Attributes of God
Introduction
Being and Attributes Identical. The Bible teaches that God is characterized or comprehended by his attributes—that his being and his attributes are identical. They are not, and cannot be, in some type of “economic” or functional relationship, because the two are identical with each other. Thus, when a theologian tries to insert either “economic” (functional) or “ontological” (being) hierarchies into his analysis of God’s attributes, his own method produces unnecessary difficulties.25 Analysis of God’s being and attributes requires a methodological balance. For this reason, when describing God, the word perfections is superior to the word attributes. Each divine “attribute” is perfect; thus, one “completely perfect attribute” cannot be economically superior to another “completely perfect attribute.”
Since believers love our heavenly Father and want to know more about him, and God’s perfections are beyond any human concept, theologians, with a humble and godly attitude, must turn to God himself for aid. Since God has revealed himself in his Word, a proper approach will analyze God’s attributes or perfections as he himself has revealed them in the historical unfolding of his special revelation.28 Nevertheless, while choosing a God-honoring path is a good first step, that beginning does not solve the methodological problem.
Commencing with God’s self-revelation in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian has to determine levels of continuity and discontinuity with the NT concerning God’s perfections or attributes. Moving then to the NT itself, the best approach embraces a well-developed biblical-theological method that begins with God’s revelation in the Gospels and ends with the book of Revelation. It is a demanding task even to try to summarize what the Bible says about God! Yet theologians must go beyond. Our method will incorporate the nature of God’s being itself in the analysis.
Aseity and Simplicity. The Bible teaches God’s oneness or numerical unity, also known as his simplicity. God’s simplicity includes his unity. The OT rejected the notion of there being more than one God, and the words of the Shema at Deuteronomy 6:4 proclaimed God as absolute numerical identity. The OT also taught that God was nonphysical, having no parts. In continuity, the NT teaches that God is one.32
Thus, theologians divide analysis of God’s unity into two categories. First is God’s unity of singularity (that there is only one God), and second is his unity of simplicity (that he is not made of parts). The two notions imply each other, and the denial of one is the denial of the other. This divine simplicity is related to his spiritual nature and is connected to his indivisibility. Even though he is simple, or possesses “qualitative oneness,” we can still distinguish between God’s various perfections or attributes because that is how God has revealed himself.34
In conformity to his oneness or simplicity, and wondrous to contemplate, the OT demonstrated that God is also a plurality of persons. Specifically, the Word, the Spirit, and the Wisdom of God were personified and differentiated.35 It is intellectually difficult to hold on to God’s simplicity combined with his multiplicity. Nevertheless, this is Scripture’s teaching. God’s simplicity reminds believers that God’s relationship with his people is fully personal.37
One of the most startling parts of the opening of the NT is the fact of the incarnation. The notion of God’s simplicity helps to explain the complexity of the incarnation. In the NT, built on the OT, God’s simplicity means that there is no division in God, on one hand, and that God is a unity in contrast to multiplicity, on the other.38 For example, John taught that God is spirit, God is light, and God is love (John 4:24; 1 John 1:5; 4:8, 16). John 17:3 described God’s revelation of himself as love and the complete unity between the persons of the Trinity, even in their activity of loving. However, God’s simplicity is not simple!41 As it relates to these passages, God’s simplicity means that he is not one-third spirit and one-third light and then one-third love. God is entirely all three. He is simultaneously all three and not divided. The parts are all essential to him and should not be considered only individually.43
Moving to the next topic, God said at Exodus 3:14, “I AM” or “I AM WHO I AM.” God’s self-existence is denominated in his aseity, meaning that God is not dependent on anything besides his own being—he is independent from the world.45 God is the source of his own being.
A good presentation for God’s aseity follows these lines. First, God owns all things in heaven and on earth, and all that his creatures possess is given to them by God’s hand. Second, God does not owe anything to his creation, nor does he have any needs that are based on the creation.47 All of God’s virtues or perfections (analyzed in the next section) are included in his aseity.
The particular difficulty with God’s aseity is that there are no cognitive or intellectual parallels to it in secular thinking. There have been many attempts to find something similar in competing philosophical or theological systems. Those systems try to find something that is “of itself” or in Greek a se in the sphere of being, of knowing, or of doing, but they all fail. No non-Christian thought has been able to locate those ultimates in a single principle. While God’s aseity is intellectually difficult, such a great God is also our boast. The aseity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gives an ultimate reference in human thinking. He is the equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. The next step is to move toward comprehending the Trinity.
2. Incommunicable and Communicable Attributes
This pattern has been used especially by modern Reformed theologians. Incommunicable attributes are those in which there is no divine sharing and no reflex in human beings, whereas communicable attributes are those in which there is divine sharing and a reflex in human beings. Herman Bavinck placed under the “incommunicable” independence, immutability, eternity, omnipresence, unity, and simplicity. Under the “communicable” he placed spirituality, invisibility, omniscience, wisdom, veracity, goodness, righteousness, holiness, will, omnipotence, perfection, blessedness, and glory. Louis Berkhof made a similar classification.
