Глава 1. Об отношении Бога, как Творца и Промыслителя, к миру вообще. 1. Бог – Творец мира

§ 32. The concept of creation; God created the world; the world does not exist from eternity 1. By the name of creation, in the strict sense, we mean the creation of something from nothing. And therefore, when we say that God created the world, we express the idea that God a) not only created everything that exists outside of Him, but b) created everything from nothingness, and c) that, therefore, the world does not exist from eternity, but was created in time or together with time. 2. God created everything that exists outside of Him, and is the Author of the world. Here is the testimony of a) the Prophet David: blessed is the God of Jacob, his helper; his trust is in the Lord his God: Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them (Ps. 146:5, 6); b) Ezra: You are the only Lord, You created the heavens, and the heavens, and all their heavens, the earth, and all that is in it, the seas, and everything that is in them, and You give life to everything, and all the heavens worship You (Neh. 9:6); c) the Apostle Paul, who proclaimed in the Athens Areopagus: God, who created the world, and everything that is in it, this Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in churches made with hands (Acts 17:24), and, by the way, wrote to the Hebrews: every house is built from someone: but God who created everything is God (Heb. 3:4). 3. God created the world out of nothing. This truth is visible: a) From the words of the priest. Genesis writer: in the beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1), i.e. He created when there was nothing yet; b) From the belief of the Old Testament Church, which was confessed by one pious Jewish woman, during the persecution of Antiochus, convincing her son to taste death for the faith of his fathers, with the following words: I pray thee, O child, that thou mayest look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them, seeing that from things that are not, God created this, and so the human race was made (2Mac. 7:28), from those that do not exist, i.e. out of nothing; c) From those places in the New Testament where it is said that the Lord created all things (Col. 1:16; Eph. 3:9), that from Him, and by Him, and in Him all things were (Rom. 11:36), that all things were by Him, and without Him they were nothing (John 1:3), and so on. matter could not be by itself; d) finally, from the direct evidence of St. Apostle Paul, that by faith we mean to be perfected forever by the word of God, to come into being from those things which are not seen (Heb. 11:3), that God declares that which is not, as it is (τὰ μὴ ὄντα, ὠς ὄντα) (Rom. 4:17). 4. Finally, the idea that the world does not exist from eternity, but was created in time, or more precisely, along with time, is clearly expressed: a) in the words of the Psalmist addressed to God: before even the mountains did not exist and the earth and the universe were created, and from everlasting to everlasting You are ecu (Pl. 89:3); b) in the words of the Son of God: and now You, Father, have glorified Me with you with the glory that I had with you, before the world was not (John 17:5); and c) in the words of the same Son of God, or the Hypostatic Wisdom of God, spoken back in the Old Testament: before the world was the foundation of Me, in the beginning, before I created the earth, And before I made the deeps, before I came into being as a source of water, Before the mountains were raised, before all the hills He gave birth to Me (Prov. 8:23–25). § 33. Participation of all Persons of the Holy Trinity in the work of creation In Holy Scripture, in addition to many places where the creation of the world is assimilated to God in general (Gen. 1:1; Isa. 45:7; Jer. 10:12; Ps. 113:23; 133:3; Acts 14:15; 17:24; 1 Cor. 11:12; Heb. 3:4), there are those where it is assimilated in particular - 1. God the Father. For example: we have one God, the Father, of whom everything is worthless (1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 2:10). And the words of the Apostolic Prayer: Master, You, God, who created heaven and earth and the sea, and everything in them, are actually addressed to the First Person of the Most Holy Trinity; because further we read: And by the Holy Spirit the mouth of our father David, Thy servant, said: Why are the nations reeling, and men having learned in vain? The kings of the earth appeared, and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. Having truly gathered in this city against Thy Holy Servant Jesus, whom He anointed ecu (Acts 4:24–27). 2. God the Son. For example: everything was by Him, and without Him nothing came into being (John 1:3); or: By this all things were created, even in heaven and on earth...; all things were created by Him and about Him (Col. 1:16; demolished. Heb. 1:3). 3. God the Holy Spirit. The righteous Job says about Him: The Spirit of God created me (Job 33:4), and the Psalmist: By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth was all their power (Ps. 32:6; demolished. Ps. 103:30); and St. The writer of history depicts the Spirit of God rushing, at the creation of the world, on top of the water, and as if pouring life into the newly created substance (Gen. 1:2). Note 1. The Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church, wanting to indicate what exactly was the participation of each of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity in the work of creation, expressed themselves: “The Father created the world through the Son in the Holy Spirit,” or: “all things are from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” And such a teaching has a basis in Holy Scripture, which precisely