Creation

Subsections

How Long God took in Creating
Of Angels
Evolution
Bible Chronology
Geocentrism & Heliocentrism
Contra Flat Earth
Reformed vs. Aquinas

Order of Contents

Articles 30+
Historical 1
Latin 5+

Could have not Created 4
Creator 5
None can Create but God 3
Act of the Godhead 2
From Nothing 4
God did Not Change by Creating 3
Time & Space began with Creation 2
How Creation occured 1
Devotional 1

Purpose of Creation 5
Communicable Attributes & Participation 16+
Union to God by Creation 2
Mediate Creation after Day 1?
How Creation Groans 1
Conservation 6+
Create a Better World? 2
Infinite Universe? 4
Eternally Existent Universe? 2
Multiple Worlds? 2
Men before Adam? 1

Articles

See also ‘Commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed’ on ‘Maker of heaven and earth’.

Anthology of the Post-Reformation

Heppe, Heinrich – ch. 9, ‘Creation’ in Reformed Dogmatics ed. Ernst Bizer, tr. G.T. Thomson (1861; Wipf & Stock, 2007), pp. 190-201

Heppe (1820–1879) was a German reformed theologian.

1500’s

Bullinger, Henry – 4^th Sermon, ‘That God is the Creator of All Things & Governs All Things by his Providence; where mention is also made of the goodwill of God to usward, and of predestination’ in The Decades ed. Thomas Harding (1549; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1850), vol. 3, 4^th Decade, pp. 173-94

Melanchthon, Philip – 3. ‘Of the Article that God Created All Other Things’ in Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, Loci Communes, 1555 tr. Clyde L. Manschreck (1555; NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 39-45

Vermigli, Peter Martyr – The Common Places… (d. 1562; London: Henrie Denham et al., 1583)

pt. 1, 13. ‘Of the Creation of All Things’110

‘Of the Creation of Angels, their Sundry Names, Visions, Assuming of Bodies, Office, Dignity, Order & Degrees’ 111
‘Of Man’  121
‘Of the Soul’  121
‘Wherein Consists the Image of God’  123
‘Of Paradise’  125
‘The Long Life of the Fathers’  126
‘Of Giants’  128

Appended: Propositions

‘A Disputation of the Article of Creation’ 144

Musculus, Wolfgang – Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563) See also the AI translation.

‘Creation’ 9.b
‘Creation of Angels’ 10.b
‘Creation of Man’ 11.b

Beza, Theodore – Ch. 2, 2. How the Father is Creator & Preserver of All Things in A Brief & Pithy Sum of the Christian Faith made in Form of a Confession (London, 1565)

Viret, Pierre – A Christian Instruction… (d. 1571; London: Veale, 1573)

The Summary of the Christian Doctrine, set forth in Form of Dialogue & of Catechism

Of the Creation of the World & of the Providence of God

A Familiar Exposition of the Principal Points of the Catechism, and of the Christian Doctrine, made in Form of Dialogue

6th Dialogue: Of the Creation & of the Providence & Predestination of God, & of the Vocation of Man

Of the Work of the Creation
Of Other Works of God that are Conjoined to the Work of the Creation

The Sum of the Principal Points of the Christian Faith

9. Of Man, & of the Creation & Fall of Him by Sin 10-11

Zanchi, Girolamo – Confession of the Christian Religion… (1586; Cambridge, 1599), pp. 21-26 & 277-78

ch. 5, ’Of the Creation of the World, of Angels & of Man’s First Estate’
. On Aphorism 2

Beza, Theodore, Anthony Faius & Students – 12. ‘Of the Creation of All Things & their Division’ in Propositions & Principles of Divinity Propounded & Disputed in the University of Geneva by Certain Students of Divinity there, under Mr. Theodore Beza & Mr. Anthony Faius… (Edinburgh: Waldegrave, 1591), pp. 23-26

Ursinus, Zachary

The Sum of Christian Religion: Delivered… in his Lectures upon the Catechism… tr. Henrie Parrie (d. 1583; Oxford, 1587)

Of Creation

1. Whether the World were Created of God
2. How God made the World
3. For what cause God created the World

Rules & Axions of Certain Chief Points of Christianity in A Collection of Certain Learned Discourses… (Oxford, 1600)

5. Of the Creation of the World
6. Of the Same

Perkins, William

‘The Creation’ in An Exposition of the Symbol, or Apostles’ Creed… (Cambridge, 1595), p. 52 & 58

Perkins (d. 1602) was an influential, puritan, Anglican clergyman and Cambridge theologian.

7. Of Predestination & Creation in A Golden Chain (Cambridge: Legat, 1600)

1600’s

Bucanus, William – 5. ‘Of the World’s Creation’ in Institutions of Christian Religion... (London: Snowdon, 1606), pp. 48-63

What is the signification of this word, ‘to create,’ in the Scriptures?
What is creation?
Prove it by some testimonies
Why is the creation ascribed in the Apostles’ Creed to the Father alone?
What was the moving or impellent cause of the creation of all things?
And when did God begin to create?
But whereof and whence were all things made and produced?
How prove you that?
Can the creation of the world be proved certainly by human reasons?
Now what was created?
How was the creation of the world brought to pass?
What kind of matter was that which God brought forth of nothing in the beginning?
But what was the information or framing of the world?
By what means did God give that matter a form?
Into how many parts is the earth divided?
What is the use and what is the nature of the earth?
What was the adorning of the world?
What are the plants?
To what end were the sun, moon and the stars in heaven created?
Whether can things to come be foreknown and foretold by the stars?
Is it a sound opinion to think that the stars have souls or that they be living creatures?
Why did God place the creation of the stars between the creation of plants and beasts?
What are living creatures?
Whence were living creatures brought forth?
How manifold is the procreation of living creatures?
What is the end and use of fishes and birds?
And what is the use of those living creatures which live upon the earth?
For what cause were those beasts that live upon the earth created the sixth day?
Seeing that it is written, ‘God saw all that He had made and they were exceeding good,’ how comes it to pass that there be hurtful things, as scorpions, venomous serpents, death, sickness and such like?
What is the difference between the producing of the soul of brute beasts and of man?
Have brute beasts the faculty of understanding and reason?
Why is God said to rest the seventh day from all his works?
But whence come those things which have their beginning of putrefaction or which be altogether unprofitable, or are only hurtful, as flies, wasps and such like?
What things are we principally to observe in general in the creation of all things?
Lay open these distinctly
And what is the end of the creation of all things?
But why did not God create the world sooner?
But what did He before He made the world?
What things make against the doctrine of creation?
Is this opinion to be admitted?
Which are the errors of the philosophers?

Alsted, Johann H. – 6. ‘Creation’ in Polemical Theology, exhibiting the Principal Eternal Things of Religion in Navigating Controversies, pt. 2, 4-6 (Partial) tr. by AI by Onku (Hanau, 1620; 1627), pt. 2, 2. A Major catholic Symphony: Theological Common Places, pp. 23-24 Latin

Ames, William – ch. 8, ‘Creation’ in The Marrow of Theology tr. John D. Eusden (1623; Baker, 1997), bk. 1, pp. 100-107

Ames (1576-1633) was an English, puritan, congregationalist, minister, philosopher and controversialist. He spent much time in the Netherlands, and is noted for his involvement in the controversy between the reformed and the Arminians. Voet highly commended Ames’s Marrow for learning theology.

Polyander, Johannes – 10. ‘Concerning the Creation of the World’ in Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text & English Translation Buy (1625; Brill, 2016), vol. 1, pp. 246-60

Wolleb, Johannes – 5. ‘Creation’ in Abridgment of Christian Divinity (1626) in ed. John Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius & F. Turretin (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), bk. 1, pp. 54-58 See also this AI translation.

Wolleb (1589–1629) was a Swiss reformed theologian. He was a student of Amandus Polanus.

Wendelin, Marcus Friedrich – Christian Theology 3rd ed. (1634)

Outline
Doctrine of Creation
Doctrine of the Creation of Angels
Doctrine of the Creation of Men

Wendelin (1584-1652)

Gomarus, Francis – Locus 6, ‘On the Creation of the World’ in Epitome of Theological Common Places (d. 1641; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1653)

Alting, Johann H. – Locus 5, ‘On Creation’ in The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

Maccovius, John – ch. 6, ‘On Creation’ in Scholastic Discourse: Johannes Maccovius (1588-1644) on Theological & Philosophical Distinctions & Rules (1644; Apeldoorn: Instituut voor Reformatieonderzoek, 2009), pp. 143-55

Maccovius (1588–1644) was a reformed, supralapsarian Polish theologian.

Voetius, Gisbert – Select Theological Disputations, vol. 1, pt. 2 tr. by AI by Onku (Utrecht: Johannes a Waesberg, 1648) Latin

On Creation, pt. 1 99
. pt. 2 115
. On the World 122
. pt. 3 137
. pt. 4 153
. Work of the 2nd Day 159
. Work of the 3rd Day 165
. pt. 5 168
. pt. 6 182
. Little Appendix on Inundations 187
. Little Appendix 2, On Islands 189
. Work of the 4th Day 214
. pt. 7 223
. Brief Appendix on the Harmony of the Upper & Lower World 235
. Work of the Fifth Day 239
. pt. 8 247
. Work of the Sixth Day 247
. On Man 258
. pt. 9 270
. pt. 10 288
. Addenda on Creation 313
. Appendix to Disputations on Creation, pt. 1 319
. pt. 2 335
. pt. 3 353
. Consectary 367
. Appendix to Corollaries 368-69

Leigh, Edward – A System or Body of Divinity… (London, A.M., 1654), bk. 3

3. Of the Creation of the Heavens, the Angels, the Elements, Light, Day & Night 233
4. Of Some of the Meteors, but especially of the Clouds, Rain & Sea, the Rivers, Grass, Herbs & Trees 243
5. Of the Sun, Moon & Stars 258
6. Of the Fishes, Fowls, Beasts 261

Hoornbeeck, Johannes – ‘Of Creation’ in Institutes of Theology, gathered out of the Best Authors (Leiden: Moyard, 1658), trans. AI Latin at Confessionally Reformed Theology

Hoornbeek (1617-1666). This systematic largely replaced the Leiden Synopsis (1625) in seminaries in the Netherlands. It is wholly comprised of choice, extended quotes from previous, standard reformed authors.

Macedo, Francisco – 2. ‘Relations of God and the creature to each other’ in Collations of the Teachings of St. Thomas & Scotus, with the Differences between the Two… vol. 1 tr. AI by Vertias (Padua: Frambotti, 1671), bk. 1, Collation 8, pp. 403-10 A more detailed ToC is given at the beginning of the volume.

Rijssen, Leonard – ch. 7, ‘Creation’ in A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary tr. J. Wesley White MTh thesis (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), pp. 66-77

Rijssen (1636?-1700?) was a prominent Dutch reformed minister and theologian, active in theological controversies.