C. IMMENSITY
God is infinite in relation to space. He is not limited or circumscribed by space; on the contrary, all finite space is dependent upon him. He is, in fact, above space. Scripture clearly teaches God’s immensity (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chron. 2:6; Ps. 113:4–6; 139:7f.; Isa. 66:1; Jer. 23:24; Acts 17:24–28). Due to the spirituality of his nature and our inability to think in spaceless terms, this is a difficult doctrine to apprehend. However, this much is clear: God is both immanent and transcendent, and he is everywhere present in essence as well as in knowledge and power. Whenever and wherever it is present, spiritual substance, like the soul, is a complete whole at every point.
God’s transcendence of all spatial limitations and locations
GOD AS IPSUM ESSE SUBSISTENS
Thomas Aquinas is well known for his insistence upon God’s identity with his act of being: “being must be the essence or nature of God.” Indeed, Thomas insists that it is this identity with being that most fundamentally distinguishes God and sets him apart from all other beings. Contrary to creatures, which are individuated by their bits of matter or respective essences and not by their acts of existence, God is individuated by his esse and not by some principle of reception or contraction as in the case of composite beings: “God’s being is individualised and distinct from every other being by the very fact that it is self-subsistent being, and is not something additional to a nature that is distinct from its being. Now every other being that is not subsistent must be individualised by the nature and essence that subsists in that being: and of such beings it is true that the being of A is distinct from the being of B by the fact that it is the being of another nature.” The self-subsistent and non-contracted manner of God’s esse is what supplies the “difference” that in all finite existents is supplied by their respective essences. Thomas accordingly declares, “Now God is act both pure and primary.” This rather grandiose claim that God is primarily distinguished by his identity with being (or act) is also endorsed by Herman Bavinck in a striking passage:
God is the real, the true being, the fullness of being, the sum total of all reality and perfection, the totality of being, from which all other being owes its existence. He is an immeasurable and unbounded ocean of being; the absolute being who alone has being in himself. Now, this description of God’s being deserves preference over that of personality, love, fatherhood, and so forth, because it encompasses all of God’s attributes in an absolute sense. In other words, by this description, God is recognized and confirmed as God in all his perfections.
Impressive as these assertions are, we are still faced with the challenge of explaining them. Critics of this Thomistic tendency to identify God as ipsum esse subsistens find such an identification to be philosophically absurd as well as uninformative and uninteresting. After all, Thomas himself admits that “being” is the most common of features as it is found without exception in every single existent. How could this possibly serve to meaningfully identify God and set him apart from all other beings? Furthermore, is it even coherent to speak of esse as self-subsistent?
Anthony Kenny faults Thomas’s depiction of God as ipsum esse precisely because esse appears too universal to meaningfully identify God. He points to Thomas’s affirmation of the commonness of being in De potentia 7.2 when arguing for God as the proper cause of being: “different causes having different natures and forms must needs have their respective different proper effects: so that if they have one effect in common, this is not the proper effect of any one of them, but of some higher cause by whose virtue they act … Now all created causes have one common effect which is being.” In the context Thomas’s point is that one common effect, such as the being, which is found in all existents, cannot have multiple proper causes; each effect has only one proper cause that produces its effects in similarity to its own nature. Kenny’s criticism, though, disregards Thomas’s greater point about effects and their proper causes and focuses instead on the fact of being’s commonness. He concludes that inasmuch as being seems to be the common attribute possessed by anything with substantial or accidental form it “seems to be the thinnest possible kind of predicate; to be, so understood, is to have that attribute which is common to mice and men, dust and angels.” He adds, “This attribute, being common to every substance, could hardly constitute the particular essence of any subject.” It would appear nothing so common could meaningfully differentiate one thing from another, much less God from creatures.38
Kenny further argues that naming God as ipsum esse seems very much like a failure to predicate anything at all. This follows from his assumption that existence is not a first-level predicate or concept, but a second-level concept. Thus, it always points to the factuality (or isness) of some thing’s quiddity. The whatness is the first-level concept and the thatness, signified by “is,” belongs to second-level predications. For this reason, identifying God as “He who is” or “He is” just seems to be an incomplete sentence. Kenny would ask, “He who is what?” Without some addition to the affirmation of being the predication remains nonsensical. Thomas’s attempt to make God’s esse a meaningful concept is logically and linguistically misguided, according to Kenny. “Aquinas,” he tells us, “in order to prevent God’s esse from being the applicability of a quite uninformative predicate, turns it into the applicability of a predicate which is no predicate at all.” Whenever we say that something “is F” we simply intend to indicate that it is specified in some particular way. But Thomas, in saying simply that “God is,” does not at all mean to say that he is a kind of thing. But without the specification of some particular kind, Kenny wonders how “God is” can possibly be a meaningful sentence, much less the name of God. “So interpreted,” he opines, “the incommunicable name [He who is] seems to be just an ill-formed formula.”42 Underlying Kenny’s objection, as will be noted below, is his commitment to a univocal notion of being as predicated in the same way of anything whatsoever.
