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Subsections
God’s Life
God’s Blessedness
God’s Freedom
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Order of
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Articles
1500’s
Musculus, Wolfgang – ‘Of the Sufficiency of God’ in Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563), fol. 377.a – 380.a See also this AI translation.
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1600’s
Cheynell, Francis – ch. 2, ‘God is the First, Eternal & Independent Being, the Fountain of All Being & Well-Being, & therefore cannot but Be, Exist & Persist in Being’ in The Divine Trinunity of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit (1650)
Cheynell was a Westminster divine.
Leigh, Edward – 6. ‘That God is Great in his Nature, Works, Authority, a Necessary Essence, Independent & Wholly One’ in A System or Body of Divinity… (London, A.M., 1654), bk. 2, pp. 152-60
van Mastricht, Peter – Theoretical-Practical Theology ed. Joel Beeke, tr: Todd Rester (RHB, 2018), vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, pt. 1, bk. 2
3. ‘The Essence & Independence of God’ 72-95
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21. ‘The All-Sufficiency or Perfection of God’ 453-69
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1700’s
Venema, Herman – Translation of Hermann Venema’s inedited Institutes of Theology tr. Alexander W. Brown (d. 1787; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850)
5. God (Names of, Names of Essence, Proper Names, Appellatives, Aleim, Jehovah, El-Shadai, Adonai, Jah, Nature of God, Perfect, Spiritual, Independent Cause of All, Attributes of, Essence & Life, Simplicity) 119
6. Attributes of God (Independence, Eternity, Immutability, Understanding, Knowledge, Object of, Extent, Manner, Will, Object of, Acts, Perfection) 138
De Moor, Bernard – Continuous Commentary, ch. 4, ‘On God’
20. Independence of God
21. God’s Independence in Existence & Essence
21. God’s Independence in His Faculties & Operations
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1900’s
Wolter, Allan – ‘Allan Wolter’s Conclusions respecting Reality, Proving God’ (1958)
Conclusions respecting Reality
2 If the relatively permanent exists the absolutely permanent exists
16-27 Transient to a First Uncausable Efficient Cause
28-31 Caused to Something is Unconditioned & Independent
32-34 From Another to a Being from Itself
35-39 Contingent to Necessary Being
40-47 Potential Being to Something is Pure Act
48-51 If Anything, the Uncausable is Substance
52-53 Relative to Absolute Being
54-58 Composite to the Ineffectible, Efficient Cause is Simple
Proof of God
1-3 Only One Infinite Being Exists, which is from Itself & Perfect
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Quotes
Order of
Gonzalez
Fentiman
Fanatic Thomist
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1800’s
Zeferino González
Metaphysicam generalem atque specialem (1894), vol. 2, p. 331 in Fanatic Thomas, ‘Divine Aseity as the Formal Constituent of God’s Metaphysical Essence’ (2023) Cardinal Gonzalez (1831–1894) was a Spanish Dominican theologian and philosopher, Archbishop of Seville and cardinal.
“The metaphysical essence of God is constituted by His aseity
Proof:
The concept of self-existent being, or omnimodal aseity can be understood in the following manner:
1. It is that which is conceived as the first and foremost in God.
2. It is the primary distinguishing characteristic of God from all other things.
3. It serves as the fundamental root of God’s attributes.
Therefore, aseity constitutes the metaphysical essence of God; this is the proper understanding of the metaphysical essence.
Regarding the first part, this is evident because any other perfection or attributes attributed to God, such as being wise, eternal, infinite, cannot be conceived as truly divine without aseity, which means complete independence from anything else. Additionally, no other attribute can be assigned from which aseity itself could be derived.
As for the second part, this is because by His aseity, God is first and immediately distinguished from creatures, which exist from another as a cause. God is conceived as having the power to emanate from Himself or, rather, to contain within Himself all other divine perfections or attributes. As St. Thomas puts it, “God is existence itself, of itself subsistent. Consequently, He must contain within Himself the whole perfection of being.” (Summa Theologiæ, Prima Pars, q. 4, a. 2)
Concerning the third part, it follows from the fact that God is being from Himself and by Himself, and that He has no cause for limitation, and therefore necessarily possesses all possible perfections, which are the divine attributes themselves. Therefore, all these attributes are conceived to flow forth from His aseity as their primary source.”
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2000’s
Travis Fentiman
‘A Proof for God’s Existence from Change’ (2024), 3. The Unmoved Mover is God: further Attributes
“Some may not be used to thinking of God as an unmoved mover. Yet is not the first cause of all things God? If God is anything He is that. But many more attributes may be derived from the unmoved mover being pure act,ª which will show that we are dealing with God.
ª This is not accidental. Just as (1) the attributes of a thing derive from its kind of existence, so (2) if God’s existence or being may be established and that it is of itself, or from itself (aseity), (3) its absoluteness, independence and primacy being herein established, (4) and everything else must flow out of this first principle and (5) must be systematically related to it, it ought to be expected that many attributes of the first principle may be further drawn out. See the footnote below on classic reformed theology and Mastricht.
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While we could go on for some time deriving many of the attributes of the unmoved mover from nature’s light, such an exercise in natural theology is unnecessary here.° It is clear we are dealing with God.
