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This book on creation theology is the last of a trilogy, all published by the Catholic University of America Press. The first, which came out in 2011, on Christian eschatology, points to the future, and is centered especially on the Christian virtue of hope, which in turn is determined—content- and meaning-wise—by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and eschatological judge. Thus the title of the work, Christ Our Hope.1 The second volume, published in 2016, refers to the present moment and deals with theological anthropology, the life of Christ in the justified believer. It considers the re-ality and outworkings of Christian grace, which reveals our existence and life as a gift of God, and thus sheds a powerful light on the human person who is made by love and made to love. Perhaps the key virtue involved here is the infused virtue of charity, the true motor of Christian existence, what gives meaning and expression to corporeity, freedom, sociality. The book is entitled Children of God in the World.2 The present volume will attempt to consider the act by which God created the world, both material and spiritual. Obviously, it refers to the past. Besides, it is based on Chris-tian faith in the triune God, and is entitled God’s Gift of the Universe. The reader may notice that the chronological presentation of these texts seems to be moving in the wrong direction. By right we should start with creation, then pass on to anthropology, and finish off with eschatol-ogy. This is the classical system. But doing so would involve neglecting central elements of both creation theology and theological anthropology. True, we know little about what will take place in the next life and at the end of the world; we should apply our eschatological imagination with care. But we know, through faith and hope, that the world and human persons will have a definitive future. We have but an approximative and imaginary understanding of what eternal life, judgment, and final resurrection will involve, but the future of the believer is guaranteed by God’s power and promise. Christian believers will not just wander aimlessly into an unknown future and walk around forever in sterile circles. Rather they are sure, in the depth of their hearts, that God is preparing for them “a new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells” (2 Pt 3:13), that Christ has gone “to prepare a place for us” ( Jn 14:2), that “the Spirit and the Bride say ‘Come’ ” (Rv 22:17). Our hope is certain, although its exact profile is as yet unknown: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). And of course the knowledge of our future destiny makes all the differ-ence for a proper understanding of anthropology and creation. We would perceive neither the meaning nor the underlying dignity of human life with-out an appreciation of its eternal destiny. Indeed without the promise of immortality human existence would be senseless; true personhood, a pipe dream.3 But at a deeper level the same may be said of creation. For Chris-tians not only ask what the world is or how it works, but why it was created in the first place, what it is meant to achieve, what is its destiny. It is said that the final cause (the reason why things are made or actions are carried out) is first in intention but last in execution.4 Without an ultimate purpose or aim for the world the best explanation we could give for its existence would probably be that of the eternal return: the world and all it contains would just keep going around in circles, endlessly, forever, with no ultimate purpose.5 That the universe has an ultimate purpose is attributed by Chris-tians to an omnipotent deity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who dreams up a universe, lovingly places it in existence, blesses it abundantly with life, and draws it along powerfully and skillfully so that it can achieve its ultimate end. This idea—that the world made by God will go back to God—will arise time and again throughout the text, as will the following four elements. First,