Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE ESSENCE AND THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN GENERAL.

On the proper reason of the divine essence, as we distinguish it by consideration from the attributes.

« Although the absolute divine perfections are not really distinct, nor can one of them be understood in the thing itself as prior to the others and the foundation of the rest; yet a distinction of reason, following from our imperfect manner of conceiving, is sufficient for us to distinguish the essence and the properties of the essence. This distinction being posited, we conclude that the essence is to be placed in this: that God is Being a se. »

I. Essence or what the Esse of a thing is (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), the quiddity of the thing, as they say, can be considered in creatures in three ways: 1° if we understand all those things by which some individual thing is constituted in the nature of things, so that when they are posited it is, and with any one of them removed it would not be this thing. Considered in this way the individual essence in substances is called πρώτη οὐσία, first substance, which, if it is whole and wholly in itself, that is, neither made proper to another nor common to several distinct things among themselves, is a hypostasis. The essence under this consideration is therefore constituted of all that are in the individual thing, excepting the accidental things, which can be present and absent without the thing ceasing to be this thing. In this sense, if we speak of the essence of God, not only all the absolute perfections which we can conceive but also the relations constituting the persons pertain to the divine essence; not only as God is in himself, but also as he is conceived by us. But this sense of the name essence could not be used without confusion of things. For one thing is the consideration of the subject which is, and another of the perfection what it is. Hence although in God the most simple Esse is both the hypostasis which is and the absolute perfection what it is; nevertheless that distinction of reason with a foundation in the thing obtains between hypostasis and essence, so that the neglect of it, as the Fathers often warn, was the origin of nearly all the heresies concerning the mystery of the Holy Trinity (see Tract. de Trin. th. XXI. sqq.).

2°. In created things we understand essence as the complex of all those things which are necessarily common to the single subjects of the same order. This is essence abstracted, indeed, from individuals, and therefore precise with respect to accidental things and to the marks which individuate; but constituted by all the essential perfections which are in the individuals, and it is commonly called physical essence. By analogy to this we understand the essence of God as constituted by all the absolute perfections, and we oppose it, since there is no accident in God, to the internal relations and notions by which the persons are constituted and distinguished.

3°. Finally, in physical essence itself, where the discourse concerns created things, we distinguish those marks which are understood to comprehend all the rest in themselves, either formally but in confusion, or at least virtually; and this we call metaphysical essence. Metaphysical essence, therefore, a) contains the quiddity common to all and only the subjects of the same order; and so it sufficiently exhibits what the thing is in itself, and by this very fact distinguishes it from all others of a different order, in that it comprehends all the perfections of physical essence at least virtually. Hence b) in this same essence all the perfections of the thing have their principle, follow from it, and are understood to be inherent in it. c) Accordingly essence is that which is first understood in the thing, as being the source and principle of all that belongs to the thing. Concerning this metaphysical essence it is now asked whether any can be defined by us in God, and what it is.

It is clear that neither physical essence is to be distinguished from the personal properties, nor any metaphysical essence from the other perfections of God, if we were to conceive God as he is in himself¹. But indeed if we hold all the diverse reasons, under which we inadequately conceive the absolute and the relative, and in the absolutes again many perfections, to be identical, our judgement is no less erroneous than if we thought that the perfections exhibited under those reasons were really distinct in God. Therefore we judge from the truth of the thing that the reason under which we conceive that supreme thing as absolute, by which God is and which God is, abstracting from relatives, is a different reason; and again another reason, under which we conceive the Father formally as Father in relation and opposition to the Son. Accordingly we rightly distinguish that supreme thing as absolute, under the name nature and essence, from the personal properties, because truly that supreme thing is both absolute and relative; and since we cannot comprehend both in one adequate concept, we somehow adumbrate them by distinct and inadequate reasons.

In the same way we conceive the essence and the nature itself, most simple, under many inadequate notions of perfections (th. XIII.). But just as in creatures, from which we first derive the ideas of perfections, those are distinct, and depend upon one another and flow from one another up to the metaphysical essence, which is the principle of all: so also when we understand them in God, we do not indeed judge that one perfection really flows from another, since they are not really distinct; yet one inadequate reason, as it is conceived by us, presupposes another, and depends upon it as upon its principle. For although in God one thing is altogether simple, Being, and to be spirit, and to be wise, and to be willing, yet when we understand these through distinct concepts, we cannot conceive the will, either in itself or in its functions, except by presupposing the concept of intellect, nor the intellect except by presupposing the concept of spiritual substance, nor finally this or anything else without the concept of Being itself. Although therefore in God, on account of his infinite simplicity, we cannot indeed distinguish the metaphysical essence in the way in which it is understood in creatures; this nevertheless does not prevent that, according to our imperfect mode of understanding, among the many reasons by which we conceive in some measure what God is, there be assigned some one which stands in the place of essence. Moreover, just as the distinction of the perfections of God according to diverse reasons is necessary, so that the extension of our one concept through several concepts may in some measure make up for the defect of the intension of one concept; so the determination of what in God ought to be conceived, in the manner declared, as standing in the place of essence, will reconcile the unity with the multiplicity of reasons under which we think the perfections of God, and will render our knowledge deeper and better suited to the simplicity of its object.

II. Although the theologians agree that essence can, and for the benefit of knowledge ought to, be distinguished in God from the properties in the manner explained, there is not one opinion of all as to the concept in which its proper reason is to be placed. As is clear from what has been said above, the concept of essence ought to exhibit marks which both distinguish the thing from all others of a different order, and are understood as first constituting the thing, so that from these, as from prior things, the rest that inhere may be deduced, and which are not themselves consequent upon any prior things. Essence therefore is always the supreme perfection (not having one prior to it) among all those which constitute a thing in a certain order of beings and distinguish it from all others. In created things, therefore, essence can never be constituted by the reason of being, because although that is the supreme perfection, it is not proper to one order nor distinguishing from others, nor are all the determinate perfections which inhere in the thing comprehended in it as in a principle; but it is necessary that essence be being contracted to a determinate perfection. But if in something the very reason of being were distinct and different from all things which are not it, and if it were the reason of being simply, so that it would be understood not as an indeterminate concept of being arrived at by abstraction, but as determinate being in the fullness of perfection; then indeed this reason of being would be both the supreme perfection, and distinct from all others, and the principle containing all perfections, which, being determinate, could be distinguished in it not in reality but only in reason: and accordingly this very reason of being would be, before the other perfections, metaphysical essence. But this very reason of being is in God, insofar as he is being not by participation but Absolute Being; a negation of participated being and an affirmation of Absolute Being are expressed together in this, when it is said being from itself. Therefore the divine essence is rightly reckoned before the other perfections of God.

Let the very great difference between being by participation and being from itself be carefully noted, I beg. In creatures, the lower and more determinate things are always more perfect, and at least virtually include within themselves the perfections of the higher grades. « Living things surpass beings, sentient things surpass living things, rational things surpass sentient things, and pure spirits themselves surpass rational (sentient) things » Dionys. de div. nom. c. 5. §. 3. For since the being of creatures is not simply but determined to a certain grade, therefore being is found in them at a higher or lower grade, according as they more nearly or more remotely imitate and shadow forth the divine Being. The more restricted grade rational therefore includes the more universal grade of life, and this in turn the higher grade of being, but not the reverse. But being from itself is not restricted to any grade, but is Being simply, and therefore of all nobility and of all perfection. Hence when being from itself is said with no determination added, there is understood absolute perfection in every line of being, if it is lawful so to speak. Whence by the added determination life from itself is not signified as a nobler grade, but there is expressed a perfection of a determinate order already comprehended in Being from itself, which is the perfection of every order; and further, if life is defined as intellectual, this very intellectuality from itself was already comprehended in life from itself, and both ultimately in Being from itself. Hence in being from itself the more universal and less determinate grade comprehends the lower grades, which we conceive as determined to certain reasons; the contrary holds in being by participation.

St Thomas has most clearly summed up all this doctrine, 1. 2. q. 2. a. 5. ad 2. « Being simply taken, according as it includes in itself every perfection of being, excels life and all the perfections that follow. Thus Being itself has in itself beforehand all the good things that follow, and in this way Dionysius speaks (de div. nom. c. 5.). But if one considers being itself, as it is participated in this or that thing, which do not take in the whole perfection of being, but have being imperfect, as is the being of any creature; so it is manifest that being itself with a superadded perfection is more eminent. » Cf. 1. q. 13. a. 11.

From all these things it appears that those theologians have not sufficiently considered the reason of being from itself, who thought that the metaphysical essence of God is to be constituted not in Being from itself, but in a grade of intellectuality or in an intelligent act; for Being from itself is prior to these grades, by which they are themselves comprehended, and from which they are deduced as from a prior. Being from itself therefore is not any lower grade whatever, but is what in God we understand as the first and as the supreme root of all perfections. Nevertheless the grade of intellectuality in creatures is a fuller expression of the divine Being than the higher and more general grade of life, and here again the imitation is nearer than the most universal grade of being, because, as has been said, in participated being the fullness of the more contracted grades stands to the higher grades in the inverse order to that in Being from itself. Therefore the teaching declared by St Thomas, 1. q. 93. a. 3, that in intellectual beings alone is found the image and the likeness as specific, while in the other, higher grades of life and being there exists only the vestige of God, does not conflict with our statement that the divine essence is to be constituted in Being from itself, because the one divine Being is the exemplar shadowed forth through participated being, through participated life and intellectuality; but being participated together with the perfection of intellectuality expresses it more nearly than being without an addition.

From what has been said it can also be declared why this predication being from itself is not, in the proper sense, a definition of God, nor can any other definition be given of the kind that logicians understand, consisting of the genus that is nearest and the last differentia. « All the contrary and diverse things that are in the world, says St Thomas, de potent. q. 3. a. 6, are found to communicate in some one thing, either in the nature of the species, or in the nature of the genus, or at least in the reason of being. » That is to say, all created things are in some way composed of what is common to many and of what is proper to themselves (cf. Ecclesi. XLII.25.). Hence the essence of all created things consists of a grade of reality which is common to the order immediately above, and of another, proper grade which determines to an order distinct from all others; and accordingly the definition, which is a statement explaining what a thing is, consists of the designation of the nearest genus and the last differentia². But such a definition of God, not only as God is in himself but also as he is conceived by us, cannot be given; because in God nothing, not even the supreme reason of being, is something common which, with a perfection added, is determined to the proper reason of God; but that supreme reason of Being is by itself most proper and altogether different from every reason of being which we can conceive apart from God; nor can any distinct perfection be added to it by which it would be determined, because that Being itself is every perfection³. Nevertheless, since the name being is analogous, that is, since being said principally of God can also signify what is outside God, of a reason altogether diverse indeed, yet assimilated and subordinated to the divine being⁴; therefore we can apply this name to signify only the divine being, through the added from itself, which we understand as a last differentia of diversity from participated being. Whence this determination of the analogous name to its principal signification, by an added differentia as it were last, has a certain likeness to a definition. Moreover, the perfections which are confusedly comprehended in the concept of being from itself we can explain more distinctly, and so describe God in some measure.

On the distribution and the order to be observed in treating the divine attributes.

« The distribution of the divine attributes into negative and affirmative, received among the theologians, has its foundation in the intrinsic reason of the attributes, as they are conceived by us; nor, however, are other divisions excluded, into absolute and relative attributes with respect to what is outside God, into the absolute properties of the divine essence and into attributes more strictly so called; nor do they lack their own best reason. »

When we treat of the distinction of the divine properties and perfections from the essence, and of the partition and distribution of those properties into certain categories, as it were, this can indeed only be understood of the essence and the perfections according to the mode in which they are known by us. The principle of order therefore cannot be drawn from the perfection of God as he is in himself, but from the intrinsic objective connection by which the perfections succeed one another according to our mode of knowing.

