Sacred Mysteries: How God acts from the inside of everything
The so-called prologue of this Gospel, starting, 'In the beginning was the Word,' has been so praised for its sublimity that its meaning is sometimes skated over. I've just been reading the Commentary on the Gospel of John by St Thomas Aquinas, and was struck by what he says early on about the Word of God before he 'was made flesh, and dwelt among us'.
John says: 'He was in the world.' Thomas says he was in the world as an efficient cause (in the language of Aristotle) but with a striking difference. 'Other agents act as existing externally...' he says, 'But God acts in all things from within, because he acts by creating.'
To create, he says, is to give being to the thing created. The Latin word for 'being' that he uses is esse, the infinitive. This in his vocabulary is the act of being that makes anything exist as what it is. Esse is sometimes translated into English as 'existence', but it is more than the fact of existing; it is the power each thing has to act as itself. In our case, esse is the difference between being alive and dead.
'Since existence [ esse ] is innermost in each thing,' Thomas says, 'God, who by acting gives existence, acts in things from within. Hence God [the Word] was in the world as one giving existence to the world.'
This is very different from the mental picture people may have of God sitting in heaven and commanding things to be created. It is true that God is not part of the world and that he transcends everything that we know. But when the old Catechism answer said that 'God is everywhere', it meant, among other things, that God is interior to the vital being of anything.
All this applies to the Word of God, God the Son, before ever he took upon himself human flesh and was born in Bethlehem.
There is a puzzle here because, since God is present in a volcano, say, and gives it its existence and power to act, then, when the volcano erupts, God has responsibility. Certainly volcanoes function by ordinary secondary causality, for which we like to construct laws of nature. But the volcano would not continue to exist from second to second did God not sustain it in being.
Fortunately, this cuts both ways. God's sustaining presence is also part of his almighty power: he does whatever he wants to. He is in charge, so if things look pretty bad at one moment, he can bring them to good. And if things seem bad to us, the Word made Flesh suffered as badly in his death as anyone could.
God can do his good work while allowing secondary causes to act according to their laws. He can also allow human beings to exercise their freedom to do good or evil while he brings wicked plans to nothing, or rather to a good conclusion. The fierce logician, Peter Geach, in his book Providence and Evil, likens God to a master chess-player, winning the game whatever moves the opponent chooses.
This applies in specific cases, not just in the lump. So someone with faith in God believes that it is wise to trust him, for there is nothing to be gained by going against the principles of good behaviour that he has revealed in his commandments.
In the Bible, Joseph was thrown by his brothers into a pit to die. When, by fortune, he ends up in Egypt and prospers, and feeds his brothers in famine, he tells them: 'It was not you who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.'
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