CONTRA GENTILES - BOOK THREE: PROVIDENCE - Chapter 83 EPILOGUE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS

[1] Now, from all the things that have been pointed out we may gather that, as far as the planning of the order to be imposed on things is concerned, God disposes everything by Himself. And so, in his commentary on the text of Job 34:13 (“What other did He appoint over the earth?”) Gregory says: “Indeed, He Who created the world by Himself rules it by Himself” [ Moralia XXIV, 20]. And Boethius says, in Consolation of Philosophy III: “God disposes all things of Himself alone.”

[2] But, in regard t o the execution, He orders the lower things through the higher ones, and the bodily things through the spiritual ones. Hence, Gregory says, in his fourth Dialogue: “in this visible world nothing can be ordered except through an invisible creature.” And the lower spirits are ordered through the higher ones. Hence, Dionysius says that “the heavenly intellectual essences first give divine illumination to themselves, and then bring us manifestations which are above us.” Also, the lower bodies are ordered by the higher ones. Hence, Dionysius says that “the sun brings generation to visible bodies, and stimulates them to life itself, and nourishes, increases and perfects, cleanses and renews.”

[3] Moreover, Augustine speaks on all these points together, in the Book III of The Trinity: “As the grosser and lower bodies are ruled in a certain order by means of the subtler and more powerful ones, so are all bodies by means of the rational spirit of life, and also the sinful rational spirit of the sinner by the righteous rational spirit.”

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