says that everything is from the Father (1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 5:18) through the Son (John 1:3; Heb. 1:3) in the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:18); that from Him, and by Him, and in Him are all things - ἐξ αὐτῦ καὶ δὶ αὐτῦ, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα (Rom. 11:36). This idea is expressed more separately by St. Basil the Great, saying: “in the creation of them (Angels), imagine the original cause (προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία) of what was created - the Father, and the creative cause (δημιουργική) - the Son, and the perfect cause (τελεωτική) – Spirit; so that ministering spirits have existence by the will of the Father, are brought into being by the action of the Son, and are brought into being by the presence of the Spirit. Note 2. It must be added: a) that the teaching on the participation of all Persons by the Most Rev. The Trinity in the work of creation is a necessary consequence of the doctrine of Their unity and perfect inseparability by nature and all Divine properties, and b) that the very order and measure of participation of each of Them in this matter fully corresponds to Their personal order and relationship among themselves. § 34. How God created the world The Word of God expresses that God created the world - 1. By understanding and wisdom: God founded the earth with wisdom, but prepared the heavens with understanding (Prov. 3:19; demolished Ps. 136:5), i.e. He created in accordance with those most sublimely wise ideas of His, in which from eternity He contemplated all His future creations: from eternity, all His works have been rational and God-like (Acts 15:18). 2. By will, desire, i.e. completely freely, and not due to any necessity: Our God has created in heaven and on earth everything that He pleases (Ps. 113:11); The Lord has created all that He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the abysses (Ps. 134:6). 3. In a word: and God said: let there be light, and there was light,... and God said: let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and there was this,... and God said: let the waters that are under heaven be gathered into one assembly, and let the dry land appear, and there was such, and under. (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9 et seq.). He spoke, and it was: He commanded, and it was created (Ps. 149:5). But under the word of God, note St. Fathers of the Church, - here we should not understand any articulate sound or word like ours: this creative word signifies only the wave or expression of the omnipotent power of God, which produced the universe from nothingness (Ap. 4:11; Jer. 32:17). 4. It is completely incomprehensible to our minds: we believe that we understand that the word of God has brought us to the end of eternity, in which things were not made visible (Heb. 11:3). § 35. In what order did God create the main types of His creations? According to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, God first of all created the spiritual world, then the material world over the course of six days, and finally on the sixth day He created man (Space of Christ. Catech. on part 1). I. God first of all created the spiritual world. The basis for this doctrine can be found - 1. In the first words of the priest. Genesis writer: in the beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1). Here, by heaven we cannot mean the firmament or, in general, what is usually called heaven: for the visible heaven with all its spaces and luminaries was created after (Gen. 1:6, 8, 14–17); but most likely they mean here the spirits themselves, who are usually represented in scripture as inhabiting the sky (Col. 1:16): because Moses does not attribute to the sky the disorganization that he attributes to the earth or primeval matter. If so, then the Angels were created first of all, when nothing else existed except God, and they served as the beginning of the entire creation of God. 2. In the words of God Himself to Job: when the stars were created, all My angels praised Me with a great voice (Job 38:7). The angels are recognized here as praising God on the fourth day, when the stars were created; This means that they are supposed to have been created before. 3. St. the fathers and teachers of the Church undoubtedly recognized the Angels as created before the material world. For example: St. Basil the Great. “Even before the existence of the world,” he says, “there was a certain state befitting the supermundane forces, transcending time, eternal, ever-lasting. In it, the Creator and Creator of all things created creations - a mental light befitting the bliss of those who love the Lord, rational and invisible natures, and all the decoration of intelligible creatures that surpass our understanding, so that it is impossible to invent names for them. They fill with themselves the essence of the invisible world." St. Gregory the Theologian. “God invents first of all (πρῶτον) Angelic and heavenly powers, and thought became a deed that was filled with the Word and accomplished by the Spirit.... since the first creatures were pleasing to Him: then He invents another world, material and visible; and this is the harmonious composition of heaven, earth and what is between them.” St. John Chrysostom. “(God) created Angels, Archangels and other incorporeal natures, and he created not for anything else, but for goodness alone. After creating them, he also created man and this entire (i.e., visible) world for the same reason.” II. God created the material world over the course of six days, and finally on the sixth day he created man, as stated at the beginning of the book of Genesis. We are obliged to recognize