Creed 6
Creator
Divine Providence, Divine Keeping of
Creation & Divine Economy
Review of Creation
1.
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4.
God created the world
God created the world from nothing
Time started with the creation of the world
Characters of the act of creation
a. freedom
b. goodness
c. absolute power
d. the goodness of the universe is relative (the
world is not bad, nor it is perfect)
Review of Creation
5. The reason for creation
a. God is complete in Himself; God is a family
b. out of the fullness of His Being and His goodness, God
willed to reveal it in creation
c. God Himself is the destiny of creation, “for Him (the
Son) everything is” (Hebrews 2:10) for the glory of God
d. the creation of a human being was the reason of the
rest of the creation “God’s glory is man fully alive.”
6. The days of creation- there are 2 directions in explaining the
days
a. thousands of years
b. 24 hours
God’s Work with Creation
• Divine Providence: God’s knowledge of how existence
of things should be to be good, then keeping and
directing the order of existence with His will
- first cause: God is the source of all goodness
- secondary causes: the people and the created things
that act as agents working with God
• Divine Keeping of Creation: it is the active direct and
indirect intervention of God (through secondary
causes) aiming at sustaining His creation
• Divine Economy of the world: the action of divine will
by which God directs His creation. It is the execution of
His plan. The divine economy negates what we call
“fate” and “judgment.” there is no place for psychic or
reading stars, hands, etc
God’s Work with Creation
Divine Economy
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Miracles
Definition: a phenomenon that breaks usual, natural
system and cannot be explained by the usual laws
A miracle is directly related to the work of Divine Economy
for a higher goal
God’s miraculous work does not cancel the natural laws,
but transcends it
God’s miraculous work can be looked at as a creation and
every new creation does not cancel the creations before,
but adds to it
Miracles does not mean change in God’s will, but it is
included since the beginning
Miracles will be completely denied by pantheism, deism or
materialism
God’s Work with Creation
Divine Economy
Miracles
• To be able to differentiate between miracles,
works of magicians, and sorcerers, we should
consider:
1. Miracles are made by divine power that
transcends the powers in the tangible world
or the spiritual world
2. True miracles glorify God. We need to look at
the goal of the miracle
Divine Economy & Prayer
• To believe in the power of prayer and its
effectiveness, does not mean to negate divine
economy
• The effectiveness of prayer enters into God’s
previous knowledge and economy
• God is the source of our prayers, if it is according
to His will
• “when we call God, we don’t call Him to change
things from what He had already ordained from
eternity, but to actualize what He ordained,
through our prayers” Descartes
Divine Economy & Human Freedom
• Jeremiah 10:23 “O Lord, I know the way of
man is not in himself; it is not in man who
walks to direct his own steps.”
• God created humans to have free will
• Human freedom, even if used against God’s
will in serving it’s own, eventually would serve
God’s will
Divine Economy & Human Freedom
• There are 2 kinds of evil:
1. Natural evil that God permits with a disciplinary goal
2. Moral evil that God hates, but God permits in
respect to human freedom
God’s economy is continually actualized even by moral
evil
• Evil is not just the absence of good; this is called
Neo-Platonism and tends to go towards dualism.
Evil is active opposition to God.
• Sin is saying “no” to God
Divine Economy & Human Freedom
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Examples:
Joseph and his brothers (Gen 41:39-44)
baby Moses and Pharaoh (Ex 1:7-12)
St. Paul and the sea men (Acts 27:30-44)
Elijah and the widow
Previous Knowledge, Predestination, &
Permission
• “previous knowledge” is not a perfect term because it
gives an impression of past, present and future in God’s
knowledge. God has no past, present or future- only
present
• The free choice of humans is the reason of God’s
knowledge
• Because God knows the evil that humans can do by
their free will, He sets a limit to their actions
• Sometimes God delivers, or give up, persons to their
own wrong choices when they insist on it, in a way of
discipline. Others are delivered to their own ways
completely, when they reject God completely, ending
in despair (Romans 1:18,21,28)