God's Creation

A philosophy professor for a class studying Aristotle would often ask his students the question, "Why did God create people?" After all, it seems God must have created us for a reason. Surely God is not unreasonable.

Aristotle tells us that happiness is not just a state of being but an activity. In God's perfection, we would expect Him to be "happy". Since God is happy, we would think He engages in activities. However, what activities would God do? Well, He engaged in the activity of creation, and now He engages in the continuing activity of loving those He created.

So, God was to create others to love. How will He go about this? Can He create others who are just as He is? This is a meaningless question. To "create" others who are just as He is would not be to create others at all. This would simply be a sort of separation of Himself as was the case when Jesus came to Earth.

What will these created others be like then? God is perfect, so it would only make sense that the others He creates would be the perfectly created others. Going back to Aristotle's definition of perfection, recall that it is a state of lacking nothing and not requiring anything from others. However, isn't to create something to give it existence? So, we see that a creation that is as perfect as God would be contradictory.

So, a deviation from perfection without qualification is necessary in a creation. Its creation itself keeps it from absolute perfection, which we will say is possessed by God alone. So then, what is the closest a creation can come to absolute perfection?

Perfectly created others would not start at their final perfection but would grow on their own to their full potential, reducing what a creator gave them since being given things reduces their perfection. Certainly the perfectly created others would someday choose perfection of their own free will. It would not be forced upon them (given to them). So, this is where the separation is in the current state of human beings. We have every reason to choose God's perfection, but we are not being forced to choose it. It seems that this is how it had to be.