Turretin, Francis – Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 5^th Topic

1. ‘What is creation?’  431
2. ‘Is the ability to create communicable to any creature either principally or instrumentally? We deny.’  433
3. ‘Was the world from eternity, or at least could it have been? We deny.’  436
4. ‘In what season of the year was the world created? In the spring, or in the autumn?’  441
5. ‘Was the world created in a moment, or in six days? And, were the particular works of each of the six days created without motion and succession of time, or did God employ a whole day in the production of each thing?’  444
6. ‘In what order were the works of creation produced by God in the six days?’  446
7. ‘From the use of the luminaries posited by Moses can judiciary astrology be built up? We deny against the astrologers and planetarians.’  452
8. ‘Was Adam the first of mortals, or did men exist before him? And is the epoch of the created world and of men’s deeds to be referred much farther back than Adam? The former we affirm; the latter we deny, against the Preadamites.’  457

van Mastricht, Peter – Theoretical Practical Theology (2nd ed. 1698; RHB), vol. 3, pt. 1, bk. 3

ch. 5, ‘Creation in General’ 101
ch. 6, ‘The World & the Work of the Six Days’ 123-74

Heidegger, Johann H. – 6. ‘On the Creation of the World’ in The Concise Marrow of Theology tr. Casey Carmichael in Classic Reformed Theology, vol. 4 (1697; RHB, 2019), pp. 41-49

1700’s

à Brakel, Wilhelmus – ch. 8, ‘The Creation of the World’ in The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vols. 1 ed. Joel Beeke, trans. Bartel Elshout Buy (1700; RHB, 1992/1999), pp. 265-85

a Brakel (1635-1711) was a contemporary of Voet and Witsius and a major representative of the Dutch Further Reformation.

Holtzfus, Barthold – ‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

Holtzfus (1659-1717) was a German, reformed professor of philosophy and theology at Frankfurt.

De Moor, Bernardinus – ch. 8, ‘On Creation’ in Didactico-Elenctic Theology

Outline
1. From the Internal to the External Works of God
2-3. Term, “Creation”, pt. 1, 2
4. Truth of Creation
5. Definition of Creation
6. Efficient Cause of, pt. 1
7. Efficient Cause of, pt. 2
8. Efficient Cause of, pt. 3
9. Efficient Cause of, pt. 4
10. Formal Cause of, pt. 1
11. Formal Cause of, pt. 2
12. Formal Cause of, pt. 3
13. Material Cause of, pt. 1a
13. Material Cause of, pt. 1b
14. Material Cause of, pt. 2
15. Aptness of
16. Order of
17. End of, pt. 1
18. End of, pt. 2
19. Time of, pt. 1
20. Time of, pt. 2
21. Time of, pt. 3a
21. Time of, pt. 3b
22. Time of, pt. 4
23. Time of, pt. 5a
23. Time of, pt. 5b
24. 1st Day, pt. 1
24. 1st Day, pt. 2
25. 2nd Day, pt. 1
25. 2nd Day, pt. 2
26. 3rd Day, pt. 1
26. 3rd Day, pt. 2
27. 4th Day, pt. 1
27. 4th Day, pt. 2
28. 5th Day, pt. 1
28. 5th Day, pt. 2
29. 6th Day, pt. 1
29. 6th Day, pt. 2
29. 6th Day, pt. 3
29. 6th Day, pt. 4
30. Sabbath Day
31. Effects of Creation
32. Old & New World
33. Unity of the World
34. Finitude of the World
35. Possibility of more worlds
36. A world-soul?

Venema, Herman – 19. Creation in Translation of Hermann Venema’s inedited Institutes of Theology tr. Alexander W. Brown (d. 1787; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850), pp. 335-50

ToC: Defined, Essential Cause: God, Proved by Scripture & Reason, its Economical Cause: Trinity, its Effect, Manner: Interior & Exterior, Mosaic Account, Ends of in Reference to God, Primary & Secondary, Ends in Reference to Creatures

Venema (1697-1787) was a professor at Franeker. Venema “maintained the fundamental line of confessional orthodoxy without drawing heavily on any of the newer philosophies… and maintained a fairly centrist Reformed position. Venema… evidence[s] the inroads of a rationalistic model…” – Richard Muller

1800’s

Alexander, Archibald – 11. ‘Creation’ in God, Creation & Human Rebellion: Lecture Notes of Archibald Alexander from the Hand of Charles Hodge (1818; RBO, 2023), pp. 132-41

Bavinck, Herman – ‘Creation’ from Our Reasonable Faith, excerpts from p. 170-73

Vos, Geerhardus – ch. 6, ‘Creation’ in Reformed Dogmatics tr: Richard Gaffin 1 vol. ed. Buy (1896; Lexham Press, 2020), vol. 1, pp. 166-93

1900’s

Berkhof, Louis – ‘On Creation’ HTML 70 paragraphs in Systematic Theology (1949)

Historical

On the Post-Reformation

Article

Muller, Richard – ‘creatio’ in Dictionary of Latin & Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology 1st ed. (Baker, 1985)

Latin

1600’s

Alsted, Henry – ch. 8, ‘Creation’ in Distinctions through Universal Theology, taken out of the Canon of the Sacred Letters & Classical Theologians (Frankfurt: 1626), pp. 44-47

Wendelin, Marcus Friedrich – ch. 5, ‘Of Creation; where also is of Angels & Men’ in Christian Theology (Hanau, 1634; 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1657), bk. 1, ‘Knowledge of God’, pp. 153-71

Voet, Gisbert

Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 1, tract 3 Abbr.

I. Of Creation & the Works of the Six Days

1. Creation in General
2. The Creature in General
3. The World
4. The Works of the 1st Day

Of Heaven
Appendix of Philosophical Questions
Of the Land
Of the Light of the First Day
Further Philosophical Questions
On Privation [in mostly Philosophical Matters]

5. The Works of the 2nd Day
6. The Works of the 3rd Day

The Land, the Dry Land Especially
Appendix: Questions of Physics & Geography:

On Water
On Floods
On Plants
On Physics
On Fossils
On Hell
On Paradise [Relating to Eden]

7. The Works of the 4th Day

On Stars (Philosophical, More Theological)
On Planets (Physical & Astronomical, including the Sun & Moon)
On the Effects & Consequences of the Stars
On Motion
On Daylight & Light, & Phases or Appearances from there Arising
Of Heat
On Occult Influences
On Time

8. The Works of the 5th Day

On Animals in General
On Fish & Birds

9. The Works of the 6th Day

Of Land Animals
Of Man in General
Of the Body
Of the Spirit
Of the Union of the Soul to the Body
Philosophical Questions:

On the Powers or Faculties of the Soul
On the Intellect, or the Human Mind
On the Conscience
On Appetite in General
On Sensation
Of the Will
Of the Principles of Existance, or of the
. Rise of Man
Of the Generation of Man
Of the Proper Adjuncts & Effects of Man, which they are accustomed to attribute to the account of the soul, the body or the total composite

Select Theological Disputations (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1648 / 1667)

vol. 1

32. ‘Of Creation’, pp. 552-71
33. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 2, pp. 571-97
34. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 3, pp. 597-617
35. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 4, pp. 617-35
36. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 5, pp. 635-52
37. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 6, pp. 652-99
38. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 7, pp. 699-726
39. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 8, pp. 726-54
40. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 9, pp. 754-75
41. ‘Of the Same’, pt. 10, pp. 775-808
42. ‘Of the Same’, Appendix 1, pp. 808-31
43. ‘Of the Same’, App. 2, pp. 831-51
44. ‘Of the Same’, App. 3, pp. 851-69
45. ‘Of the Same’, App. 4, Containing Some Corollaries, pp. 869-82

vol. 4

50. ‘A Syllabus of Questions on the Whole Decalogue’, ‘Of the love of all creatures & specially of the angels’, p. 788

vol. 5

Some Problems on Creation, pt. 1 148
. pt. 2 155
. pt. 3 166
. pt. 4 173
. pt. 5 180
. pt. 6 187
. pt. 7 194
. pt. 8 204
. pt. 9 217
. pt. 10 229

Wettstein, Gernler & Buxtorf – 5. Creation & the State of Creation in A Syllabus of Controversies in Religion which come between the Orthodox Churches & whatever other Adversaries, for material for the regular disputations… customarily held in the theological school of the academy at Basil (Basil, 1662), pp. 16-19

God could have not Created in a certain respect

See also R. Muller on God’s decree taken in a divided or composite sense.

Order of

Quotes 4
Latin 1

Quotes

Order of

Alting
Wendelin
Baxter
Holtzfus

1600’s

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“They are not, however, called ‘works of nature’ as if God works them by nature, seeing that outside Himself He acts not by necessity of nature but by the liberty of His will, Ps. 115:3; Eph. 1:11.
…

The moving cause of God unto creating was not any necessity or indigence, for He is in need of nothing, Acts 17:25, but His most free will, Ps. 115:3, by which He willed to communicate and manifest Himself to creatures, Gen. 1:27, 31, and thereby to be glorified by them, Ps. 8:1; 19:1.”

Marcus Wendelin

System of Theology, bk. 1, ch. 5, thesis 18, expl. 3-4, p. 182-83 in Barthold Holtzfus, Theological Dissertation on the Free Will of Man’, p. 12 trans. AI by Nosferatu (Frankfurt: Zeitler, 1707)

“For neither is a will confirmed in good, nor hardened in evil, so determined to all and every one of its free acts
that it cannot not exercise each one; which is manifest in the state of Integrity and Innocence of the first men, in the state of Sin, in the state of Grace, and in the state of Glory. The same is to be judged of the will of the angels, and many things God does willingly which he could have not done, and the contraries of which he could have done.”

Richard Baxter

The Unreasonableness of Infidelity (London: R.W., 1655), An Advertisement Explicatory, pp. ix-x

“But let us suppose, for I shall not contradict it, that the common determination is right, that God created the world, not necessarily, but freely; not only as freedom is opposite to coaction, and to any extrinsic, imposed necessity, which are unquestionable, but also to an intrinsical necessity, so that his wisdom, and communicative nature, or glory, did not necessitate the creation of the world, but that he so willed to create it, that consideratis considerandis, he might have nilled it, and in this sense did freely create it. I say on this common ground supposed we shall proceed, though I fear such high inquiries myself.”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“Nor is God the univocal cause of the world, but the equivocal; nor necessary and immanent, as Spinoza wishes, Ethics, pt. 1, On God, Proposition 18, p. 19, but free and transient, or better:

Creation, taken actively, is not an immanent, but a transient action, by which God produces things diverse from Himself and confers being upon them, the immediate principle of which action is the practical volition of God, his command and mandate.”

Latin Article

1600’s

Rutherford, Samuel – 8. ‘Whether God exercises providence in all things by necessity of nature or by freedom?’ in A Scholastic Disputation on Divine Providence (Edinburgh, 1649), Metaphysical Inquiries, pp. 561-63

On God as Creator

See also ‘Commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed’ on ‘Maker of heaven and earth’.

Articles

1500’s

Calvin, John – 6. ‘The Need of Scripture as a Guide & Teacher in coming to God as a Creator’ in Institutes of the Christian Religion tr. Beveridge (1559), bk. 1, p. 83 ff.

Beza, Theodore – Ch. 2, 2. How the Father is Creator & Preserver of All Things in A Brief & Pithy Sum of the Christian Faith made in Form of a Confession (London, 1565)

Viret, Pierre – A Christian Instruction… (d. 1571; London: Veale, 1573), The Exposition of the Preface of the Law

Of the creation and fall of the angels, and how that God in the same has declared the difference that is between the Creator and the Creature, and how it is only He that is perfect and unchangeable

Olevian, Caspar – ‘Creator of heaven and earth’ in An Exposition of the Apostle’s Creed (London, 1581), pt. 1

Olevian (1536–1587) was a significant German reformed theologian, and has been said to be a co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism along with Zacharias Ursinus (though this has been questioned).

Ursinus, Zachary – 1^st Part of the Creed, Of God the Father, Creator in The Sum of Christian Religion: Delivered… in his Lectures upon the Catechism… tr. Henrie Parrie (d. 1583; Oxford, 1587)

Latin Articles

Zanchi, Jerome – Of the Nature of God, or of the Divine Attributes, in 5 Books (Heidelberg, 1577), bk. 1

9. Whether that which is predicated of the creatures, all the same may even be able to be predicated of the Creator, & vice-versa?