Now first, from what has been demonstrated in the preceding theses, both by reason and in revelation, we attain in some measure, only through ideas drawn from creatures, what God is; and therefore there is a twofold way of knowing the divine perfections, one joined with the other, namely through negations of imperfections, and through affirmations of perfections. The general distribution of the divine perfections into those which are expressed by negations and those which are expressed by affirmations is therefore taken from our very mode of knowing, on which every division of those things which in God are one and undistinguished necessarily rests. It is strange, therefore, that certain more recent theologians have wished to reject this distribution, which is frequent among the holy Fathers and universal among the masters of the schools, as merely extrinsic, taken from the grammatical form of names, and, as it seems to them, mechanical, and not flowing from the intrinsic organism of doctrine. So that it may be understood how imprudently these things have been said, the reason of this distribution must be examined somewhat more carefully.

In the very inquiry whether God is, the reason, from the limitation of creatures by which they are known as contingent being and being from another, evidently concludes that there exists necessary being, being from itself. As, moreover, that limitation of contingency and participation affects all the perfections of creatures, so the perfection of being from itself and the fullness of being pervades all the perfections of God. Hence reason and faith, in the question what God is considered absolutely, do nothing other than render the confused concept of being from itself more distinct by an explanation of those things which are comprehended in it.

This, however, takes place in our manner of knowing God from creatures in two ways: a) by declaring the perfection of being from itself through negation of the negation or limitation with which the creature is necessarily affected through all grades and, as it were, in every direction, concerning which mode of knowing it was said above. It is easily apparent from the proper character of such negations that they are nothing but one concept after another of fullness of being under diverse respects of opposition to limited being; therefore by their multiplication we conceive more distinctly what we understand confusedly in Being from itself. « The nearer we approach to the knowledge of the divine substance, the more things we are able to remove from it by our intellect; for the more fully we see its differences from other things, the more perfectly we know each thing; for each thing has in itself its own being, distinct from all others » S. Thom. cont. gent. I. c. 14.

We can now consider the limitations of creatures with respect to origin: thus it is created being and from another; whence formally it is in itself finite being, and therefore multipliable, somehow composite or even material, mutable; with respect to time, enduring with succession at least possible; with respect to place, restricted in its presence, or even circumscribed by space; with respect to knowledge, comprehensible to a finite intellect, knowable as it is in itself, or even sensible, and accordingly explicable by doctrine¹. We understand all these limitations as so many distinct expressions of participated being; and accordingly we understand, in inverse order, that a perfection beyond all these limitations is comprehended in the very reason of being simply and absolute. And since that perfection has no analogous ectype in a creature corresponding to it, by which it may be apprehended and named, but there corresponds to it rather the opposed imperfection in creatures, we conceive it confusedly and express it by negations of these limitations; and hence the theologians call negative attributes those which enumerate that God is without beginning: uncreated Being, infinite, one, simple, and a fortiori incorporeal, immutable, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, invisible, ineffable. It is, I think, quite evident from all this, and it appears even from the very inspection of the names, that it is not a question here of grammatical form, but that the distinction of these attributes from the other affirmative ones is grounded in their own reason, by which they stand in relation to the perfections of creatures, and consequently in the mode in which they are known by us.

We can understand b) being from itself and the fullness of being in some measure by concepts that directly affirm perfections (although only with some confusion, or by a co-signified negation, as was explained above). We attain this by abstracting from the limitation with which perfections, as we apprehend them in and from creatures, are affected. This abstraction from limitation can be made in all those perfections, and in those only, whose most universal concept is analogical, so that it is not of itself restricted to limited being, but can be applied both to that which is simply and from itself, and to that which is by participation. Perfections of this kind are chiefly the transcendentals: being, true, good; then the generic substantial grades: living substance, intellectual (or spiritual); then, among the further attributes, which either exclude or at least do not include the imperfection of material things, are intellect, will, power, and those which follow from these. Those which may seem also to pertain here, duration and presence, are in truth, through the exclusion of all imperfection, resolved in being from itself into negations of restriction to time and place, or into the negative attributes of eternity and immensity.

It is therefore plain that this common distribution into perfections which we conceive through negation, and those which we conceive through direct affirmation, does not at all derive from the grammatical form of names, but has its principle in the intrinsic reason of the perfections as they are understood by us², and its contempt has arisen not from deeper knowledge, but from a more superficial consideration. Nevertheless this does not prevent other distinctions, drawn from another and different consideration and from a different principle of order, from being added to these, and these from keeping their own right.

2°. Certainly the distribution into absolute attributes and relative, which is not infrequent among the theologians, is rightly disapproved by no one. Here, however, relative is not understood of a real relation ad intra, but of a relation of reason to a term distinct from God, that is, ad extra. In this distinction, therefore, those attributes are called absolute which are considered in themselves without co-signifying a term ad extra; those are called relative which co-signify a term distinct from God.

Concerning these relative attributes it may be noted that some of them co-signify a term necessary in the state of possibility, as the knowledge of simple intelligence co-signifies all possibles, or the essences of things, necessary in the state of possibility. Others co-signify a term ad extra existing at some point of time, and therefore not absolutely necessary but free for God; nevertheless the denomination of perfection does not begin with the actual existence of the term. An example is the knowledge of vision as related to creatures. Lastly, others are denominated from the actual existence of the co-signified term, as creation, dominion, providence, and so on. The first are necessary and from eternity; the second are from eternity but free as to formal denomination; the last, as to formal denomination, are both free and begin in time. In order that this may be rightly understood, in all attributes of the second and third kinds just mentioned two things must be considered: one is the perfection in God, which is indeed necessary and eternal; the other is the extrinsic term, not necessary and temporal, from which the denomination is taken, but which is not a perfection in God. Therefore when God is called creator, Lord, provider, sanctifier, and so on, the foundation of these denominations, considered in God, is the necessary and eternal perfection of intellect, will, and power; but what outside God is created, subject, directed, sanctified adds no perfection to God, although these denominations are derived from it.

3°. If the perfections just enumerated are considered more carefully, it readily appears that the transcendentals and substantial grades, both in creatures themselves and as they are conceived by us, are not to be understood as something accruing and superadded to substantial being, but rather as diverse reasons and expressions of being itself; and much the same must be said of the perfections which are designated by negations. Understanding, will, power, and the perfections connected with these, insofar as they are regarded in their acts, are conceived by us, as the Fathers are wont to say, as something about the essence and in some way accruing to the essence. Hence in our manner of conceiving there is a foundation for the other distribution of the perfections of God, adopted by many theologians, into properties (absolute) and into attributes properly so called.

To ourselves this latter distinction seemed the more convenient for arranging the order of the matters to be treated, because in this way we can keep more strictly the logical connection among the perfections, as they are understood by us one from another in synthetic order. In the following chapters of this Section, therefore, we shall consider the absolute properties, at least those which require a more careful treatment, so that we understand one from another according to our manner of conceiving, paying no attention, in constructing the order, to the concept of perfections whether by negations or by affirmations. Next we shall speak of the attributes of intellect and will, which we shall consider chiefly as they constitute supernatural providence and have for their object the salvation of men.

ON THE FULLNESS OF PERFECTION IN ABSOLUTE BEING.

The fullness of absolute perfection is expressed in the Scriptures by the name of God who is.

« The name, who is (ὁ ὢν), revealed by God himself, is 1° the proper name of God, signifying immediately the very substance of God, and not, as seemed to some learned men, his efficacy or a special relation of God to the people of Israel; and so, admitting no analogical signification, it is an incommunicable name; 2° by this name is designated, as is expressed in the Scriptures, absolute Being itself, actually, as the essence of God and as the fullness of perfection. »

I. The ten names of God are listed by St Jerome in letter 25 to Marcella: El, Elohim, Eloe, Sabaoth, Elion, eser ieie, Adonai, Ia, « τετραγράμματον ineffabile, which is written with these letters Iod, He, Vau, He; which some, not understanding because of the similarity of the letters they had found in the Greek books, were accustomed to read πιπι »; Saddai¹. Of these, only four are properly substantives: El, Elohim, Adonai, Iehovah²; the rest either differ from one of the enumerated names by almost only their grammatical form: Eloah, ascher ehieh, Iah; or are epithets designating some attribute of God: Elion, Schaddai; or designate an extrinsic term of divine dominion: Sabaoth. Of the first four, Adonai (Dominus, ὁ κυριος) signifies an extrinsic term. The other two, El and Elohim, are used in exactly the same way as the Latin name Deus; for whatever you think of the etymology of these names³, in common usage they certainly signify the supreme deity, surpassing all in power and majesty, which in truth can only be one; but by false opinion several deities can nevertheless be thought to exist: « for although there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, since there are many gods and many lords, yet to us there is one God » 1. Cor. VIII. 5. 6.⁴ Hence, although among those who rightly think of the supreme deity these names (El, Elohim, Deus) signify the one God in his substance, nevertheless they are also applied to designate false gods, and so they take on, as it were, the character of appellatives. By contrast, the tetragrammaton יהוה is altogether the proper name of the true God, and was never used to designate anything else. This distinction between a proper name and, in a sense, an appellative is best perceived in those places where the Scriptures predicate of God under the name יהוה that he alone is El or Elohim, in opposition to and to the exclusion of false gods. « Know therefore this day that the Lord (יהוה) is God (Elohim) in heaven above and on earth beneath, and there is no other » Deut. IV. 32⁵; « O Lord God (יהוה), you have begun to show ... your strong hand; for there is no other God (El), either in heaven or on earth, who can do your works » ib. III. 24. etc.

Connected with this property of the name is its incommunicability; and each must be explained from the mode of signifying. The holy Fathers frequently teach that all the other names, not excepting this very name God, are derived from the efficacies of God⁶; whence when men ascribe these efficacies to false divinities, those too are called gods in the Scriptures, θεοί, אלהים, not indeed from the truth of the matter but from the opinion of men; for in the truth of the matter they are, and are called « lies, vanities, nothing⁷. » Moreover, since God is named by these names insofar as he is known from his efficacies, they stand in the place of affirmative attributes, of which some imitation is found in creatures; whence in the Scriptures themselves the name God, θεός, אלהים, is transferred in a certain analogous signification (in the plural number only, see Tract. de Incarn. th. III.) to designate angels or men who exercise the authority of God. Cf. S. Thom. 1. q. 13. aa. 8. 9. 10.

But the name יהוה is derived from none of the efficacies of God. For God is not named by this name (who is) as the exemplar and efficient cause of existing creatures; but rather, as will presently appear, by this name, as ὁ ὢν, as who is through essence, he is set over against everything that can be conceived apart from him. Accordingly what is signified by this name holds the place of those perfections which we express by negations, or which we conceive in some measure not by likeness but by the removal of the imperfection found in creatures. By the name itself, therefore, is signified the eminence of essence (ὑπερουσία) and perfection, formally as incommunicable; from which it follows that it admits no analogical signification, and therefore cannot be transferred to the designation of others, which have a likeness of God through participation, or to which some attributes and efficacies of God have been ascribed through error; and so it is an altogether incommunicable name, just as the essence which it signifies is incommunicable ad extra.⁸

This property of the name יהוה, and the signification of the divine Being itself, is confirmed from the very context of Exod. III. 14. 15. collated with VI. 3, where God revealed himself by this name. « Moses said to God: behold, I shall go to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers (אלהי אבותיכם) has sent me to you. If they say to me: what is his name? what shall I say to them? » It was not enough for Moses to know « the God of the fathers », who called and protected Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and whom they worshipped as God almighty (אל שדי VI. 3.); but he manifestly asks, in opposition to the appellative name God אלהים, for a proper name, which is incommunicable, so that it may not be given to another. God, answering this request of Moses, declares first the very actual necessary existence as the distinguishing mark by which he alone can be called. « God said to Moses: I am who I am » (אהיה אשר אהיה ἐγω εἰμι ὁ ὤν)⁹. Hence from this act of being the proper name, which Moses had sought, is derived as that by which he himself declares himself: « Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: who is (in Hebrew אהיה, I am, that is, he who declares what he is by this word: I am) has sent me to you. » Finally, he changes the form of the first person אהיה, by which he declares what he is, into another, either substantival or of the third person יהוה, by which he is called by his faithful ones: « Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: The Lord יהוה, God of your fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever. » The comparison made with the request of Moses and with the preceding verse shows that the designation « God of the fathers » cannot, as some have thought, be taken as an imposed name; but the proper name is יהוה, and the apposition « God of the fathers » declares that the true God himself, whose name is ὁ ὢν, is the God who chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their seed.

