The procession of created existences from God is a finite similitude of the procession of the Son and Holy Spirit from the Father. Creation is an expression of that archetype in finite form which is expressed in the infinite image of the Word. He is "the splendor of the glory, and the express image of the substance" [Footnote 2] of the Father; and creation is a reflection of this splendor, a reduplication in miniature of this image. It is an act of the same infinite intelligence by which the infinite Word is generated. For although finite itself, it is the similitude of an infinite archetype which only infinite intelligence can possess within itself. It is also an act of the same infinite love whose spiration is the Holy Spirit. The sanctity of the divine nature consists in the perfect conformity of intelligence and volition. Volition is love, a complacency in good. Love must therefore concur with intelligence in every divine act, that it may be holy. The Holy Spirit, or impersonated love, must concur with the Father and the Son, as principle and medium, to consummate or bring to its final end the creative act. Creation is therefore essentially an act of love; proceeding from intelligence and ordained for beatitude; proceeding from God as first cause, and returning to him as final cause. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 2: Heb. i. 3.]
[Footnote 3: Final cause is the same as ultimate end. It is the cause or reason of the determination of God to create.]
The final cause of creation must be God, just as necessarily as its first cause must be God. The creative decree being eternal, all that constitutes its perfection, including its end and consummation, must be eternal, and must therefore be in God. He is the principle and consummation of his own act ad intra, and of his act ad extra, which imitates it perfectly. God creates, because he freely chooses to please himself by conferring the good of existence through the creative act on subjects distinct from himself. The adequate object of this volition of God is himself as the author of created good, or the term of the relation which created existences have to him as their creator. The possession of good by the creature is inseparable in the volition of God from the complacency which he has in the exercise of the power of bestowing good by creation. Although he is necessarily his own final end in creating, yet this does not prevent creation from being an act of pure and free love, but on the contrary makes it to be so; because it is as infinite love that God is the end of his creative act. A charitable man, who confers good upon another, is moved by a principle of love in himself, which causes him to take delight in the happiness of his fellow-creatures. This movement originates in himself, and returns back to himself, being consummated in the pure happiness which the exercise of love produces. Yet the possession of good by another is the real object which elicits the act of love, and it is therefore pure, disinterested charity. Love makes the good as given, and the good as received, one identical object, and unites the giver and receiver in one good. Selfishness is inordinate self-love, or a love of others merely so far as they serve as instruments of our own pleasure and advantage, and not as themselves subjects of happiness. But the just love of self and of others is identical in principle, proceeding from the amor entis, or love of being. The benignant father, prelate, or sovereign, the generous benefactor of his fellow-men, is not less disinterested in his acts on account of the pure happiness which comes back to himself, filling his heart with the purest happiness of which it is capable. Thus in God; his complacency in his creative act, or sovereign pleasure in creating, is the purest and most perfect love to the creature. That which he delights in as creator is the bestowal of existence, which participates in the infinite good of his own being.
The mode and degree in which existences participate in this infinite good which God distributes from the plenitude of his own being, specificates and determines their relation to him as final cause, and constitutes the ultimate term to which their creation is directed. This ultimate term or final end of creation as a whole, includes the ends for which each part taken singly is intended, and the common end to which these minor and less principal ends are all subordinated in the universal creative design. The end of a particular portion of the creation, taken singly, is attained, when it makes the final and complete explication of that similitude to the divine perfections which constitutes it in its own particular grade of existence. The end of the universe of existences is attained, when they collectively reach the maximum of excellence which God proposed to himself in creating. That is, when the similitude of the perfections of God is expressed in the universe in that variety of distinct grades, and raised to that altitude in the series of possible states of existence, which God prefixed in the beginning as the ultimate term of the creative act. Whatever the maximum of created good may be, whatever may be the predetermined limits of the universe of existence, whatever may be the highest point of elevation to which it is destined, it is evident that the accomplishment of the creative act brings the creation back to God as final cause. It has its final end in God, wherever that finality may have been fixed by the eternal will of God. This is very plain and obvious. But it leads into one of the most abstruse and, at the same time, one of the most unavoidable questions of philosophy, that which relates to the end of creation metaphysically final. What is the end of creation, or the relation of the universe of created existences to the final cause, which is metaphysically final? How far ought the actual end of created existences to coincide, or does it really coincide with the end metaphysically final?
VIII.
THE END OF CREATION METAPHYSICALLY FINAL—THE ASCENDING SERIES OF GRADES IN EXISTENCE—THE SUMMIT OF THIS SERIES IS A NATURE HYPOSTATICALLY UNITED TO THE DIVINE NATURE OF THE WORD—THE INCARNATION, THE CREATIVE ACT CARRIED TO THE APEX OF POSSIBILITY—THE SUPERNATURAL END TO WHICH THE UNIVERSE IS DESTINED COMPLETED IN THE INCARNATION.
By the end of creation metaphysically final, is meant a relation of the universe to God as final cause which is final in the divine idea, or the one which God beholds in his own infinite intelligence as the ultimatum to which his omnipotence can carry the creative act. It is a relation which brings the creature to the closest union and similitude to the creator in the good of being which the nature of the infinite and of the finite will admit.
