God Creates Out of Love

God creates, we believe, ex caritate—out of love. 

If we recall our image of Christianity as a reflection of the human heart, we can ask: what is the first thing love longs to do? What is the first impulse of a lover toward his or her beloved? Is it not the bestowal of gifts? We long to be good to those we love; we look for ways to provide for them, and traditionally such benevolence is the first characteristic of charity. This is how to understand God’s original act outside of himself. Creation is the primal gift of God to the human race. 

Benevolence is the first sign of love because love naturally desires that one’s beloved have the best of gifts. Have you ever wondered why a perfectly sufficient being would freely choose to bring out of nothing an entire world well below himself? God’s acting solely on our behalf is an unparalleled act of generosity: here there is absolutely no trace of debt or a gift given in hope of a better one being given in return. The Godhead chooses to create solely out of love, knowing that the height of this gift—the human person—would enjoy being alive in a universe teeming with creatures of all sorts, with hundreds of billions of galaxies, brimming with colors and hues and textures, with angels whose celestial existence bring unhidden joys, and a human race whom he formed—and will save—out of nothing other than love.  

What does an authentic Catholic theology of creation entail? First and foremost, we must rediscover a childlike wonder before all the manifestations of God’s love for us. That is what creation is: a reflection of the Trinity’s own love. Before talk of the earth and of “ecology” became politicized, the great saints were able to offer counsel for Christians to become more aware of God’s presence in and through all that he creates. 

Therefore, whoever is not illumined by such great splendors in created things is blind. Anyone who is not awakened by such great outcries is deaf. Anyone who is not led from such great effects to give praise to God is mute. Anyone who does not turn to the first Principle as a result of such signs is a fool. Therefore, open your eyes, alert your spiritual ears, unlock your lips and apply your heart, so that in all the creatures, you may see, hear, praise, love and adore, magnify and honor God, lest the entire world rise up against you. -St. Bonaventure 

Is love a sufficient enough answer to explain God’s choosing to create a cosmos that he in no way needs? It is if we are clear that the love he longs to create is not his but ours. Perhaps no one understood this dynamic of divine love in and through creation as well as the great poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The Florentine bard understood well how creation adds nothing to God’s love, but instead allows for us creatures to experience new loves, which pleases the eternal Lover. 

Not to increase Its good—no mil nor dram 
can add to true perfection, but that reflections  
of his reflection might declare ‘I am’—  
in his eternity; beyond time, above  
all other comprehension, as it pleased him 
new loves were born of the Eternal Love - Dante 

Are you free enough to encounter everyone you meet as a “reflection of his reflection”? For every human person is an image and a likeness of God himself. All persons, all things, exist because God is love; and out of love and for love he brings all into being.  

Such a claim, though audacious, is not difficult to imagine when we think of how human couples do not ask their children if they wish to be conceived, born, and nurtured. We may likewise present creation as God’s knowing well beforehand that the human race would enjoy existing, living with reason and community, surrounded by all the material as well as spiritual goods and blessings only God can bring about. This is the first movement of love: the benevolent bestowal of good gifts for the sake of the beloved. 

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