Yet another difficulty that Kenny has with identifying God as ipsum esse subsistens is that it appears to be applied to God both concretely and abstractly: “God does not just be, he is being.” He is aware that Thomas affirms this somewhat enigmatic notion in order to uphold the denial that God possesses any accidents. But it seems that identifying God with esse abstractly, far from distinguishing God from the world, makes him almost totally unidentifiable. Indeed, it seems to suggest that God is the most universal of the Platonic ideas. Kenny remarks, “What all men call ‘God’, on this account, is the Platonic idea of Being.” But this “idea” must surely hold true for all substances. Thus to identify God with being abstractly is “at best uninformative and at worst unintelligible.”46
The challenges issued by Kenny (and echoed by Christopher Hughes) against the real identity of God’s essence with his act of existence can be met with a number of considerations. First, we should not lose sight of the fact that Thomas derives this conclusion that God is ipsum esse subsistens from the affirmation that God is entirely identical with that by which he exists; that is, that God is his own ontological sufficient condition. Indispensible to this existential self-sufficiency is the affirmation that God is pure act (actus purus), for only if God is pure act (i.e., without passive potency) can it truly be said that his existence is uncaused and unreceived. From this we may readily conclude that “to be” is not predicated of God in exactly the same way as it is of the creature.
Kenny and Hughes tend to speak of esse as though it were exactly the same in everything to which it is attributed. They simply take esse to be “an on/off property” that a thing either has or does not have. Inasmuch as esse in creatures always points to the existence of some particular essence or differentia, they reason, it must function in exactly that same way for God. If “to be” did not refer to some additional principle of differentiation then God would not be this or that. But, of course, this is precisely what the doctrine of God’s simplicity maintains. Rudi te Velde explains: “God is not a particular being among others, not even the highest one: He is his being. One cannot speak of God as if He were ‘this’ but not ‘that’ … God is not one amidst others, particularized within the common space of being, but He is ‘being itself’ (ipsum esse). The way of simplicitas leads ultimately to the identity in God of essence and being.” Undoubtedly, this is where Kenny and Hughes break with Thomas. For them, God is one being among others, whereas for Thomas God is the cause of being and so cannot be counted among those beings in general. He is existentially distinguished from all other existents not by this or that, but by the fact that in him existence is self-subsistent and is not something received and marked off by an essence.
Given that God is pure act it follows that denominating him “ipsum esse” must carry a different sense than when we speak of ipsum esse generally, that is, of esse commune. The difference between the “being itself” that is God and the “being itself” that is the general being common to all non-divine things is that God’s esse is a self-subsistent act of existence while the esse commonly attributed to creatures does not subsist in itself. God is not abstract being, “but being that is fully determinate in itself and subsistent, and from which all other things derive their being. As ipsum esse per se subsistens, God is formally determined as the cause of all beings.” And as the cause of being God cannot be an instance of esse commune unless he is existentially self-caused, which is impossible.
This twofold sense of esse (divine and creaturely) also allows us to deny that ipsum esse is too abstract to be identical with God. Indeed, insofar as esse commune is considered as ipsum esse it must be in an abstract sense since there is no such thing as esse commune per se subsistens. In non-divine things it is a principle by which complete created substances are said to be; but as an intrinsic principle of the subsisting creaturely being (ens) it does not subsist in itself. In God, though, esse is not a principle in the proper sense, but is simply the Godhead itself considered as its own sufficient reason for existing. Te Velde emphasizes that in God ispum esse “is not abstract, but most concrete and fully determined; God is not merely being without essence but being that has fully and completely ‘essentialized,’ and, as such, God possesses the whole infinite fullness of being.” God’s esse is not like the abstract simple esse of composite entities, which is only actualized in composition with an essence really distinct from it. Rather, God is the personal, self-subsistent simple esse because of the real identity of his essence with his existence. Te Velde clarifies this non-abstract notion of ipsum esse:
This impression of abstractness, with its connotations of being inert, static, and lifeless, may be partly due to the fact that the received picture of Thomas’s conception of God is particularly dominated by the doctrine of divine simplicity without taking sufficiently into account how the idea of simplicity is intrinsically qualified by the idea of perfection and subsistence. What Thomas tries to think by means of the formula ipsum esse per se subsistens is, in fact, the most concrete; not concreteness as a result of the fact that a simple form is received into something else, a material substrate, but the full concretio of being itself which is, as it were, “individualized” and distinguished from everything else by the fact that it subsists through itself.
Finally, in addition to the twofold sense of esse and the non-abstractness of God as ipsum esse, it should be observed that God is identified as ipsum esse subsistens because he is the proper cause of being in general; being is his proper effect. This is the very point that Thomas makes in De potentia 7.2 and that Kenny virtually ignores in his consideration of that passage. The underlying maxim is that all effects preexist eminently in their proper causes. Rather than posing a problem for the ipsum esse subsistens doctrine, though, the commonness of being among creatures actually demands just such a conception of God insofar as he is the first efficient cause of all creaturely existence.
