Sacrae Theologiae Summa IIB: On God the Creator and Sanctifier • On Sins
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Sacrae Theologiae Summa IIB: On God the Creator and Sanctifier • On Sins
Since theology is the science about God, it considers him first of all and principally as he is in himself one and three or by means of an absolute consideration of God. But since, beside God, there is the world, theology would not know God perfectly if it did not secondarily carefully consider his relation to the world. Therefore theology also deals with the world, but only inasmuch as it comes from God and is directed to God or as it is an analogical projection of God, on whom it depends for its existence and to whom it tends in order to participate in his being and to glorify him. "Sacred doctrine," St. Thomas says, "does not deal with God and creatures equally, but about God principally and about creatures according as they are ordered to God as their principle and end" (I, q. 1, a. 3 ad 1). Therefore our treatise is truly theological or On God, since it does not consider things outside of God except through their reference to him. "In sacred science," says the Angelic Doctor, "all things are treated under the aspect of God; either because they are God Himself; or because they refer to God as their beginning and end" (ibid., a. 7). Therefore this consideration of God is relative, or with reference to creatures. Moreover it is necessary that it be based on some aspect of causality, since no relationship between God and the other things is found outside of the area of cause and effect or what can be reduced to this. The mystery of sin, however, and in particular original sin, can rightly be called the hinge of all Christian soteriology. For it assumes in man the loss of gratuitous gifts, so that from a comparison of the primeval human condition with the state imposed on many because of sin, it appears that all this evil, both physical and moral comes from man himself; but on the other hand original sin was the occasion of the Redemption of Christ and therefore of the whole supernatural economy of salvation. O happy fault!