The Activity of God

God. That God is personal, means in simple language, that God knows us, loves us, cares for us, provides for us, governs the world for our welfare.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned the meaning of essence, nature, attribute. We have learned also what is meant by the physical essence and the metaphysical essence of a thing. We have discerned the physical essence of God in His infinite substantial spirituality. We have seen that His metaphysical essence consists in the fact that God is Subsistent Being Itself, Self-Existent Being. We have learned something of the nature of God by studying His essence and His attributes. We have carefully explained that an attribute in God is not merely a perfection possessed by God; it is God Himself in one aspect; it is God Himself seen from one angle by our finite minds. All God’s attributes are one with His essence and one with each other in the Undivided Godhead. We have seen that God is a personal God.

a) Operations of God; b) Immanent Divine Operations;c) Transient Divine Operations.

a) Operations of God

By an operation we mean an activity performed; we mean the product of a power for acting or doing. Now, infinite power is an attribute of God. But, as we have learned, this attribute is not something that God has; it is something that God is. God is Infinite Power. In creatures, an operation is the product of a power which is not the active or operating creature itself, but something distinct from the creature which the creature pos sesses. A creature cannot act or operate immediately; it must act or operate through the medium or by the means of a power to act; it operates mediately. But with God this is not so. Hence, when we speak of the operations of God, or of the divine operations, we speak of God Himself exercising Godhead.

An operation is either immanent or transient. An immanent or “indwelling” operation stays in its main effect within the being which operates; we call this being the agent, from the Latin agens “the actor, the doer, the performer, the accomplisher.” A transient operation (from the Latin transiens “going across” ) goes across, so to speak, from the agent and finds its main effect in something outside the agent. The operation or activity of growing is an immanent operation in a child. The tearing of a garment by growing is a transient activity or operation of the growing child. The operation of thinking is immanent; the operation of bat against ball is transient

Now, since God is the author of all positive being or perfection, there is nothing outside God for Him to work upon except such things as His power has placed there, and which His power keeps in existence. And so there is no positive being, no actual creature, which is utterly independent of God, and which exists as a wholly alien thing for Him to exercise transient operations or activities upon. Besides, a transient activity always involves (in creatures, where transient activity in its perfection is possible, and where alone it is possible) a kind of “kick-back,” an effect on the agent itself. If the bat hits the ball, the bat itself receives an impact; the bat itself is affected. But this connatural property of transient activity or operation is not found in God’s operations. And thus we perceive that the phrase transient operation or transient activity is not strictly and literally predicable of any of God’s operations. But we use such language as we possess; it is imperfect language, but it is the best we have. And so we call by the name of transient divine activity the operations of God which affect creatures.

The immanent operations of God are those that are “indwelling” in God, and indeed are identified with the very essence of God in His Undivided Infinite Self-Subsistent Being.

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b) Immanent Divine Operations

The immanent operations of God (apart from the eternal generation of the Son by the Father, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son—operations which philosophy is not competent to discuss) are the operations of God as Intellect and of God as Will.

(j) God as Intellect is God the Omniscient, God the Allknowing. Since God is infinite, there is no limitation to God’s knowledge; it exhausts the knowability of everything. It is truly comprehensive knowledge which takes in not only what things are or have been or will be or can be, but all that, under other and non-existing circumstances, they could be. God’s knowledge is knowledge of all things in all their actual and possible relations. This must be so, as reason sees, otherwise God’s knowledge would be limited; and God (who is His knowledge) is infinite. God’s knowledge is not the product of learning. It is not conserved in memory or anticipated in expectation. For God has no past and no future; He knows all knowables (in all actual and possible relations) now, in an eternal now; for God’s knowledge is His eternal Self. God’s knowledge does not operate to the prejudice of his free creatures, men and angels. For God’s knowledge regarded as the operation of knowing, is immanent. It is the will of God that provides and governs and gives free creatures every possible help to their happiness. The fact that God knows whether I shall be saved or damned does not save me or damn me. We do wrong to speculate on this point, for our speculation always imposes on God our own limitations; we always speak or think of God looking forward to our final state as to a future event. And this view of the matter is calamitously false. Such a mistaken imposing of limitation on God results also in the silly cry, “If God knew [past tense] that I shall be lost [future tense] why did [past tense] He create me?” But God has no past and no future, and such a cry is a hopelessly falsified expression of a state of affairs. I had better say: “I am part of a magnificent and eternal plan. How I fit into it is my own doing, for I am made in God’s image and my best gift is my freedom. But whether I fit into the plan to my own happiness or my own misery, I do not spoil the plan. God’s work is perfect in any case; it gives Him external, formal, and objective glory, no matter whether I proclaim His goodness in heaven or His justice in hell. God’s work does not fail, nor can I make it fail. I can make my own work fail, but I had better not do so. Meanwhile, I must not idly and impiously inquire why God made His glorious creation of which I am a part, and utter silly cries of objection that the whole thing should have been omitted because I was going to ruin my own happiness by my own free choice. God’s knowledge of my success or failure in my own work does not compel or necessitate me. I am free. Besides, let me soberly consider this: God knows whether I am going (future tense, for me, not for God) to heaven or to hell. But I do not know. What I do know, and it is sufficient, is that I can go to heaven if I choose to do so and if I express my choice by living rightly according to God’s will.”

