How is God present in the world? In the soul? (I, 8)
How God is present in the world and how he is present in the soul is a fascinating question,
not only theologically, but also for our spiritual lives.
It is a very profound subject to meditate on.
And Aquinas, I think, does a marvelous job at laying out the ways to think about God's presence in the world, and in us, dwelling in us.
He talks about this in the Prima Pars of the Summa theologiae in question eight, article three.
And there he says that God is present in the world in three classical ways--
and, in fact, this is not unique to Aquinas:
he is picking up a long theological tradition--
but it is by his essence, his presence and his power.
That is the way God is present in the whole world, in all of creation.
And then there is a special way that we will talk about with respect to the soul in just a minute.
But he is present to the world by his essence: what does that mean?
God's essence is to be, to exist.
God is being.
God is "ipsum esse subsistens," Aquinas says, being itself subsisting.
He is.
Everything else is only existing relative to God.
So, God is present in the world as what is causing everything to be.
If you just pause and think about that for a moment, how profound, how deep that goes.
Everything depends at every moment on God sustaining it in being.
So, everything, every place, every being depends on God.
God is constantly present to it, holding it in being, as it were.
That is the first way that God is present in creation.
The second way: by his presence. Well, that sounds sort of redundant: what does that mean?
God is everywhere by his presence.
He is present to things by his presence.
Aquinas means by that, that he is present to things, as it were, gazing on everything.
Everything is open to the eye of God.
And this is not a gaze that is a harsh, severe gaze, not the gaze of a judge, who is looking to see what you are doing wrong;
it is the gaze of our loving Father,
God who is perfectly good,
and who has created all things to share in his goodness,
who apportions good things to all things,
and he looks at them and rejoices in them, in a certain sense, as good.
That is why he has created them: to be good.
He sees that they are good, as we read in Genesis.
So, for the spiritual life, imagine this: simply putting yourself in the presence of God, knowing that God is supporting me in being right now.
And God sees me.
He sees me at every moment of my life, not looking at me first of all as a judge, looking at me with love.
Okay, the third way that God is present to creation:
he is present by his power.
Aquinas means by that, that God has a kind of mastery over all things that exist.
He not only sustains them in being, he not only sees what is happening in creation,
but he can do whatever he will, at every moment, in creation.
So he is present everywhere by his power to affect the world,
which means we can always turn to God for help.
Now, there is a special way that God is present in the rational creature, in the human soul.
And this is especially beautiful and especially important for our spiritual lives.
Aquinas says, in the same article that I have been referring to, that God is present in a special way, when we know and love God.
So, as we come to know God, we share in how God knows himself.
We become more like God in that way.
And as we love God, we come to love God a bit like God loves himself.
We become assimilated to God in this knowing and loving.
And then, God is present in us most perfectly.
We are, as it were, drawn into God as we know and love him.
That is something that non-rational creatures are not capable of doing,
not capable of sharing in the very life of God which is to know and love himself.
We can do that.
And the more we do that, the more we are in God's presence, the more we are drawn into him.
And in fact that is our ultimate beatitude, our ultimate destiny.
The life of heaven is to see God perfectly and to know him absolutely perfectly with a kind of infinite, perfect love, insofar as a human creature is capable of that.
That is what we will be able to do in heaven,
and that is to share the life of God as perfectly as we can.
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