7 Minutes
The wonderful thing about the final cause is that the end goal of a thing actually causes its creation. God created us for His pleasure and to get us there we must be like His Son. Jesus is, by nature, the image of God. Yet being fully human for our sake, and fully divine for his sake. We are, by nature, created in that image, and by grace, being transformed into that same image, being human, yet divinized. And what we will become is intrinsic to who we are now. We are naturally enbued with the spirituality of the Godhead. Our “final cause” is calling us into this transformation, from seed to tree, because that is our end beginning. This cause is intrinsic to our humanity because God has already united Godself to humanity in Jesus Christ. And grace is the liberation given us to affect the final cause. This is the purpose of the mind of Christ. We are to reason with the counsel in determination of the why of the final cause. We are the eternal intent of God. Reason this...God became human so that we should become like Him. And the God who knew before counsel, in counsel, vowed to be human and orchestrated the cause to become human. This body being prepared him, united us in humanity, that in the final cause we can be divinely perfected into the likeness of God. Wait! What? We are being readied for the final cause of humanity that is belonging essentially to us because of what Jesus did and is? Then it follows that something divine already appears in us now in seed form. That seed is our spiritual desire for the transcendent good even when our natural desires are obviously disordered. We cannot have a natural desire for transcendence unless that desire is internal to who we are. So, God, by the Holy Spirit rebirths us as spiritual beings whose first cause now is our end. This is our wonderment in God as if we’re not in awe of this thing caused by “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.
The key here is the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, the God-man, who becomes that which, as God, he always is in eternity and in time. Because God’s Presence is always present, whether in eternity or in time. Why? Because eternity is not “before” anything. Eternity is not on some “before and then later” everlasting timeline. Eternity is timeless and every point in time is immediately present to the eternal now. So we must always start with the One Lord Jesus Christ, human and divine, crucified and risen, and then we say, “this One, the Cruciformed Lamb, is the eternal Word and Son of God, Creator of all things, whose image was the pattern for humanity, and in whose image, humanity is becoming. Because it is Jesus who says “before Abraham was, I am, we reason that He is the divinely human God who descends from above time, from eternity, from outside of time. And eternity is forever indivisibly and directly united with time through the Cross. On this truth we reason “the mystery of Christ” that is the final cause as that done for the sake of which a thing is done. The seed’s final cause is the seed produced by the flowering plant. In the wisdom of God His people do nothing without a reason for doing it, so every single stroke or encounter has a final cause. Following the work of God, and pursuing the ends of the covenant in a spiritual holy way, setting the Lord always before our eyes, and acknowledging him in all our paths, keeping the way straiter on those whom God hath sealed.
It is the uncaused cause that purposed the first cause to bring movement in the universe to the final cause. Everything is maintained by Him, and everything is routed by His power. Therefore, by their actions and reactions, the potencies which come from Him dissolve the dark creation and create the light manifestations of the new. The Lord is the cause and also the effect. Thereby, if we be Christ’s, we find contentment not in ourselves, but in the higher spiritual beings that we will manifest. It is because God knows all things, the end from the beginning, that our faith having a backward-looking analysis by which we see the offering of Jesus in the determinate counsel, from the observation of a purpose already achieved, the steps that were necessary to its achievement are reasoned and discovered to give finality to the cause. And likewise, in our cause we must be absolutely deterministic to a fixed observant obedience to every principle of God. This is not a static conformity. It is dynamic due to the increasing causes that a hierarchy of a more perfect likeness of the one divine providence is the conception of God as the destination of the entire universe. The final cause sees the whole universe as a plurality of beings, each endowed with the principle of appropriate charge; higher beings endowed with wisdom and free will under the governance of God, which is shared in measure with all created holies, every one of these beings tends toward its own aim, which is to reflect specific aspects of God's perfection and to contribute to the universal order of the creation that is also His reflection. And we will forever be of the cause because we can never reach the fulness of the infinite God. But none will no
longer be subject to chance, corruption, conflict, or sin. We will be the ordained of God. And we know this truth – eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart mind any conjecture of the mysterious divine revelations to be made known in the divine freedoms of determinant love. The principle of the final cause is but the avowed purpose of the pattern of Christ.
God is both the extrinsic and intrinsic final cause of all things. All things find their regard in God. This regard serves the unfallen, men and angels as a mirror in which they contemplate certain reflections of God that are found in the spiritual universe. Also, through sharing in God's governance over the universe, the unfallen, men and angels participate in God's creative action. Yet man is the dynamic image of God, perfectly realized in Jesus Christ, in whom the whole visible cosmos is redeemed and consummated. The motive of the incarnation was primarily for the sake of redeeming man from sin and perfecting of the creation of God...the final cause. The events of salvation history all take on their meaning in terms of the ultimate goal, the kingdom of God in which the whole cosmos is subject to Christ and He to God. The thing caused must have a relationship to the cause in order to exist. Christ is our cause. He teaches us that forgiveness takes sacrifice even on our part toward others. The final cause will see the triumph over suffering. Life fully coursed in the obedience of Christ. The complete work of his atonement. God will commit His name to us. We must maintain the absoluteness of the truth; we will accept no compromise. God’s vindication is more important than our face. We will know how to let God.
To come to the final cause, we must have a mind fixed on Christ, not our trials or difficulties, is essential for endurance. We must remember the resurrection for it reminds us that Jesus Christ is God. He is the cause to life for all the righteous dead. He is the cause to the eternal change to all those who continue to live. The final cause is holy. The purpose and end for God’s faithful people is the final cause of holiness which is fully manifested in salvation. Explained in the final cause is our end to possess God in full in the beatific vision, to have our powers fully realized, fully perfected, and to find them at rest, in perfect happiness for all eternity. Revelation reaches reality with God’s great deeds in salvational history. The bible is seen as the record of these deeds.
We are in the final cause of faith. It has been the foundation and the root of our relationship to Jesus. Faith’s presence is the necessary condition for the sequences we are to follow to affect perfection in God’s sight. By it we receive the grace to overcome. Faith is the cause that changes our status.
Being the stone cutout from the mountain by the sculptor, we are now hewed into the stature of Christ. He is the one who makes it happen. The final cause is the purpose for which the thing is made, which in this case is to beautify the purposed beginning in the Garden. In God we see the final cause; we see our Creator, we see our redeemer, we see our rest. The final cause is the self-unveiling, imparted to man, of the God who by nature cannot be unveiled to man. We come to a fulfillment of the inner appeal of the human spirit toward fuller consciousness having new light about the knowledge of God’s theistic properties of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and His infinite goodness. A final cause happens where faith and grace constitute the transformative power of the authority of God to be a testimonial justification aligning our wills and character with God’s character and purposes. Divine love can appear in such an overwhelming way that its glorious majesty throws one to the ground; it shines out as the last word and the final cause leaving one no choice but to respond in the mode of pure, blind obedience.
The final cause is what Christ finished. We haven’t yet, but with him we will. Be at peace...acquaint now thyself with Him...AMEN.
Comments