Studia theologica I, 3/2003, 118-122
"I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY,
CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH"
in the view of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas
Andrei GOŢIA
1. St Augustine.
The Doctor of Hippo distinguished three ascending levels of faith: (1) Credo Deum; (2) Credo
Deo; (3) Credo in Deum. When he explained briefly in his In traditione symboli the contents of faith, St
Augustine wrote: "The time has come for you to learn the Creed, which enumerates briefly all that you
must believe in order to attain eternal salvation."1 When so much is at stake, one can only believe in a
person, not a concept, a person to whom one abandons himself.
Accordingly, St Augustine proceeds: "You must believe, then, in God the Father Almighty,
invisible and immortal, King of the universe, Creator of all things visible and invisible, and whatever
else is fittingly said of His grandeur, as dictated by pure reason or by the authority of Sacred
Scripture."2 St Augustine is using the Apostles' Creed, without insisting on the unicity of God, and he
adds the spiritual nature (invisible) of God, along with the transcendence (immortal); by speaking of
God as the 'King of the universe', St Augustine explains the omnipotence and the providence of God,
Who not only is the author of all creation, but also the governor (rex) of the universe. The author of the
Confessions, who knew from his own experience that one cannot exhaust speaking of God, much less
comprehend Him, exhorts the candidates to baptism to the contemplation of God's grandeur, without
abandoning the two indispensable tools for knowing God: reason and the Holy Scripture.
In the catechesis which completes this first one, In redditione symboli, St Augustine preserves the
elements already established - faith gives salvation, the attributes of God - and he adds the manner in
which creation was accomplished - "out of nothing" -. He then explains how God transcends time and
space: "Time in no way adds anything to His stature, nor does space extend His jurisdiction, neither
does matter encompass Him or limit Him."3 In a manner reminiscent of St Cyril, St Augustine ends
these brief considerations by a question, exhorting his listeners to contemplation in front of the Dei
arcana: "For if the reward promised to His saints is such that 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
has it entered into the heart of man', then how can the mind conceive, or the heart picture, or the tongue
describe Him Who makes the promise?"4
In De fide et symbolo, St Augustine expands on the omnipotence of God. He presents the problem
of prime matter as something contesting the omnipotence of God: if He has power over anything, there
clearly is not a single thing which He needed in order to create or of which He was not the author.
Understanding the omnipotence of God gives one the understanding that creation was ex nihilo: "If
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they admit that the world was made by an omnipotent God they must admit that He made what He has
made out of nothing."5 Then St Augustine goes into the more difficult aspect of the potentiality and
actuality of matter saying: "Only from God omnipotent did it receive whatever mode of being it had,
and whatever potentiality it had to receive other different forms. For it is by His gift that any formed
thing not only has its being but even is capable of receiving form."6 In writing this St Augustine
emphasizes that God is the first agent and that He does not 'simply' create, but He creates, besides the
being of a creature, the mode of being fitting to that creature, because He has a plan for every single
creature.
The Enchiridion is the work in which St Augustine deals at length with the various aspects of the
Creed. In the text previously quoted he implied that the cause of creation is God's goodness, since
everything about creation is a gift. In chapter 9 of the Enchiridion, St Augustine states: "It is enough
for the Christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly,
whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator the one true God; and that nothing exists but
Himself that does not derive its existence from Him; and that He is the Trinity […]."7
St Augustine, as a former Manichean, understood deeply that he cannot overemphasize the
goodness of the Creator. He first explains in a few lines (chapter 10) the foundation for the goodness of
the creation; the reason for this brevity can be found in the fact that God, Who is Goodness, is also
Simple; only evil, which is a corruption of good, is complicated and needs to be dealt with extensively
(chapters 11-22). He wrote:
By the Trinity, thus supremely and equally and unchangeably good, all things were created;
and these are not supremely and equally and unchangeably good, but they are good, even
taken separately. Taken as a whole, however, they are very good, because their ensemble
constitutes the universe in all its wonderful order and beauty.8
This dense chapter deserves more than a few observations; but the main points I would like to
underline are the participation of the entire Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the creation,
although the Creed seems to appropriate it exclusively to the Father. Then St Augustine points out that
the Trinity is Goodness itself, a pastoral element which gives the Christian the model towards which to
strive, Goodness supreme, equal and unchangeable. The goodness of the creation is a derived goodness,
it cannot equal the Goodness from which it originates; creation is good in two ways according to St
Augustine: every creature in itself, and the whole of creation together, united (uni-versum) by the plan
and order given to it by its Creator, the goal of all creation.
It is not the purpose of this paper to analyze in detail the doctrine on evil as explained by St
Augustine. Two are, I think, the elements of interest here: evil is not a part of creation, it is the
corruption of the good of creation; secondly, God permits evil to exist in order to bring good out of it.
One immediate such good is that, by contrast, evil makes good stand out:
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And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own
place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when
we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, Who, as even the heathen acknowledge,
has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the
existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He
can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?9
2. St Thomas.
The position of St Thomas is restricted to one single text, In symbolum apostolorum, which
begins with the first principles: since the first word of the Creed is 'credo', it is only fitting that St
Thomas present the four boons (bona) which faith provides and that he explain the appropriateness of
faith, which means believing things one does not see.
St Thomas uses, when needed, the Nicene Creed, because his purpose in this sermon is mainly
pastoral and the formula established at Nicaea-Constantinople offers a richer text. Thus, having divided
the first article of the Creed in two, he insists on the oneness of God (I believe in one God), the first
thing one has to believe. Systematically St Thomas then proceeds to explain the next word, God
(Deus); his approach is not etymological or semantic, but theological: he tells his congregation what is
understood by this word: "nihil est aliud quam gubernator et provisor rerum omnium."
