according to the determinations of their time, while the beauty of the ages is unfolded by the coming and passing of things.4

The creature is good because the Creator is good. Not to discover the root of created goodness in the Uncreated Goodness in the Creator is to misunderstand the nature of the creature. To misunderstand the nature of the creature is to fail to accord the creature its divinely conferred dignity. That is why a correct theological anthropology is crucial towards the elaboration and profession of any humanism worth the name.

The narrative tells of a God who did not create one but many different things. And, explaining the multitude and distinction in creation, Thomas Aquinas has this to say:

[T]he distinction and multitude of things come from the intention of the first agent, who is God. For he brought things into being in order that his goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because his goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, he produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided; and hence the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.5

God communicates his goodness in the diversity of his creatures. His work of creation was the communication of his goodness and love to each creature he has made. Since none of God's creatures is a perfect recipient of divine goodness, one creature would not suffice in representing God's goodness. Variety in creation was necessary for representing divine goodness. The beauty of creation was in its variety and order. There was beauty in each thing God created, and there was beauty in the whole of creation itself. There was beauty in particularity, in diversity, and in the entirety of creation. "God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good" (Gen 1:31). God saw that each thing was good, and God saw that all things were good. There was harmony in the diversity that God willed in creation.

Within this diversity, there was also inequality, and even this inequality, said Aquinas, comes from divine wisdom for the sake of perfection of the universe.

4 Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, trans. John Hammond Taylor (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), bk. 1, ch. 8.5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 47, a. 1.

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