From this whole context the property of the name יהוה is clear first; and it is clear next what is chiefly sought, that by this name the Being of God himself is directly signified, and not fidelity in fulfilling promises, as some more recent writers have thought. For this is shown a) by the etymology of the name itself and by the declaration given by God himself. b) In the absolute signification of Being itself the name is explained in the Scriptures themselves, Apoc.I.4.8; IV. 8: ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος; in which resolution of the name the form of indefinite time is declared as a unity of past, present, and future, which is nothing other than the negation of succession, and accordingly an eminence above every relation to time. c) In this sense all the ancient interpreters, Jews as well as Christians, understood the name. d) That more recent interpretation rests on a false supposition. For they think that from Exod. VI. 3 the name יהוה can be understood only insofar as God is shown faithful in carrying out what he had promised, because only in this sense does it seem true to them that God, insofar as he is יהוה, did not manifest himself to the patriarchs. But it is one thing that fidelity in keeping promises is directly signified by the name, and another that this fidelity follows from what the name signifies; the former we deny, the latter we concede.

As to the question whether the name יהוה itself, even considered materially, was first revealed to Moses at Exod. III. 14, we say that the cause we are now treating does not depend upon it. For if some contend, on account of certain names and sayings which occur before this theophany, e.g. Gen. XV. 7. 8; XXII. 14, that the name had been known long before, it must at least be conceded that the thing signified by the name was more distinctly revealed to Moses, l. c. For this at least is said at Exod. VI. 3. Now by what argument, I ask, will they demonstrate that this more distinct revelation refers only to the fidelity of God or to his special providence toward the people of Israel, and not rather to the very perfection of the divine essence, from which, to be sure, that fidelity in fulfilling promises follows? « Under the law, says St Thomas, the prophetic revelation was made concerning the things that pertain to the faith of the deity more excellently than before ..... Whence the Lord says to Moses: I am the Lord, who appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in God almighty, and my name Adonai (יהוה) I did not reveal to them: because, namely, the preceding Fathers were instructed in faith in the omnipotence of the one God, but Moses was afterward more fully instructed concerning the simplicity of the divine essence, when it was said to him: I am who I am » S.Th. 2. 2. q. 174. a. 6. Moreover, the words of God at Exod. VI. 3 are so worded that the earlier manifestation of the name יהוה seems altogether to be denied. If this is admitted, it must be said that the use of this name in Genesis, even in the somewhat more difficult passages Gen. XV. 7. 8; XXII. 14, is by a figure of anticipation¹⁰.

II. What we have said so far pertains rather to determining the nominal signification, so that it is clear what term is signified. But it is our concern to know the mode of signifying, so that from it (as far as may be) we may understand the thing signified, what it is. We say therefore that by this name ὁ ὢν, Exod. III. 14, Being actually is defined as the divine essence, and consequently that in the Scriptures Absolute Being is declared as the fullness of absolute perfection.

1°. God, l. c., does not obscurely declare, by the very form of the enunciation, that Being actually is his own essence, as that to which the question what God is is answered (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, which the Scholastics called quod quid esse and quiddity). For before he assigns to himself the name ὁ ὢν, אהיה or יהוה, and makes it known to Moses, he declares by a certain definition the thing signified by that name. The definition is: « I am who I am »; where manifestly the term who I am constitutes the predicate, and therefore states of the subject I, what it is. The sense therefore is equivalent to this other: I am Being itself; therefore Being itself is declared by God as his own quiddity or essence. We may illustrate this somewhat by comparison with the essence of a creature. The essence of a creature is in itself in the state of objective possibility, and is brought forth into the state of real existence only by the will of the Almighty; being therefore is not part of the concept of the creature's essence, but supervenes upon it through an efficient cause. But because in God essence is Being itself, the essence of God cannot be conceived in the state of possibility, and apart from Being actual, any more than the essence of a creature can be conceived in the state of impossibility; for just as objective possibility enters into the very essence of a creature, so Being, itself actual, is the essence of him who says: I am who I am. It is therefore expressed directly and formally by this utterance, and accordingly also by the proper name of God, I am or who is, the necessary Being of God, of which there is no cause or other reason than the intrinsic quiddity and essence of God himself; which we express by saying being from itself, by which we both deny the cause from which it is, and affirm the intrinsic necessity of actual Being¹¹

2°. God, according to the context described above, Exod. III. 14. 15., claims the name I am (ὁ ὢν) simply and without addition for himself

אני הוה ונמצא מצד שאני הוה ולא מצד שזולתי נמצא claims it as its own, and as distinguishing it from all things that exist or can be conceived apart from it. It cannot therefore be understood as being in common, as the most simple mark opposed to non-existence or to nothing; but it is necessarily understood as Being of its own proper reason, distinguishing itself and distinct from being of any grade and reason, which is not God. This divine Being is therefore first of all determinate, singular, personal, and not universal and indeterminate being. This is already clear in itself, and by the personal form not only of the subject I but also of the predicate who I am it is evidently expressed; it is not an indefinite ὄν but a personal ὁ ὤν; it is ὁ αὐτός¹². On the other side, this Being, supremely determinate and distinct from all others, has no determination according to some grade of being, but is called Being simply. Being is moreover the same as perfection. Whatever therefore of perfect Being or of absolute perfection can be conceived, all that is he, whose essence is Being, not according to any grade beyond which it would not extend, but simply, and therefore without limit. « The purest Is, says St Bonaventure, is found only in the full flight from not-being... for Being itself has nothing of not-being » Bonavent. Itiner. c. 5. Read St Thomas cont. gent. I. c. 28; 1. q. 4. a. 2. Dionysius admirably circumscribes the name who is (divin. nom. c. 5. §. 4.): « God is not in some measure being, but simply and infinitely, as one who has embraced and anticipated all Being in himself »¹³.

3°. This fullness of being, indicated by God himself through the revelation of his own proper name and, as it were, of its definition, the same divine revelation declares more distinctly in other places of Holy Scripture. « Where are their gods........ see that I am alone (כי אני אני הוא) and there is no God besides me... I live for ever ». Deut. XXXII. 39. 40. « I, the Lord (יהוה), am the first and the last ». « I myself am; before me no God was formed, and after me there shall be none; I am, I am the Lord (יהוה), and there is no saviour besides me ». « Thus says the Lord (יהוה), the king of Israel..... I am the first and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. » « The Lord of hosts (יהוה צבאות) is his name... I myself, I am the first and I am the last. My right hand also founded the earth » Is. XLI. 4; XLIII. 10. 11; XLIV. 6; XLVIII. 12. 13.¹⁴ « I, the Lord (יהוה), do not change » Mal. III. 6. « I am α and ω, the beginning and the end, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the almighty. » « I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end » Apoc. I. 8; XXI. 6; XXII. 13.

In these passages, a) by affirming, he is declared whose name is I am, the first and the same last, the beginning and the same end, himself the α and himself the ω; in whom, as is, was, and will be are not successions but one immutable Being; nor is there one thing first, another last, another α and another ω; but the same himself is, if he is conceived as first, beginning, α; and if he is conceived as last, end, and ω. Thus he who is comprehends the beginning, the middle and the end, and the whole fullness of absolute being and of absolute perfection, to which nothing can be added nor anything taken away. « He who is before the world and unto the world; nothing is added to him, nor is anything diminished » Ecclesi. XLII. 21. Therefore, as Dionysius says (div. nom. c. 5. §. 8.), « he who in the Scriptures essentially pre-exists according to every notion of the things that are, is predicated in many ways, and is properly sung as was and is and will be; for he has anticipated in himself, absolutely and eminently, the beginning and the middle and the end of beings¹⁵. » In an eminent and transcendent manner (for these are what the Greek words mean) he is said to have anticipated the whole in himself; that is, not as a principle of the same order, like unity among numbers, but as absolute Being and supereminent cause¹⁶¹⁷. Hence b) in the same places of Scripture is inferred by denying that, apart from him who is the whole fullness of being, there is nothing of absolute, independent, divine being, nothing that is Elohim.

4°. If the texts cited a little above are rightly considered, it is readily understood that Being simply, and that fullness of being, is everywhere presented as the reason and cause why other things besides God and outside God can be, and really are: because God is יהוה ὁ ὤν, therefore he alone is the one who knows all things and declares things to come; he alone, and no one with him, founded the earth; he alone, and no one besides him, is Saviour, etc. For as God alone is ὁ ὤν, Being intrinsically necessary, comprehending the first and the last, that is, the whole fullness of absolute being, and beside him nothing can be of absolute being: so in his very absolute perfection is the reason why can there exist outside him analogical imitations and beings by participation; and in the free application of his will and infinite power is the cause why such beings really are. For both pertain to the fullness of absolute being: that outside him nothing of absolute and independent being can exist (otherwise God would not be the fullness itself); and that by his will can there be imitations of his perfection in created realities, all depending on him in every way (otherwise God would not be perfect according to all reasons, and so would not be the fullness of being or of absolute perfection). God alone is because he is, nor can any reality such as he is exist or be conceived beside him and outside him; the rest can be because God is, and they actually are because God wills them to be. « They adored him who lives for ages of ages.... saying: worthy art thou, Lord our God¹⁸ to receive glory.... because thou hast created all things, and by thy will they were and were created » Apoc. IV. 10. 11. From him as from the beginning of the necessary intrinsic and extrinsic possibility of all things, and through him as from a free cause, not only that it may begin but also that it may persist, existence of created things dependent on him in every way; and unto him as unto the end of all; from him as beginning, middle, and end, α and ω are all things, Rom. XI. 35. 36; Hebr. II. 10. Whatever therefore of perfection is not only in real creatures but can be in all possibles, all is comprehended in God, not indeed formally, as it exists or can exist in creatures (for thus it is something dependent, created, limited, and an analogous being in comparison with being simply); but it is comprehended eminently as one, absolute perfection, imitable outside itself, of the exemplar and efficient cause. « That eternal and unchangeable nature, having in itself that it is, as was said to Moses: I am who I am, far otherwise, of course, than those things which were made.... none of those which he made, existing and having all things first as he himself is... nor would he have those things which were not yet made, unless as he himself is, not made » S. Aug. Gen. ad litt. l. V. n. 34.

Hence being and to be, which is understood apart from God, is not said univocally with the divine Being, nor can it be numbered along with it, because in the very reason of being it is plainly diverse; nor yet is it said equivocally, but analogically, because it is some imitation and shadowing of the divine Being: whence the community of the name is not arbitrary but is founded on the likeness and relation of the lower to the higher. Therefore in the Scriptures, creatures which, considered in themselves, are indeed said to be, in comparison with the divine Being are sometimes said not to be, Is. XL. 15. 17; Sap. XI. 23. Cf. 1 Tim. VI. 16; Matth. XIX. 17.¹⁹ We shall speak more distinctly, a little later, of the difference between divine being and participated being.

The signification of the name, who is, and the absolute perfection of God, is declared by the holy Fathers.

• The doctrine which we have so far shown to be expressed in the Scriptures, the holy Fathers have illustrated in many ways; for from their sense and consensus: 1° by the very name of God « who is » Exod. III. 14., the eternal divine Being and its intrinsic necessity of existing ought to be held to be revealed; 2° this necessary being ought to be understood as Being absolute and Being simply, because all absolute perfection is comprehended in it; whence 3° the divine Being differs by an essential difference from the reason of being which can be, or be conceived, outside God. »

There is now no need to say anything about the most eloquent teaching of Philo (see Petav. l. I. c. 6. n. 5.) and of the later commentators of the Jewish people (see de Voisin, Theolog. Iud. l. I. c. 5., and elsewhere passim); for our purpose in this thesis is to confirm and illustrate, by the authority of Christian interpretation, the sense deduced in the preceding thesis from the sacred text and context of Exod. III. 14. 15.; VI. 3. The LXX interpreters above all expressed this sense in their version: ἐγω εἰμι ὁ ὠν... ὁ ὠν ἀπεσταλκε με. How great is the worth of that version, used by the Apostles themselves and handed down to the Churches as the genuine word of God, in a text eminently dogmatic and liable to no suspicion of corruption, is easily seen.

