THE ORDINATION OF THE CREATURE TO GOD AS FUNDAMENT FOR ETHICS
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Cardona first establishes that the relation between creature and creator is real in the creature and rationis tantum in God. Furthermore, the relation is essential, radical or fundamental in the creature, because it establishes an absolute dependence from God as efficient, final and formal-exemplary cause. But this relation is not the essence of the creature, but rather one of its accidents; and thus the relation of the creature to God is a predicamental relation. Cardona here rejects the terminology "transcendental relation" because it is not proper to St. Thomas. The relation is either real (secundum esse) or is a relation of reason. The so-called secundum dici relation is not a relation of transcendental reason; it is simply a relation considered in its consequences.
The author goes on to distinguish in the relation an essence and an act of being, as in any entity. The essence of the relation is only the relatio, in other words the esse ad aliquid, the reference to another, whereas its act of being depends on the subject in which it inheres. In the case of the trinitarian relations, this act of being is the divine substance itself, and in this case we have subsistent relations; in the creature, by contrast, given that the creature is not its relation, the act of being of the relation will be derived from the act of being of the subject, and so the relation will always be an accident.
Turning to the moral consequences of the nature of the relation of the creature, Cardona affirms that a real relation, such as that under consideration, demands not only the real existence of a subject in which it inheres, but also the real existence of a terminus of reference. In the case of the relation of the creature, the terminus of reference is God Himself, the Creator. The relations is therefore perfectly real in the creature, insofar as its extremes are real, but it is not the creature, but rather something created with the creature (concreatum aliquid). But, at the same time, the creature may be considered without this relation to God, given that the relation is not part of its essence. This is the root of the possibility of a deordinatio, a voluntary desorder, which constitutes the essence of sin. The sinner cannot eliminate his fundamental ordination to God as a creature, but he can, by using his freedom badly, neglect this ordination in the operative order. Moral evil - sin - is seen as an absurd negation of the order of the creature.
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