this Mosaic legend as history because - 1. Moses himself took it for history. He placed this legend at the very beginning of his historical book, in which he proposed to tell the Israelites true and accurate concepts about God as the Creator of the world and man: trace. I would have acted against my own intentions if I had hidden some mysterious meaning here, incomprehensible to anyone. And most importantly, on this legend Moses based the law on the Sabbath, given to the Israelites, during the exposition of which he clearly revealed his thoughts about the six-day creation: Remember the Sabbath day, he says: keep it holy: Six days shalt thou do, and in them shalt thou do all thy work: And on the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: Thou shalt not make any work stink... Thou shalt not stink in six days The Lord created heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, and rested the seventh day: for this reason the Lord bless the seventh day, and sanctify it (Ex. 20:8-11). And in another place: let the children of Israel keep the Sabbath, to keep it throughout their generations:... for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day there was rest and rest (Ex. 31:16, 17). 2. Other saints accepted the Mosaic legend as history. writers. Moses, for example, narrates in his legend that God creates the world with a word, and that the Spirit of God hovered over the primordial, still unstructured substance (Gen. 1:2), and the Psalmist exclaims: By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Ps. 32:6), and further: That was what he said; He commanded and was created (- 9). Moses tells us that darkness covered all creation in the beginning, and that God said: let there be light, and there be light (Gen. 1:3), and St. The Apostle Paul expresses himself in one place: God flows out of darkness to make the light shine forth in our hearts, to enlighten our minds with the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Moses tells that God separated between the water that was under the firmament and between the water that was above the firmament (Gen. 1:7), and the Psalmist also mentions this water above the firmament when, calling on the various creations of God to glorify His Creator, he says: praise Him (the Lord) the heavens of the heavens, and the water that is above the heavens (Ps. 149:4). Moses narrates that God created the heavenly lights, the sun, the moon and the stars, so that they, among other things, would exist for signs and for seasons (Gen. 1:14), and the same Psalmist cries: He created the moon for seasons (Ps. 103:19). 3. The Mosaic legend of St. fathers and teachers of the Church, namely: Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Athanasius the Great, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Theodoret and others. Note Regarding the meaning of the Mosaic story about the six-day creation, the following should be noted: 1. Moses distinguishes two main types of creation, which followed one after the other. The first is creation in the proper sense, which existed at the very beginning, when the Creator produced everything from nothing: in the beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1), produced the very substance of the world, which contained the beginnings or germs for all its creatures. In this sense, the Wise Son of Sirach also said: He who lives in the age created everything in common (Sir. 18:1). And the other is creation from a ready-made, primordial or still unorganized substance, which took place over the course of six days. This creation, of course, was what Solomon had in mind when he wrote that the omnipotent hand of God created the World from ugly matter (Wis. 11:18). 2. Moses depicts the origin of the entire material world (cosmogony), and not just the earth (not geogony). For he says, firstly, that God created the heavens and the earth, i.e. the whole world; then he mentions the creation of light, the creation of the firmament, the creation of the luminaries, the sun, the moon and the stars. But, on the other hand, it is obvious that Moses mainly and with particular detail describes the origin of the earth with its various inhabitants, and touches the sky and heavenly things as if in passing, to the extent that they relate to the earth. Narrating about the creation of the heavenly bodies, he mentions only their particular purpose, which they have in relation to the earth, and gives them names, ascribes properties that can be given and attributed to them only from the earth. 3. Moses tells about the original origin of the world and earth, and not about their transformation. For he writes: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, i.e. created when there was nothing yet. Further: and God said: let there be light: and there was light..., let there be a firmament..., let there be lights in the firmament of heaven:... all such expressions that clearly presuppose a previous non-existence. Finally, he concludes his description with the words: and the heavens and the earth and all their adornment were completed (Gen. 2:1); This means that they have been completed, completed only now, but did not exist before. 