God’s knowledge (which is God as Intellect) embraces all things perfectly. God knows Himself, which is only saying that He is Himself. God knows all creatures in Himself. We human beings learn, we come to know; we apprehend what things are in themselves after the things are there. But God knows all know- ables eternally. In our language, God knows things perfectly be fore they are there. If He did not know them, they could not be planned and created and put there. Their very possibility rests upon God’s knowledge. Thus God knows all things in Himself, not in themselves, as we know things. We know things by taking in their mental image or species, as it is called. But God Himself is the adequate species of all existible creatures. No image or species is impressed on God, or expressed in God, for such impression and expression is necessarily limited, and God’s knowledge is His Infinite Essence and unlimited. But we say, technically (if inaccurately), that in God are the “archetypes,”

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—that is, the first molds, the primal designs,—of all things knowable and creatable. Sometimes we call these “archetypal ideas” or “archetypal images” or “archetypal species.” The primary object of God’s knowledge is Himself; the secondary object of God’s knowledge is all knowable creatures, and these He knows eternally in Himself.

Philosophers (and theologians) make a distinction (not real, but logical with a basis in reality) in the knowledge of God, and speak of God’s Simple Understanding and God’s Vision. By the Knowledge of Simple Understanding, God knows all things possible. By the Knowledge of Vision, God has present knowledge of all things actual, whether, in our view, these are past, present, or to come. Some learned men make a further distinction and say that there is a type of knowledge which lies midway between these two types; they call it Scientia Media or Middle Knowledge, and they assign to this type of divine knowledge the things, not merely and sheerly possible, and not truly actual, but such things as a creature would certainly do if certain circum stances and conditions were verified, but which are not, in fact, going to be verified. Thus God knows perfectly what I would do if I went out into the street tomorrow and found a thousand- dollar bill. But, as a fact, I am not going to find any such bill. What I would do is not sheerly possible, but something that would be actual if conditions were met (and they are not going to be met) ; nor is it truly actual but only what would be actual in the unrealized circumstances. Such a thing is knowable, and God knows it. But in the human scheme of distinguishing God’s knowledge into a sort of set of two compartments (Simple Understanding or Simple Intelligence and Vision) such a thing does not seem to fit; we make a third compartment called Scientia Media for this thing to fit into. Now, these things that are not going to happen, but would certainly happen, if conditions (which are not going to be realized) were in fact realized, are called futuribilia. So we may sum up this matter and say that philosophers and theologians distinguish in God (a) Knowledge of Simple Understanding or Knowledge of Simple Intelligence, by which God knows all things possible; (b) Knowledge of Vision, by which God knows all things actual; and (c) some philosophers add what others call unnecessary, the third distinction called Scientia Media or Middle Knowledge, by which God knows futuribilia. (2) God as Witt is God the Almighty; it is God as Infinite Love, For love is the proper act of will. God loves Himself infinitely, which is only saying that God is Himself. We must not impose upon God our creatural thoughts or expressions, and think of self-love in God as we think of it in creatures. For will is a thing which a free creature has, not what he is. Besides, “self- love” in a creature is really not love of self; it is “selfishness” and does harm to the creature afflicted by it; true love of self would not do harm but good to the self. So we must be on our guard, lest mistaken human expressions should make us attribute something unworthy to God. In God love of Self is the highest perfection; it is Infinite Godhead. And God loves all creatures, for they are the product of His will, that is, of His Almighty Love. The primary object of God’s will is Himself; the secondary object of God’s will is creatures. Creatures are the object of God’s will or love in proportion to their actuality or perfection or being. Hence, men and angels, the most perfect of creatures, are peculiarly the object of God’s will or love.

Philosophers and theologians distinguish in God an antece dent and a consequent will. God’s will is called antecedent when it wills simply; it is called consequent when it wills in view of special conditions and circumstances, especially those that come from the free-will of a creature. Thus, antecedently God wills all men to be saved. But men are free, and can abuse their freedom, and so can be lost. Consequently upon their choice, God wills their punishment if they choose to be lost.

