Consideration

You’ll have to think a bit deep for this one…

Still on the topic of how I get to know myself.  We’ve mentioned self-reflection and friends’ feedback.  We’ve mentioned temperament tests.  We haven’t mentioned the Creator.

  1. To every effect there must be a cause.  In this sense, no effect is “accidental” in the strict sense of the word.  Every effect (whether a phenomenon, a creature, a creation or an invention) has a cause.
  2. According to Aristotle, there are four different kinds of causes: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. The material cause is what anything is made of; the formal cause is the form, type, or pattern according to which it is made; the efficient cause is the immediate power acting to produce the work; the final cause is the end or motive for the sake of which the work is produced.  So, for example, the material cause of a statue is the marble from which it was carved; the efficient cause is the sculptor; the formal cause is the shape the sculptor realized –Hermes, perhaps, or Aphrodite; and the final cause is its function, to be a work of fine art or to sell it for profit.
  3. I did not make myself.  I am not my own cause.  I am an effect.  Therefore, I too must have a material, a formal, an efficient and a final cause.
  4. As a human, my material cause (what I am made of) is flesh and spirit, body and soul.
  5. My formal cause, is double-barrelled.  On one hand, the pattern I am made after in both body and soul, is God.  I am made in God’s image in both body and soul. Further to that, my body is also made in the pattern of a specific animal species (homo sapiens).
  6. My efficient cause is also double-barrelled. I did not create myself, I was created. Technically speaking we say my parents pro-created me.  They “gave a hand” in my creation.  They gave a hand in creating my body.  They are my efficient cause.  God directly created my soul.  God too is my efficient cause.
  7. My final cause, the reason God made me, is (for) happiness.  And for Short Exercise 23 of today, read how one lady explains this last point as found in the annex.

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