10. Whether that which is predicated of God, & yet at the same time of the creatures, may be predicated univocally, equivocally, or truly analogically?

Zanchi (1516-1590) was an Italian, protestant Reformation clergyman and educator who influenced the development of Reformed theology during the years following John Calvin’s death.

None can Create but God

Order of

Article 1
Quotes 3

Article

1200’s

Aquina, Thomas – Summa, pt. 1, q. 45, art. 5, ‘Whether it belongs to God alone to Create? [Yes]’

Quotes

Order of

Alting
Spanheim
Holtzfus

1600’s

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Now God is creator alone, acknowledging no associates in this work, Isa. 44:24; Job 9:8. The reason for this is that creation is a work of infinite Divine power, Jer. 32:17, which, as He alone possesses, so He alone also can create—so that Jeremiah rightly pronounces, Jer. 10:10-12:

‘Those gods who have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth. But Jehovah is the true God, the living God, and everlasting King, who made the earth by His power,’ etc.”

Friedrich Spanheim the Elder

Disputationum Theologicarum Miscellaneorum Pars Prima (d. 1649; Geneva: Chouët, 1652), ‘Miscellaneous Theological Disputation’, trans. AI by Roman Prestarri at Confessionally Reformed Theology Latin

“14. Creation is impossible to every creature, and is the act of an infinite being only.

15. Nor is creation capable of an instrument, nor ought Christ to be called its instrument.”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“IX… VII. The [medieval] Scholastics rightly state indeed that God created the world. Some of them, however, following Avicenna, bk. 9, Metaphysics, ch. 4, who thought that in the creation of things there is a golden chain, and that the first intelligence created the second, the second produced the third, and so on down to the last, admitted that the power of creating could be communicated to a creature as a principal cause, such as Durandus, Gabriel Biel, also d’Ailly, de Raconis, Arriaga, Franciscus Bonae Spei.

X. Others rightly deny indeed that the power of creating can be communicated to a creature as a principal cause; yet they affirm that the power of creating can be communicated to the same as a physical instrumental cause; which they assert in favor of the sacraments: such as Suarez, Metaphysical Disputations 20, sect. 5-7; Hurtado de Mendoza, Disputation 12, Physics, sect. 2, n. 62; into which opinion they allege Thomas himself, in pt.1 of 2, quest. 2, art. 3;

With whom, from the Lutherans, Ebelius, Disp. 5, Metaph., Part. Spec. §4, art. 5, and Slevogt, Disp. Acad. 20, which is the third on Creation, are partly in favor.

But more rightly do Scotus and the Scotists teach that a creature can create neither as a principal cause nor as an instrumental one. For:

1. Creation is an action of God alone, as Scripture testifies:

Job 9:8, “Which alone spreads out the heavens.” Isa. 44:24, “I am the Lord that makes all things; that stretches forth the heavens alone; that spreads abroad the earth by myself.”

Whence Paul in Rom. 1:20 demonstrates the true God from creation; which demonstration would not be solid if a creature were or could be the principal or instrumental cause of creation; and God wishes to be distinguished from false gods by this mark, that He made heaven and earth.

Ps. 96:5, “For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens.” Isa. 44:6, “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” v. 9, “They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit,” etc. v. 24 “I am the Lord,” as above. Jer. 10:11 “Thus shall you say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.”

Which a second reason confirms: Omnipotence is required for the work of creation, Isa. 40:26; 42:5, at least with respect to being and nothing, between which there is an infinite distance; which, since it belongs to God alone, so God alone can also create and remove and take away that infinite distance.

3. It is clear from the distinction between the Creator and the creature: for a creature cannot be a creator, because it is and always remains a creature;

4. Whose condition is such that it is finite, and not capable of infinite power, which, however, is required for creation. For creatures are either material, or immersed in matter, or at least in potentiality. That material things cannot create is beyond controversy; things immersed in matter cannot create, because the mode of being in matter does not admit a mode of acting outside of matter, and of producing immaterial things, such as are angels. But these themselves are also subject to potentiality, and have a finite and subjective mode of being by reason of their immanent acts, namely of understanding and willing.

5. The nature of an instrument is added [to the argument, to seek to bolster creatures being able to create, that is, in being instruments of creation from nothing]. For an instrument operates only dispositively and preparatively and requires a subject upon which it acts, being elevated by the principal cause; but in creation no subject pre-exists, upon which and about which the instrument can be occupied.

Furthermore, an instrument has some aptitude and power for producing the effect intended by the principal cause; e.g., a sword, a knife, an axe, a saw, have some proper power of cutting wood and other things; since no creature has such a power from itself and in itself, by which it could concur in producing something from nothing, it cannot even be an instrument of creation from nothing.

6. The argument for the deity of Christ against the Jews, Arians, and Socinians, drawn from the work of creation, would be weakened if a creature could be an instrument of creation.

7. Whence from the fathers: Irenaeus, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Basil, Cyril, Augustine and Damascenus deny that a creature can be an instrument of creation from nothing.

8. Whom from the [Medieval] Scholastics, Hugo, Bonaventure, Aegidius Romanus, Alexander Hales, Thomas, Scotus, Occam, Gabriel: Gregorius de Valentia, Vasquez, Molina, Pererius, Fonseca, Rada, Estius, and Boyvin, Philosophia Scoti, pt. 3, which is pt. 1, Physics, Disp. 2, ch. 3, quest. 2, Concl. 3, pp. 199, 202, etc., follow, in the places cited by Gisbertus Voetius, Select Disputations, vol. 1, disp. 32, §4, p. 556, and Quenstedt, Systema Theologicum, pt. 1, ch. 10, sect. 2, quest. 4, p. 427.”

That Creation was an Act, not of Merely one Divine Person, but of the Whole Godhead, & hence was of All Three Persons by their one Essence & Power

Article

1200’s

Aquina, Thomas – Summa, pt. 1, q. 45, art. 6, ‘Whether to Create is Proper to any [Divine] Person? [No]’

Quote

1600’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“VI…. Hence, God, the Word and the Spirit are joined by David in Ps. 33:6, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth,” which the rule of the theologians confirms: “The outward works of the Godhead are undivided.”

When, however, in the Scriptures and the Creed, Creation is attributed to the Father, this is done not oppositely, but distinctly. For because the Father is the beginning, fount, and origin of the Godhead, the beginning of things is also appositely attributed to Him.

For the Father created the world from Himself through the Son in the Holy Spirit; the Son from the Father in the Spirit; and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Which Basil the Great, in his book On the Holy Spirit, ch. 16, expressed thus:

προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία τῶν γενομένων ὁ πατὴρ, ἡ δημιουργικὴ ὁ υἱὸς, ἡ τελειωτικὴ τὸ πνεῦμα

i.e.: ‘The original cause of things that have come to be is the Father, the fashioning cause is the Son, and the perfecting cause is the Spirit.’

VII. When, however, we teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit created, we do not admit three creators of the world or associate causes of creation. For:

1. In associate causes there is a diversity of causality; if this were admitted, diverse causes and diverse beings would be constituted; but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not create as three diverse principles, but as one principle and one cause.

2. In associate causes there is a partiality and particularity of influx into the effect: whence not only finitude, but also division and diversity of operations appears; whereas on the contrary, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit concur in the work of creation with one and the same power and operation of creating; and so they are not diverse authors or diverse causes, but there is a single author, a single cause, because the operation is undivided.

It is not to be doubted, therefore, that they spoke improperly (ἀκύρως) who called them three authors of creation, as Johannes Crocius testifies in Conversatio Prutenica, pt. 2, ch. 21, pp. 534-35, where he adduces Goclenius, who, although accused here, acknowledges the same.”

That which was First Created was from Nothing

Order of

Quotes 4
Historical 1

Quotes

Order of

Wolleb
Alting
Holtzfus
Garrigou-Lagrange

1600’s

Johannes Wolleb

Abridgment of Christian Divinity, bk. 1, ch. 5, ‘Creation’ (1626) in ed. John Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius & F. Turretin (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 54

“3. Creation is the act by which God made the world and all that is in it, partly from nothing and partly from unsuitable material, in order to reveal the glory of his power, wisdom and goodness.
…

III. For creatures, but not for the creator, creation is the transition from potency to act.

IV. This potency is not privative but negative.”

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“The matter of creation was none. For in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, Gen. 1:1, the sea and all things that are in them, Acts 4:24, when before these none of them existed.

And the term ברא [bara], “created,” in its first and proper signification designates the production of a thing from nothing. Where “nothing” has no other notion than that of a terminus a quo [point from which], or mere negation.

And it is rightly explained by ‘after nothing,’ when nothing had been before. For ‘from’ is a mark not of matter or of efficient, but only of terminus or order, which is between nothing and the thing, according to our mode of understanding.

Whether, however, all things or most things were produced from nothing immediately is not undeservedly doubted. Certainly we read that the body of Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, that of Eve from the rib of the man, Gen. 2:7, 21. The terrestrial animals also and the birds are taught to have been produced from the earth, v. 19 of the same chapter—to say nothing now of others.

Therefore they do rightly who, by reason of the matter, distinguish creation into first and second, or into immediate and mediate, of which the former is from nothing, the latter from matter, but undisposed matter.

If ‘nothing’ is taken broadly, not only negatively as to matter but also privatively as to form, even the latter species of creation will not inconveniently be said to be from nothing.

The Form of Creation is the first production of all things, not by successive but by momentary emanation from the first cause. Of this mode indeed a threefold manner is perceived in the πρωτοκτισίᾳ [prōtoktisia, first creation]: κτίσις, ποίησις, and πλάσις [ktisis, poiēsis, kai plasis], Gen. 2:4, 7.

I. Κτίσις [Ktisis], creation, is the production of a thing from nothing simply, such as was that of first matter, of the supreme heaven, of the angels, and of human souls.”

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“XIII. The matter from which, of the first creation, there was none, but the omnipotent Creator produced all things from nothing, either negative, which signifies a pure negation and absence of pre-existing matter; or privative, which denotes a privation or indisposition, and therefore matter indeed, but indisposed, unsuitable, and by its nature inept for the production of the term, in which only an obediential potentiality, or non-repugnance in order to the first cause, acting with infinite power, is given. And the first, or immediate, creation was from negative nothing; but the second, or mediate, creation of the following days was from privative nothing.

Whence ‘nothing’ here has the nature of nothing other than the term ‘from which’; but the preposition ex (from/out of) is a note not of an efficient cause, as in Rom. 11:36, nor of matter, as in Gen. 2:7, but of order; and of the term ‘from which’, which is taken away by creation, and of the term ‘to which’, which is introduced by creation, just as when it is said, ‘from morning comes noon,’ that is, after morning comes noon, as Thomas says, Summa, pt. 1, q. 45, art. 1, ad 3.

XIV. But because ordinarily and by the power of finite nature, nothing comes from nothing, and from nothing, nothing is generated; hence many, both Gentiles and heretics and the heterodox, have desired something in nothing and for nothing, and in place of nothing have posited a universal matter. Among the Gentile philosophers, Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras, as Plutarch testifies in On the Opinions of the Philosophers, 1, 9, believed matter to be an eternal work of nature. Similarly, the Stoics stated that the
matter of the world was co-eternal with God…

See also Petrus Gassendus, Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri, sect. 2, ch. 3, 4, Opera, tome 3, pp. 28-29, and
Physics, bk. 3, sect. 1, ch. 5, Opera, tome 1, pp. 259-60, who on ibid. Physics, bk. 1, sect. 1, ch. 6, p. 163, truly writes:

“All philosophers have agreed on this, that matter pre-existed, from which the world was procreated, because nothing comes from nothing,”

which he repeats in bk. 7, ch. 6, p. 484.