God wills or loves all things. But evil is not a thing. Thing or being means actuality, and actuality means perfection. Evil is the absence of perfection. Thus God does not will evil. But

physical evils (Hke hunger, sickness, hardships, a bad climate etc.) may be really good inasmuch as they help a man to virtue such as patience, penance, hope of eternal life, striving towards heaven. Inasmuch as these are good, God is said to will physical evils accidentally and not per se or in themselves. Thus a loving father whose son has been extravagant may profitably allow the young man to suffer inconvenience and threat of arrest, or even arrest itself, as a lesson that will be of inestimable profit to him in time to come. The father does not will the suffering of the son in itself or per se; he wills it accidentally or per accidens inasmuch as it comes along with the good he wishes his son to take from a tight situation. Or, to use another analogy, a man who must undergo a painful, dangerous, and expensive operation if he is to recover health, wills the pain, the danger, the expense (all types of deprivation, absence, evil) accidentally and not in themselves; for he wills his recovery of health, and these things “go along.” So we say, God does not will physical evils per se, but only per accidens inasmuch as they are the means to good for His children. But God does not will moral evil or sin either per se or per accidens, for sin is a contradiction of God and God does not will (that is God is not) a contradiction in Himself. Sin is man’s own doing; it is an abuse of free-will; and, like all evils, moral evil or sin is not a thing, but the absence of a thing; it is the absence (that is, the failure) of agreement between man’s conduct and the rule of what it ought to be. Sin is a failure to meas ure up. It is a defection from the true moral rule, which is God as Infinite Understanding and Will.

c) Transient Divine Operations

As we have warned the reader above, there are no literal or strictly-so-called transient operations of God. But we call transient the divine operations which reach out, so to speak, to God’s creatures.

(j) The first of these operations is creation. There is, as we have seen in the first Article of this Chapter, no ultimate ex- planation of the world of creatures except an absolute begin ning, an emerging out of nothing under the power and activity of the First Cause, Creation is therefore a fact. And, as we have also seen, only truly infinite power (which is God) can account for such an emergence. For creation is the producing of a thing in its entirety out of nothing. Creation is an operation so proper to Infinite Power that a creature cannot serve even as an instrumental cause. For an instrumental cause is a cause employed upon something which is there to work upon; and in the case of creating there is nothing to work upon.

(2) The second of the divine transient operations is conser vation or preservation of creatures. For not only does a creature fail to explain its coming into existence, it fails to account for its continuing in existence. Contingent things (and all creatures are contingent) depend utterly upon causes to produce them and to maintain them. Hence, in last analysis, the creating power (without which the world is wholly impossible) must be extended to be also the preserving or conserving power. Now, preserving a thing may be direct or indirect. A man who catches a delicate vase as it is about to fall, directly preserves it. If he then locks it up in a case where nothing can come near to break it, he indirectly preserves it, and he may go off about his business and forget the vase entirely; still he is indirectly preserving it by the fact that through his activity it is now locked up and safe. Now, God must preserve creatures directly. For creatures are wholly contingent, and unable to preserve themselves for an instant unless they are actually and actively held out of nothingness. They cannot be locked in a forgotten case, for God would also actively hold the case in existence. Thus conservation is a divine activity that is continuous. It is called “a continuous creation,” and the phrase is justified. For the same divine power that is required to bring creatures to existence is required to keep them in existence. If God were to refuse conservation, this would be annihilation of creatures. Speaking absolutely, God could annihilate; but when we consider that God is not only creating and conserving Power, but is also Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Mercy, and Infinite Goodness, we say that He cannot annihilate, for this would conflict with His perfections. The technical way of putting all this is: God, by His absolute power, can annihilate; by His ordinated power (that is, power as seen in line with the other divine perfections) He cannot annihilate.

