On Creation
XXXIV. On Creation
1. God has created the world
for the sake of His memorability,
intelligibility, amability and bonificativity.[1]
2. God has created the world out of nothing
so that man may know His good<ness>
as well as the great operation that obtains within Himself.
3. God created the world by means of His goodness,
and has thereby bonified it;
man, however, spoils it by means of his sins.
4. Since God created the world by means of <His> great power,
great wisdom and great will,
a great purpose (lit. “end”) was assigned thereto.
5. Great goodness would not have been assigned to the world
unless it were deified by a man
in whom God is hominified.
6. If God had not wished to create the world,
He would not have sought to bestow His goodness
and He would have been idle and miserly.
7. God bestows <His> good<ness>, since He is able to do so,
which <goodness> He has bestowed for the sake of creation,
as well as that of His own honour.
8. God has created the world for the sake of man,
and has bestowed Himself upon that man,
insofar as He Himself has deified him.
9. God could not create sin,
for the reason that it does not pertain to Him
to be able to create except by means of goodness.
10. God possesses such limitless power
that He is able to exert it over being as well as non-being,
for which reason it is certain that the world has been created.
[1] Cat. amabilitat, here effectively transliterated into English, corresponds to the correlativised abstract potential complement deriving from the dynamic activity of love (Cat. amor), here in its passive aspect.