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church have defended the sense enunciated in the thesis in all its chapters, and illustrated it with ample commentary. Those who had read the Hebrew text hold this doctrine: Origen (de Princip. l. I. n. 6; hom. I. in l. Regnorum n. 12; in Rom. l. X. n. 8.); Jerome (in Eph. III. 14. T. VII. p. 600. ed. Vallarsii; ep. 15. alias 57. ad Damas. n. 4. etc.); Ephrem the Syrian (adversus scrutator. serm. 63. Opp. Syr. Lat. T. III. p. 123.). Others agreed, who had read the Greek and Latin version: Justin (cohort. ad gent. n. 25.); Clement of Alexandria (Paedagog. I. c. 8.); Gregory Nazianzen (or. 30. al. 36. n. 17.18; or. 38. n. 7; or. 45. al. 42. n. 3.); Cyril of Alexandria (dialog. de Trin. I. T. V. P. I. p. 392.); Damascene (de fid. orthod. l. I. c. 9.); Hilary (de Trin. I. n. 4-6.); Augustine (often, e.g. in Ps. 134. n. 4; Genes. ad litter. l. V. c. 16; de Trin. l. VI. c. 7.); and very many others, of whom some testimonies can be read in Petavius l. I. c. 6., and, from Petavius, in Card. de Aguirre, Theol. S. Anselmi T. I. disp. 24. sect. 2. We reduce their doctrine, as stated in the enunciation of the thesis, to three chapters.

I. They declare that Esse, a name which might seem to designate what is common and universal, belongs wholly and properly to God, because he alone necessarily is, and in his essence has the ground of existence. « God claims as his own proper name the common name of substance (existence), since all other things received their being by God's favour; God always is and has no principle from elsewhere, and he is his own origin and the cause of his own substance » S. Hieronym. in Eph. III. 14. It is clear enough in itself that he is not called origin in the proper sense, nor cause as efficient cause; but negatively, to exclude an origin from another and a cause distinct from himself, and positively, to indicate the ground of necessary existence from the very nature of that Esse, which can be called formal cause¹. Jerome expressed both of these again, in ep. 15. al. 57. ad Damasum. « One and alone is the nature of God that truly is, for what subsists has not from elsewhere, but is its own. » And so « he alone is, to whom what he is has been given by no one » Orig. hom. I. in l. Regn. n. 12. They say that this name qui est is most proper to God, « because he could not not have been, nor will ever be able not to be » Hilar. Trin. l. I. n. 5; Ambros. in Luc. l. X. c. 23. Hence at times they further say that the name ὁ ὢν embraces the three tenses, was, is and will be, Iustin. l. c.; Clemens Alex. l. c.; and therefore that God holds beginning, middle and end, Iustin. l. c.; Dionys. de div. nom. c. 5. §. 8. At other times, on the contrary, they teach that by the name ὁ ὢν the past and the future are excluded. « In the truth that remains, I find no past or future but only the present, and this incorruptibly » Aug. in Io. tract. 38. n. 8-10; Gregor. Naz. or. 38. n. 3²; Dionys. l. c. §. 4; Cassian. de Incarn. l. V. c. 8. Precisely by the fact that God is ὁ ὢν simply and a se, just as no beginning can be conceived in him, nor ever any end, so he is Esse persevering without any change or succession, or any possibility of succession; nothing therefore can have passed in him that is no longer; nothing can arrive that is not yet; and so nothing can be conceived as before and after, as past and future; but the whole is Esse unchangeably abiding, which we conceive as present, as a perpetual now: although it is not the present of time, which has relation to past and future; but it is a permanence eminent above every relation of time³. « For there is that which neither begins at a beginning nor ends at an end, where neither is there waiting for what will come, nor running over what ought to be recalled; but it is one, which always is » Gregor. M. Moral. l. XV. c. 20. But if the succession which is in things outside God be compared with the unchangeable permanence of him who is; the past, present and future coexist, the changeable with the unchangeable, the flowing with the permanent, for whatever difference of time by which the temporal thing exists; and thus the permanent Esse of God comprehends the past, present and future, which are differences in the coexisting creature, not in God who abides unchangeably.

II. The Fathers no less plainly declare the other head which we have indicated: that by the very fact that Esse is revealed as the proper name of God, the fullness of absolute perfection is shown. Gregory Nazianzen says that God ascribes to himself the name ὁ ὢν as his own, « because the whole Esse (ὅλον τὸ εἶναι) must be placed in him, from whom other things have that they are » or. 12. n. 12; « because Esse, and indeed the whole Esse, is essentially proper to God (τὸ δὲ ὂν ἴδιον ἐντως Θεοῦ καὶ ὅλον), and is neither bounded nor circumscribed by anything, whether before him or after him » or. 30. n. 18; because « he holds the whole Esse comprehended in himself, without beginning and without end, like a certain infinite and boundless sea of essence »⁴ or. 45. al. 42. n. 3; or. 38. n. 7. John Damascene, de fide orth. l. I. c. 9, set down this last opinion entire. Hence God « is not in some measure being, but simply and infinitely embraces the whole Esse in itself »⁵ Dionys. div. nom. c. 5. §. 4. Now just as esse contracted and bounded to one particular species is the perfection of one order but not of every order; and as esse bounded by some degree, beyond which it does not extend, is some limited and finite perfection: so he who is « Esse simpliciter » and « totum Esse » and « oceanus infinitus essentiae » is assuredly all absolute perfection. « God is indeed called many things: great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatever else seems fittingly to be said; but his greatness is the same as his wisdom, for he is great not by bulk but by power; and his goodness is the same as his wisdom and greatness; and his truth is the same as all those; and there is not there to be blessed as something other than to be great and wise, or true or good, but all are Esse itself » S. August. de Trin. l. VI. c. 7. Plainly all those perfections, and any others we can conceive, are esse considered according to some aspect of nobility; Esse therefore simply is said by the Fathers to be every perfection according to every aspect of nobility⁶ and according to every degree; or rather, he has no degree beyond which he is not perfect. St Bernard says this very thing in that famous consideration of God (de Consider. l. V. c. 6.). « Who is (God)? Surely nothing better occurs than who is. He himself willed this to be answered of himself; he taught this when Moses said to the people: he who is has sent me to you: rightly indeed, for nothing is more fitting to eternity, which God is. If you say good, great, blessed, wise, or whatever such thing of God, it is restored in this word, which is Is. Indeed, to be him is to be all these. Even if you add a hundred such, you have not departed from Esse; if you say them, you have added nothing; if you do not say them, you have diminished nothing. Now if you have seen this so singular and so supreme Esse, do you not, in comparison with it, judge whatever is not this to be rather not-being than being? What again is God? Without whom nothing is. As nothing is without him, so neither can he be without himself. He is to himself, he is to all; and thereby in some way he alone is, who is of his own and of all Esse..... from whom all things are creabiliter, not seminaliter »⁷. Clearly God is understood as Esse of himself and of others in a very different way: his own Esse is formal, that of others is not formal, but as exemplar, efficient, conserving and final cause.

III. From the teaching of the Fathers just described concerning the nature of divine being, it is now also established that the eminence of the same divine Esse and its transcendent diversity from all things that are outside God or can be conceived outside God are real. The Fathers repeat and inculcate this diversity explicitly, and with deliberate effort, very frequently.

The fullness of divine Esse cannot indeed be understood in an extensive sense, so that whatever is in any way something would be divine Esse. For God is being from himself, singular, existing necessarily from the intrinsic reason of his essence, in intensive fullness of perfection, so that he himself is every unlimited, independent perfection, which in one word we call absolute Esse. Hence no absolute perfection can be conceived that does not really exist, and nothing can really exist except God himself. From this, however, as we have already indicated above, it does not follow that limited, dependent, contingent realities created by the absolute Being, as by exemplar, final and efficient cause, are not possible or do not exist. Rather it follows, from the very reason of infinite reality, that such participations and imitations outside God are possible without end; and likewise it follows that limited, dependent perfections are in God not formally but eminently: namely, the limited, created or creatable perfection itself is not in God; but in God there is absolute perfection, inadequately imitable by many limited, dependent and created perfections. Plainly therefore the reason of divine Esse and of any being that is not infinite is otherwise.

In this sense, first, the Fathers teach that divine Esse rises above every essence and above every esse, if by these names is signified whatever is in this universe, or whatever can be conceived in any way apart from that one most simple perfection of absolute being. « The superessential infinity surpasses essences (ὑπερούσιος ἀόριστα al. ἀπειρία)... existing as none of those things that are, since he is the cause for all things that they be, but he himself is not (in respect of common being), inasmuch as he is placed beyond every essence » Dionys. de div. nom. c. 1. §. 1; Naz. or. 6. al. 12. n. 12; August. Genes. ad litt. l. V. c. 16; Damasc. Fid. orthod. l. I. c. 12. 14. The Fathers are to be understood in the same sense when they say: « divine Esse is joined with none of those things which are » Maxim. praefat. ad theol. mystagog.; Naz. or. 30. al. 36. n. 18; and when God is called « a nature proper to himself and in no way associated with these things of ours » Naz. ibid. n. 17. and « imparticipability (ἀμεθεξία), with which there is no communion of mixture with participants » Dionys. div. nom. c. 2. §. 5.

2°. The Fathers describe in many ways this singular and necessary supereminence of divine Esse, by added clarifications of the property of divine Esse in opposition to creatable or created esse. God alone is, naturally⁸ (by the intrinsic perfection of his nature): he alone is ὄντως; or essentially⁹ and singularly¹⁰: he is per se¹¹: he is simply, not in any measure¹²: the rest are what, and so far as, God willed them to be¹³: and so they are by participation in a particle of good¹⁴; and by this reason God is his own self (formally) and of all Esse (as cause)¹⁵.

Hence creatures are not nothing, they are not mere φαινόμενα; but they have esse of their own from God through creation, not of God through communication of their nature¹⁶. They are therefore: but because the reason of esse participati and of Esse a se is plainly different from what has been said, therefore esse is denied of God if it is regarded according to the mode in which we conceive being and esse from creatures. Conversely, however, God alone is said to be esse, and creatures non esse, when Esse principale is considered, and « Est, the purest, which has nothing of non esse », and « Esse totaliter, from which non-being wholly departs », as St Bonaventure and St Thomas speak (above). Accordingly « he is such that, in comparison with him, the things that were made are not. Not compared with him they are, for they are from him; but compared with him they are not, because true esse unchangeable esse is what he alone is » Aug. in Ps. 134. n. 4. For « there is one thing to be, another to be principally; one thing to be changeably, another unchangeably. For all these (created things) are, but they are not principally, because they do not subsist in themselves (by their own independent power); and unless they are held in the hand of the one who governs, they cannot be at all » Gregor. M. Moral. l. XVI. c. 6; XVIII. c. 17. St Augustine in many places, Origen in l. Regn. hom. 1. n. 12, Jerome in Eph. III. and ep. 25. ad Marcellam, and Dionysius and his interpreter Maximus, and others whose words may be read in Petav. l. I. c. 6. n. 6. sqq. and in Thomassinus l. III. c. 1. sqq., all hold teachings wholly like these.

On the infinite difference of divine being from universal being.

« They err without doubt who teach that the idea of being, under which we understand « whatever we conceive intellectually to be the idea of God; and so being, « which is the object of that idea, to be God, although known only directly and not yet reflexively. »

He who has understood the reason of being which God is, demonstrated in the preceding theses, and has at the same time attended to the reason of being which we apprehend in all things we conceive, will readily perceive that the certainty of the proposition we defend has already been demonstrated in what precedes, and that this thesis is in the manner of a corollary which spontaneously follows from what has gone before. For that which is comprehended in that most universal idea is not some singular being, determined in itself; but it is a most abstract note of reality, whether possible or actual (when it is called being), or of reality in act (when it is called esse in act), in which, beyond opposition to nothing and to non-being, there is no determination. Divine Esse, in the very simplest reason of essence, is from what has been demonstrated a singular Esse, determined by the highest determination, beyond which a more intense being cannot be. Whence it is plain that that being, under whose aspect we conceive all things, is not only not known by us under the formal aspect of divine essence as it is in itself, which our opponents indeed willingly grant; but also is not divine being, and in its whole reason is different from divine being.