4. Moses testifies that God acted Himself, by His immediate power, not only at the first creation, when he produced everything from nothing, but also during the six days when he produced various parts and beings of the world from ready-made matter. And God said: let there be light: and there was light...; and God said: let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters: and so it was...; and God said: let the earth bring forth the living soul according to his kind... and so it may be:... and so on. Follow. should not explain the initial formation of the world and earth according to the forces and laws of nature: these forces and laws began to act in the world since the world received perfect existence and they were given by God to the world. But God Himself did not at all submit to them when He created heaven and earth and produced different classes of beings by His omnipotent power. So He created the first people (and all earthly animals) right at the age of manhood, while according to the forces and laws of nature it would have taken many years of life before the first people could reach manhood. 5. By the name of the six days of creation, Moses means ordinary days. For each of them determines the evening and the morning; and there was evening, and there was morning, one day..., and there was evening, and there was morning, the second day... etc. And besides, as we have already noticed, according to these six days, in which God did all His works, and at the end of which He rested and sanctified the seventh day, Moses commanded the Israelites that they should also do six days of the week, and sacred the seventh day, the Sabbath, to the Lord their God (Ex. 20:8-11; 31:16, 17). 6. Moses describes the six-day creation of the world in such a way as to be understandable to everyone - he describes it not as a scientist of natural science, but as a wise and God-enlightened teacher of faith. Therefore, although it communicates only true concepts about everything, it is expressed in relation to the general human meaning - it speaks about the high actions of the Creator, if possible, in accordance with their dignity, however, sensually and humanly, and presents various objects of the physical world as they appear to the simple eye of an observer, and not as they are known to a scientist. § 36. Why and for what purpose God created the world The Orthodox Church teaches us the following about this: “we must believe that God..., being good and most good, although He Himself is most perfect and glorious, created the world out of nothing to the end, so that other beings, glorifying Him, would participate in His goodness” (Orthodox. Rev. part 1, answer to question 8). Track. The Church recognizes the only infinite goodness of the Creator as the motivation for the creation of the world, and the goal of the world, on the one hand, is the glory of the Creator, and on the other, the bliss of creatures. 1. The only motive or cause which disposed the Most High to create the universe was His infinite goodness. Holy Scripture a) suggests this thought in those places where it teaches that God is an all-perfect Being (Ps. 145:3), all-glorious (Ps. 23:10), all-blessed (1 Tim. 1:11); that He does not need anyone or anything (Acts 17:25, 26), that from eternity He existed alone without the world (Ps. 89:3; Eph. 1:3–4), and so on. could also have existed forever and ever, if He Himself had not deigned to produce other beings; b) Clearly expresses in those places where, raising our gaze to the very creation of God, he exclaims: the Lord is good to everyone and His bounty is in all His works (Ps. 144:9), or calls us to confess His mercies revealed in the work of creation: confess to the Lord, for His mercy endures forever.... to Him who made the heavens with His understanding: for His mercy endures forever. To Him who established the earth on the waters: for His mercy endures forever. Great is the one who created the only light: for His mercy endures forever (Ps. 136:1, 5-7). 2. The purpose of the creation of the world is primarily the glory of God. Holy Scripture expresses this idea: a) in general terms, when it says that the Lord did everything for His own sake (Prov. 16:4), and that everything is for His sake (Heb. 2:10); b) more clearly and directly when he testifies that the heavens will tell the glory of God (Ps. 19:1), and the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord of hosts (Is. 6:3); c) with all clarity, when he commands us: glorify God in all your bodies and in your souls, who are the essence of God (1 Cor. 6:20); Whether you eat or drink or do anything else, do everything for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). 3. The second purpose of the world is the bliss of the creatures themselves. If God created the universe solely out of His infinite goodness, desiring that other beings would taste the sweetness of existence and become partakers of His goodness; then obviously this is one of the goals of the world. For this purpose, God does not cease to do good (Acts 14:17) to His creatures, Himself giving to all life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25), and, moreover, giving everything richly for enjoyment (1 Tim. 6:17), fulfilling all His goodness (Ps. 104:28) and every living creature of good will (Ps. 144:16). Moreover, moral beings, striving for their main goal - the glorification of their Creator, thereby already achieve their bliss. For they can truly glorify God, as the Savior commanded us, only with good deeds and a pious life (Matthew 5:16), and the consequence of good deeds is blessedness, according to His teaching about the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and piety, as the Apostle says, is useful for everything, having a promise for the life of the present and the future (1 Tim. 4:8). § 37. The perfection of God's creation Holy Scripture teaches us that everything created by God was created perfect. So holy. The writer of everyday life, narrating about the days of creation, repeatedly makes the remark: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), and in conclusion he says: and God saw everything that was created, and all that was good (-31). Subsequent Writers repeat the same idea in different expressions; for example, the Psalmist: Your works are magnified, O Lord, you have done all things with wisdom (Ps. 103:24); Ecclesiastes: every good thing that you have created (essence) in its time (Ecc. 3:11); St. Apostle Paul: every creature of God is good (1 Tim. 4:4). II. God is the Provider of the World § 38. The concept of Divine Providence, its actions and types 1. The providence of God is the constant action of the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of God, by which God preserves the existence and strength of creatures, directs them to good goals, helps every good, and the evil that arises, through removal from good, stops, or corrects and turns to good consequences (Long. Catech. about part 1). 