(5) The third of the divine transient operations is concur rence by which God supports creatures in their activity. By conservation God supports creatures in being; by concurrence He supports creatures in doing. When we read in Scripture that man “cannot so much as say the Lord Jesus but by the Holy Ghost” we find the fact of necessary divine concurrence neatly expressed; man (or any creature) can do nothing except by the concurrence of God. But what about sinning? Remember that the actual physical activity that may be connected with a sin (such as the bodily exertions of the murderer) are in themselves good; a murderer might use the same muscles, the same movements, in saving a life that he uses in destroying a life. The bodily actions of the sinner are in themselves good. It is their direction and their result as determined by free-will that is bad. It is the free-will that fails to bring them into line with God and so make them morally, as well as physically, good. But what of the freewill action itself? This is sinful inasmuch as it fails, is defective, is an absence of agreement with the moral law. For, as we have seen elsewhere, evil, whether physical or moral, is not a thing but the absence of a thing. A thing, a positive being, as such, is good. So God does not concur with sinful activity as sinful, for this phase of the activity, being negative and defective, is not positive being or activity. But God does necessarily concur with physical activity, even in a sinner, and He permits the abuse and defection whereby the sinner fails to make his act a good act. God is in no sense the author of sin; man is responsible for sin by defection, by failure, by absence of the work and effort needed to bring his activity into line with moral goodness. Sin requires, in itself, no effecting cause, but a defecting cause; not a cause that produces being, but a cause that fails to produce being as it should. Hence, God, the sole Primary Effecting Cause of all being and all real activity, is not the cause of sin; this, as we say, is a dejecting cause; it is the jailing will of man.—We distinguish types of divine concurrence, (a) Mediate concurrence is that by which God supports in creatures their power to act. (h) Physical concurrence is that by which God supports the ac tual exercise of such power, (c) Moral concurrence is that by which God draws or invites free creatures to good action, (d) Previous concurrence is the divine support or influence on the agent before the operation and in view of it. (e) Simultaneous concurrence is the divine support in the doing or operating of the creature at the actual instant that such operating takes place. (/) Efficacious concurrence is that which infallibly takes effect. (g) Indifferent concurrence has its effect dependency upon the co-operation of the creatural cause (or secondary cause). (h) General or Indeterminate concurrence is not directed to a definite effect (i) Special or Determinate concurrence is directed to one determinate effect. (/) Intrinsic concurrence is intertwined in the very essence of the operation of the creatural cause, (k) Extrin sic concurrence is, so to speak, an outer influence.— Now, how does God concur with man’s free acts? Some say that God’s concurrence with man’s free acts is immediate, moral, indifferent, simultaneous, and extrinsic. (Such is the theory of Molina, famous Jesuit theologian and philosopher of the 16 century.) Others maintain that God’s concurrence with man’s free acts is physical, previous, immediate, special, intrinsic, and also simultaneous. (Such is the theory of “Physical Pre-motion.”) We cannot pause here upon a point of controversy. Suffice it to say that, whichever theory best expresses the fact of God’s concurrence with man’s free will, God so concurs with the human free-will as, on the one hand, to retain in Himself the creating power neces sary for the first origin of all activity, and, on the other hand, to keep man’s deliberate activity truly free. There is mystery here, of course; but the facts remain: God alone is necessary and pri- mary Cause; man is actually free in all his deliberate moral conduct.

(4) The fourth of the divine transient operations is the gov erning of the world. God is Infinite Wisdom. He has made the world, therefore, for a most wise purpose. Hence He has a most wise plan for the working of the world to its end. This plan of God we call divine Providence. The working out of the plan is divine Government. Providence and Government extend to everything and every activity in the world, not only in a general way, but in every particular and detail. God supports and moves all creatures according to their nature (that is, their working essence which He has made), and where man’s free nature brings in, by its failure, the evil of sin, even here God’s Providence and Government so shape things, by eternal plan, as to bring good out of evil, as, for example, the great good (the sanctity) of the martyrs is drawn out of the crime of those who put them to death. Mystery is here too, but reason sees that Providence and Government must be factual, and experience of honest minds testifies to the actual working out of Providence in the Government of creatures. In many matters we are in the dark about just how such and such a thing fits in with God’s Providence and Government ; we are like the puzzled child undergoing a painful operation at the hands of his surgeon-father; the child cannot see how his own father can hurt him so. Yet the hurt means life to the child. We have compelling evidence each hour of God’s provident love for us. We must sanely trust Him, and not imprudently seek to know all the workings of His loving Providence. Reason and experience, as well as faith, testify that indeed God “moves from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly.”

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned what is meant by a divine operation. We have listed the divine operations as immanent and transient, making careful explanation that the term transient is not used literally in this instance. We have studied the divine immanent operations of God’s Intellect and God’s WilL We have seen that the divine knowledge does not destroy human freedom. We have discussed the object of God’s knowledge, and have distinguished God’s knowledge of simple intelligence, God’s knowl edge of vision, and the disputed type of divine knowledge called scienta media. We have seen the essential love of the acts of the divine Will, and have shown that these do not make God the author or approver of moral evil, and that Gpd wills physical evil only accidentally or per accidens. We have seen that God is the necessary Creator, Conserver, Concurrer, and Governor in the relations creatures bear to Him ; in these offices we discerned God’s transient operations or activities. In point of divine concurrence, we have briefly discussed the Molinist Theory and the Pre- motionist Theory on the mode or manner of divine concurrence. We have noticed that God’s providence and governance extend to all creatures in general and in special down to the last and least, and that this divine activity is neither destructive of human freedom nor in conflict with the fact that man, by failing his true nature, can sin.