XV. The ancient heretics also admitted the error of matter co-eternal with God… Today, indeed, no one professedly defends creation from matter; meanwhile, however, the Socinians deny that they rely on light reasons or an infirm foundation, who will that the first matter is eternal. We prove creation from nothing:

I. [From Scripture and the Apocrypha:]

[1.] Heb. 11:3, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων).”

2. Rom. 4:17, “God… calls those things which be not as though they were.”

3. From 2 Cor. 4:6, “God… commanded the light to shine out of darkness.”

4. From 2 Macc. 7:28, “God made the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, of things that were not (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων).”

5. From the omitted mention of matter in the account of the first creation in Gen. 1:6.

II. From reason:

1. The world was created by God either from nothing or from matter: If from matter, it is asked whether that matter was created or uncreated: and if created, the question will return: whether from nothing or from something pre-existing? Either, therefore, there will be a progression to infinity, or it must be confessed that the world was founded from nothing; or it must be admitted that the world was founded from matter co-eternal with God, which being admitted, there will be two eternal principles, God, i.e., mind, and ὕλη, matter, which, as it is Stoic and Manichaean, is absurd.

2. If matter were eternal, and therefore co-eternal with God, God’s right over it would have been only that of the first occupant; indeed, scarcely such, because being eternal, it would be independent, immutable, and subject to no one. Since all these things are absurd, it is also absurd that matter is co-eternal with God.”

1900’s

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Theought (n.p., 1946), ch. 5, ‘Act & Potency’, pp. 29-30 Lagrange is a Romanist, neo-Thomist theologian.

“…creation is instantaneous, unpreceded by a process of becoming…

St. Thomas excels in explaining this distinction, just now noted, between passive potency and active potency. Real passive potency is not simple possibility. Simple possibility is prerequired and suffices for creation ex nihilo. But it does not suffice as prerequisite for motion, change, mutation. Mutation presupposes a real subject, determinable, transformable, mutable, whereas creation is the production of the entire created being, without any presupposed real potency.

Now, since active potency, active power, must be greater in proportion to its passive correlative, it follows that when passive potency is reduced to zero, the active potency must be infinite. In other words, the most universal of effects, the being of all [created] things, cannot be produced except by the most universal of all causes, that is, by the Supreme Being. (Summa, pt. 1, q. 45, art. 1, 2, 5; pt. 3, q. 75, art. 8)”

Historical Theology

On the Post-Reformation

Article

Goudriaan, Aza – 2. ‘Philosophy & Creation from Nothing’ in ch. 2, ‘Creation, Mosaic Physics, Copernicanism & Divine Accommodation’ in Reformed Orthodoxy & Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen Pre (Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 86-104

That God did Not Change in Creating

Order of

Article 1
Quotes 2

Article

2000’s

Barcellos, Richard C. – ‘Change in God Given Creation?’ in The Master’s Seminary Journal, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring, 2022), pp. 21-47

Quotes

Order of

Alting
Feser

1600’s

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“To the eternal decree corresponds temporal execution. For since God neither changes His counsel nor can be hindered by anyone, whatever He decreed with Himself from eternity, He executes outside Himself in time. From the variety of this execution arises the distinction of God’s works.
…

Concerning the mode of creation, insofar as it indeed pertains to the efficient, it must be held that God did not always create—otherwise the creature would be coeternal with the creator. But He began to create at the beginning of time, as Moses speaks, Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning”; from which beginning John speaks, Jn. 1:1, from which beginning creation is called the beginning of Jehovah’s way, Prov. 8:22. And when He began, He did not pass from idleness to work, from potency to act. But the creature, which was in potency, and that only negative, was brought into act and existed in act.”

2000’s

Edward Feser

Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Ignatius Press, 2017), ‘The Divine Attributes’, ‘Immutability’

“Change, as we saw in chapter 1, is the actualization of potential. We have also seen that God is pure actuality, devoid of potentiality. Now, if He has no potential that needs to be, or indeed could be, actualized, then He cannot change. He is therefore immutable or changeless.

To be sure, it might seem that He changes insofar as He creates the world. For doesn’t this involve a transition from God’s not creating it to his creating it?

But as I have just argued, God’s being Creator of the world is a Cambridge property rather than a real property, and his becoming the world’s Creator is thus a mere Cambridge change. Just as, in our example, Socrates’ becoming shorter than Plato [when Plato grew taller] involved a real change only in Plato and not in Socrates, so too does God’s becoming Creator of the world involve a real change only in the world’s status, not in God. To say that God is immutable is to say that there is no real change in Him, though there may of course be Cambridge changes.
…

It might be objected that in creating the world, God acts, and that acting always involves a change in the one acting and not merely in the thing He acts upon…

However, while it is true that the things of our experience happen to undergo changes themselves in the course of acting upon other things, it simply does not follow that absolutely anything that acts must necessarily undergo change itself as it does so. To draw such an inference would be to commit what is called a fallacy of accident. Such a fallacy would be committed, for example, if one were to conclude from the premise that every college professor who has ever lived has been under nine feet tall to the conclusion that any possible college professor must be under nine feet tall…

As Brian Davies points out in responding to this sort of objection, what is essential to acting is the bringing about of an effect in another thing, rather than undergoing change oneself as one does so. For example, what is essential to teaching is that one causes someone else to learn, and not that one does so by lecturing, specifically, or by writing books, or what have you. Similarly, what is essential to creating is simply that God causes the world to exist. There is nothing in this that requires that it be done by virtue of the Creator’s undergoing change Himself.”

Time & Space Began with Creation, & did not Exist Before

Quotes

Order of

Musculus
Alting
Holtzfus

1500’s

Wolfgang Musculus

Loci Communes Sacrae Theologiae 3rd ed. (Basel: Hervagius, 1564), ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Fourthly, if it be asked when God created all things, nothing else can be responded, than in the beginning of time. For Moses also thus begins the history of creation: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth.’ And the question concerning time cannot have place there, where time was not yet. But time was not yet, when none were yet created, which the spaces of times should serve. Yet also distinct times are assigned in the Scriptures, in which by order this world with all things which exist in it has been created.”

1600’s

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Concerning the mode of creation, insofar as it indeed pertains to the efficient, it must be held that God did not always create—otherwise the creature would be coeternal with the creator. But He began to create at the beginning of time, as Moses speaks, Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning”; from which beginning John speaks, Jn. 1:1, from which beginning creation is called the beginning of Jehovah’s way, Prov. 8:22. And when He began, He did not pass from idleness to work, from potency to act. But the creature, which was in potency, and that only negative, was brought into act and existed in act.
…

I. That the creation of individual things was made in an instant, as they say, or moment of time, in respect to God the creator, because in creating He employed the omnipotent Word.
…

The subject creation concerned were creatures, to be produced by the power of God. The subject, however, in which, there was initially none, because, no creature existing, there existed also no place. Afterward, however, with the creature place began: common indeed to all creatures, the world; proper, however, to certain ones: heaven, water, earth, Gen. 1:1, 14, 20, 24.
…

II. Finitude is in place and time. In place, because all creatures, inasmuch as they are finite in essence, occupy some space, whether corporeal or spiritual, according to the condition of their nature, Gen. 1 throughout. In time, because they both began in time, Gen. 1:1, and as long as they exist, they are subject to it.”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“Some things were created in themselves, others in their causes, such as meteors; animals that arise from the commixture of species, like mules, leopards; and
according to some, insects, which are thought, but falsely, to be made from putrefaction.

Some things are co-created rather than created, such as accidents and adjuncts in their subjects; universals in their species and individuals; time and place or space, in which creatures are received.”

How Creation Occured

Quote

1200’s

Thomas Aquinas

Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 2, distinction 18, Creation of Woman, quest. 1, art. 2, I answer that

“I answer that the emanation of created things from God is like the procession of artifacts from an artisan. Hence just as artificial forms in matter flow forth from the art of an artisan, so also all natural forms and powers flow from the ideas existing in the divine mind.

But because, as Dionysius says, ‘things that are caused preexist in their causes abundantly,’ forms received in matter are not equal to the uncreated power or art from which they proceed. Hence from his art, an artisan still has the power to do something in some other way to what he has made, to which thing the power of his art has not been bound. Similarly, it is within God’s power to add, change, or remove something from created things.”

Devotional

Myers, Andrew – ‘He Made the Stars Also’ a collection of photography and poetic quotes about the stars

On the Purpose of God in Creating

Articles

1500’s

Ursinus, Zachary – 3. For what cause God created the World in The Sum of Christian Religion: Delivered… in his Lectures upon the Catechism… tr. Henrie Parrie (Oxford, 1587), Of Creation

1600’s

Owen, John – An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews… vol. 2 ed. W.H. Goold in Works (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), vol. 19, Preliminary Exercitations

Exercitation 27, p. 43 (2.)
Exercitation 28, p. 90, #16

1700’s

Holtzfus, Barthold – sect. 22 in ‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), pp. 15-16 trans. AI Latin

Venema, Herman – pp. 347-50 in Translation of Hermann Venema’s inedited Institutes of Theology tr. Alexander W. Brown (d. 1787; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850), ch. 19, Creation

Quotes

Order of

Musculus
Wolleb

1500’s

Wolfgang Musculus

Loci Communes Sacrae Theologiae 3rd ed. (Basel: Hervagius, 1564), ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Fifthly, it can also be asked to what end God created all things. The principal end is, that there might be those who should enjoy the divine goodness known in very deed, and should glorify the majesty of God sempiternally. Unto this end both angels and men have been created.

The secondary end is that the remaining created things should at the same time illustrate the glory of God and serve the uses of men. The consideration of these ends has nothing of ambiguity, and makes very much unto nourishing in us the faith of divine goodness and providence.
…

That place, Prov. 16, where Solomon says: ‘The Lord works all things for Himself, and the impious also unto the evil day,’ is not to be adduced unto this operation of creation. For Solomon speaks there not concerning creation, although God Himself the principle and end of all things created all things for Himself: but concerning His providence and government, by which He so governs all things, even the minds of the impious, that they make unto His glory.

Therefore it is to be taken heed, lest anyone from the words of Solomon badly understood and applied, should gather that God created the impious, as impious. For the impious as impious is not from God, but from the father the devil (Jn. 8).”

1600’s

Johannes Wolleb

Abridgment of Christian Divinity, bk. 1, ch. 5, ‘Creation’ (1626) in ed. John Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius & F. Turretin (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 54

“V. The creation of the world adds nothing to the perfection of God, nor did he make it that some good might result for his benefit, but rather so that he might communicate his goodness to creatures.”

On the Communicable Attributes & Participation

Order of

Quotes 6+
Articles 7
Historical Theology 5

Quotes

Order of

Beza & Faius
Zanchi
Wolleb
Alting
Rutherford
Turretin
Holtzfus

1500’s

Theodore Beza & Anthony Faius

Propositions & Principles of Divinity Propounded & Disputed in the University of Geneva… (Edinburgh, 1591), disputation 6, ‘Concerning the Attributes of God in General’, p. 10

“5. Now these things are attributed unto the Deity, sometimes substantively, and sometimes adjectively as they speak, that we may thereby know Him to be a being that subsists indeed, and that He is such a one, not by participation and imperfectly, but of Himself, and that most perfectly.

6. Of attributes we make two kinds: the one is, of them which are so proper unto the Deity that they can be in no sort communicated unto creatures, neither have they any other respect unto creatures, save that by them the Deity is distinguished from creatures; of this kind are eternity, simpleness, unmeasurableness, omnipotency.

7. The other kind is of those, who although simply, and as far as they are in the Deity, they cannot be communicated; yet creatures may be partakers of them, not properly, but by analogy, and a kind of agreement, and that not essentially, but in regard of quality, and but in part neither: such are wisdom, goodness, and the rest of that kind.

