Choose a topic from Part 1:
1. Only God is necessarily eternal. Now, absolutelyspeaking, God could create from eternity, so that creatures shouldexist without a beginning. But God does not need to create frometernity, nor, for that matter, does God need to create at all. Andin creatures we discover no reason for supposing that God hascreated from eternity.
2. By revelation (Gen. 1:1) we know that God's eternal will and decree to create are a will and decree to create in time.For, "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.. . ." But apart from revelation and our faith, we cannot prove that the world did not always exist; that is, that God did not create from eternity. But we can prove that even a beginningless world is a created world, a caused world. For eternal matter, if it existed, would not be causeless matter; it would still have being by participation and not by necessity.
3. God created in the beginning of time. Time itself came into existence with the creation of things.
"The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit, but now that the face of evil bares itself more and more, so does the Lord bare his treasures more."
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church
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"Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.
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Thomas á Kempis
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"The one thing necessary which Jesus spoke of to Martha and Mary consists in hearing the word of God and living by it."
R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP
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