° While classic reformed theology during the Post-Reformation varied with how far God’s attributes might be derived from nature’s light alone, especially with regard to epistemology after the Fall (in distinction from metaphysics from pure-nature), yet there is good reason, said Mastricht, to think “all the attributes of God are established in this primacy” of God’s being.
All attributes of things depend upon and flow out of the characteristic being of the thing. If one establishes the greater, one establishes (at least theoretically) all the lesser. Thus if God’s “aseity [from Himself-ness], independence and primacy” (which things inhere from being pure act) are proved, from this may be deduced, according to Mastricht, God’s unity, immutability, infinity, simplicity, life, intellect, will, omnipotence and “the virtues of the intellect and will—wisdom, goodness, grace, holiness, and others…” Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 3, sect. 16, pp. 84-85 In most of the subsequent chapters on God’s attributes Mastricht has a specific section on how each attribute may be derived “from reasons”.”
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‘Allan Wolter’s Conclusions respecting Reality, Proving God’, Intro, ‘The Proof’
“Most of the work being done in the proof [by Wolter] is in conclusions 2 and 68-69 respecting reality, and in conclusions 1-3 of the Proof of God. Much of the argument through the rest is patterned off of those. To illustrate conclusions 2, 16-17 and 24:
If anything is caused and comes into existence in changing reality around us, it does not have its reason for existence in itself; otherwise, if it did, it would always exist. This may be likened to a metal link hanging solitary in the air: nothing in the link itself can explain or provide the power for it hanging in the air.
Connect to the link several more links, or an infinite chain of them. Yet nothing in the infinite chain can justify its hanging in the air. Form the chain into a circle: it still, of its own nature, can’t cause itself to float in the air. Yet that nothing can come from nothing, in order to account for this phenomenon, is plain. Something is yet causing the chain to be suspended in the air and to exist.
That something must be (1) able to cause (so as to hold the chain in the air, or in being), and (2) cause all other things needing a cause, that is all things besides itself (or else it would be a part of the chain). Yet as it cannot be one more link in the chain, needing a further cause, it must be uncaused. The very existence of a cause necessitates that a causer, which is uncaused, exists.
In the scenario above, with a few explanations and adjustments, one may replace the relevant terms with:
transient / permanent
temporal / eternal
changeable / unchangeable
dependent / independent
contingent / necessary
relative / absolute
composite / simple
finite / infinite
imperfect / perfect
Hence if something transient, temporal, changeable, etc. exists, so must something permanent, eternal, unchangeable, etc.; in fact, something infinitely necessary, absolute and perfect must exist. But it is undeniable by one’s own experience that something transient or changeable, etc. exists, or may exist (which possibility will reach the same conclusion). This we call God. As all perfections must be in God, infinitely, as Wolter will show, God must be personal.
All the terms of the above pairs are attributes (or properties) of being. As they are contradictory opposites with respect to being, all being may be divided amongst the opposite terms of each pair. Hence Wolter calls these pairs, “disjunctive attributes of being”. He will show that if being of the less perfect term of the pair exists, or can exist, some being of the opposite term must exist (conclusions 68-69).”
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Fanatic Thomist
‘The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature’ (2024)
“…the perfection which is conceived as primary [to God] among others, serving as the reason and root of all attributes in our analogical [knowledge of God].
Since we know God by concepts that are intrinsically different, a question arises about the order that obtains among these intrinsically different concepts, and, in particular, which of these concepts corresponds to that absolute perfection in God which holds first place and is the source of all His other perfections. This is what we mean when we speak of the formal constituent of the metaphysical essence of God. To put it simply, we want to know which attribute a) is the ‘primary’ attribute, as well as the source and root of all other divine attributes, and b) that by which God is distinguished from creatures.
There are many positions on this, but here, I will only present a few of them.
1. According to Neo-Platonists, goodness is what constitutes the metaphysical essence of God.
2. According to the Nominalists, the metaphysical essence of God consists in the sum-total of all perfections.
3. According to Scotus and his followers, Infinity is what constitutes His metaphysical essence.
4. According to some a number of Thomists, subsistent intellection is the constituent of God’s essence. Gonet and Billuart held this position.
5. Finally, according to St. Thomas, his followers and the majority of Scholastics, ens a se [“being from itself”] or aseity is the formal constituent of the divine essence.”
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Latin Articles
1600’s
de Vries, Gerard – Rational Exercitations on God & the Divine Perfections, even Miscellaneous Philosophical Things new ed. (Utrecht, 1695), vol. 1, Rational Exercitations, pp. 35-45
4. ‘God-Independent’ 35-45
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7. God Necessarily Existing 61
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13. God All-Sufficient 95
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1700’s
Holtzfus, Barthold – 5. ‘Of the Truth, Goodness, Primacy & Independency, Infinity, Incomprehensibleness, Eternity, Immensity, & Immutability of God’ in A Theological Tract on God, Attributes & the Divine Decrees, Three Academic Dissertations (1707), pp. 40-55
Holtzfus (1659-1717) was a reformed professor of philosophy and theology at Frankfurt.
Roy, Albert – Of the Eternity, Existence from Himself & Immutability of God (Bern, 1717)
Roy (1663-1733)
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Related Pages