Therefore Osiander erred grossly, who taught that the essential righteousness of God was communicated unto us, and at this day their error is intolerable, who recalling back again the blasphemy of Eutyches, hold that all the proprieties of the Deity, were powered by personal union, into the flesh, which the Son of God took upon Him.

8. For whatsoever is not the divine essence, thereunto the essential attributes of the Deity cannot be communicated.”

Jerome Zanchi

Of the Nature of God, II.i, thesis 3, col. 55, as quoted in Muller, PRRD (2003), 3.240

“all things can be said to exist from God by participation in the divine existence.”

1600’s

Johannes Wolleb

Abridgment of Christian Divinity, bk. 1, ch. 5, ‘Creation’ (1626) in ed. John Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius & F. Turretin (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 54

Johann H. Alting

The Scriptural Theology of Heidelberg, vol. 1 (d. 1644; Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646), Locus 5, ‘On Creation’, trans. AI at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“The end of creation is double: supreme and subaltern. The supreme is the glory of God the creator, Prov. 16:4; Ps. 8:1; 19:1; 145:10; Rom. 11:36.

The subaltern is the communication and manifestation of the same. For in the works of creation God both communicated his goodness, because He made all things very good, Gen. 1:31…”

Samuel Rutherford

The Divine Right of Church Government… (London, 1646)

Introduction, section 6, pp. 83-4

“It is an untruth which [the Romanist] Raphael de la Torres, with other schoolmen say (tome •, in 22, question 81, article 4, the only disputation), that with the same religion by which we honor holy men, we honour God, upon this reason, because holiness in them is a parti∣cipation of the divine nature; therefore God must be the intrinsical end and formal reason for which we honor the saints.

For holiness in saints is a participation of the divine nature, but it is a temporary and a created participation; it is not the same very holiness that is in God, but [rather is] the created effect thereof: and so the love I bear to any creature, because there is somewhat of God in every creature, and the love to our neighbor, commanded in the Second Table of the Law, should be the love of God commanded in the First Table of the Law.

2. When I bow to the gray-haired and to the king; I then do an act of obedience to the Fifth Commandment: No man can say that when I bow to the king or to a holy man that I am then bowing to the God of heaven and worshipping God: No acts terminated upon saints, living or dead, are acts of worshipping God; yea, reverencing of the ordinances of God, as the delighting in, or trembling at the Word, are not properly acts of adoring God.”

ch. 1, Question 5

section 2, p. 151

“1st Conclusion. The relative expression of God which is in the works of God, is no formal ground of any adoration of the creatures.

1. Because adoration upon this ground, though the creatures, the host of heaven be excellent, is forbidden, Dt. 4:19.

2. [If it were the case, then] Not only images (which cannot represent God) and the sacraments, but all the creatures, even, rats, mice, flies, frogs, worms, Judas and wicked men, yea, and devils are to be worshipped, because all things having being are shadows and footsteps of God, their cause, first author and last end, Ps. 19:1; 103:22; Rom. 1:19-20; Acts 17:27-28; Prov. 16:4; Rev. 4:11; Rom. 11:36-37.

3. Because God is really, and by the diffusion of his blessed essence, present in all creatures, it follows not that we should adore them: The Formalists upon this ground, that Christ is really present in the sacrament, though the manner we know not, think that Christ should be adored in the sacrament, according to that, Verbum audimus, motum sentimus, modum nescimus. But if this be good logic, because we know not the way of the Spirit and how the bones grow in a woman with child, Eccl. 11:5, and God, where he works, is present by the immediation of essence and power, though we know not the way of his presence, we are to adore the soul of man and the bones of a young child in a woman’s belly; and though they should say that God-man Christ is in a more powerful and efficacious manner present in the sacrament than in the works of nature; yet should it follow that God is to be worshipped in the works of nature also, for magis et minus non variant speciem [greater or less does not vary the species]; for then we could not conclude any thing but this: Though there be not so real a ground of adoring lice and frogs as adoring of the sacrament, yet there is a ground, seeing God is, in the reality of his blessed essence, present in all creatures.”

Section 3, pp. 172

“4. It is ignorance in Burges to prove God may be adored in the elements, because they are as excellent symbols of God’s presence as the ark [in the OT]: for created excellency is no ground of adoring the elements, except it be a Godhead and uncreated excellency:

We condemn Pope Anastasius, who directs reverend bowing at the hearing of the Gospel and not of the Epistles, as if the Gospel were holier than the Epistles.”

Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself… (London: 1647), pt. 2

p. 268

“Position 4. Though it be true that grace is essentially in God, and in us by participation, yet is it false [contra antinomians] that grace is not properly in us, but that faith, hope, repentance, and the like, that are in us, are gifts, not graces. For grace in us may be called a gift, in that it is freely given us as a fruit of the grace and favor of election and free redemption, which indeed is the only saving fountain-grace of God…”

p. 359

“All creatures and created beings compared with God, the first being of Himself subsisting, and the infinite God may be denied, to be beings comparatively: And so our created self is nothing, to wit, nothing in dignity, or excellency beside God, or nothing in the kind of a being that essentially is of itself: as God is in genere entis per essentiam, yet man is a being in the kind of being by participation, in genere entis per participationem; man comared with God, is a poor, worthless, sorry, little-nothing, a weeping, melting, evanishing cipher…

So the Scripture says, ‘Man at his best state is altogether vanity.’ Ps. 39:5, ‘Behold, thou hast made my days as a handbreadth, and mine age is nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.’ Isa. 40:17, ‘All nations before Him are nothing, and less than nothing, and vanity.’ Yet a heathen may say and think and demonstrate by reason that self and man, and all the world are less in incomparison of the infinite God than nothing to all things, a drop of water to the sea, the shadow to the body, a peny-torch to the light of ten thousand millions of suns in one;”

Francis Turretin

Institutes 3:545-46

“Although Christ is to be adored wherever He is present, it does not follow that everything in which He is present is to be adored. Christ dwells in all believers and yet believers are not to be adored with Christ…

We are not bound to adore God with an external adoration wherever He is present; but only where He is present with rays of his glorious majesty and where He wishes to be adored. Otherwise as God is in all creatures (in stones, in trees and in animals), He would have to be adored in them. Thus we are commanded to adore God in the heavens, where He manifests Himself gloriously. The Israelites were bound to adore Him at the ark, which was teh symbol of his presence….

The essential and internal glory of God (which consists in the eminence of his perfections) differs from the accidental and external glory (which is placed in some sensible, miraculous and extraordinary effect; as was seen in the bush, the ark and other like symbols of God’s presence). Although the internal and essential glory is the foundation of external adoration, still it does not bind to the exercise of actual adoration unless it is connected with the external glory (i.e., with some miraculous and extraordinary effect which makes an impression on the senses). Otherwise, as God is everywhere with his essential glory and in all his creatures, He would have to be adored there (which is absurd).
…

The distinctions between the absolute, ultimate, intransitive, direct and formal worship (which is exhibited to Christ in the Eucharist); and the transitive, indirect, relative, and concomitant worship (given to the species of the Eucharist), cannot remove the crime of idolatry. (1) They are unknown to the Scriptures, which recognize no religious worship excepting one alone, which is absolute and direct…”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

“VIII. Nor is God the univocal cause of the world, but the equivocal; nor necessary and immanent, as Spinoza wishes, Ethics, pt. 1, On God, Proposition 18, p. 19, but free and transient, or better: Creation, taken actively, is not an immanent, but a transient action, by which God produces things diverse from Himself and confers being upon them, the immediate principle of which action is the practical volition of God, his command and mandate.

For an agent is then said to act transiently when it actually flows into an external effect diverse from the agent, which has its place in Creation, where a true and real influx of God into the creature is given, signified by the command of God in:Gen. 1:3, “Let there be light: and there was light.”…

From this it appears clearer than daylight that here is given a true and real influx of an efficient cause into the effect, and therefore a true and real transient action. These things being diligently observed, the whole of Spinozism collapses.
…

XI. The preceding, i.e., intrinsically moving, cause is the divine goodness, communicative and diffusive of itself, by which it came to pass that God, blessed in Himself, went forth outside Himself and communicated his goodness with creatures. Ps. 127:5-8; 145:9. He produced all things from nothing, and declared His immense goodness, wisdom, and power to the creature, especially the rational one, by which in turn He would be acknowledged and worshipped.

The directing and ordering cause is knowledge, wisdom, and, based on these as a directive principle, the decree of God, as an imperious principle, which is accompanied by the power of God as an executive principle, which things were decreed from knowledge and most wisely. Whence in Eph. 1:11, God is said to do all things ‘according to the counsel of His own will.'”

Articles

1200’s

Aquinas

Summa, pt. 1, Treatise on the Creation, Question 44, ‘The Procession of Creatures from God, & of the First Cause of All Things’

Article 3, ‘Whether God is the exemplar cause of beings [Yes] or whether there are other exemplar causes?’

Article 4, ‘Whether He is the final cause of things?’

Compendium of Theology, pt. 1

ch. 21, ‘Eminent Existence in God of All Perfections found in Creatures’

ch. 68, ‘The Effects Produced by God’

ch. 109, ‘The Essential Goodness of God & the Participated Goodness of Creatures’

1500’s

Musculus, Wolfgang – Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563), ‘Nature of God’

‘Whether that God do communicate his nature unto his works’ 374.a

1600’s

Norton, John – pp. 331-2 of ch. 15, ‘Of the State of the Blessed…’ in The Orthodox Evangelist… (1654; 1657)

Norton (1606-1663) was a New England puritan divine.

Tuckney, Anthony – Sermon 22, on 2 Pet. 1:4, pt. 1, 2, 3, 4 in Forty Sermons upon Several Occasions… (London, 1676), pp. 223-63

Dickson, David – Truth’s Victory over Error, ch. ? on Communion of saints at end, and many others in this loci against the spiritualists, enthusiasts and antinomians and becoming godded, etc.

Owen, John – pp. 244-46 of Christologia… in Works (d. 1683), vol. 1

1700’s

De Moor, Bernardinus – 4.19, ‘Classification of God’s Attributes: Communicable & Incommunicable’

Historical Theology

On the Medieval Church

Wood, Jordan Daniel – ch. 12, ‘That & How Perichoresis differs from Participation: the Case of Maximus the Confessor’ in Platonism & Christian Thought in Late Antiquity Pre (Routledge), pt. 3 ToC

On Aquinas & Thomism

Koterski, Joseph W. – ‘The Doctrine of Participation in Thomistic Metaphysics’, pp. 185-96

Koterski is a Jesuit. This is more detailed as to the nature of participation than the reformed treatments.

Wanless, Brandon L. – Universality & the Divine Essence: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Unity Characteristic of the Trinitarian Persons a Masters thesis (University of St. Thomas, 2015)

‘Participation’ & ‘No Participation in God’, pp. 69-71 in ch. 8, ‘Universality & Particularity’

ch. 9, ‘Communicability & Incommunicability’, pp. 72-84

On the Post-Reformation

Muller, Richard – pp. 224-26 of 7. ‘Communicable & Incommunicable Attributes’ in pt. 2, ch. 3.3, D of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: the Rise & Development of Reformed Theology, ca. 1520 – ca. 1725, vol. 3, The Divine Essence & Attributes 2nd ed. (Baker Books, 2003)

On the 1700’s

Schweitzer, William M. – God is a Communicative Being: Divine Communicativeness & Harmony in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (London; New York: T & T Clark, 2012)

On All Creatures’ Union to God by Creation

Quotes

1600’s

Richard Baxter

Schism Detected in both Extremes, or Two Sorts of Sinful Separation... (London: 1684), pt. 1, ch. 1, p. 1

“‘United to God’ is an ambiguous word: no creature is united to Him perfectly so as to be thereby what He is, God, in the created nature. Only Christ is united to Him hypostatically in his created nature.

