77. Gn. litt. 1.4; Hill, Genesis, 171–72; CSEL 28.8.
26 Creation as the Unifying Prologue the source of creation as it comes into being from him while still imperfect, while his being the Word implies his conferring perfection on creation by calling it back to himself, so that it may be given form by adhering to the creator, and by imitating in its own measure the form which adheres eternally and unchangingly to the Father, and which instantly gets from him to be the same thing as he is.77
Logocentric and filial in nature, creation must inescapably imitate the Son's turn toward and loving communion with the Father. Only God has existence in se and everything else must receive from God the being upon which all their other natural attributes will be predicated. A creature's conversion back to and subsequent formation by [conuersione et formatione] the Father is of course neither eternal nor equal as is the Son's eternal conversion. Yet by adhering to the Father and thereby receiving their form, creatures imitate the perfect and eternal Form. The more a creature is turned toward that Word, the more that creature becomes like the Word.
This is how creation's perfection and completion is determined: by its imitation of the Word's adherence to the Father. After the Trinity's perfect unity of persons, of course, this is the most basic and necessary type of divine communion: in and through the Word, the Father grants esse to contingent being through a constant and uninterrupted conversion back to himself. Such inseparableness grants every creature, each in its own way, divine imitability. Without creation's inherent formation by and subsequent conversion toward God, there is no creation of which to speak. This total dependence of creation on its creator underscores the deiform nature of all of creation. Or as Michael Hanby puts it:
God is not one actor alongside others whose agency can be treated as an efficient quantifiable force in relation to the force of other agencies. Nor are creatures patients awaiting actualization prior to God's
77. Gn. litt. 1.4; Hill, Genesis, 171–72; CSEL 28.8.