We have already established the doctrine that God is by nature free to create or not to create, and eternally determines himself to creation by his own sovereign will to confer the pure boon of existence. We have also established, that since God determines himself from eternity to create, he necessarily creates in accordance with his own nature or essence, in accordance with the eternal archetype and idea reflected in the person of the Word; and for his own glory, or for an end in himself to which the creature is related, and which he must attain if he accomplishes his destiny. But we must inquire further, whether in determining himself to create according to the archetype contained in his own essence, he necessarily carries out this idea to the most perfect and complete actualization in the real universe? That is, does he necessarily create for an end metaphysically final, and carry the creative act to its apex, or the summit of possibility? Or is there any degree of existence or [{6}] grade of resemblance and relation to God as archetype which must be supposed in order to conceive of an end accomplished by creation which is worthy of the divine wisdom and goodness? Or, on the contrary, is it just as free to God to determine any limit, however low, as the term of creation, as it is to abstain from creating? For instance, can we suppose it consistent with the divine wisdom to create only a grain of sand? On the one hand, it may be said that creation being a free act, the creation of a grain of sand does not take away the liberty of the divine will to abstain from creating anything else. On the other hand, God, as being in his very essence the infinite wisdom, must have an adequate end in view, even in creating a grain of sand. It may be said that the creation of a grain of sand is truly an infinite act, and that a grain of sand represents the omnipotence of God as truly as the universe itself. Yet, it is difficult to see any reason why Almighty God should make such a representation merely for his own contemplation. For the same reason, it is equally difficult to suppose any adequate motive for the creation of a merely material universe, however extensive. The wisdom and power of God are manifested, but manifested to himself alone. The very end of such a manifestation appears to be to manifest the attributes of God to intelligent minds capable of apprehending it. Suppose the material universe filled with sentient creatures, and, although its end is thus partially fulfilled, by the enjoyment which they are capable of receiving from it, its adaptation to the manifestation of the divine attributes to intelligence is still apparently without an object. The sentient creation itself manifests the wisdom and goodness of God in such a way that it seems to require an intelligent nature to apprehend it, in order that God may be glorified in his works, and that the love which is the essential consummating principle of the creative act may be reflected back from the creation to the creator, and thus furnish an adequate term of the divine complacency. This complacency of God in himself as creator, as we have seen, is complacency in the communication of good, or pure, disinterested love delighting in the distribution of its own infinite plenitude. The material creation can only be the recipient of this love in transitu or as the instrument and means of conveying it to a subject capable of apprehending it. The sentient creation can only be the recipient of it as its most imperfect term, and as an end most inadequate to the means employed. The wisdom and goodness of God in the creative act cannot therefore be made intelligible to us, except as we consider it as including the creation of intelligent natures, capable of sharing in the intelligent life of God. As soon as the mind makes this point, it is able to perceive an adequate motive for the creation, for it apprehends a good in the finite order resembling the infinite good which is necessary and uncreated. It is approaching to a finality, for it apprehends that the rational nature is that nature in which the finality must be situated, or in which the ultimate relation of the universe to the final cause must exist. In other words, it apprehends that God has created a universe, including all generic grades of existence explicated into a vast extent and variety of subordinate genera and species multiplied in a countless number of individuals, all subordinate to a common order, and culminating in intelligent life. It apprehends the correspondence of the actual creation to its ideal archetype, or the realization in act of the highest possible nature which omnipotence can create after the resemblance of his own essence impersonated in the Word, and of every inferior nature necessary to the constitution of a universe, or a world of composite order and harmony comprising all the essential forms of existence whose infinite equivalent is in the divine idea.
It is evidently befitting the wisdom and grandeur of Almighty God, that the created universe should represent to created intelligence an adequate and universal similitude of his being and perfections; that its vast extent and variety, the multiplicity of distinct existences which it contains, its complicated relations and harmonies, the sublimity and beauty of its forms, the superabundance of its sentient life and enjoyment, the excellence and perfection of its intelligent creatures, should be adapted to overwhelm the mind with admiration of the might and majesty, the wisdom and glory, the goodness and love of the Creator; that, as far as possible, the procession of the divine persons within the essence of God should be copied in the procession of created existences; that the ineffable object of the divine contemplation, or the Word going forth from the infinite intelligence of the Father and returning to him in the Holy Spirit, should be represented in created similitudes by the communication of being, life, and intelligence, in every possible grade, and the completion of these in the most sublime manner of union to God of which finite nature is capable. This consummation of the creative act is worthy of the wisdom of God; for it is the most perfect act of the divine intelligence ad extra, or extrinsic to the actus purissimus by which the Word is generated in the unity of his eternal being, which is possible. It is worthy of the goodness of God; for it is the most perfect act of love ad extra, or extrinsic to the actus purissimus of the spiration of the Holy Spirit, consummating the interior life of God in eternal, self-sufficing beatitude, which omnipotence can produce.