Teach Mormons about Catholicism (Home)
Table of Contents:
1. Prophets of God 7. Man
13. The Restoration
19. Baptism
2. One God 8. The Image of God
14. Tradition
20. Confirmation
3. Jesus Christ
9. The Fall of Adam
15. Catholic
21. Marriage
4. The Holy Spirit 10. Original Sin
16. The Church
22. Purgatory
5. The Holy Trinity 11. Faith and Grace
17. Apostle
23. Heaven and Hell
6. The Creation 12. Authority
18. The Priesthood
24. Eternal Life
6. The Creation
Mormonism: We can become a creator like our Heavenly Father
(GP
Chapter 47)
Catholicism:
- God Alone Created The Universe
- God Created Everything By His Eternal
Word, His Beloved Son
- God Created Out of Nothing
- God Created The World to Show Forth His Glory
- God Created Man To Make Him Share In His Own Blessed Life
- No Creature Has The Infinite Power Necessary To Create
God alone created the universe, freely, directly and without any help (CCC317). God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order (CCC337). God is unique; there are no other gods besides him [Is 44:6]. He transcends the world and history. He made heaven and earth (CCC212). "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" [Gen 1:1]. Holy Scripture begins with these solemn words. The profession of faith takes them up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is "Creator of heaven and earth" (Apostles' Creed), "of all that is, seen and unseen" (Nicene Creed) (CCC279). God is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists (CCC300). The eternal Father created the whole universe and chose to raise up men to share in his own divine life, to which he calls all men in his Son (CCC759).
The Old Testament suggests and the New Covenant reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, [Pss 33 6; 104:30; Gen 1:2-3] inseparably one with that of the Father. This creative co-operation is clearly affirmed in the Church's rule of faith: "There exists but one God... he is the Father, God, the Creator, the author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom", "by the Son and the Spirit" who, so to speak, are "his hands". Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity (CCC292). God created the universe and keeps it in existence by his Word, the Son "upholding the universe by his word of power" (Heb 1:3), and by his Creator Spirit, the giver of life (CCC320). God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation. He who chose the patriarchs, who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who by choosing Israel created and formed it, this same God reveals himself as the One to whom belong all the peoples of the earth, and the whole earth itself; he is the One who alone "made heaven and earth" [Is 43:1; Pss 115:15; 124:8; 134:3] (CCC287).
"In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" [Jn 1:1-3]. The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in heaven and on earth... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" [Col 1:16-17]. The Church's faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the "giver of life", "the Creator Spirit" , the "source of every good" (CCC291). "By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear" [Heb 11:3] (CCC286).
Though the work of creation is attributed to the Father in particular, it is equally a truth of faith that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are the one, indivisible principle of creation (CCC316). The whole divine economy is the common work of the three divine persons. For as the Trinity has only one and the same natures so too does it have only one and the same operation: "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle." However, each divine person performs the common work according to his unique personal property. Thus the Church confesses, following the New Testament, "one God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are". It is above all the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show forth the properties of the divine persons (CCC258).
In God "there is no variation or shadow due to change" [Jas 1:17]. God is "HE WHO IS", from everlasting to everlasting, and as such remains ever faithful to himself and to his promises (CCC212). The revelation of the ineffable name "I AM WHO AM" contains then the truth that God alone IS. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and following it the Church's Tradition, understood the divine name in this sense: God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is (CCC213).
Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God's word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun (CCC338). Scripture bears witness to faith in creation "out of nothing" as a truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them for martyrdom: I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws... Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being [2 Macc 7:22-21, 28] (CCC297).
We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing": If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants (CCC296). The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body" (CCC327).
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": [Gen 1:1] three things are affirmed in these first words of Scripture: the eternal God gave a beginning to all that exists outside of himself; he alone is Creator (the verb "create" - Hebrew bara - always has God for its subject). The totality of what exists (expressed by the formula "the heavens and the earth") depends on the One who gives it being (CCC290). The Scriptural expression "heaven and earth" means all that exists, creation in its entirety. It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other: "the earth" is the world of men, while "heaven" or "the heavens" can designate both the firmament and God's own "place" - "our Father in heaven" and consequently the "heaven" too which is eschatological glory. Finally, "heaven" refers to the saints and the "place" of the spiritual creatures, the angels, who surround God [Pss 115:16; 19:2; Mt 5:16] (CCC326).
Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God." St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it", for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand." The First Vatican Council explains: This one, true God, of his own goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal..." (CCC293). The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us "to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace", [Eph 1:5-6] for "the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God." The ultimate purpose of creation is that God "who is the creator of all things may at last become "all in all", thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude" [1 Cor 15:28] (CCC294).
We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom [Wis 9:9]. We believe that it proceeds from God's free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: "For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created" [Rev 4:11]. Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: "O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all"; and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made" [Pss 104:24; 145:9] (CCC295). Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight" [Wis 11:20]. The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the "image of the invisible God", is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the "image of God" and called to a personal relationship with God [Col 1:15, Gen 1:26]. Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness - "And God saw that it was good... very good" [Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 31] - for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him (CCC299).
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life (CCC1). God, who "dwells in unapproachable light", wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son [1 Tim 6:16, Eph 1:4-5] (CCC52). The eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe and chose to raise up men to share in his own divine life, to which he calls all men in his Son. The Father... determined to call together in a holy Church those who should believe in Christ. This "family of God" is gradually formed and takes shape during the stages of human history, in keeping with the Father's plan. In fact, already present in figure at the beginning of the world, this Church was prepared in marvelous fashion in the history of the people of Israel and the old Advance. Established in this last age of the world and made manifest in the outpouring of the Spirit, it will be brought to glorious completion at the end of time (CCC759).
When Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom." God will then be "all in all" in eternal life [1Cor 5:28] (CCC1050). God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him (CCC358). Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom (CCC396). No creature has the infinite power necessary to "create" in the proper sense of the word, that is, to produce and give being to that which had in no way possessed it (to call into existence "out of nothing") (CCC318). Adoration is the first attitude of man acknowledging that he is a creature before his Creator. It exalts the greatness of the Lord who made us [Ps 95:1-6] and the almighty power of the Savior who sets us free from evil (CCC2628).
Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God [Eph 3:14; Mt 23:9]. Married couples should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator (CCC2367). By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents co-operate in a unique way in the Creator's work (CCC372). The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" [Gen 2:24]. All human generations proceed from this union [Gen 4:1-2, 25-26; 5:1] (CCC2335).