What is the role of divine providence in our creation?

We are indebted to the beneficent God for His love for us, with which He loved us even before we ever existed. St. Clement of Alexandria declares that the human being was in the thought of God before he was created. In His endless love, He created the world for the sake of the human being, and then created the human being in His own image and likeness, that he might taste communion with Him. He says, “Man is therefore justly dear to God, since he is His workmanship. The other works of creation He made by the word of command alone [He said, and it was], but man He framed by Himself, by His own hand, and breathed into him what was peculiar to Himself .”⁵²⁴

Origen says, “For there is no one who does not have experience of this law, which is naturally innate within men, both Jews and Gentiles … One finds that God has in fact given to man every disposition and every drive by which he can press forward and advance toward virtue. Over and above the power of reason God has ensured that man should know what he ought to do and what he ought to avoid. One finds then that God has supplied these things universally to all men.”⁵²⁵