God's Moving or Changing of Creatures

We speak first of bodily creatures. A body is made of matter and form. Matter is common to all bodies; it has no existence ofits own apart from existing bodies. Form, joined substantially with matter, constitutes a body as an existing material substance of an essential kind. We speak here of matter and form, and we meanprimal matter and substantial form. An existing body isnot primal matter, but secondary matter. And the variabledeterminations of a body (size, shape, color, temperature, rest or motion, resemblance to other things, etc.) are accidental forms,not substantial forms. Now, God, in creating bodies, joins substantial form to primal matter in each case, and so produces actual bodily substances.

God can move or effect bodily substance in any way he wills, for he is the universal cause and is also infinite power. Nor is there anything unworthy in the notion of God moving matter. Though matter is the least of creatures, it is a creature, and not unworthy of the operation of the Creator.

Speaking now of God’s moving of nonbodilycreatures, we say that God moves the intellect of men and angels by giving them power to understand, and by impressing and preserving in them (directly, or through connatural operation designed by God)the intelligible species by which they understand.

God alone is the supreme and universal good which isthe necessary object of the will of intellectual creatures. God moves the will by giving it power to act, by making it tend to the good in universal, and, without destroying its liberty, moving itin its individual choices.

God works in all things in such a way as suits the operation natural to each thing. For it is God who gives creatures existence and nature, and works in them to preserve both.

God can do things that are not in the established course of nature so long as such action would not mean a contradiction in God himself. For God as First Cause gives things their determinate essence, and to be such things they must have that essence. God cannot give an essence and not give it. Since,for example, God has chosen to make man a rational animal, he cannot make a man who is not a rational animal. Thus in the immediate reference of things to their First Cause, there can be nodivinely imparted movement or change outside the divinelydetermined order. But God can act outside the ordinary course inwhich divine government is exercised through secondary causes. God can produce the effects of secondary causes even when such causes are absent, and he can have them produce effects which are altogether beyond their natural powers, or even in conflict with their natural action. Our Lord used clay, spittle, and the waters of a certain pool to cure blindness; he used the flames of the fiery furnace rather to preserve than to destroy the three young men.

An effect produced by God in the bodily universe,outside the order of created nature, is called a miracle.

Miracles differ in greatness, not with reference to God’s power which is infinite and therefore has no greater orless, but with reference to the extent by which miracles surpass the powers of creatures. There are three grades or orders of miracles: (a) The first and greatest order of miracles is that of miracles in the very substance of the deed or fact. A miracle of this type is altogether outside the reach of any created power. Such would be the miracle of glorifying a human body, or the miracle of two bodies simultaneously occupying one place. (b) Thesecond order of miracles is that of miracles in the subject in which they occur. Such, for example, would bethe miracle of raising a dead person to life. Now, nature actually can give life; hence, in raising the dead, there is no miracle of substance of the fact. But nature cannot give life to a corpse. Itis utterly beyond the powers of creatures to give life to such a subject. (c) The third order of miracles is that of miracles of manner or mode. Such a miracle, for example, would be the instantaneous healing of a grievous wound or sore. Nature can heal; nature can heal in such a subject (that is, the personafflicted); but nature cannot heal in this way, that is,instantaneously. Nature heals in a gradual and successive manner which requires much time.