It is observed in De potentia 7.2 that as one agent causes this to be, another agent causes that to be and their common effect is being while their proper effects differ as this from that. But, this multitude of improper causes does not sufficiently explain the common effect of being because no effect can have more than one proper cause. Thomas concludes, then, that there must be some “higher cause” back of the various proximate causes to which being belongs as its proper effect. Moreover, the nature or essence of this proper efficient cause of esse must itself be esse inasmuch as any agent’s proper effect is always a likeness or reproduction of its own nature: “Now the proper effect of any cause proceeds therefrom in likeness to its nature.” Thomas clearly expresses this point when he states, “it belongs to the nature of action that an agent produce its like, since each thing acts according as it is in act. The form of an effect, therefore, is certainly found in some measure in a transcending cause, but according to another mode and another way.”57 Thus, for Aquinas, every agent must actually be the form of the effects it causes to exist; every cause produces something that in some way is like itself. This raises the question posed by John Wippel: “How does [Thomas] justify this?”
The key to Thomas’s claim that causes produce only things in their own likeness is his insistence that agents act only as they themselves are in act. No agent can produce an effect without being in act itself. “Moreover,” Wippel explains, “it seems evident that if an agent is to communicate something to an effect, it must actually have or at least virtually possess what it is to communicate to its effect.” Importantly, he adds, “It is clear that Thomas is here thinking of principle agents, not of purely instrumental ones.”60 In sum, then, an efficient cause cannot give a form to an effect that it does not itself possess in some actual way. Now, non-divine agents only cause the esse in their various effects insofar as they are the instrumental causes of those things; but God causes all esse as the principle cause and so is himself esse in a manner transcendent to the esse of his effects.
All told, the notion of God as ipsum esse subsistens follows negatively from the denial of any real esse-essentia distinction in him and positively from the affirmation that, lacking all passive potency, he is pure act. This identity of God is entailed in the DDS and serves to distinguish the absoluteness of God’s existence from the contingent existence of all composite and non-divine things. It remains, then, to consider more specifically the difference between being in general and the being of God.
Distinct Orders of Being
Consider, furthermore, that God’s existence and the existence of the world really constitute two entirely different orders of being. Given the radical nature of creation ex nihilo and the uniqueness of God as ipsum esse subsistence it follows that he cannot be categorized as yet another thing in the world. This conclusion represents a fundamental distinction between the ontological outlooks of Thomistic and Reformed adherents to the DDS on the one hand, and the host of modern critics of the doctrine on the other.
It should be observed that the univocal concept of being in which God and creatures are simply different beings within one great ontological order is at the heart of recent “possible worlds” semantics (which predominates among the analytic critics of the DDS) in which a possible world is understood as any maximally consistent state of affairs.78 One adherent to this “possible worlds” ontology, Jay Richards, notes that, “An approximate synonym of a state of affairs that obtains is the usual notion of a fact.”
The danger, of course, is in making “fact,” or the maximal “state of affairs,” something that stands over both God and creatures. What binds God to creation (and even to the rules of modal logic) for many Christian analytic philosophers is that he stands with man under the unifying umbrella of “the maximal state of affairs.” Placing God and creatures together as so many facts within the actual world inevitably tends toward ontological univocism. Gone is the ancient concern to sharply differentiate between God and creatures at the level of existence; rather, all existence has been brought under a single notion of “being” redubbed “reality,” “fact,” “the actual world,” or “the maximal state of affairs.” In this scheme God and man are now simply two facts within the one domain of being.
But the DDS does not insist upon distinguishing the absolute existence of God from the contingent existence of the world itself by suggesting that God’s absoluteness and the creature’s contingency are two ends or terms upon a single ontological continuum. Instead, the entire range of being that we call the “world” is a spectrum of caused and participated being that is related to God both by its likeness to him and by its ontological dependence upon him. It is existentially ordered to him, but he is not existentially ordered to it.81 As caused, non-divine existence is not a mere extension of God’s being and does not add additional being to him. In a penetrating passage, Etienne Gilson explains why the existence of the world in no way adds to or determines the existence of God:
It may be asked how creatures can be derived from God without either being confused with Him or added to Him. The solution of this problem brings us again to the problem of analogy … The creature is not what he possesses. God is what He possesses. He is His act-of-being, His goodness, His perfection. This is why creatures, even though they derive their act-of-being from that of God Himself, since He is Esse in its absolute sense, possess it nevertheless in a deficient manner which keeps them infinitely distant from the Creator. A mere analogue of the divine being, created being can neither constitute an integral part of the divine being, nor be added to it, nor subtracted from it. Between two magnitudes not of the same order, there is no common measure.
God’s absolute simplicity is central to Gilson’s argument and he is certainly correct to stress not the duality of being within a single order but the duality of entire orders of being. This “duality” ensures the Creator-creature distinction at the existential level and helpfully qualifies the nature of creaturely participation in God’s existence.
Real Identity in God of Knower, Knowing, and Known
In order to understand how the DDS secures the absoluteness of God’s knowledge it is first crucial that we explicate the impact of the actus purus conception of God (see the relevant discussion in chapter 4 above) upon any explanation of his understanding. Thomas Aquinas argues that if God and his object of knowledge are not identical then God cannot be pure act since his knowledge would be informed by something other than himself. This would logically require some intellectual movement in God from the state of “could know” (a state of passive potency) to that of “does know” (a state of actuality). This would hold whether we refer to God’s knowledge of himself or his knowledge of non-divine things. But if God is pure act then there can be no real distinction in him between knower (subject), knowing (act), and known (object). Thomas writes:
Since therefore God has nothing in Him of potentiality, but is pure act, His intellect and its object are altogether the same; so that He neither is without the intelligible species, as is the case with our intellect when it understands potentially; nor does the intelligible species differ from the substance of the divine intellect, as it differs in our intellect when it understands actually; but the intelligible species itself is the divine intellect itself, and thus God understands Himself through Himself.