Certainly the difference is greatest, first, in the very mode by which we conceive being in both ways. By the proper concept of being there is presented to us what is in created things, since from these we abstract it immediately; but then, from created things, by inferring, we arrive at thinking of Esse exemplare itself, the principle and fountain of all created and creatable esse¹. Therefore we do not have a positive proper concept of this Esse divine, because it is not presented to our cognition immediately in itself, but only from equivocal effects (of an order diverse from it), and from shadows and likenesses; by inferring (« by a touch of reasonings », see above p. 151.) we attain it. Hence the Fathers teach that if being, as it is presented to us by abstraction from created things through a proper concept, is considered, God must be conceived through negation and through ὑπεροχή, and it must be said that he is not being, and is above all beings (above th. XII. XXIII.).

2°. The difference is infinite in the intrinsic reason of being itself, from which that different mode of conceiving arises. That reason of being, which is first and under which our mind conceives all things, is most abstract, consisting indeed in a single note in opposition to non-being; and therefore it is intensively minimal, and so its universality or extension is greatest; for it is found in all things that are or can be thought, pertaining to their intrinsic formal reason: although in the actual esse of individuals there can exist only determinate being, concrete according to the proper reason of each and the diverse degrees of participation, from all of which determinations, by abstracting through the operation of our intellect, we conceive that very idea of universal being. On the contrary, being which God is, in his very reason of being, is the fullness of all absolute perfection; and therefore it is infinite intensively, and by this very reason of absolute being is determined to the esse of singularity, to which multiplication is intrinsically repugnant.

Thirdly, therefore, the simplicity of being in common is negative, by abstraction from all determinate perfections; and therefore that simplicity is not and cannot be in real existence, but only in the apprehension of the mind. The simplicity of divine being is positive, by the infinite intensity of perfection in the very reason of absolute being, and therefore necessarily is in real existence; while we attain it by the apprehension of our mind only most imperfectly and through negations. « They did not consider (Amalric of Bena and his followers) that what is common or universal cannot be without addition (in act), but is considered without addition... although the universal is also thought without addition, yet it is not without receptivity of addition... But divine Esse is without addition, not only in thought but also in the nature of things, and not only without addition but also without receptivity of addition. Whence from this very fact, that it does not receive addition nor can receive it, it may rather be concluded that God is not esse commune, but proper.... In this also their reasoning fails, that they did not attend to the fact that what is found in us as most simple (by abstraction) is not so much a complete thing as some aspect of a thing; whereas simplicity is attributed to God as to a thing perfectly subsisting » S. Thom. cont. Gent. l. I. c. 26. n. 6.

Finally, fourthly, just as being determined by the manifold degrees of created perfection is a certain imitation of the divine essence, so also the reason of common being, considered abstractly, has in the divine essence its own exemplar and is a certain shadow of it, the more remote, however, the more universal and the less intense its perfection. Therefore the reason of being in God and in all things outside God is wholly diverse; and accordingly being is predicated of God and of all things that can be conceived outside God not univocally (not according to the same reason of being), but analogically, insofar as the reason of being in created things is a shadow of divine being. « Being predicated of all things is not the nature of the uncreated, because what is predicated of all is the first of created things, as the philosopher says, and being is mixed with all things and is something existing among all. But created and uncreated being are diverse; and being which is something of all those things of which it is predicated, and mixed with all things, and being which is essentially none of all things and unmixed with all, must be diverse. And if it is asked how they differ as distinguishing, it must be said that divine essence differs from all in itself, and its simplicity and perfection do not permit it to be mixed with anything so that it is of its being » Albertus M. Summae P. I. Tract. VI. q. 29. m. 1. a. 2. ad 1. (Cf. supra th. XXIII. n. III.)

Therefore they are greatly mistaken who think that esse, under whose aspect we conceive whatever we conceive by the intellect, and whose idea is the first of all, is in reality God, and must therefore be recognized and affirmed reflexively as divine Esse. For they confuse the reason of being which is most abstract with the most concrete; the universal with the essentially singular; the indeterminate, and of the least intensity of perfection of all that can be conceived, with the supremely determined and with the infinite intensity of perfection; and finally, being which, formally as it is conceived to be universal, cannot exist outside the mind, but when it is determined to this or that singular being, multiplied, is identified with those very singulars: they confuse it with a being singularly existing by intrinsic necessity and wholly different in its reason from all things that can be conceived apart from it. They confuse, I say, absolute Esse and Being from itself not only with participated being but with that being in which the participation of all is conceived to be least.

This huge fallacy, by which simple being through abstraction is substituted for simple Being through absolute perfection, is not only the principle and, as it were, the summary of pantheism in all its most diverse forms, and not only was the foundation of the Eunomian theory of the simplicity of God and of the intuition by which we understand the divine essence; but from the same confusion, or from a little attentive consideration of the all-round diversity between universal being and divine being, which is essentially singular in itself, there have arisen the false doctrines of some learned Catholics concerning being, which they hold to be the object of our first intellectual idea and of our immediate intuition, and which they contend is objectively and really God, although not yet known distinctly and reflexively by us under the aspect of absolute essence. In this opinion there is also contained a false doctrine of created being, and further a false theory of creation, whether these consequences are explicitly drawn, as we know has been done by some, or are refrained from by them.

The propositions which the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office pronounced on 18 Sept. 1861 « cannot safely be taught » all rest on this confusion of the being of our intuition with absolute being. Thus they were stated: « 1. Immediate knowledge of God, at least habitual, is essential to the human intellect, so that it can know nothing without it: since it is the intellectual light itself. 2. That Esse which is in all things, and without which we understand nothing, is divine Esse. 3. Universals, considered on the side of the thing, are not really distinguished from God. 4. Innate knowledge of God as simply being involves all knowledge in an eminent manner, so that through it we have implicitly known every being which is knowable under any respect. 5. All other ideas are nothing but modifications of the idea by which God is understood as simply being. 6. Created things are in God as a part in a whole, not indeed in a formal whole but in an infinite, most simple whole, which sets its parts, as it were, outside itself without any division or diminution of itself. 7. Creation can be explained thus: God, by that special act by which he understands and wills himself as distinct from a determinate creature (man, for example), produces the creature. » — « The most eminent and most reverend Lord Cardinals, having first heard the vote of the consultors, and having carefully weighed each and every one of the propositions set out above, answered the question proposed (whether they can safely be taught): Negative. »

Corollarium 1. Since a species consists in an essential perfection, which, being common to many individuals², constitutes those individuals as one nature and essentially different from all others; and a genus likewise consists in an essential perfection common to several species and distinguishing it from all others: hence being in common is outside every genus, because by reason of the least intensity of its perfection it distinguishes nothing from another, but is common to all; divine being is outside every genus, because by the infinite intensity of its perfection it is distinct in itself and different from all things that can be conceived apart from it, and has nothing in itself that could be common to any other.

Corollary 2. Those who ask whether there is more being with the creatures than God without the creatures speak more absurdly than one who would ask whether there is more art in the mind of Alighieri and the divine comedy computed together than if the art be considered in the mind of the poet by itself. For they do not notice, namely, that the name being, in relation to absolute being and participated being, is not univocal but analogous, and therefore those two cannot be counted together under one reason of being. Of absolute being there can be neither more nor less, since it is fullness, intrinsically and absolutely necessary; and therefore the essence and possibility of participated being is also absolutely necessary, which, however, apart from the divine essence itself, which is imitable outside it, is nothing of actual reality. But Esse actuale of a creature is contingent and not necessary, and therefore there can be more of it and less. Hence to the question whether there is more being after creation than before creation, the answer must be given by distinguishing: there is more being, if by this name you understand absolute being, I deny; there is more being, if you understand a being of a plainly different reason which can be conceived apart from the absolute, and which therefore admits with it not a numbering together but an analogical naming: I subdistinguish. There is more being, that is, more essences in the metaphysical order, I deny; more being, that is, more actual esse of participated being in the physical order, I grant.

It may be objected, however, against these things: being must be conceived by abstracting from absolute Esse and from participated esse; in this supreme abstraction there is comprehended under being, both divine being and participated being. Therefore it must certainly be asked whether (understanding being according to that abstract reason, and with no determination yet conceived to divine being or to participated being) there is more real being, or more esse in actu, after creation than before creation is supposed; and this must be affirmed, lest through a pantheistic error the reality of participated being, diverse from absolute being, be called into doubt.

Some things must be premised, for the explanation of this difficulty, about the analogical notion of being. The notion of being, already in that supreme abstraction where neither absolute nor participated being is distinctly named, is so constituted that it essentially requires application first to that which by intrinsic necessity is principally and in fullness is being, and secondarily to that which, by the very reason of its own entity, is only an imitation of absolute being, depends on it, and expresses a relation to it. Hence that notion of being is not abstract in such a way that one and the same reason of being is comprehended in two things (uncreated and created) which are distinguished from each other by other differences, as the reason of genus metaphysically is found the same in its subject species; but being is abstract in such a way that, although uncreated or created being is not expressed, nevertheless in the one the reason of being is plainly other than in the other. Therefore that notion of being is not generic but analogical; that is, fit to be applied to one principally, and to the others according to a diverse reason, with subordination and relation to that prior one: as, for example, art considered abstractly does not distinctly signify art in the mind of the artificer or art in the work, but can be applied to each according to a different reason (see Suarez Metaphys. disp. 28 sect. 3. n. 21.).

With these things laid down, the answer to the objected difficulty is easy. When it is asked whether after creation there is more being, it cannot be asked whether more being is contained in the abstract notion; just as one who asks whether after men have been created there is more humanity does not mean, if he is of sound mind, whether after creation more is contained in the abstract notion of humanity; for what is comprehended in an abstract notion can neither be increased nor diminished. The sense of the question, therefore, is whether, with creatures now existing, more things really exist in which the reason of real being, or esse itself in act, is verified, than the necessarily existing being alone. Therefore in this comparison the reason of being is already applied to diverse things, and divine being and participated being are conceived, which in the supreme reason of being itself differ wholly. Therefore the answer given above stands. For those which differ among themselves in the very reason of being cannot be numbered together; but it must be said that neither is there, nor can there be, more of divine being, which is Esse itself in absolute fullness; but there is more real participated being, or rather real participated being begins through creation and can increase, and can also be diminished by annihilation. Moreover this vindication of the diversity in the very reason of being between God and whatever can be conceived apart from God is necessary, and is the sole and sufficient exclusion of pantheism in every form.

ON THE ABSOLUTE PROPERTIES OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE, INSOFAR AS IT IS ONE, TRUE, GOOD.

The divine essence is one with the unity of singularity.

« From the demonstrated fullness of absolute perfection there follows that unity of the divine essence, so that its multiplication, and any number of gods, cannot be conceived in the mind without the notion of the same divine essence being subverted; rightly therefore the Fathers have said that polytheism is atheism. »

In Scripture and from the Fathers, the reason of the divine essence, which is Esse simply, has been declared, as shown in the preceding theses, to be the fullness of absolute perfection, and from this very thing unity is defined: so that, besides him who is יהוה ἄλφα and ὦμεγα, first and last, beginning and end, there is nothing of divine and absolute being. Now, from the fundamental doctrine of absolute perfection, and with the Fathers leading the way, we shall attempt to explain more distinctly the intrinsic repugnance of multiplication.