All are so far united to Him in natural being as that in Him they live and move and have their being: and the Nature of man is one sort of his image: All things are united to Him as effects to their constant efficient.”

2000’s

Richard Muller

Dictionary of Latin & Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology 1st ed. (Baker, 1985), p. 313

“‘unio essentialis’

essential union; i.e., a union of two different essences, such as the union of all things with God according to the divine omnipraesentia (q.v.) and omnipotentia (q.v.) and manifest in the divine concursus.

This union of God with all things can also be called the unio generalis, or general union, inasmuch as it belongs to the universal nonsaving work of God as opposed to the unio specialis or unio mystica (q.v.).”

Whether, After the First Day, God Created the Rest not Ex nihilo, but Mediately, out of the Unformed Mass, or Prime Matter?

Order of

Article 1
Quote 1

Article

1700’s

Holtzfus, Barthold – sect. 16-17 of ‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), trans. AI Latin

Holtzfus argues Yes, which was a common position before the Reformation, and sometimes after it. He lists proponents of Yes as:

Zanchi, On the Works of the Six Days, bk. 1, ch. 3, quest. 3;
Danaeus, Christian Physics, ch. 21-22, Opera, p. 246;
Polanus, System, bk. 5, ch. 4;
Alting, Problematic Theology, pt. 1, problem 19;
Spanheim, System of Theological Disputations, pt. 1, On Creation, thesis 10;
Wendelin, Physics;
Maresius, System of Theology, locus 5, §7;
Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, locus 5, Quest. 6, §4, 6

He lists as proponents of No:

Pareus, Gomarus, Keckermann, Voet, and Burman.

Quote

1900’s

Allan B. Wolter

Little Summary of Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1958), pp. 103-4

“Creation is the production of something from nothing both as to itself and as to its subject. It differs from formation, which is production from nothing as to itself but not as to its subject.

Conclusion 23: The first external production of God must be creation. This conclusion is against the philosophers who reckoned that God was only the former of the world but not its creator.

The conclusion is proved from the fact that all beings outside God are effects. Therefore if you say the matter from which God made things was present beforehand I ask: what about the matter? It cannot exist from itself because it lacks the properties of a being from-itself (from conclusion 2 of this part 3); therefore from another, and therefore ultimately from God (from corollary 1 of conclusion 3 of this part).”

How the Creation is Said to Groan

Quote

1600’s

Samuel Rutherford

The Covenant of Life Opened… (1655), p. 17

“1. Man is to be considered as a creature [and] 2. as such a creature, to wit, endued with reason and the Image of God; in either considerations, especially in the former, all that are created are obliged to do and suffer the will of God though they never sinned. It’s not enough to say that sun, moon, trees, herbs, vines, earth, beasts, birds and fishes cannot suffer the ill of punishment which is relative to the break of a Law, for the whole creation is subject to vanity for our sins, Rom. 8:20-21.

The servant is smitten and sickened for the master’s sake, and God may take from them what He gave them, [even] their lives without sense of pain and dolor, for all beings, yea [even] defects and privations, are debtors to the glory-declarative of God, Prov. 16:4; Rom. 11:36; yea, and no-beings [things that could be, but are not,] are under this debt.”

On Conservation

Order of

Articles 4
Quotes 2
Historical 1
Latin 1

Articles

1500’s

Musculus, Wolfgang – Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563), ‘Of the Providence of God’

‘Of Conservation’ 426.b

1600’s

Turretin, Francis – 4. ‘Is providence occupied only in the conservation and sustentation of things; or also in their government (through which God Himself acts and efficaciously concurs with them by a concourse not general and indifferent, but particular, specific and immediate)? We deny the former and affirm the latter, against the Jesuits, Socinians and Remonstrants.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 6^th Topic, pp. 501-5

2000’s

Feser, Edward

ch. 5, ‘Existential Inertia & the Five Ways’ in Neo-Scholastic Essays (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015)

“Existential Inertia” means that once a thing exists, it “will continue in existence on its own at least until something positively acts to destroy it. It thus has no need to be converved in being by God.” (p. 86) This is in contrast to the Doctrine of Divine Conservation (DDC), which Feser defends by way of showing that Aquinas’s Five Ways for proving God also prove DDC.

“The first [way] argues that the existence, even for an instant, of composites of act and potency presupposes the simultaneous existence of that which is pure act;

the second argues that the existence, even for an instant, of composites of essence and existence presupposes the simultaneous existence of that which is being or existence itself;

the third argues that the existence, even for an instant, of composites of form and matter presupposes the simultaneous existence of an absolutely necessary being;

the fourth argues that the existence, even for an instant, of things which are many and come in degrees of perfection presupposes the simultaneous existence of something one and absolutely perfect;

and the fifth argues that the existence, even for an instant, of finality or directedness toward an end presupposes the simultaneous existence of a supreme ordering intellect.” – pp. 87-88

‘Conservation & Concurrence’ in Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2017), ch. 6, ‘God & the World’, pp. 232-38

Quotes

Order of

Wolter
Feser

1900’s

Allan B. Wolter

Little Summary of Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1958), p. 104

“Conservation, as it is here understood, is defined as the action by which a being from-another remains in the existence it has received. It is double, namely:

a) Negative, or the action by which what can destroy the existence of the thing is removed or impeded. Penicillin, for example, which destroys bacteria, conserves the health of the body;

b) Positive is the act that consists in the positive inflow by which a thing is continually given existence. Hence it is a sort of continued creation.

Conclusion 24: All created things are positively conserved in existence by God.

Whatever does not have in itself a reason for its existence positively requires, if it remains in existence, a cause of its remaining in existence. But there cannot be an infinite regress in conserving causes, because such causes need to exist simultaneously; therefore the thing is conserved positively by God as first cause.”

2000’s

Edward Feser

Neo-Scholastic Essays (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015), ch. 9, ‘The Road from Atheism’, p. 214

“And once you have allowed yourself to see the truth that reason leads you to, what reason apprehends is (given the convertibility of the transcendentals) as good and beautiful as it is real.

If you find yourself intellectually convinced that there is a divine Uncaused Cause who sustains the world and you in being at every instant, and don’t find this conclusion extremely strange and moving, something that leads you to a kind of reverence, then I dare say you haven’t understood it.

Of course, there are those whose heads and hearts are so out of sync that they cannot follow both at the same time. But we shouldn’t mistake this pathology for an insight into human nature.”

Historical Theology

On the Post-Reformation

Muller, Richard – Dictionary of Latin & Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology 1st ed. (Baker, 1985)

‘continuata creatio’
‘continuus Dei in creaturas influxus’
‘unio essentialis’
‘conservatio’
‘providentia’
‘unio parastatike’

Latin Article

1600’s

Voet, Gisbert – 2. Of Providence in Specific: of Conservation in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 1, tract 3 Abbr.

Could God have made the World & Creation better than it is?

Quotes

Order of

Baxter
Holtzfus

1600’s

Richard Baxter

Catholic Theology (London: White, 1675), sect. 1, ‘Of our Knowledge of God as here Attainable’, p. 2, margin note

“the Schoolmen manage it as an insuperable difficulty: Whether God could have made the world, or any thing better than it is? If you will pardon me for making that easy which they make ineffable, I answer:

Goodness is primitive (that is, God) or derivative, which only is in creatures. This last is formally good, as it is related as conformed to God’s will, the Prime Good, as its rule: To be a Deo volitum [having been willed by God], is the formal notion of created good.

And so the world is perfect, and can be no better, because it is as God wills it: and yet God can make particular creatures better to themselves, and to one another; He can make any man more wise, more holy, etc. But bonum sibi [good with respect to Him] is no further properly bonum, than it is volitum a Deo:

Therefore God can make the world far otherwise than it is; and yet then it would be no better. For still it would be but as God willed it to be: So that the matter and private goodness might alter; but the true form of goodness would be still just the same as now.”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), ch. 2, On Creation, p. 20 trans. AI Latin

“VII. II. An adjunct of the world is its goodness and perfection, by which the world is conformable to the divine will, and consists of all its parts. It is therefore perfect, not simply and absolutely, in which sense only God is good and perfect, Mk. 1018; but in a certain respect and in its own kind, because nothing is wanting in it which belongs to the world from the intention of the Creator.

Gen. 1:31, “all things that God had made were very good.” Ps. 104:24 “how magnificent are your works, O Lord, you have made all things in wisdom: the earth is full of your possessions.” 1 Tim. 4:4, “Every creature of God is good.” cf. Ps. 8.

And this is shown both by the order of the parts of the world, and by their varieties and integrity: which David praises in the whole of Ps. 104. Those things which seem viler and more imperfect are only such separately from the whole and comparatively, since they too were wisely and well made, and contribute to the perfection of the universe.

To that which is wont to be asked: Whether God could have made the world more perfect; it must be said:

The species of beings could indeed have been made accidentally more perfect, because their qualities and endowments can be increased, and they admit of more and less; yet they could not have been made essentially more perfect, their essences remaining safe and unchanged, because species are like numbers, to which if a unit is added or subtracted, the numbers are changed. If, therefore, God were to add an essential perfection to a certain species, that species would be changed, and would not remain such a species.

Meanwhile, God could have produced other species, more perfect than those which He actually produced; since the power of God is infinite, and not exhausted by the production of the creatures actually existing in the world.

It can also be said that God can make something better, not adverbially, because He made all things in the best way, but adjectivally, because He can make good things better and increase their accidental goodness.”

Whether the Universe is Infinite in Certain Ways or in any Way

Intro

Travis Fentiman
Feb. 2026

One ought to distinguish potentially infinite from actually infinite. Creation is infinite potentially in that it is able to, and does advance in time through eternity, infinitely, yet it is not actually infinite in that way (as God is, existing in all time and outside of time, without time). Likewise space could be expanded perpetually, infinitely, and yet not be actually infinite.

That persons’ minds can always conceive of something being bigger, more extended, etc. reflects the mind’s ability for mental composition (given the mind’s fundamentally immaterial nature), but not necessarily a reality in the thing itself (as minds can be mistaken, yet have the ability to think of hypotheticals, or potentialities, which are not actual). Yet the mind cannot clearly grasp infinite things, or size, or time, at once (which cannot be added to or increased), precisely because our minds are not infinite.

The certain potential infinity creation has, as it depends on an efficient cause in order to be actualized, namely God, is properly grounded in and arises out of God’s infinite power and will and the creature’s necessity of obeying God’s power and will, rather than in the creature itself.

The question here is properly about the creation being actually infinite (i.e. without limit), in whatever way. Note that for something to have truly infinite properties or qualities, it would have to have an infinite essence and existence, which of course is unique to God alone, the I am that I am.

Note that if the created universe is not spatially infinite, then it may have a center.

Order of

Article 1
Quotes 3
Latin 1

Article

1700’s

De Moor, Bernardinus – 34. ‘Finitude of the World’ in Continuous Commentary (d. 1780), ch. 8, ‘On Creation’

Quotes

Order of

Scotus
Holtzfus
Wolter

1200’s

John Duns Scotus

Ordinatio, bk. 1, distinctions 1-2, distinction 2, question 2, Whether some infinite being is self-evidently known, IV, To the Principal Arguments of the First Question, pp. 86-87 tr. Peter Simpson

“151… An example: if there were, per impossibile, some infinite ‘where’, and an infinite body were to fill up that ‘where’, it would not follow that ‘this body is here such that it is not elsewhere, therefore it is finite according to where’…”

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), ch. 2, On Creation trans. AI Latin

“VIII. Since the world was created, III. it is also finite, both by reason of quality and perfection, since no creature can be infinitely perfect; and by reason of quantity and extension, because it has certain, although to us unknown, limits of its essence, for God, Isa. 40:12,
“has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.”

