(Wisdom 1:13; Ecclesiastes 11:14)

1^ST CATEGORY OT

QUESTION 34. HOW DOES THE SAME SOLOMON SAYS ON ONE SIDE: "GOD DID NOT KILL," AND IN ANOTHER: "THE GOODS AND THE EVILS, THE LIFE AND THE DEATH, THE POVERTY AND THE LUXURY COME FROM GOD?" — Nobody doubts that all good things come from God; as for the evils of doubt it is here a question, they are only such as when they serve to chastise us. This is how God speaks to the fishermen by his prophet: "I will hurt you," that is, I will penalize you. Now, life and death are represented to us as coming from God, because he has given the law that promises life to those who observe it, and threatens those who transgress it from death, which is called the second death. As it is God who gives back to everyone what he deserves, it is from him that come the sentence of life or the condemnation to death. God is not the author of death, but the judge; the author of death is sin. How, then, could God have made death, who knows no sin? It is because it gives to sins what is due to them, that Scripture says that death comes from him, although it does not come in reality, but from him who has sinned; it is in the same sense that poverty and wealth come from God, there are some who, under the impression of the fear of God, despise the pleasures of the senses, flee the lavishness of life, do not turn away the eyes of the poor and the needy, and thus accumulate real treasures, because it is written in Proverbs: "The love of the rule makes misery and genealogy disappear. (Prov. 13:18) But those who have no fear of God, who live without rule and without restraint, and despise the poor, will be in want, as it is written: “They have been full,” not only of negligence and improvidence for their interests, but of contempt for the law which was given to them. It is in this sense that God made the poor and the rich; as the transgression of the law produces poverty, we attribute this effect to God, the author of the law, and when others, for fear of His judgments, are faithful to the prescriptions of the law, we also say that it is God, author of the law, who enriches them.

(Wisdom 11:17)

2^ND CATEGORY OT

QUESTION 20. WE READ IN THE BOOK OF WISDOM: "GOD CREATED THE WORLD OF INVISIBLE MATTER,” AND THESE VERY CONTRARY WORDS THAT WE WERE CREATED FROM NOTHING. — Sacred Scripture clearly teaches us that God simultaneously created all the elements of the world in a chaotic and confused state, in which the darkness was mingled. These confused elements, air, fire, water, earth, darkness, are what Scripture calls an invisible matter, as we read in Genesis; "The earth was invisible and unformed." (Gen. 1) So it is from these confused elements that God created the world by establishing the faith, so that the waters coming together, the earth could offer the human race. This distinction and this separation of elements is a dwelling place for man under the spherical space which covers the earth.