I. If the individual perfections are considered, for example truth, goodness, wisdom, and so on, it is easily understood that it is plainly repugnant for perfection which is perfection simply, that is, which comprehends the whole reason of perfection, to be multipliable and not wholly one. For who, thinking of wisdom, which is the whole reason of wisdom, ἡ αὐτοσοφία, does not clearly understand that it is as repugnant for two entire and distinct reasons of it to exist, as it is repugnant that the whole reason of absolute reality, or absolute totality, be conceived in the mind as twofold, one absolute totality distinct from the other? Now truth, goodness, wisdom, and perfection wholly, all that can be conceived in the whole reason of perfection and limited by no imperfection, are not, from what has been demonstrated, a merely abstract concept, but are by intrinsic necessity really existing¹; essence is not, and cannot be, only in an ideal state, but it is real Esse (Ego sum qui sum); he is יהוה, the true and infinite God. Therefore it is intrinsically repugnant that the divine absolute Esse be multiplied, or that there be some number of gods. « The very truth is one God, says St Fulgentius to Donatus c. 4; and just as, besides the one truth, there is no other truth, so without the one true God there is no other true God.... and so two true Gods cannot truly be spoken of, just as the one truth itself by its own nature (from the intrinsic nature of the thing) cannot be divided. »

Indeed, if you do not conceive in the mind (for that cannot be done) but state in words two infinite things which are the fullness of absolute Esse itself, you have said that one is infinitely perfect, lacking the infinite perfection which is in the other; and this other likewise you call the fullness of the whole absolute being, lacking the whole fullness of absolute being which is of another, infinite nature distinct from itself: therefore of each you affirm and deny at once the whole fullness of perfection. « For if there are several gods, each will lack as much as there is in the others » Lactant. Instit. 1. I. c. 3. Hence, « if there is something outside him (absolute and not depending on him), it is no longer the pleroma of all, nor does it contain all things; for the pleroma will lack, or the God who is above all things will lack, that which they say is outside him. And what lacks (that is, to which something is lacking), or is taken away from something, that is not the pleroma of all » Iren. l. II. c. 1. n. 2. Boethius expressed this same thing (de consolat. phil. l. III. prosa 10.), in words most apt for bringing the matter to light: « That goods which differ, that one is not the other, is plain; wherefore neither of them can be perfect, since to each the other is lacking. »

This is the inner reason why the multiplication of the divine essence is repugnant, and therefore why its unity is not such as the unity in number is, but is above unity (see above p. 168.). Whence, if anyone attentively examines, he will see that this argument is either presupposed or implicitly contained in all the others by which the Fathers are wont to demonstrate the unity of God from the very perfection of the divine essence: namely, that if there were two gods or more, none would be supreme²; that among several there could be no difference³; that several gods would be superfluous, since one suffices⁴. Likewise, where they demonstrate the unity from the reason of necessary being, this same argument from the fullness of perfection is deduced as a kind of middle term; for from the necessity of existing they infer the fullness of perfection, and from this the unity to which all multiplication is repugnant. « Moreover, thus Hilary writes of his own philosophy (de Trin. I. n. 4.): his mind held for certain that the divine and eternal is nothing but one and undifferentiated, because that which, being to itself the cause of what it was, had left nothing necessary outside itself that would be more excellent than itself; and thus omnipotence and eternity belong only to the one. »

II. Therefore the tritheists, who did not explicitly deny the infinity of the divine nature but taught that its unity was only specific and not of every kind of singularity, were in conflict no less with reason than with the principal foundation of revealed faith; nor could they defend their heresy without wholly perverting the very notion of the infinite perfection of God, which revelation teaches must be believed and which sound reason attains by understanding. But the Gentile worshippers of idols and of many gods, and those who usurped the Christian name, the Gnostics, Marcionites and Manichaeans, denied God by the very multiplication of gods, insofar as they affirmed gods; while they substituted for the supreme object of worship either a creature or some product of the mind, and « they were unwilling to know the God whom they could not fail to know »⁵ Tertullian says admirably: « If God is not one, he is not; for we believe more worthily that it is not, whatever has not been as it must be. But that you may know that God must be one, seek what God is, and you will not find it otherwise » Tertull. c. Marc. I. 3. Hence by St Paul, Eph. II. 12. the worshippers of gods are called ἄθεοι; and the holy Fathers say that the worship of many gods is the denial of God, that polytheism is atheism (τὴν πολυθεότητα ἀθεότητα εἶναι λέγομεν Athan. cont. gent. n. 24. 40.).

On the unity of simplicity in the divine nature.

« From the demonstrated absolute perfection of the divine essence a unity follows, just as the unity of God, which lies in the repugnance of multiplying the nature, follows; this unity is absolute simplicity, free from any composition in God himself, whether physical or metaphysical. This is demonstrated first from the intrinsic reason of composition itself, which necessarily presupposes imperfection. »

Because the explanation of the composite is easier for us than that of the simple, we explain the latter by means of the former as better known. In the composite a) there must be considered parts, whether each of them is in itself something physical really distinct from the other parts, and so the parts are real components of the whole—such as matter and substantial form, for example in man, integral parts in the body, and substance and its accidents, which are not mere modes; or whether the parts are not things distinct in the object itself, but are conceived, nonetheless, with objective precision one from the other, so that one, precisely taken, is understood to be imperfect and to be perfected by the other, and this contingently, not from the intrinsic nature and necessity of the thing. In this way we understand the composition of essence and esse (actual), of nature and hypostasis formally taken, and universally of subject and contingent modes properly so called, and finally of the metaphysical grades of genus and specific difference. Now whatever has parts is in some way multiple and not wholly undivided and indivisible in itself; but what has no parts is plainly undivided in itself, and this is called one¹. b) There must be considered the coming together of parts into one, from which the composite is formally produced, whose immediate and direct negation is simplicity. Hence one in itself (in the declared sense of unity) and simple are distinguished not in reality but only by mode of consideration; namely, one in itself is considered in opposition to the many of which the composite consists, simple in opposition to the composite that consists of many.

Hence it is further inferred that a composite approaches more nearly to the notion of the simple the fewer distinct realities its parts have, and the more closely they coalesce into one indivisible whole. In comparison, therefore, with bodily things, in which both the constituent and the integral parts are substantial, created spirits are wholly simple, in which there can be no other composition than of qualities, habits, and spiritual acts, which inhere in a substance free of substantial parts.² But if they are compared with pure act, where we set out to demonstrate that no such composition is or can be, created spirits are sometimes denied by the Fathers to be simple. After St Basil ep. 8. ad Caesar. n. 2. T. III. p. 82. demonstrated that there is substantial composition indeed in the world, in man, and accidental composition, from substance and adventitious holiness, in angels, and therefore that they are not simple, he adds: « wherefore also number designates everything that has been allotted a material and circumscribed nature (ἐνύλον καὶ περιγραπτὸν φύσιν), but monad and unity is the distinguishing mark of a simple and incomprehensible essence. »

The kinds of composition are usually enumerated: from matter and substantial form, from integral parts, from substance and accidents, from essence and esse, from nature and hypostasis, and finally from genus and difference. To define now the sense and declare the reason how and why all the compositions enumerated, some of which do not even seem to be real, are said to be repugnant in God, first the very reason of part must be considered. By the name of part is understood an imperfect thing which, by communicating with and uniting with another, receives perfection. Hence parts properly so called always mutually perfect one another by mutual communication, and the perfection of the whole composite issues from the union and mutual communication of all the parts. Whatever therefore has the reason of a part is conceived either in mere potency (objective potency) toward perfection, which the Greeks call ἐντελέχειαν and the Scholastics call act; or it is in act in some measure and in potency toward some further perfection arriving to it from the communion of another (receptive potency). A part therefore, as a part, is an incomplete being. From this intrinsic reason of parts it is understood how the diverse compositions usually enumerated are consequences and sure indications of limitation. Where composition is physical, from parts really distinct in the thing itself, whether the parts are already substantial or one is merely an accident, the cause is clear. For since each part, by the very fact that it is a part, is essentially a circumscribed being, by the negation of absolute perfection, the perfection of the whole that springs from the mutual communication of finite things cannot be absolute and infinite; because the finite and the infinite, perfection in a certain respect and absolute perfection, differ not by degree but by their whole intrinsic reason and essence.

Now indeed this same reason, which is drawn from the imperfection necessarily included in composition from parts, also applies to metaphysical composition, even though those things which are conceived as parts are not distinct in the object itself as thing from thing. We confess that our mind cannot understand essence in act and the existence, or esse, of this essence, as two distinct things. We think also that the substantial nature in created things, without any thing superadded with which it is physically compounded, is hypostasis, but only because it is wholly its own, and not a nature of a higher hypostasis by way of a part; concerning which matter we have argued at length in the treatise on the Incarnation. Finally we concede that the metaphysical grades of animal, for example, and of rational in man, are not compounded as two real parts into one whole, but are one thing, in which nonetheless, by objective precision, two are distinguished, so that what is understood by the concept of genus does not include that which is understood by the concept of difference. Therefore we defend that metaphysical composition is not repugnant in God because in it really distinct parts concur, which indeed in infinite perfection can be none, as we demonstrated a little before; but because, of the enumerated reasons of composition, we maintain that in the necessary and absolute Esse there can be no place, since this metaphysical composition is conceived, and can be conceived, only by reason of contingency and limitation, which is in the essence, in the nature, in the genus and species of creatures, and is expressed and understood by this very concept of composition.

First, because the essence of a creature is not necessarily really existing, but in itself is in the state of mere possibility, or in objective potency; therefore when esse of a determinate order, for example an angel, is created by God, we conceive the essence of the angel, to which esse in act is added. But this signifies nothing other than that we understand this essence, really existing, not to be necessarily existing. Yet in God essence is Esse itself, nor therefore can the divine essence be conceived to which divine Esse accedes; for if you understand the divine essence so that Esse accedes to it, it would be an equally or even more absurd invention, as if you wished to conceive the essence of some creature to which intrinsic possibility accedes. See above th. XXII. n. II.

2°. Again, although subsistence, or that by which a first, singular, complete substance is formally constituted as hypostasis, is not, even in created things, some distinct thing compounded with that substantial nature; but is the wholeness in itself of the substance itself³, that is, is one whole in itself, insofar as it is not communicated to another by way of a part: nevertheless this very thing, not being of another, is not essential to a finite nature, nor required by the necessity of its perfection; but a nature which is complete and actually existing can be by way of a part to be perfected by the nature of a higher person, at least a divine one, as is established by faith from the mystery of the Incarnation. Hence it was only from this mystery that Christian philosophers and theologians learned to consider created hypostasis as composed, as it were, of the nature itself and of the mode of subsisting through itself, which is not essential to it. Now this very thing follows from the limitation of the nature, and is the most certain indication of limitation. Wherefore the divine nature, from the very reason of infinite perfection, is in itself by intrinsic absolute necessity, so that it is wholly repugnant for it to be of another by way of a part, by the very fact that it is absolute Esse, to which no perfection can accede.

Therefore, although in God we distinguish, as the Fathers very often warn, the absolute nature and the three modes of subsisting (τρόπους τῆς ὑπάρξεως), this is not composition in God. It is not physical composition, as is evident of itself, since we deny physical composition even in the created hypostasis, and since « each of the three persons is substance, essence or divine nature, and that thing is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit » (cf. Conc. Later. IV.). Nor is it metaphysical composition of the kind we assert in the created hypostasis. For in creatures we can conceive the nature with objective precision from the mode of subsisting through itself, since this mode is not essential to the created nature; but in God we can, by our imperfect mode of understanding, conceive the nature only with formal distinction, not, however, with objective precision from the very mode of subsisting through itself; that is, we can think of the nature without expressly thinking of the mode of subsisting, but we cannot think of the infinite nature so that the mode of subsisting through itself is not included in the thing thought; because subsistence through itself is essential to such a nature, that is, it is by intrinsic necessity of infinite perfection. In creatures a nature can be thought and can be without the mode of subsisting through itself, and therefore this mode can be conceived as accruing, as a metaphysical grade superadded to the nature considered in itself; but the divine nature can neither be nor be thought without being a substance wholly in itself, in which very thing the reason of hypostasis lies; and therefore this reason of hypostasis cannot be conceived as some grade metaphysically superadded to the nature, although the formal reason of the nature or quiddity can be conceived without expressly conceiving the formal reason of hypostasis. Thus being can be conceived without expressly conceiving the reason of good; but because being by its own intrinsic reason is good, therefore the reason of good cannot be conceived as a metaphysical grade superadded to being, but only as a more explicit mode of being. (See above p. 160.)