The key element in Thomas’s argument is the denial of real distinction between God’s intellect and the “intelligible species” by which he knows himself and all things. Without digressing into an extended discussion of Thomas’s philosophy of mind, his distinction between the human subject’s intellect, act of knowing, and object of knowledge should be noted. When Socrates, for instance, knows himself to be a human there is a real distinction between Socrates as the subject and that intelligible species, “humanity,” by which he knows himself to be human. Socrates is not identical with humanity (i.e., there is a real distinction in him between supposit and nature). As a concrete human Socrates stands outside of that humanity by which he knows himself to be human. His self-knowledge is accordingly discursive and derived from the form of humanity that impresses itself upon his intellect. In short, his intellect is in-formed because the form by which it knows comes to him from without. This holds, according to Thomas, for everything that the human knows, both for self-knowledge and the knowledge of other things. Accordingly, no human intellect can be described as pure act since it is always moved from potency to act by the informing power of some intelligible species with which it is not identical.
Inasmuch as there is no real distinction in God between supposit and nature there is no reason to suppose that his self-knowledge is possessed by way of in-formation or discursive reasoning. God is the divinity by which he is divine and thus knows himself by himself. This self-knowledge, furthermore, is not an act of self-impressed knowledge by way of self-representation. That is, God does not cause himself to know himself. Rather, he just is that act of knowledge by which he knows himself. Consider Thomas’s explanation:
It must be said that the act of God’s intellect is His substance. For if His act of understanding were other than His substance, then something else … would be the act and perfection of the divine substance, to which the divine substance would be related, as potentiality is to act, which is altogether impossible; because the act of understanding is the perfection and act of the one [who is] understanding. Let us now consider how this is … [T]o understand is not an act passing to anything extrinsic; for it remains in the operator as his own act and perfection; as existence is the perfection of the one existing: just as existence follows on the form, so in like manner to understand follows on the intelligible species. Now in God there is no form which is something other than His existence, as shown above [ST I.3.4]. Hence as His essence itself is also His intelligible species, it necessarily follows that His act of understanding must be His essence and His existence.
This is a challenging yet significant passage. Thomas’s point depends upon his understanding of the proportionality between the intellectual and existential orders. As God’s essence cannot be further perfected by the reception of accidental forms, so his intellect cannot be further perfected or enriched by the reception of intelligible species or forms with which he is not identical. Garrigou-Lagrange points out, “This means that, just as God’s essence does not differ from His existence, so His intelligible essence does not differ from His act of understanding.” Just as God is wholly undetermined and independent in his existence, so his knowledge is wholly undetermined and unreceptive of any intelligible species by which it may be enriched (i.e., perfected) and informed.7 Whereas humans know themselves by way of information, God does not. He is wholly identical both with his intelligible nature and the intellectual act by which he knows his nature.
While many may acknowledge that the identity between knower and known in God is useful for explaining the superiority of his self-knowledge over the human’s discursive mode of self-knowledge, it is less clear how there can be a real identity between God and the object of his knowledge when that object is anything non-divine. How can God be that by which he knows creatures? Surely, the divine essence cannot be the intelligible species by which God knows non-divine things. Yet this is precisely what must be affirmed if God’s knowledge is to be regarded as simple, most absolute, and independent of the creature. God does not stand in the same relation to known objects outside himself as humans do. While human knowledge is always informed by some intelligible species really distinct from the individual, God’s knowledge moves, as it were, in exactly the opposite direction. His knowledge informs creatures rather than being informed by them. In this sense created beings are never the primary object of God’s knowledge if by “object” we mean “the specifying term of knowledge.” Rather than his knowledge being specified by creatures, creatures are themselves specified by his knowledge.10 God knows these non-divine things in knowing himself and inasmuch as he is identical with his act of self-knowledge he is identical with that act by which he knows all creatures, both actual and possible. This knowledge of creatures through himself has been explained as God knowing the imitability, or participability, of his essence.
What are attributes in relation to God?
The two aspects of theology
The Christian doctrine of God contains two distinct, though obviously related, aspects. The first of these is concerned to answer the question: what is God like? The second answers the question: who is God? To put it a different way, the first aspect deals with God’s nature. At this level, it is generally recognized that God is one Being, totally different in every way from anything he has created. It is therefore a study in contrasts, which has to overcome the problem of finding a way to describe a being who is literally indescribable, because his nature surpasses anything of which we have direct experience.
The second aspect concentrates on his personal identity. In sharp distinction from the first, it insists that God is not one person but three. It also emphasizes the fact that although God’s nature is so different from ours, he nevertheless can, and wants, to enter into a relationship with us. This is made possible by what we call ‘personhood’, which is a characteristic of God that he has shared with us.