Since the government of the physical world could be only contested by a fool who lacks common
sense, Doctor communis goes on to detect views which contest the range of God's omnipotence,
namely that He should govern by His providence human actions. St Thomas, having identified the
cause for this belief in the apparent paradox "that in this world the good suffer and the wicked
prosper,"10 compares the holders of this view to patients who presume to know better than the doctor;
this answer suggests two things: we are ill and need medicine to be restored to health and only God can
provide it; then, that God has a plan for us and that we cannot fathom the divine operation: "It is so
with God: Who with good cause and by His providence disposes such things as are necessary to man:
and thus He afflicts some good men, and allows certain wicked men to prosper."11 The one who would
see hazard in this is a fool (insipiens).
In the beginning of this article St Thomas affirmed the oneness of God. At this point in his
catechesis he compares, resorting to common sense, the government of human things, which is better
when the governor is one, and the government of the universe, which pleads for one divine Governor.
The next element for St Thomas is to analyze the causes of polytheism: 'the weakness of human
intelligence', 'human flattery', 'carnal affection for children and kindred' and 'the wickedness of the
devil'. The last element, the most important, reveals the real purpose of satanic worship, a problem then
and nowadays, which is not that the devil have an animal sacrificed to him, but that men worship him
with the worship due to God alone.12
The original aim of this sermon was to help believers prepare to celebrate the Resurrection of the
Lord in 1273. For this reason St Thomas proceeds elucidating the consciences by detecting polytheistic
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attitudes which can escape unnoticed, then as now: belief in the influence of the stars on the human
will, obedience of earthly rulers being given precedence over obedience to God, more love for humans
or earthly things than for God, sorcery;13 all these attitudes are sinful against the first commandment, in
that they give to stars, humans, family, possessions, personal desires the first place which is due to God
alone.
St Thomas then turns to the second half of the first article: "The Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth." Like St Augustine, he points out to the order in the universe and suggests a way of
attaining more beauty and excellence: "And the same will happen to anyone who considers this world
in detail. For he will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and
excellence, and that the nearer they are to God the more beautiful and the better they are."14
Once the common sense demonstration has been made and the scriptural basis for this article of
faith given, St Thomas deals with three errors which occurred in regard to it: that of the Manicheans,
according to whom the devil was co-creator ('responsible' for visible things), that of those who held the
eternity of the world and that of those who presupposed prejacent matter for the creation.
St Thomas uses St Augustine to refute the error of the Manicheans, which was due to the
incapacity to see that created things are not simply good and simply evil and that what is good for
something may be evil for something else, according to the plan of the Creator, Who has a definite plan
for every single creature, which cannot be fulfilled by any other creature. St Thomas then reminds his
congregation of the definitions of the Church against this error: "Of all things visible and invisible. -In
the beginning God created heaven and earth. -All things were made by Him."
The second error is treated with the same simplicity which is the companion of truth: if one
ignores the beginning of a creature that does not mean there is no beginning for that creature. And since
we hold God to be creator of the universe, it is clear we imply the beginning in time of the created
world, St Thomas argues.
The third error occurred because some patterned God's power to ours, who are limited to
prejacent matter when we 'create' anything. St Thomas writes:
The reason for this is that a man's power is confined to the form only, and consequently his
causality is confined to the production of this or that form. On the other hand God is the
universal cause of all things, and creates not only the form, but also the matter; so that He
made all things out of nothing: wherefore to remove this position we say: Creator of heaven
and earth.15
St Thomas completes the exposition of this article with the fruits these considerations yield: a
knowledge of God's greatness, which cannot be de-fined by any human representation of it; the second
fruit is gratitude, when seeing that everything comes from God and, closely connected, the third fruit,
patience in difficulties, which one bears easier if they are taken as a gift: "For by pain sins are cleansed,
the guilty are humbled and the good are urged on to the love of God."16 The fourth fruit is a good use of
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the creatures, namely in agreement to the plan that God had when He created them, to His glory and
our profit. The last fruit is an acknowledgement of man's dignity: God freely chose to make man the
crown of creation, impressing His likeness and image in man. Therefore the conclusion of St Thomas:
"[We] must rule and hold dominion over the things of the earth, but we must be subject to God by
obeying and serving Him and thus we shall attain to the enjoyment of God."17
Notes
1
St Augustine, Sermon 28, "On the Creed to the Candidates for Baptism (In traditione symboli)", in Selected Easter
Sermons of Saint Augustine, with introd., text of thirty sermons, notes and comm. by Ph. T. Weller (St. Louis: B. Herder,
1959), 194.
2
Ibid.
3
St Augustine, Sermon 30, "On the Creed to the Candidates for Baptism (In redditione symboli)", in Selected Easter
Sermons, 216.
4
Ibid.
5
St Augustine, "Faith and the Creed", in Augustine: Earlier Writings, selected and trans. with introd. by J. H. S. Burleigh,
The Library of Christian Classics, Ichtus ed. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 354.
6
Ibid.
7
St Augustine, The Enchiridion; Or On Faith, Hope And Love, trans. by Prof. J. F. Shaw, Londonderry, available at
www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augenchiridion/enchiridiontoc.html.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 4.
10
St Thomas, "Exposition of the Apostles' Creed", First Article, in The Treasury of Catholic Wisdom, ed., with and introd.
and notes by J. A. Hardon, S. J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 257.
11
Ibid.
12
Cf. Ibid., 258-259.
13
Cf. Ibid., 259.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid., 261.
16
Ibid., 262.
17
Ibid.
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