal matter and substantial form. Some have said that the substantial forms of bodies were taken from the angels. This is false doctrine. Bodies come in first instance from God the Creator; no bodily element is supplied by angels or other creatures.

"Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life eases the mind and a clean conscience inspires great trust in God."
Thomas á Kempis

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"Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in drynesses of spirit and devotion, and for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it."
St Philip Neri

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"If, devout soul, it is your will to please God and live a life of serenity in this world, unite yourself always and in all things to the divine will. Reflect that all the sins of your past wicked life happened because you wandered from the path of God's will. For the future, embrace God's good pleasure and say to him in every happening: "Yea, Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy sight." "
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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