The present chapter is concerned with the first of these aspects. It asks what it means to call God a ‘being’, and discusses how we can claim to know and describe something which is completely different from us. It then goes on to look at the so-called ‘proofs’ for the existence of God. Most of these were devised by theologians as a means of demonstrating that Christian belief is rational and in tune with other branches of science. They have been frequently criticized, but their value as supporting evidence, if not as ‘proofs’ for God’s existence, should not be underestimated.
The chapter then goes on to discuss the validity of analogy, a device which involves using one word to mean something else in a different context, but which preserves an essential conceptual link with its original point of reference. From there, it looks at the meaning of the different attributes (characteristics) of God, all of which are basically analogies, before considering the challenges to this way of thinking which have been presented by modern theologians. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of what we can learn from this so-called ‘natural’ theology, and reviews the reasons why it is inadequate as a statement of the Christian doctrine of God.
What is our justification for knowing God?
How do we relate God to Creation?
How do we rightly speak about God then?
Attributes Contrasted with Time
Independence, Imperishability, Immortality
25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
28 The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before you.
58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
Independence- God, Independence of A reference to the fact that God does not need anything outside himself for his existence.
39 “ ‘See now that I, even I, am he,
and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
40 For I lift up my hand to heaven
and swear, As I live forever,
41 if I sharpen my flashing sword
and my hand takes hold on judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
and will repay those who hate me.
Imperishability-
Immortality-
Immortality The condition of being able to live forever.
Attributes Contrasted with Space
Infinity, Incomprehensibility
Infinity
INFINITY—INFINITUDE. In Greek philosophy infinitude was generally not valued, as it was associated with indeterminacy. Finitude, and thus limitedness, was associated with the idea of order and perfection. This conception, which has its roots in Pythagoreanism, Parmenides and Plato (whereas a more positive idea of infinitude was held by Anaximander, Anaxagoras, the atomists and Epicurus), found its paradigmatic expression in Aristotle, acc. to whom nothing which has no limit (peras) is perfect, and the limit is the end (telos). According to Aristotle, there can exist nothing actually infinite, but only potentially. According to Philo, on the contrary, God is infinite, and this notion, which is related to the biblical idea of the omnipotence of God, was taken up esp. by *Origen and by Gregory of Nyssa. But their positive concept of infinitude has a precise correspondent in Plotinus and in Neoplatonism, and this is one of the many remarkable correspondences between Origen and Plotinus. For Plotinus, the One is characterized by an infinite power and richness. This is also why, acc. to Plotinus, it is impossible to grasp the One: “It is ridiculous to try to grasp and comprehend [περιλαμβάνειν] what is infinite by nature” (Enn. V 5,6,15). Likewise for Gregory of Nyssa it is impossible to grasp the Godhead because of its infinity.
Gregory is unequivocal in stating that “the Godhead is infinite” (Or. cat. 10). Infinitude is the mark and peculiarity of God vis-à-vis all creatures, both intelligible and sense-perceptible; God is the only being who is uncreated, and therefore also the only being who is infinite (C. Eun. III, vi, p. 209,19–21; iii, pp. 107–108; i, pp. 105–106). In his sixth homily on the Song of Songs, p. 174, however, infinitude is ascribed to “the intelligible and immaterial substance” as opposed to the sense-perceptible and material one, which is “included within given limits.”
God’s infinity, acc. to Gregory, is characterized by an infinite extension in time and by the immutability and infinity of the various traits that we humans ascribe to God. God’s infinitude is made possible by the absence of a principle that is equal and opposite to God, a feature that is typical of dualistic systems like *Manicheism. Such a principle would constitute a limitation of God. Once again, this concept is very close to that of Plotinus, who describes the One as lacking every dimension and number, in that it precedes numbers and is endowed with an infinite power (Enn. VI 9,6,10; V 5,10,19–23;11,1–4). Plotinus explains, like Gregory afterward, that the infinity of the One’s power derives from the absence of any other equal principle which could limit it. These details are very close to those offered by Gregory of Nyssa (C. Eun. I 231–236). Gregory also develops the notion of God’s temporal infinitude, or better of God’s transcendence in respect to time, which is a διάστημα, i.e., a dimension, typical only of creatures (C. Eun. I 362–364). The Creator is eternal and never had origins, unlike creatures. Similarly, Plotinus maintained that time pertains to the world soul, whereas the One and the Nous transcend time (Enn. III 7,3–4). The temporal infinity of God, or better God’s transcending time, was already maintained by Origen (Princ. IV 4,1: only the Trinity transcends every χρόνοι and every αἰών, whereas all the rest is measured against time and duration).
There is a close relationship between the idea of the infinitude of God and apophaticism. The Godhead, insofar as it is infinite, escapes every definition and delimitation, and every discursive knowledge which proceeds through definitions. Indeed, for Gregory, God’s infinitude implies God’s incomprehensibility, as the divine exceeds the limits of human intellect (C. Eun. I 364,369,373) and can be grasped only through faith (ibid., I 371).
This concept was already present in Origen and even in Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V 12,81–82). Apophaticism is ultimately grounded in God’s infinity and indeterminacy; for it is impossible for humans to apply any ὅρος, any limit or definition, to God. As Gregory explains in Ad Ablabium, God’s nature is impossible to define and comprehend (ἀόριστον, ἀπερίληπτον), as its infinitude (ἀπειρία) eludes every definition and delimitation. Likewise, commenting on the Song of Songs, Gregory affirms that God’s infinite nature (ἀόριστον) cannot be encompassed in the meaning of a name. All good that may be conceived about it resolves itself into infinity and indeterminacy; it remains indeterminate in the good and has no limit in itself.
