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Creation: Original Blessing, Original Goodness at Work
03/30/2023 |
My teaching about Original Blessing that so disturbed the previous two popes can
be understood as an exegesis of the first page of the Bible. There we are told that creation is “good” in all its parts and “very good” taken as a whole. I invite the reader (and followers of the previous two popes) to re-read Genesis 1. |
To speak of love as we have in our recent meditations on Divinity is to speak of goodness, original goodness, since God is understood as the origin of creation and the goodness of creation. Thomas Aquinas, mystic and doctor of the church, had a lot to say about goodness. For him, “God is sheer goodness." | “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.” Painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1615. Wikimedia Commons. |
Such goodness may well account for the existence of all that is. “Goodness of itself is generous. God is supremely good and therefore supremely generous.” Unlike idealists who see creation as a step down for divinity, Aquinas proposes that “there is no loss of the original goodness involved in the sharing” of goodness with all creatures. Notice the term “original goodness”–where does that come from? |
| For out of the love of God’s own goodness it happened that God wished to pour forth and share the divine goodness with others, as far as was possible, namely, through the mode of likeness, with the result that the divine goodness not only |
remained in God but also flowed out to other things. Aquinas defines love in terms of goodness: “The
habitual or conditioned appetite for something as for its own good is called love.” Love is our response to the good therefore and brings love alive in us. Love, by which God loves, is the actual existence of goodness in the
things themselves, and on account of this one says that everything is good, since it preexists causality in the good . God, who is the cause of all, on account of an excess of the goodness that is God’s own, loves all
things. |
From love God makes all things, giving them being. God perfects all things by filling them individually with their own perfections. God contains all things by preserving them in being. | “Great Spirit.” A prayer for creation sung by Nahko. Video by Gro Films |
God converts all things, that is, God orders them toward the Godself as toward an end . We are a long way from a punitive father God when we meditate with Thomas Aquinas on creation. The Bible itself begins with the Via Positiva. |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 99f. 108. See also Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 33-36. And Fox, Original Blessing. Banner Image: A moment of trust and beauty: giving
nourishment to a wild bird. Photo by Karo Kujanpaa on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that the Bible, Genesis one, begins with the Via Positiva? What follows from that? Do you agree that love and
goodness go together? What follows from that?
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Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation
Spirituality Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas
entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way. “The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword). | |
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard
Times A stunning spiritual handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of Aquinas’ mystical/prophetic genius, offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action. Foreword by Ilia
Delio. “What a wonderful book! Only Matt Fox could bring to life the wisdom and brilliance of Aquinas with so much creativity. The Tao of Thomas Aquinas is a masterpiece.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit | |
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation
Spirituality Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias
Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way. “Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great
Work; co-author, The Universe Story | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox online as he offers a Worship Service Inspirational Message - “Otto Rank, and Pere Chenu: Two 'Real, Raw and Radiant' Guides calling us to Deep Freedom” for Brentwood Inspired Living Center, Sunday, April 16, 10:00 am PT. Learn more HERE. Join Matthew Fox as he discusses “Creativity – Where the Divine and the Human Meet” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat. Thursday, April 20, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. Register HERE. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Karen Tate interviews Matthew on his latest book
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality to discuss religious vs. spiritual, the nature of evil and angels, compassion vs pity, and wisdom vs knowledge. On Voices of the Sacred Feminine with Karen TateLearn more HERE. | |
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