2. Thus, in the general concept of God’s Providence, three of its particular actions are distinguished: preserving creatures, promoting or assisting them and managing them. The preservation of creatures is such an action of God by which the Almighty brings into being both the whole world and all the private beings found in it, with their powers, laws and activities. Assisting or assisting creatures is an action of God by which the All-Good One, allowing them to use their own powers and laws, at the same time provides them with His help and reinforces them during their activities. This is especially noticeable in relation to rationally free creatures, who constantly need the grace of God to succeed in spiritual life. However, in relation to moral beings, God’s real assistance occurs only when they freely choose and do good; in all those cases when they, of their own free will, choose and do evil, there is only God’s permission, and not at all assistance: because God cannot do evil, and does not want to deprive moral beings of the freedom that He Himself gave them. Finally, the control of creatures is such an action of God by which the Infinitely Wise directs them, with all their life and activity, towards their intended goals, correcting and turning, if possible, the worst deeds to good consequences. From this it is clear that all the indicated actions of God’s providence are different from each other. Conservation embraces the being of creatures, their forces, and activity: assistance actually refers to the forces; control - to the forces and actions of creatures. God preserves all the creatures of the world; promotes some good ones, and only allows evil ones to do their evil activities; also controls everyone. 3. God's Providence is usually divided into two types: general Providence and private Providence. The general Providence embraces the whole world in general, as well as the genera and species of creatures; the particular extends to the most private beings of the world and each of the indivisible, no matter how small they may seem - and the Orthodox Church, believing that God “from the smallest to the greatest knows everything exactly, and provides for every creation in particular” (Right. Confess. Part 1, answer to question 29), obviously allows both of these types of Providence. § 39. The reality of God's Providence I. The reality of God's Providence for the world is preached in countless places of Holy Scripture. For example: a) in the book of Job: God Himself (God) oversees everything under heaven, being aware of everything that is on earth (28:24); or: is not the soul of all living, and the Spirit of every man, in His hand (12:10); b) in the book of Psalms: he founded ecu (Lord) the earth, and remains. The day endures by Your discipline: for all things are done by You (118:90, 91); c) in the Gospel of Matthew: that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for His sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and on the unjust (5:45); d) in the book of the Acts of the Apostles: (God) has not left Himself untestified, doing good, giving us rain from heaven, and fruitful times, filling our hearts with food and joy (14:17). II. The Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church proved the existence of Providence also from sound reason on the basis of concepts, on the one hand, about God as the Creator of the world, and on the other, about the world, God’s creation. 1. In the first case, they pointed: a) to the infinite goodness of the Creator, according to which He cannot in any way leave His own creatures, created by Him solely out of goodness, without His providence; b) the omnipresence of the Creator, according to which He is directly present in every creature, every thing, every being, directly sees their condition and needs; and the next Then only he could not provide for peace if he either was not good or was inactive; c) the omnipotence of the Creator, according to which He does not have to make the slightest effort to provide for the world. 2. Turning to the world, the teachers of the Church primarily focused on the following: a) that without the Providence of God the world could not exist on its own, being called into being from nothingness and constantly being above the same nothingness, and b) that, without the Providence of God, the amazing order that is noticed in the world could not be maintained; on the contrary, everything would move beyond its limits and would fall into disorder and decay. § 40. The validity of each of the actions of God’s Providence and both of its types I. Attributing to God in general providence for the world, Holy Scripture attributes to Him, in particular, each of the actions of Providence, such as - 1. Conservation of creatures. This is preached by: a) The Psalmist in the entire 103rd Psalm, and especially in the following verses: they all look to You, give them food for a good time (27.) Having given You to them, they will gather: I will open Your hand, they will be filled with all kinds of goodness (28.) But if I turn away Your face, they will rebel: take away their spirit, and they will disappear, and return to their dust (29) .) Follow Thy Spirit, and they will be created, and renew the face of the earth (30). b) Apostle Paul: God... does not accept gratification from human hands, demanding that He Himself gives to everyone life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). 