Gregory’s own conception of ἐπέκτασις entirely depends on the notion of God as infinite. Every soul is destined to elevation and infinite development, by always increasingly participating in divine Good (De An. 105AD), because the Good, who is God, “proceeds toward infinity” (ibid., 97A). This idea is also stressed in the fifth homily on the Song of Songs. God is the Good, and nothing can limit it, as evil is limited itself; as a consequence, the soul who participates in this Good experiences an infinite progression. The eighth homily is entirely focused on the theme of ἐπέκτασις as an infinite growth of the soul toward God’s infinite nature, which remains always further and ungraspable.
Hilary of Poitiers, who was deeply influenced by Origen, in his Trin. presents God as infinite in space, time and power, basing himself on Ex 3:14; Is 40:12; and Is 66:1–2. Hilary speaks of an infinitas potens of God. As for Origen himself, he surely considered at least God’s wisdom to be infinite (ἀπέραντος). Even if one remains skeptical concerning two passages, Sel. in Ps. 144 (PG 12,1673) and Fr. in Ps. 70,14 and 138,7, at least another passage is surely authentic: C. Cels. III 77, in which Origen describes God as infinite and unlimited (τῷ ἀπείρω). In De Or. 27,16 God is said to be ἐξ ἀπείρων ἐπʼ ἄπειρον. This also makes the authenticity of Sel. in Ps. 144 more likely, where it is declared that “there is no limit to God’s greatness” (οὐκ ἔστι πέρας τῆς μεγαλοσύνης αὐτοῦ) and God’s providence extends ἐξ ἀπείρου έπʼ ἄπειρον. Gregory of Nyssa will echo this in his Antirrh. adv. Apol. GNO III/1,156: “The greatness of God’s power extends up to infinity”; in C. Eun. III 3,68: “the infinity of divine power”; and Ep. 3,20: “The power of the divinity is something infinite and impossible to measure.”
It is on the basis of God’s infinitude that it was possible to support the thesis of the ontological priority of the Good over evil. This is particularly clear in Gregory of Nyssa. In Vit. Mos. 5,5 he can affirm that virtue has no limit “because all that is good, by its very nature, has no limit.” Gregory argues on the basis of the infinitude of God-Good and the finitude of evil that it will be impossible for any creature to advance in evil or remain in evil forever; for evil is limited, and once one has reached its utmost depth, one cannot but return back again to the Good, which is unlimited and has no end, because the Good is God. Moreover, since evil is pure negativity, it will not exsist forever, but will disappear, acc. to its own nature, which is nonexistence. For evil is no creature of God, but only the result of an error, of a bad choice of the free will of rational creatures. In De hom. op. 21, Gregory opposes the immutability (τὸ ἀμετάθετον) of God’s will, which is always in the Good, to the mutability (τὸ τρεπτόν) of human will, which cannot stably remain in evil forever. He argues that, since evil is limited, an infinite progression in evil is impossible: “Therefore, after the utmost culmination of evil, there comes again the Good … even though we had crossed the boundary of evilness and had arrived at the apex of the shadow of sin, we shall return again to living in the light.” A variant of this argument, based on the (very Origenian) notion of κόρος is expounded by Gregory of Nyssa in De mortuis (esp. in § 19 Lozza). That human will may persist in evil forever is impossible, in that the desire for evil generates κόρος. Only the desire for the Good can endure eternally, because it produces satisfaction and contentment rather than κόρος.
God’s infinity was held by Gregory of Nazianzus as well (Or. 6,22; 38,7). He ascribes to God infinity in time (Or. 38,7–8), but this is only an aspect of God’s general infinity. He too argues on the basis of Ex 3:14, and assimilates God to “an ocean of Being, infinite and unlimited.” Gregory of Nazianzus also grounds apophaticism in the conception of God as infinite, and thus ungraspable (e.g., in Or. 38,7).
The notion of the soul’s love for God as an infinite progression is taken up by John Climacus, who in his Ladder 30,197–201 defines love as “an eternal progression.”
E. Mühlenberg, Die Unendlichkeit Gottes bei Gregor von Nyssa, Göttingen 1966; T. Boehm, Theoria—Unendlichkeit—Aufstieg, Leiden 1996; C. Apostolopoulos, Aoriston, Platon 51 (1999–2000) 109–188; I. Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa Sull’anima e la resurrezione, Milan 2007; Id., Apofatismo cristiano e relativismo pagano: un confronto tra filosofi platonici, in Verità e mistero fra tradizione greco romana e multiculturalismo tardo antico, ed. A.M. Mazzanti, Bologna 2009, 101–169.
God, Infinity of God’s greatness of nature that has no limits and cannot be limited.
