Free Republic

TREATISE ON THE LOVE OF GOD Book II, Chapter IV By St Francis de Sales Book II. The History Of The Generation And Heavenly Birth Of Divine Love. Ch 4. Of The Supernatural Providence Which God Uses Towards Reasonable Creatures. All God's works are ordained to the salvation of men and angels; and the order of his providence is this, as far as, by attention to the Holy Scriptures and the doctrine of the Fathers, we are able to discover and our weakness permits us to describe it. God knew from all eternity that he could make an innumerable multitude...

In recent times, an expert on angelology and demonology, the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, Fr. Gabriel Amorth, wrote a most concise and lucid summation of the Franciscan thesis in his book An Exorcist Tells his Story. Before he ‘tells his story’, he begins by “first stating some basic facts about God’s plan for creation.” He writes (in Chapter 1): “All too often we have the wrong concept of creation, and we take for granted the following wrong sequence of events. We believe that one day God created the angels; that He put them to the test, although...

[...]It should be noted that, while Faber did not hesitate to employ the hypothetical mode of defending the Scotist position, his aim always went beyond such a limited formulation. What he underscored was that "Jesus was decreed before all creatures, and therefore before the permission of sin". Faber clearly saw the implications of the Scotist thesis in establishing the predestination and primacy of Christ. Here is how he put the matter in his last work and masterpiece, Bethlehem: What then was the first aspect of creation in the divine mind, if we may use the word "first", of that which...