2. Assisting or allowing the creatures. The idea of ​​God's assistance to creatures, especially moral creatures, is expressed by Holy Scripture when it says that God bears all things by the verb of His power (Heb. 1:3); gives life in every way (1 Tim. 6:13); that God is the one who works in us, who wills and works for good pleasure (Phil. 2:13), and in Him we live and move and are (Acts 17:28). The idea of ​​God's permission is expressed, for example, by St. Apostle Paul, when he writes about the pagans: for this reason God gave them up in the passion of dishonor (Rom. 1:26); or when he speaks of the Jews: God has given them a spirit of insensibility, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear (Rom. 11:8). 3. Control of creatures. This action of God is spoken of: a) in the prayer of King David: To You, O Lord, is majesty, and strength, and glory, and victory, and confession, and meekness, for You rule over all in heaven and on earth, and in Your hand is strength and power, in Your hand is mercy, the Almighty, magnified and strengthened all (1 Chronicles 29:12); b) in the words of the Prophet Daniel: He changes times and years, establishes kings and puts an end, giving wisdom to the wise, and understanding to those who understand (Dan. 2:21). II. The providence of God, with all its actions, extends not only to the world in general, to the genera and types of creatures, but also to each created being in particular, i.e. There is a Providence not only general, but also private. This is visible: 1. From the words of the Psalmist - the eyes of all trust in You, and You give them food in due season: You have opened Your hand and fulfilled every animal’s good will (Ps. 145:15, 16); or - sing to our God with the harp: To him who covers the sky with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth: to him who grows on the mountains grass and grain for the service of man: to him who gives their food to cattle, and to the chick of corvids that call upon Him (Ps. 146:7-9). 2. From the words of the Savior Himself - may you be sons of your Father who is in heaven, as His sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45); Look at the birds of the air, how they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them: are you not better than them (Matthew 6:26)? Look how the villagers grow: they neither toil nor spin. I say to you, that Solomon was clothed with all his glory, as if he were one of these. If the hay of the village exists today, and is swept into the oven in the morning, God clothes it like that, isn’t it much more than you, you of little faith (Matthew 6:28–30)? Are not two birds valued by a single assar? and not one of them will fall on the earth without your Father: for you also the chief powers are counted (Matthew 10:29, 30). Note If God does not provide for all creatures, or if His Providence embraces only the great objects of the world, only the genera and types of creatures, but does not extend to small things and each of the indivisible: then this is possible for two reasons - either because God cannot provide for all His creatures, or because He does not want to. But the first reason cannot be assumed; because God is omniscient, infinitely wise and omnipotent. The second reason cannot be allowed either; because God is infinitely good and always working (John 5:17). And if He did not consider it unworthy of His greatness to create small and indivisible creatures, and not just great ones, then, without a doubt, His thought for them cannot be unworthy of His greatness; especially since objects are great and small only comparatively among themselves and according to our concepts - before the boundless greatness of the Creator and Almighty there is nothing great, just as before His boundless goodness nothing is small that only He Himself deigned to grant existence. § 41. Participation of all Persons of the Holy Trinity in the matter of industry Just as the work of creation, so exactly the work of providence in Holy Scripture is equally assimilated by all three Persons of the Divine, and precisely - 1. God the Father. For example, in the words of the Savior: may you be sons of your Father who is in heaven, as his sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45); Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them (Matthew 6:26). 2. To God the Son: He is before all, says St. about Him. Apostle, and all things will be fulfilled in Him (Col. 1:17); bear all things with the word of your strength (Heb. 1:3). 3. God the Holy Spirit. The Psalmist preaches His providence for the physical world in his appeal to God the Father: everyone is looking to You to give them food for a good time. When I give to You, they will gather them: I will open Your hand, and they will be filled with all kinds of goodness. If I turn away Your face, they will rebel: take away their spirit and disappear, and return to their dust. Thou shalt follow Thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and renew the face of the earth (Ps. 104:27-30). The Apostle preaches the providence of the moral world: divisions of gifts are, and the same is the Spirit... To whom is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit... But all this acts one and the same Spirit, dividing power to each as he wills (1 Cor. 12:4, 7, 11). You might be interested in: