  There is something worth pausing and reflecting about here; the natural means of salvation, if you will, are built right into the very structure of things. The opus restaurationis is located within the opus conditionis. While it initially sounds odd to say that a thing’s operation is its end, the oddness disappears as soon as one realizes that all operations are ultimately reditive. And as such they must lead a being beyond itself. One could put it another way by saying that for Dietrich the proper operation of every creature is to return to God. Dietrich’s use of the Augustinian triad of being, truth and goodness confirms this. A thing’s being gives it self-reference and dignity with respect to the hierarchy of being. Its truth gives it reference to intellect, thus opening it up to what Dietrich calls ens conceptionale, being as conceived by the intellect, which in its own way reflects the universe of beings. But in its goodness, a thing is like God, overflowing into another, imparting itself to those below it in an act which might be called a cooperation with the redemption of all things.