Отдел II. О Боге, как Творце и Промыслителе

§ 31. The teaching of the Church and the composition of this department 1. The teaching of the Orthodox Church about God as Creator and Provider is briefly expressed in the words of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol: “I believe in one God... Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, visible to all and invisible.” The Orthodox Church teaches us more about God as the Creator as follows: “without any doubt, God is the Creator of all visible and invisible creatures. First of all, with His thought He produced from nothing all the heavenly powers, as excellent singers of His glory, and created this intelligent world, which, by the grace given to it, knows God and is always devoted to His will in everything. After that, God created this visible and material world out of nothing. Finally, God created man, who was made up of an immaterial and rational soul and a material body, so that from one man thus composed, it could already be seen that He is the Creator of both worlds, the immaterial and the material. For this reason, man is called the small world: for he bears on himself the image of the entire great world.” (Right confession part 1, answer to question 18). And the teaching of the Orthodox Church about God as a Provider is expressed in more detail in the message of the Eastern Patriarchs about the Orthodox faith as follows: “we believe that everything that exists, visible and invisible, is governed by Divine Providence; however, evil, like evil, God only foresees and allows, but does not provide for it, since He did not create it. And the evil that has already occurred is directed towards something useful by the supreme goodness, which itself does not create evil, but only directs it to the best, as far as possible” (Part 5). 2. In order to explain this teaching of the Church more separately, we will say: 1) about the relationship of God, as Creator and Provider, to the world in general, i.e. and to the spiritual world, and to the material world, and to the small world - man; 2) about the relationship of God as Creator and Provider, in particular to the spiritual world - since this relationship, according to the teachings of the Church, has its own characteristics or distinctive features; 3) finally, about the relationship of God, as Creator and Provider, to man, which also has, according to the teaching of the Church, its own characteristics. There is no need to talk, in particular, about the relationship of God as the Creator and Provider to the material world; because it does not represent any features in the teaching of the Church, or anything that would not be contained in the relationship of God, as Creator and Provider, to the world in general. You might be interested in: