Summa contra Gentiles3.18 Chapter XVIII. How God is the end of things

It remains to ask how God is the end of all things: and this shall be made clear from what has been said.

For He is the end of all things, yet so as to precede all in being. Now there is an end which, though it holds the first place in causing forasmuch as it is in the intention, is nevertheless last in execution. This applies to any end which the agent sets up by his action: thus the physician by his action sets up health in the sick man, which is nevertheless his end. There is also an end which, just as it precedes in causing, so also does it precede in being: even so that which one intends to acquire by one’s motion or action, is said to be one’s end, for instance fire seeks to reach a higher place by its movement, and the king seeks to take a city by fighting. Accordingly God is the end of things as something to be obtained by each thing in its own way.

Again. God is at once the last end of things, and the first agent, as we have shown.? Now the end effected by the agent’s action, cannot be the first agent, but rather is it the agent’s effect. God, therefore, cannot be the end of things, as though He were something effected, but only as something already existing and to be acquired.

Further. Ifa thing act for the sake of something already in existence, and if by its action some result ensue; something through the agent’s action must accrue to the thing for the sake of which it acts: thus soldiers fight for the cause of their captain, to whom victory accrues, which the soldiers bring about by their actions. Now nothing can accrue to God from the action of anything whatever: since His goodness is perfect in every way, as we proved in the First Book. It follows, then, that God is the end of things, not as something made or effected by them, nor as though He obtained something from things, but in this way alone, that things obtain Him.

Moreover. The effect must tend to the end, in the same way as the agent acts for the end. Now God, who is the first agent of all things, does not act as though He gained something by His action, but as bestowing something thereby: since He is not in potentiality so that He can acquire something, but solely in perfect actuality, whereby He is able to bestow. Things therefore are not directed to God, as to an end that can gain something, but that they may obtain Himself from Him according to their measure, since He is their end.