rms
applied to God have only a secondary import, such, for instance, as we
give to the word _healthy_, as applied to medicine; whereby we signify
that it is productive of health in the organism, while the organism
itself is said, properly and primarily, to be healthy.

In the third place, these interpretations distort the meaning of those
who employ such terms in regard to the Deity. For, when they declare
that He is the living God, they certainly mean something else than that
He is the cause of our life or that He is different from
inanimate bodies.

We are obliged, therefore, to take another view, and to affirm that such
terms denote the substantial nature of God, but that, at the same time,
their representative force is deficient. They express the knowledge
which our intellect has of God; and since this knowledge is gotten from
created things, we know Him according to the measure in which creatures
represent Him. Now God, absolutely and in all respects perfect,
possesses every perfection that is found in His creatures. Each created
thing, therefore, inasmuch as it has some perfection, resembles and
manifests the Deity; not as a being of the same species or genus with
itself, but as a supereminent source from which are derived its effects.
They represent Him, in a word, just as the energy of the terrestrial
elements represents the energy of the sun.

Our manner of speech, therefore, denotes the substance of God, yet
denotes it imperfectly, because creatures are imperfect manifestations
of Him. When we say that God is good, we do not mean that He is the
cause of goodness or that He is not evil. Our meaning is this: What we
call goodness in creatures preexists in God in a far higher way. Whence
it follows, not that God is good because He is the source of good, but
rather, because He is good, He imparts goodness to all things else; as
St. Augustine says, "Inasmuch as He is good, _we are_."

HOW CAN THE ABSOLUTE BE A CAUSE?

From the 'Quaestiones Disputatae'

The relations which are spoken of as existing between God and creatures
are not really in Him. A real relation is that which exists between two
things. It is mutual or bilateral then, only when its basis in both
correlates is the same. Such is the case in all quantitive relations.
Quantity being essentially the same in all quanta, gives rise to
relations which are real in both terms--in the part, for instance, and
in the whole, in the unit of measurement and