INFINITY
As with God’s aseity and unity, the DDS is also integral to the traditional Christian explanation of God’s infinity.27 Divine infinity is often articulated negatively as the opposite of finitude and positively as God’s plentitude of being and nature. Etienne Gilson locates finitude in the “metaphysical composition of categorical being,” and Benignus Gerrity explains it in terms of the mutual contraction of a creature’s parts: “whatever is limited, is limited by virtue of the limitations imposed upon it by the subject in which it is; thus all forms of corporeal being are limited because they are received in matter, and even immaterial forms are limited if they are received in a limited subject; as for example, intelligence and freedom, though unlimited essentially, are limited in man.”29
Thomas notes, “everything that according to its nature is finite is determined to the nature of some genus.” We are prohibited from saying that a subject found in a genus is infinite inasmuch as it is the nature of a genus to lack the perfections unique to other genera; no one genus contains the perfections of every other genus. Putting it in broader terms, Thomas explains that everything composed of act and potency is inherently terminated or limited in its perfection: “[E]very act inhering in another is terminated by that in which it inheres, since what is in another is in it according to the mode of the receiver … [A]n act is all the more perfect by as much as it has less of potency mixed with it. Hence, every act with which potency is mixed is terminated in its perfection.”
Creaturely finitude can be construed in just as many ways as creaturely composition can. A corporeal entity’s form, for instance, is limited by matter and its prime matter is always contracted by some substantial form. A thing’s genus reduces it to a certain class of being so that it cannot exemplify the properties unique to other genera. Accidents are limited by the substances in which they inhere (for example, although the form of intelligence is potentially infinite in itself, it is always limited by the subject possessing it). Most importantly, a creature’s act of existence (esse) is limited by its essence since contraction to a particular essence restricts it from functioning as the act of existence for any other being. It is the varieties of metaphysical composition that account for the finitude of non-divine things and stand in sharp contrast to the ontological conditions necessary for divine infinity.
If God’s infinity is to be conceived as positive perfection it must be differentiated from the older Greek concept of infinity as imperfection or incompleteness. Indeed, many Christian theologians have derived the biblical motivation for divine infinity from passages that teach God’s immeasurable greatness. Infinity conceived as the limitlessness of God’s perfection does not denote that God is ever in potency toward a further intensification of being, but rather that he eternally subsists as the fullness of being and perfection in himself. It is only when infinity is applied to the categories of finite and composite being that it is conceived as passive potency, openness, and incompleteness.
Maurice Holloway observes that God’s infinity follows from his pure actuality: “since God’s being is completely in act, there can be nothing potential or limiting within it.” Infinity is the negative way of expressing God’s perfection and indicates that “there is no limit or term to his Being.”38 Consequently, God cannot be composed of parts since discreet parts, whether physical or metaphysical, necessarily delimit one another. Any act that is received (whether this act is understood as matter, form, nature, species, accident, existence, or whatever else may function as an act) is limited, contracted, or shaped, as it were, by its receiving principle or subject. But such limitation is wholly absent in one whose act of being is not received in any way, as Thomas indicates: “an act that exists in nothing is terminated by nothing … But God is act in no way existing in another, for neither is He a form in matter, as we have proved, nor does His being inhere in some form or nature, since He is His own being … It remains, then, that God is infinite.” God’s existence in nothing is a crucial notion for understanding his existence and essence as positively and absolutely infinite, for existence in something—form contracted by matter or existence bounded by essence—would mean that God is intrinsically limited and finite.
Aquinas enhances the strength of this position through a discussion of the relative infinity of non-divine self-subsistent forms: “If, however, any created forms are not received into matter, but are self-subsisting, as some think is the case with angels, these will be relatively infinite, inasmuch as such kinds of forms are not terminated, nor contracted by any matter. But because a created form thus subsisting has being, and yet is not its own being, it follows that its being is received and contracted to a determinate nature. Hence it cannot be absolutely infinite.” All non-divine self-subsisting forms fall short of absolute infinity because that which is most formal in them, existence, is contracted by essence and is not self-subsistent that is, no creature is subsistent being itself even though spiritual natures may be self-subsistent forms. Thomas explains: “Now being is the most formal of all things, as appears from what is shown above [ST I.4.3, obj. 3]. Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being as was shown above [in ST I.3.4], it is clear that God Himself is infinite and perfect.” As God is identical with his own act of being, per the DDS, he is identical with that which is most formal in him. He is not only self-subsistent form, but also subsistent being itself (ipsum esse subsistens) and this ensures that his infinity is absolute while the infinity of other self-subsistent forms is only relative. Holloway summarizes the argument: “Now that which is most ‘formal’ in a thing is its act of existing. Not in the sense that ‘to be’ is a form, but in the sense that everything in a being is related to the act of existing as potency to act, and that existence itself cannot receive anything. Existence says simply act and in no sense potency. Now the ‘To Be’ of God is not received in anything. God is subsistent Being. And unreceived Being is simply infinite.”
The DDS teaches that there is no metaphysical space, as it were, between God and his act of existence. It follows, then, that since subsistent existence is unlimited and non-contracted, the absolute infinity of God is ontologically explained by his absolute simplicity. Though the doctrine of divine infinity may give rise to the contemplation of simplicity in the order of theological discovery, it seems to be simplicity that provides the ontological conditions for God’s absolutely infinite mode of life and perfection and sets it apart from all relatively infinite creaturely forms.43
