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| Of God’s Eternal and Unchangeable Knowledge and Will, Whereby All He Has Made Pleased Him in the Eternal Design as Well as in the Actual Result.
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Chapter 21.—Of God’s Eternal
and Unchangeable Knowledge and Will, Whereby All He Has Made
Pleased Him in the Eternal Design as Well as in the Actual
Result.
For what else is to be understood
by that invariable refrain, “And God saw that it was good,”
than the approval of the work in its design, which is the wisdom of
God? For certainly God did not in the actual achievement of the
work first learn that it was good, but, on the contrary, nothing
would have been made had it not been first known by Him. While,
therefore, He sees that that is good which, had He not seen it
before it was made, would never have been made, it is plain that He
is not discovering, but teaching that it is good. Plato, indeed,
was bold enough to say that, when the universe was completed, God
was, as it were, elated with joy.492
| 492 The reference is to the
Timæus, p. 37 C., where he says, “When the parent Creator
perceived this created image of the eternal Gods in life and
motion, He was delighted, and in His joy considered how He might
make it still liker its model.” | And Plato was not so foolish as
to mean by this that God was rendered more blessed by the novelty
of His creation; but he wished thus to indicate that the work now
completed met with its Maker’s approval, as it had while yet in
design. It is not as if the knowledge of God were of various
kinds, knowing in different ways things which as yet are not,
things which are, and things which have been. For not in our
fashion does He look forward to what is future, nor at what is
present, nor back upon what is past; but in a manner quite
different and far and profoundly remote from our way of thinking.
For He does not pass from this to that by transition of thought,
but beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness; so that of
those things which emerge in time, the future, indeed, are not yet,
and the present are now, and the past no longer are; but all of
these are by Him comprehended in His stable and eternal presence.
Neither does He see in one fashion by the eye, in another by the
mind, for He is not composed of mind and body; nor does His present
knowledge differ from that which it ever was or shall be, for those
variations of time, past, present, and future, though they alter
our knowledge, do not affect His, “with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning.”493
Neither is there any growth from
thought to thought in the conceptions of Him in whose spiritual
vision all things which He knows are at once embraced. For as
without any movement that time can measure, He Himself moves all
temporal things, so He knows all times with a knowledge that time
cannot measure. And therefore He saw that what He had made was
good, when He saw that it was good to make it. And when He saw it
made, He had not on that account a twofold nor any way increased
knowledge of it; as if He had less knowledge before He made what He
saw. For certainly He would not be the perfect worker He is,
unless His knowledge were so perfect as to receive no addition from
His finished works. Wherefore, if the only object had been to
inform us who made the light, it had been enough to say, “God
made the light;” and if further information regarding the means
by which it was made had been intended, it would have sufficed to
say, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,”
that we might know not only that God had made the world, but also
that He had made it by the word. But because it was right that
three leading truths regarding the creature be intimated to us,
viz., who made it, by what means, and why, it is written, “God
said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the
light that it was good.” If, then, we ask who made it, it was
“God.” If, by what means, He said “Let it be,” and it
was. If we ask, why He made it, “it was good.” Neither is
there any author more excellent than God, nor any skill more
efficacious than the word of God, nor any cause better than that
good might be created by the good God. This also Plato has
assigned as the most sufficient reason for the creation of the
world, that good works might be made by a good God;494
| 494 The passage referred to is in the
Timæus p. 29 D.: “Let us say what was the cause of the
Creator’s forming this universe. He was good; and in the good
no envy is ever generated about anything whatever. Therefore,
being free from envy, He desired that all things should, as much as
possible, resemble Himself.” | whether he
read this passage, or, perhaps, was informed of these things by
those who had read them, or, by his quick-sighted genius,
penetrated to things spiritual and invisible through the things
that are created, or was instructed regarding them by those who had
discerned them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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