These things would be clear if the divine person were one as the nature is one; but a greater difficulty can arise, because we know by faith that one nature subsists in a threefold mode of subsisting, and that one nature is in three persons really distinct from one another. For it seems that the nature must be conceived as not subsisting through itself, to which, as a further grade, at least in our mode of understanding, the relations of paternity, filiation and procession accede, by which the subsisting persons are constituted; and thus it seems that in the divine person there is metaphysical composition of nature and mode of subsisting, no less than in the created hypostasis. Moreover, three distinct persons might seem to constitute one God; but where things really distinct constitute some one, the composition is not only metaphysical but physical.

To the first: it must indeed be distinguished by reason, with a foundation in the thing, that one and the same supreme thing is both absolute and communicable nature, and is also one and the same thing as three relatives really distinct from one another: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But while absolute nature is conceived, it is not conceived as incomplete and in need of completion, as though by a further degree of paternity, filiation, and procession; rather, the same infinite thing, by its intrinsic and necessary perfection, is at once absolute (and under this reason, common nature) and at once relative (and under this reason, three mutually incommunicable, that is, distinct hypostases). Hence we truly need a double concept: to understand one thing as absolute nature, not indeed as something yet to be completed, but only by conceiving it, not yet expressly, under the reason of the relative; and then to understand that very same thing expressly under the reason of the relative, so as to be three distinct ones, by analogy with the way we said being, truth, and goodness are conceived: not by adding degrees of truth and goodness to being, but by a more expressed mode of being. In a word, because infinite nature cannot be conceived as completed by some superadded degree, and so cannot be conceived as a metaphysical part, no metaphysical composition can therefore be understood there. In form, the objection is answered: nature must be conceived as not subsisting per se, I distinguish: it must be conceived with objective precision from subsistence, that is, so that subsistence is not contained in the thing thought, I deny; it can be conceived with formal distinction, that is, so that the mode of subsisting is not expressly thought, I concede. What is added, that subsistence is conceived as an accruing further degree, must be denied. On these see Tract. de Trin. th. XXI. sqq.

The second objection, on physical composition, is far too absurd. The persons are not parts mutually perfecting one another so as to compose some whole. The three persons are one, insofar as both each one and all together are identically the divine nature itself, and so are not really distinguished from the divine nature; but where there is no real distinction, there can be no real composition. Insofar as, however, they are really distinguished from one another through the opposite relations of paternity, filiation, and procession, they are not joined so as to compose one thing. Therefore, in that in which they are one (in nature), they have no distinction; in that in which they are distinct (in their proper relations), they have no unity. Therefore they are not parts of one another, but each is subsisting per se; nor are they parts concurring to compose one nature, but each and all together are the very nature: the holy Trinity is one God (cf. Petav. de Deo l. II. c. 3. 4.).

3°. The last remaining composition is from the metaphysical degrees of genus and difference. In this case too, that the limitation of being must be presupposed as a necessary condition is clear from the reason by which we declared above, Coroll. 1. ad th. XXIV., why absolute Existence can have neither the reason of genus nor of difference. For under a generic degree we conceive a perfection which is in power to another perfection, namely a specific perfection, and which therefore involves limitation in its very concept. Likewise, under specific difference we conceive a degree of perfection which does not include the perfection of the genus, much less includes infinite perfection, but is limited by its own reason. Therefore both genus and difference are understood as something incomplete and as a part to be completed. Therefore, while we conceive a composition from a generic degree of being and from a specific degree of being, by that very fact we understand being to be limited under both the one reason and the other. Therefore, even though no distinction of perfections, if it is only according to reason and our mode of understanding, repugns the divine perfection and simplicity, nonetheless this distinction repugns through reasons limited by their intrinsic nature, such as are found in composition from genus and difference. Moreover, genus and species include in their formal reason a multiplication, or multiplicability, in individuals, so that the unity of genus and species is by its very concept a unity only logical and according to reason, whereas the multiplicability of the perfection and nature, whose notion is contained in genus and species, is ontological and according to the thing itself. But multiplicability and the negation of every kind of singularity are repugnant to infinite being. Therefore from this head too it is manifest that the reason of genus and species is essentially founded in the limitation of being. There is therefore no place in God, who is essentially one with the unity of singularity, for this distinction, and therefore also no place for this composition.

Corollary. Absolute simplicity is formally a perfection not by negation, namely that the simple has no parts; but by the positive intensity of perfection, namely that Existence itself is every absolute perfection, and therefore nothing can be conceived there as limited by the lack of a further possible perfection. This limitation, however, is the essential condition of a part and a quasi-part. Therefore, on account of the intensity of perfection, no part or quasi-part can be conceived there to be perfected by another part or quasi-part. Hence it can be said: simplicity is a perfection not in that the simple has no parts, but in that it cannot be a part or quasi-part⁴.

Hence also in creatures, whose simplicity compared with the divine is only in a certain respect, perfection formally does not lie in the negation of parts, but in the intensive reality of being itself. But since every created entity is limited by the lack of a further possible perfection and is therefore perfectible, a composition, physical or metaphysical, is required for the perfection of a creature, the greater the less the intrinsic entitative perfection is. « Among us, composites are better than simples, because the perfection of creaturely goodness is not found in one simple thing but in many; but the perfection of divine goodness is found in one simple thing » S. Th. 1. q. 3. a. 7. ad 2.

From what has been said, the dispute among the Scholastics is easily settled: some, with Cajetan, deny that simplicity is a perfection per se, others affirm it. If what is meant is an ontological perfection excluding composition, it is indeed a perfection per se and simply; if only the negation of parts is meant, this, per se and apart from ontological perfection, is not a perfection. Cf. Ludov. Molina in 1. q. 3. a. 7. disp. 2. It further becomes clear from what has been said what weight the argument drawn from the perfection of simplicity carries against the possibility of simple material beings, which are called simple insofar as they are supposed to consist of no integrating parts, and so to lack extension. Whatever you think of such beings, it is certainly ridiculous to deny their possibility on the ground that simplicity is a perfection.

From the documents of revelation is declared the divine simplicity, and its proper reason, that God is pure act.

« The dogma of God's simplicity in every respect has in Christian doctrine not only always been held as most certain beyond controversy; but both in the Scriptures and in the doctrine of the Fathers there is also explicitly declared the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity, namely that in God both every perfection and, in particular, understanding and volition are really the very substance of God: whence simplicity is finally traced back to this, that the divine essence is pure act of perfection. »

I. As regards the profession of the dogma (setting aside its finer declaration), the Fathers first put it forward in many ways by explicit predication. They teach that God is most simple and most remote from all composition with Cyrillo Alex. Thesaur. XIII. 2; XIV. 1. 2; supremely simple with Augustine de Trinit. VI. 6; first and purest simple with Bernard in Cant. serm. 81; as simple as one, and if it can be said, most one with Bernard Consid. 1. V. c. 7; above all simplicity with Cyrillo Alex. dialog. I. de Trin.; one eminence of simplicity (ὑπερβολὴν) with Dionysius de div. nom. c. 5. Origen hands down that this is the truth from those things in which the whole Christian name has agreed, de Princ. I. n. 6; indeed, the very « whole human race confesses that God is simple, not composite, » as Cyrillo Alex. Thesaur. XXXI. testifies. Hence, although in denying and excluding composition they say that to think God composite is « the mark of a very stupid and dull man » Gregor. Nyss. cont. Eunom. I. p. 68; Basil. ep. 141; « the mark of supreme impiety » Damasc. Fid. orth. I. 12; « absurd and wicked » Maxim. centur. IV. de charit. c. 8; « blasphemous » Cyrill. Hier. catech. VI; « a new kind of blasphemy » Athanas. de Synod. n. 34.

2°. Frequently both the Fathers and the Councils take the dogma of God's simplicity in every respect as foundation and principle, from which they either prove and declare other revealed doctrines, or refute and condemn errors. Thus at the Council Later. IV., the unity of the divine nature in distinct persons, without a quaternity following from it as Abbot Joachim objected, was declared from the simplicity of the divine nature: because the three persons, and each of them, are that nature and essence; and so they are not one thing and another, but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are altogether the same, since the whole nature, not in part but entire, is common to the three persons « as being wholly simple » : and so, by reason of divine simplicity, the Fathers define that the persons are distinguished not from the nature but only from one another. By the same principle of simplicity, the doctrine of Gilbert of Poitiers was first condemned by the Bishops of Gaul, and then at the Council of Rheims, with the Pontiff Eugene III himself presiding. He taught that God is God by deity, yet deity is not God; and thus he thought of the attributes as forms in God, so that God is not each of the attributes that we distinguish, nor is any single attribute God. This doctrine, I say, was abolished on the principle that « the supreme and uncreated nature, which is the Trinity, God, claims for itself the pure and singular simplicity of its essence, so that there is not found in it one thing and another.... Far be it that the catholic Church should assent that there is some substance, or some wholly other thing, by which God is, and which is not God » (S. Bernard. in Cant serm. 80. n. 5-8, where he disputes against Gilbert). Hence the definition of the Council is understood, as Otto of Freising reports it, « lest any reason in theology should divide between nature and person, nor God be said to be divine essence by the ablative sense only but also by the nominative, » that is, not only God by deity but also deity.

Long before these controversies, when God's supreme simplicity was called into doubt directly « by heretics, not by dialecticians » (Bernard), the ancient Fathers Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Cyril, and others to be read in Petavius 1. II. c. 4. and 6. n. 9. seqq., used this same simplicity of God as a principle by which they attacked the Arian heresy. Athanasius or. V. adv. Arian.; Basil. contr. Sabell. hom. 27; Cyrillus Thesaur. XIV; Dialog. V. de Trin.; Damasc. Fid. orthod. I. 18. argue most truly and most subtly. The Son is called in the Scriptures wisdom, will, and power of the Father, while at the same time distinct from the Father: therefore, they infer, either he is subsisting wisdom, and then he is God; or he is a quality inhering in the Father, and then God is composite, which by everyone's admission is absurd¹. Moreover, Athanasius refutes the insidious confession of the Arians, who teach that « the Son is from the Father, but not from the substance (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας) of the Father » (1. de Synodis and 1. de decretis Nicaen.), by driving the view to an absurdity of which even the Arians would be ashamed, namely to the denial of all simplicity in God; for if their profession were sincere, there would follow in the Father something other than the substance, distinct from it, and thus God would be composite. « You said the Son is from God; therefore you have already said he is from the substance of the Father »². Lastly, for the same reason of divine simplicity, the Fathers refute the Arian evasion by which some said the Son is like the Father, others unlike. For Athanasius in ep. ad Afric. and Basil in ep. 141 say that if the Son is not consubstantial with the Father, he could be called like or unlike the Father only by reason of qualities; but if you say there are qualities in God, you feign God composite: « far be it; for the substance is simple, in which no quality inheres »³. From the few things we have described, it is plain how certain was the profession of all Christian antiquity, that nothing is to be said of God that could carry a suspicion of composition, and how grave and cardinal the holy Doctors judged this dogma of divine simplicity to be.

II. In this thesis we are not so concerned with the thing itself, whether it is, as with its intrinsic reason, namely what sort it is divine simplicity; that is, how, according to the teaching of Scripture and the ecclesiastical explanation of preaching, it can be understood somewhat more distinctly by seeking understanding from faith.

1°. We here assume as manifest in itself that simplicity in God which excludes substantial parts, whether constituent or integral, such as are found in bodies or in things composed at least in part of some material element. For how could it not be self-evident that God cannot have absolute perfection constituted or completed by that which is imperfect by its own intrinsic reason, both in the grade and order of being considered in itself, and in the composition of the parts of which it consists? « That nature does not receive dull matters, nor is it made of diverse things so as to remain » S. Hilar. Trin. VI. Because of this evidence of the matter, in the Scriptures, even of the Old Testament, where greater caution might seem to have been necessary, anthropomorphic expressions, by which God's operations and relations to what is outside him are described, are used everywhere without danger. « God, who is everywhere and in all things, hears entirely, sees entirely, acts entirely, walks entirely... The power of God, which is equal and undivided (one, undistinguished), has names of offices and members: as the power by which he sees is eyes; the power by which he hears is ears; the power by which he acts is hands; the power by which he is present is feet; the diversities of offices being accomplished by the power of this one power » Hilar. in Ps. 129. n. 3. It is indeed strange that among Christians there could be found (the Audians and Egyptian monks of the fourth century) who, with an absurd horror of allegorical interpretation, insisting that such expressions in Scripture are to be taken in their immediate sense, ascribed a body to God altogether.