Melissus of Samos, indeed, a disciple of Parmenides, said, ἄπειρον εἶναι τὸ πᾶν, “the universe is infinite.” But for this Aristotle not undeservedly chastised him. Although also our mind, whatever ends or limits it may place for the world, can ascend further, this nevertheless does not make the world infinite, but evinces that it is indefinite to us.”

1900’s

Allan Wolter

‘Allan Wolter’s Conclusions respecting Reality, Proving God’, ‘Conclusions respecting Reality’

“2. If the relatively permanent exists the absolutely permanent exists.

“Whatever can begin to be or cease to be is in itself indifferent to existing and not existing, otherwise it would either always exist or never exist. Everything thus indifferent does not, as such, have in itself the total reason for its existence or for its permanence. Therefore if such thing really is and persists, the reason not only for its beginning to be, after not being, but also for its persisting or continuing to be must be looked for in something else. Such a reason for the existence of another thing is by definition called the cause…

But what of the reason that a being persists? Either it is something that depends on another with respect to its existence and permanence or it is not. If it is independent with respect to existence and permanence it has in itself the reason of both and so cannot not exist. If it is not independent then either:

a) there is a regress to infinity, or
b) there is a circle in dependent things, or
c) there will be a stand at some being that is simply first, namely first in being independent both as to existence and as to permanence in existence.

a) An infinite series of [dependent] things existing simultaneously is impossible, because such a series would be simultaneously dependent and independent:

dependent because it would be indifferent to existing and would not have in itself a reason for existing;

independent because nothing would exist outside the series for it to depend on, otherwise it would not be an infinite series since [it would be] limited and brought to an end in the being on which it depends.

By such a series then cannot be explained why something exists. This argument is confirmed by an example. Who would say that a sufficient reason for the suspension of the whole of a chain could be found in the length itself of the chain even though it could not be found in any ring of the chain?

b) Similarly a circle of mutually dependent things involves a contradiction unless we suppose a sufficient cause outside the circle as such. Otherwise every individual cause would be the total cause of itself and so would be dependent and independent, caused and uncaused, at the same time, which is manifestly absurd.

c) If a) and b) are excluded, c) is what is left. So in every case there must be a being altogether independent as to its existence and its permanence.” pp. 34-35

3. If the transient exists the absolutely permanent exists.

4. An actually infinite series of simultaneously existing dependent things is impossible. [see 2]

5. A circle of mutual dependent things cannot be independent in itself. [see 2]
…

8. Being is therefore divided into the transient and permanent. That the transient exists is continuously verified by experience; that the permanent exists follows from conclusion 7.

Scotus: “But in the case of disjunctive features [of being]… when the extreme that is less noble is posited of some being, the extreme that is more noble can be proved of some being – just as it follows that if some being is finite then some being is infinite, and if some being is contingent then some being is necessary. For in these cases the more imperfect extreme could not be present in some being in particular unless the more perfect extreme were present in some being on which the former would depend.” p. 21

…
16. In the same class of essentially ordered causes, the series cannot be infinite, for otherwise there would be an actually infinite series of simultaneously existing dependent things, which is impossible (from conclusion 4). Hence there cannot be an infinite series of essentially ordered efficient causes. The like must be said of final causes,¹ or of material or formal causes.
…

56. Every composite is composed ultimately of simple elements.

From conclusion 16, we cannot proceed infinitely with respect to material causes essentially ordered. Therefore we must reach some matter-ing that is not matter-ed, that is, to a material cause that is not materially caused. But this non-matter-ed material cause is nothing other than a part that is not composed in its turn of other parts, which is the conclusion proposed.

…
61. Every mixed perfection can be reduced to one or several pure perfections that exist concretely in a limited degree.

The reason is that the imperfection by virtue of which some perfection is said to [be] mixed is nothing other than the lack of being-ness. Therefore in itself formally, imperfection is something negative and not positive; for it is the negation of some positive perfection. Therefore it always involves something else, namely a positive being-ness of which there is a limitation.

This positive being-ness in its formal concept either includes imperfection and hence is a mixed perfection, or does not include imperfection and hence is a pure perfection.

If it is a pure perfection the conclusion is gained.

If it is mixed, the same question will return: Is the positive perfection in which the imperfection of this mixed perfection inheres a pure perfection or a mixed one? So either there would be an infinite regress and so there would be no perfection, or a stand would be made in some pure perfection, which is the conclusion intended.

So, for example, reasoning, which is formally a mixed perfection, can be reduced to understanding, which is a pure perfection. Likewise, the extension of parts beyond parts can be reduced to simples that have a definitive presence in space, etc.

…
63. Everything finite, therefore, is a caused being or a being from-another.

This follows from the two previous conclusions. For a being is finite because it is constituted either from mixed perfections or from pure perfections finite in number or degree. But from conclusion 61, all mixed perfections can be reduced to pure perfections in finite degree. But, from its own definition, no pure perfection contains in itself a reason for limiting itself intensively, nor does it have a reason for excluding other pure perfections from the being in which this perfection is (from conclusion 62).

Therefore if a full and sufficient reason for the actual limitation of a finite being cannot be found in the positive being-ness of the finite being itself, it must be in some other being, namely in the cause that gives the finite being its positive being-ness. In other words, no finite thing qua finite is from-itself, but everything of this sort is from-another.

64. Conversely, no being that is altogether independent and uncausable can be finite, either intensively or extensively.

65. If there is something finite, there is something infinite.

I prove it as follows: a finite being, because it is also a caused being, involves the existence of another being, namely an uncaused being (from conclusion 23 and following). But from conclusion 64, an uncaused being is both intensively and extensively infinite.

66. An infinite being actually exists.

This follows from the fact that there exists an uncausable being (conclusion 27) or a being from-itself (conclusion 33). But it can be proved immediately as follows: There is or can be something. Such a thing is either finite or infinite. But the finite involves another infinite being (from conclusion 65). Therefore in either case, if something can be, an infinite being can be. But if an infinite being can be it must be, both because it is uncausable and because, if it lacked actual existence, it would not be infinite.

67. Being is divided into finite and infinite.

The existence of finite being is plain from experience. But it can be inferred from other things already proved, for example from the fact that being is causable. For a caused being lacks the perfection of from-itselfness. The existence of the infinite follows from conclusions 65 and 66.

68. When being is divided through contradictory attributes opposite to each other with respect to being, one of the dividing attributes belongs to a perfection in being and the other to imperfection.

The reason is that one extreme of the disjunction formally involves the negation of the other. But both perfections cannot formally be perfections simply or pure perfections, because, from conclusion 62, pure perfections cannot formally exclude each other.

Likewise, both extremes cannot formally be imperfections or mixed perfections, otherwise no being could be infinite (against conclusion 65). But a true disjunctive should include under one or other extreme every actual or potential being. Therefore one extreme is a perfection (a pure perfection) and the other an imperfection (a mixed perfection).

69. From this follows a general law of disjunction, namely that in disjunct properties of being, when the extreme that is less noble is posited of any being, the other more noble extreme can be deduced about some other being (see Scotus, Oxon. 1, d. 39, q. un, n. 13).

The reason is that the one extreme involves imperfection and is therefore finite, while the other involves perfection simply, or pure perfection. But from conclusion 65, if something is finite, something else is infinite and has all pure perfections in the highest degree.

Proof of God

1. Some being from-itself actually exists.

I prove this conclusion summarily as follows: if something can exist, this something is either a being from-itself, altogether independent, or a being from another and so dependent with respect to its continued existence.

If it is from another there is required at the same time a cause conserving it in existence. If this cause is not a being from-itself, there is either: a) an infinite regress in conserving causes, or b) a circle in such causes, or c) there is an ultimate stand in some being simply first, namely in a first conserver that is not conserved by anything, because it is a being from-itself.

But an infinite regress in conserving causes is impossible, for such causes must be simultaneous [see conclusions 2 & 17]. The like must be said of a circle in conserving causes.

Therefore in either case, in order that something be able to exist, there is required as a condition sine qua non [without which: nothing] some other being that exists from-itself. But if a being from-itself did not actually exist, it could not exist.

Hence in brief, if it is possible that something exist, a being from-itself must exist. But it is possible that something exist, as is plain from experience. Therefore some being from-itself actually exists.

2. Every being from-itself must have every pure perfection in the highest degree and hence is both intensively and extensively perfect.

Every finite being is from-another, because no such thing has in its positive being-ness any sufficient reason as to why it lacks any pure perfection, and indeed in the highest degree. Therefore the reason for its limitation must be found in something else, namely in its cause.

Conversely, no being from-itself can be finite either intensively or extensively.

3. Only one infinite being can exist.

This conclusion involves two things: a) that existing-from-itself belongs to only one nature, because such a being is infinite; b) that a plurality of such from-itself natures is excluded. For Scholastics admit a double unity, namely [1] essential or quidditative [whatness] unity and [2] the unity of singularity.

The first excludes a multiplicity of species within the same genus, or the sort of multiplicity found, for example, in the genus of animal, which includes several species, as man, dog, horse, insect, amoeba, etc.

The second excludes a multiplicity of individuals within the same species, or the sort of multiplicity found, for example, in Peter and Paul, who differ as individuals within the same species of man [is excluded].

Proof of the two parts:

By the first is excluded the possibility of there being several infinite beings diverse in species in this way. To only one nature does it belong to be infinite,

for if several essentially diverse natures can exist, they would have to differ by reason of some essential perfection that was pure. The independence of a being from-itself or infinite being would exclude all reason for limitation. But on this supposition one or the other nature would lack some pure perfection, namely the perfection by which it would differ from another. But the consequent is false; therefore the antecedent is too.

Secondly, one must note that this infinite nature is also of itself individual and singular. The sense is that this nature qua [as] nature is such as to be unable to be multiplied in several individuals, and so no difference contracting this nature to this individual is required. But it is not to be wondered at that this is not immediately or directly perceived in this life.

For, as we said above in the chapter on individuation [pp. 24-29], all our concepts proper to God are derived from creatures, namely by affirming or denying the perfections found in creatures; and so nothing is found in such concepts, constructed or composed of common notions, that is prima facie repugnant to existing in several individuals. Hence the human mind can indeed ask: why cannot there be several infinite beings that differ only numerically?

Nevertheless, the same reason that excludes a multiplicity of infinite species in the same genus, also prohibits a plurality of infinitely perfect individuals, for if there were two beings completely identical in positive being-ness, they would not be two but one being.

But if anything does differ from a completely perfect or infinite being, it would be because it lacks some perfection that is found in the infinite being. Hence there can be a plurality of beings precisely because all beings beside the infinite being are finite.

We can therefore prove this infinite nature to be of itself individual and singular as follows:

Now it is an empty question to ask: What is the positive perfection whereby the infinite differs from the finite and why it cannot be found in several individuals? For as long as we have to form our distinct concepts by comparison with likenesses in other things, so that such concepts, precisely as distinct, are universal or composed of universal features (as, for example, an infinite being is composed positively of the feature of being and negatively of the feature of the finite), we cannot express the ultimate positive difference of a thing distinctly and in a positive way,¹ but only indirectly and in a negative way, for example when we say that one individual must differ from another by something positive that the other lacks.

¹ [See Wolter’s discussion of individuation, pp. 24-29]

So as long as we conceive the individuating reason that is ultimate in the order of singularity, properness, and unicity, it is in vain that through concepts universal, improper, and common alone we seek for a response in some individuating reason why this reason cannot multiply in many things.

