Creation is an eternal and continuous act, an act without beginning or end. . . . The world emanates from God as light emanates from the sun or heat from fire. In the case of God, to think is to create (vidit operando et videndo operatur), and His creative activity is, like His thought, without beginning. Every creature is virtually eternal; our entire being is rooted in eternity. . . . The nothingness from which the world is derived ... is the ineffable and incomprehensible beauty of the divine nature, the supraessential and supernatural essence of God, inaccessible to thought and unknown even to the angels.
