1011. What is the basic objective of God's action?

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What is the basic objective of God's action?

The basic objective of God's action is "the perpetuation of the cosmic process for the benefit of the creatures and the enrichment of [God's] own life" (WP: 195).

What is wrong with the usual way of developing the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo?

What is wrong with the usual way of developing the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo are two ideas: (1) the idea that human beings and creatures generally create only by modifying a given material, so that the products of their creativity are, at most, new predicates of a subject already in existence; and (2) the idea that God's creative activity, by contrast, presupposes nothing but the divine power.

Apart from confusions, the first idea means positively only that human or creaturely creative activity "makes use of, or profits by, antecedent events," since "if, and only if, such and such has already happened, can certain human [or creaturely] acts now happen" (WP: 193). And, as for the second idea, the only truth in it is that, although God's creative activity, also, presupposes previous events, any events that God's creative activity (in one phase) presupposes themselves presuppose God's creative activity (in another earlier phase). "Divine acts refer only to antecedent events which themselves also embodied divine acts" (WP: 194).