That this question is indeed vain (“a meaningless question”) surely appears from consideration of this fact. Many individuals exist and are known, as is positively clear from immediate and intuitive experience. Hence individuals are really known in some way. Not indeed distinctly, as is plain from the notion of distinct knowledge (namely through definition or common concepts), along with the fact at the same time that no individual is perfectly known, because our perfect or distinct knowledge of any individual does not point out or explain why it is precisely this and not something else.¹

¹ “…something is not perfectly known unless its opposite is known…” p. 18

Hence the strength of the argument of ours adduced above must not be judged by the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of distinctly conceiving that by virtue of which an individual is precisely this and not something else like it, but [it] must rather be judged by the light of this whole fundamental principle, namely that no individual is conceived in its individuality perfectly and distinctly (that is, by common or universal notions).

Hence, besides what it has in common with other things, one being differs from another being by something positive such that one has what the other lacks.

We can therefore prove this infinite nature to be of itself individual and singular as follows:

1) Principal argument: if this nature were not of itself a this [something in itself singular], and hence were able to exist in several individuals, these individuals would have to differ by something positive, which can be called haecceity [this-ness]. Now this haecceity would be a pure perfection [because it does not reduce to anything else]. Therefore if several individuals existed, they could not be infinitely perfect, because each would lack the haecceity [a perfection] of the other. The consequent is false, therefore also the antecedent.

2) Confirmation from Scotus (On the First Principle, ch. 4, concl. 11): A multiplicable species is of itself multiplicable infinitely; therefore if an infinite being could be multiplied, an infinite multitude of infinite beings would actually exist; for if an infinite being can exist, it must and does actually exist. The consequent is unacceptable and is admitted by no philosopher.

How Creatures Differ from God

Corollaries

1. Whatever besides God actually exists or can exist is: a) dependent on God as on the first cause, and b) [is] a finite or limited being. For these conclusions follow from the unicity of a being altogether independent and infinitely perfect; for if anything besides God were a being from-itself, it too would have to be infinitely perfect. But there cannot be two infinite beings.

2. No being that we now experience can be God, because everything we experience is transient, finite, etc., and so lacks the perfection that belongs to God.

3. Therefore the falsity of pantheism, whether material or [as an] idea, is manifestly plain; for God cannot be the world as such, since the world is changeable, composite, in potency, dependent etc. Nor can the world be part of God, for God, because of his simplicity, excludes all such composition.

4. Likewise the absurdity of divine evolution is plain. For every system that holds God to be in the process of evolution in the course of time must deny both the simplicity and unchangeableness of God. Hence ‘emergent evolution’ and many other like systems of modern thinkers are in error.

5. If all mixed perfections are reducible to a plurality of pure perfections existing in limited degree, and if an infinite being possesses all pure perfections, the consequent is that God in some way possesses every positive perfection that is found or can be found in creatures, and indeed possesses it in unlimited degree.

Accordingly God seems to differ from creatures by something positive not possessed by creatures. Creatures, by contrast, do not seem, in the ultimate analysis, to differ from God by any positive perfection precisely, but rather because they lack some perfection that God has. This notion is also expressed in the theory of participation, according to which creatures are finite or imperfect likenesses of God insofar as any perfection possessed by them is found in God either formally or virtually or eminently.”

Latin Article

1600’s

Voet, Gisbert – p. 749 (bot) of 49. ‘A Disputation: Some Miscellaneous Positions’ in Select Theological Disputations (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1667), vol. 4

Could the Universe have Eternally Existed?

Order of

Intro
A Beginning Necessary
Eternally Existent

Intro

Travis Fentiman
Feb. 2026

The question is not whether the universe has eternally existed (as Gen. 1:1 makes clear it was created), but whether it is possible that the world could have had an eternal existence, as Aristotle held (according to the majority interpretation of him). Many Christians through history, often with a regard to Aristotle, have answered Yes to this question.

The more specific question is (1) whether it can be demonstrated by reason that the world had to have had a beginning, or (2) whether its creation must be accepted by revelation alone. Many have answered the first question with No (e.g. Aquinas); yet many have answered the same with Yes, giving demonstrations that the universe must have had a beginning.

One such demonstration is:

An actual versus a potential infinity is to be distinguished. Creation can exist potentially, and will, forever, infinitely; yet this is not the same as creation actually existing forever infinitely in the future already.

If the universe has actually existed forever in the past without a beginning, time could never have reached this moment, as no amount of time can transverse an actual infinity of time.

Therefore if we succeed through time, the universe had a beginning.

If the universe had a beginning, it either (1) caused itself, (2) was caused by nothing, (3) was caused by something other than God, or (4) was caused by God.

(1) and (2) are not possible, as something cannot cause itself, nor can nothing cause anything.

If (3) is the case:

(i) If the other something is a creature, then one is back to the original problem with an infinite regress. That is, if the universe had a beginning, and was caused by something other than God, this something being creaturely, then the universe did not have a beginning. This is a contradiction: If the universe had a beginning, then it did not have a beginning. If it is true, then it is false.

(ii) If the other something is not a creature, then it is uncaused. Therefore it is dependent on none, self-existent, eternal, unchangeable, and therein must be pure act. From this many other attributes of God derive, including his singularity. See Travis Fentiman, ‘A Proof for God’s Existence’.

Therefore (4) God, the Creator, exists.

A Beginnig of the Universe is Necessary

Quote

1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), ch. 2, Of Creation, pp. 21-22 trans. AI Latin

“X. That the world lacked a beginning, and therefore VI. is eternal by reason of duration, was stated by Ocellus Lucanus and Xenophanes of Colophon, and after them, Aristotle.

Although there are not wanting those who excuse Aristotle: and of these, some deny that he simply denied that the world had a beginning, like Thomas, pt. 1, quest. 46, art. 1; others affirm that Aristotle spoke hesitantly on this matter in several places, like Grotius, bk. 1, Of the Truth of the Christian Religion, §7; others use a distinction, and assert that Aristotle stated that God is the emanative cause of the world, without novelty of being, so that the world is indeed posterior to God by nature, but not by duration; like Suarez, Metaphysical Disputations, 20, sect. 1, n. 24, 26.

The more common opinion, however, is that Aristotle affirmed that the world is eternal. Whence many Scholastics, rightly supposing from the foundations of the Christian religion that the world was created in time, nevertheless, in deference to Aristotle, defend that the world could have been from eternity; with whom, however, others disagree.

We, although we do not deny that this question, setting aside revelation, is most difficult to solve, and that therefore this error should be pardoned in Aristotle and other philosophers who assert eternal matter; yet from revelation, to which sound reason, let alone illuminated reason, is not repugnant, we believe it as indubitable that the world was created by God in time. For:

1. Gen. 1:1, God is said to have created the heaven and the earth “in the beginning”; although indeed the Targum of Jerusalem rendered that “in the beginning” as מהָ כְ וֹבחְּ, “through wisdom”; and Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Basil understand the Son of God, from Prov. 8:22; Jn. 1:1; c. 8:28; Col. 1:18; Apoc. 3:14, and take “beginning” not by reason of time, but of order; of which version Menasseh Ben Israel also makes mention, Problems, 13, On Creation; yet we see no solid reason why the more common interpretation should be deserted and the beginning of time be relinquished here.

2. Because in Ps. 90:2, a beginning of time is attributed to the world: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world.” Prov. 8:24-26, “When there were no depths… before the fountains abounded with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth.”

3. Because the Scripture of the New Testament also makes mention of a duration before the creation of the world. Mt. 25:34, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Jn. 17:5 “before the world was.” Eph. 1:4, “before the foundation of the world,” also 1 Pet. 1:20.

4. Because God alone is eternal, Gen. 21:33; Isa. 40:28; c. 43:10; Rom. 16:26, and therefore two eternals are not given.

5. Because things that are created, according to Paul, Rom. 4:17, were μὴ ὄντα, “not existing,” and were made to be ὄντα, “existing.” Whence Heb. 11:3 “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὰ βλεπόμενα γεγονέναι).”

6. Because the world is to perish.

7. Because certain wise gentiles themselves acknowledged the beginning of the world in time, whose consensus Mornay produces in Of the Truth of the Christian Religion, ch. 9. Isaac Peyrère, however, called this truth, so clearly asserted in the sacred letters, into doubt, System of Pre-Adamites, bk. 3, ch. 5, whom Maresius solidly refuted, Pre-Adamite Fables, quest. 3, §29, p. 232 ff.

It is ambiguously asked: Could God have created the world sooner? For if this is understood with respect to eternity, in which there is neither prior nor posterior, it must be denied; but if it is understood whether the beginning of creation could have been distant by more years, it must be affirmed, so that from then as many ages of years would have flowed as now years of ages.”

The Universe could have been Eternally Existent

Aristotle

Aquinas

Whether there are Multiple Habitable Worlds or Unknown Universes?

Order of

Article 1
Quote 1
Latin 1

Article

1700’s

De Moor, Bernardinus – 35. ‘The Possibility of More Worlds’ in Continuous Commentary (d. 1780), ch. 8, ‘On Creation’

Quote

1600’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), ch. 2, Of Creation, pp. 19-21 trans. AI Latin

“VI. From that nexus of the parts result the affections of the world, and indeed I. Unity; which certain ancient philosophers denied: Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Diogenes, Metrodorus, Empedocles, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea, Anaxarchus, Archelaus, and Anaxagoras, whom when Alexander the Great had heard discoursing that there are innumerable worlds, he is said to have wept. When asked the cause, he replied: “Do I not seem to weep rightly, who, when there are innumerable worlds, have not yet become the master of one?” Whence the saying of Juvenal, Satire 10, “One globe does not suffice for the Pellaean youth.”

But these spoke either of several particular orbs of the world, which can at least be excused; or they thought that other worlds would arise after this world, having been destroyed after fixed intervals of time, in which sense also certain Rabbis have opined that there will be successively more worlds, and have augured from the first letter of Genesis that this is the second world, and have even fabled that in each septenary of a thousand years, which are like sabbatical years for this world, it is to be destroyed and again renewed; which is said without any foundation; but it is absurdly asserted of several universes existing at one and the same time: since not several worlds were made, but one world was created in the space of six days, and besides, nothing is read to have been created or to be created, Jn. 13; Col. 1:16.
…

IX. The parts of the world V. are contiguous; whence Descartes and his followers infer that not even God Himself can create another world diverse or discrete from ours, but that it would coalesce with ours and constitute one world; for if, they say, those worlds are stated to be discrete, either something will lie between them, or nothing: if nothing, they will not even be discrete; if something, by this very fact they will be continuous: for this interjacent body will, as it were, join that framework with a common bond, and therefore again there will be only one universe. Maresius also proves this argument in his Systema Theologicum, Locus 5, §17.

Others, however, judge that such narrow limits should not be set for the divine omnipotence, as if it could not prevent such contiguity and coalescence. Cf. Dn. D. Strimesius, Physica, sect. 3, art. 4, Of Locality, §8, pp. 54-55, and Appendix 2, §4, p. 251.”

Latin Article

1600’s

Voet, Gisbert – p. 749 (bot) of 49. ‘A Disputation: Some Miscellaneous Positions’ in Select Theological Disputations (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1667), vol. 4

Were there Men before Adam?

Article

1600’s

Turretin, Francis – 8. ‘Was Adam the first of mortals, or did men exist before him? And is the epoch of the created world and of men’s deeds to be referred much farther back than Adam? The former we affirm; the latter we deny, against the Preadamites.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 5^th Topic, pp. 457-62

Related Pages

Commentaries on Genesis

Providence

On Divine Simplicity

Of God, the Knowledge of God & of his Attributes

General Revelation

Natural Theology

Natural Law