As for Tertullian (contr. Prax. c. 7; contr. Marc. II. c. 16.), who seems to speak of a body of God, or even to affirm more absurdly that God, by the opinion of all, is a body; and who in other places (de anima c. 7; de carne Christi c. 11; cont. Hermog. c. 35.) writes that whatever subsists is a body of its own kind: St Augustine (de haeres. c. 86.) says this can be understood in such a way that Tertullian called a body whatever is not empty and not merely an accident, but a substance subsisting in itself. Likewise Lactantius must be thought to have wished only to vindicate the divine Existence as singular, determinate, and personal against Stoic pantheism, when (de ira Dei c. 2.) he defends that God has some « figure and form ». Finally, to take in together the ambiguous sayings of the Fathers, Athenagoras (Legat. pro Christ. n. 23. coll. n. 24.) said that the good in God is by accident (κατα συμβεβηκος), in roughly that sense in which we have seen other Fathers considering the divine attributes which are « about God » (τα περι Θεον supra p. 128. 130. 150.). Since, namely, in our mode of understanding we distinguish many perfections in God, Athenagoras could call a perfection, which we as it were add to another by our concept, accruing or accident. For in what other sense could he, in n. 24, conceive essential Existence and unity (το ὄντος ὄν και το μονοφυες) together with goodness in God, as accidents, or rather accruings (επισυμβεβηκοτα)? Cf. Petav. 1. I. c. 12. n. 1.

2°. Setting aside this crude composition, whose exclusion contributes little to illuminating the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity, we conceive a more subtle composition, from which no creature can be free: insofar as composition in general is founded on imperfection together with the possibility of a further perfection, or in power to act. Every essence that can be conceived apart from God includes indeed an objective power to existence, but does not include in its intrinsic reason existence in act itself; and therefore in the preceding thesis we said that composition can be conceived between essence and existence, as objective power with act. For the same reason, participated existence, since it is not simply and absolutely Existence, as in every line and in the whole reason of being, does not, by the very fact that it is some existence, include the degree of being which is life. Therefore participated existence, from its intrinsic reason insofar as it is some existence, is not also life; but it is in receptive power to life: hence a living creature is said to have life, but not to be life. In the same way, participated life is in power to the higher degree of intellectuality. Further, a created substance that is living and intellectual is not absolute and simple intellect, but has intellect according to some degree of perfection; and so such an intellect, considered in itself, is in power to acts of understanding, in power to formal truth, to wisdom: and if it is in act of understanding, truth, wisdom, this cannot be except according to some degree together with a power to a further perfection. It will therefore be in act in one respect, and in power in others; but it cannot be pure act: whence it will have understandings, formal truth, and wisdom in a certain measure; but it cannot be absolute understanding itself, truth itself, wisdom itself. Likewise these things hold of the will and its perfection. In all these, therefore, there is some distinction with objective precision, so that one is not contained in the other; and hence there is conceived some at least metaphysical composition from power and act, or from the perfectible with another perfecting, and the power to a further perfection remains indefinitely, or (as is commonly said) act mixed with power.

But the essence which is Existence itself in full plenitude, or which by its intrinsic necessary perfection is absolute reality, is understood formally as this essence, pure act, without any potentiality either objective to existence or receptive of a more perfect existence. Hence there the essence is itself without any addition (for nothing can be added to absolute perfection), and its substance, without any quality that is not itself, is, just as Existence itself is, life itself, intellect itself, truth itself, wisdom itself, charity itself etc., and all these in absolute act. Accordingly, in the reverse order too, these individual perfections, and all together, are really that one most simple essence, which we understand inadequately by diverse concepts taken from the perfections of creatures. Therefore we cannot conceive in God, as in creatures, essence or Existence or perfection under any name as something imperfect and to be completed by something added to it; but we understand each perfection to be the very plenitude of absolute Existence, which by us, on account of the imperfection of our intellect, is conceived under diverse reasons, as the diverse created perfections correspond to that infinite and most simple exemplar.

We demonstrate from the Scriptures themselves that this notion of divine simplicity is genuine.

For in the sacred letters there is contained not only the foundation from which the simplicity of God, declared above, necessarily follows, namely that the divine essence is Existence itself and the plenitude of absolute Existence (th. XXII.); but the Scriptures explicitly exhibit God as one and the same with each of the perfections which we predicate of God, so that not only is perfection in him, but he himself is perfection, now one, now another, and consequently all together.

In particular, just as God is said to have life in himself, and life is said to be in God, Io. I. 4; V. 26; so God is life itself (ἡ ζωὴ) Io. I. 4; XIV. 6;1. Io. I. 2: whence he alone has immortality, 1. Tim. VI. 16. As there are « the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God » Rom.XI.33; Iob XII.13.16; Psal.CXLVII.5, and in God are « all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge » Coloss. II. 3; so God is wisdom itself Prov. I. 20; VIII; Sap. VII. 21. sqq.; Ecclesi. XXIV. 1; 1. Cor. I. 24: whence God alone is wise, Rom. XVI. 17. (and in the received Greek text, 1. Tim. I. 17; Iud. 25.). Likewise, as God is « full of truth » and from God is all truth; so God is truth itself (ἡ ἀλήθεια) Io. XIV. 6; 1. Io. V. 6. As he dwells in light, 1.Tim.VI.16; 1. Io. I. 7; so he himself is light, Io. I; III. 19; XII. 46; 1. Io. I. 5. As charity is from God and of God, so God is himself charity 1. Io. IV. 8. 16: whence « there is one good God » and « no one is good but God alone » Matth. XIX. 17; Marc. X. 18; Luc. XVIII. 19. Therefore the divine Existence itself, whose singular name is ὁ ὢν qui est, is expressed in the Scriptures not only as living and having life from himself, as having all wisdom, all truth, as dwelling in unapproachable light, as the God of charity, but as life itself, wisdom, truth, light, charity. Life itself, moreover, is not life through another life, but through itself; wisdom itself, truth itself, charity itself is not wisdom, truth, charity except through itself⁴. Therefore the divine Existence is as it were an infinite form⁵, which through itself, not through a quality distinct from itself, is all these things: « for justice (and the same holds of all perfections) is not through another virtue, but is itself virtue through itself » Clemens Alex. Paedag. I. 8. In these, moreover, the very denial of any composition is expressed, and the simplicity necessary from the intrinsic reason of absolute Existence. In the Scriptures, therefore, the doctrine of God's absolute simplicity is not only implicitly contained, but also principles are set forth by explicit declaration, from which its metaphysical demonstration is constructed.

3°. The holy Fathers supply this demonstration, most lucid, from the principles set forth in holy Scripture. We shall consider in the doctrine of the Fathers, first, the manner in which they declare the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity; then the manner in which the Fathers show, in particular, that those things which we conceive as actions of God are in God the very immutable substance.

a) As to the first, there are chiefly two modes of declaring it among the Fathers. First, from the absolute perfection of God they conclude that God himself is each of the perfections, and all together, which we can name: that God is in himself wholly both justice, and omnipotence, and wisdom, etc. Whence it follows that the perfections are distinguished neither from the essence nor from one another; but one most simple Existence must be understood, which by us is conceived truly but inadequately under these diverse notions of perfections, and is called by diverse names. « He is of many names and all-powerful, and yet the substance of one form. For not because he is called good, just, omnipotent, is he therefore different and various.... Not seeing in part and lacking sight in part, but he is wholly eye, and wholly hearing, and wholly mind, not as we, understanding in part and not knowing in part; for this speech is blasphemous and unworthy of the divine substance » Cyrill. Hier. catech. VI. n.7.⁶ Altogether similar statements are found in Irenaeus I. c. 12. n. 2; II. c. 12. n. 3; c. 28. n. 4; Clemens Alex. Strom. VII. p. 721; Gregor. Nyss. in Cantic. hom. VII. T. I. p. 570; Epiphan. in Ancor. c. 56; Maximus M. apud Euthym. Panopl. tit. 3. p. 80.

The second explanation differs from the former not in substance but only in form. God, they say, is that perfection which he is said to have. « God is therefore called simple because what he has, that is... In that which is said of itself and not of another, this is what it has; just as life is said of itself, having life indeed, and it is the same life he himself is » Aug. Civ. Dei XI. 10. and often elsewhere, as also other Fathers. In creatures, as we explained above, it is not by the mere fact that they are that their final perfection is already present; because their existence is participated, not absolute Existence: hence for them to exist is one thing, and to exist in final perfection is another. Hence created substances are not all their perfection; but they have perfections, by which, as accruing, they are perfected: for them, therefore, to be is one thing, to be thus is another; and hence composition of the perfectible and the perfecting follows. In God, however, on account of the opposite reason, since his essence is by itself necessarily every perfection, nothing can be perfectible in him (no passive power), and so nothing as a perfecting form, but the whole is perfect (pure act), and therefore no composition. « No one of men is truth, says Pope Leo the Great with many others (ep. 93. c. 5. ad Turribium), no one is wisdom, no one is justice; but many are participants in truth and wisdom and justice. God alone, however, has need of no participation, of whom whatever is worthily thought in any way is not quality but essence. For nothing accrues to the immutable, nothing is lost, because Existence which is everlasting is always proper to him. » Gregorius M. Moral. l. II. c. 27. has similar things. « Otherwise the light that illuminates, otherwise the light illuminated; otherwise justice justifying, otherwise justice justified. Wisdom is and is wise, and does not have existence other than being wise: but servants of wisdom can indeed be wise, yet they do not have this existence which is being wise; for they can exist and not be wise. Wisdom has life, but does not have it as something else, it is it; for to it to be is to live: but servants of wisdom, when they have life, are one thing and have another; for to them this very existence is not to live. »

Hence it is understood why God's simplicity is expressed most properly, as far as we can, by names of abstract form. Yet because the divine, which is expressed by those names, is self-existing and subsisting, we also use, by a certain necessity, names of concrete form to express this very thing. « In speaking of God we use concrete names, to signify his subsistence, because among us only composites subsist; and we use abstract names, so that we may signify his simplicity » S. Th. 1. q. 3. a. 3. ad 1; q. 13. a. 1. ad 2; q. 32. a. 2.

b) It remains to be said of the manner in which the Fathers teach that immanent acts, as we conceive them, are the very substance of God. As to the thing itself, so long as only whether it is is asked, there cannot be here a greater difficulty than in all the other divine attributes. For if the divine essence is by itself perfection in its whole plenitude, and if any perfection that we can distinguish by reason is really the divine essence and substance itself in the plenitude of absolute Existence: by that very fact the intellect, will, (active) power is not, nor can it be conceived as, a faculty to be perfected by an accruing act of understanding, of willing, or of efficiency; but the divine essence and substance itself is, as infinite intellect, infinite will, infinite power, without any lack of reality, so a substantial act understanding, willing, and effecting, by itself, not by anything accruing beyond the essence itself.

This follows as a necessary corollary from the very plenitude of being and from the simplicity of divine Existence declared so far; nevertheless the Fathers also declare it in explicit teaching. « It must be understood, says St Maximus on Dionysius de div. nom. c. 5. §. 6, that since the super-excellent goodness is itself mind and wholly act turned upon itself, it is in act and not in power, as if it were first not wisdom and then became mind in act. Hence also it is only pure mind, not having being wise superadded; but altogether it is wise from itself »⁷. The same explanation is given by Augustine (in Io. tract. 40.). « If what few understand is the simple nature of truth, this means that for the Son to be is to know. He therefore has from him that he knows, from whom he has that he is, not that he would first be from him and afterwards know from him. But as by begetting he gave him to be, so by begetting he gave him to know. For in the simple nature of truth, as has been said, to be and to know are not one thing and another, but this very same. » He repeats the same thing in very similar words about God considered absolutely, tract. 99. Cf. Cyrill. Alex. Thesaur. XXXI. pag. 267.

What is said of the act of understanding is plain to be no less true of the act of willing. But in the act of volition, which is freely directed outward, a special difficulty presents itself to our imperfect understanding, if we ask how it is. The teaching of St Gregory of Nyssa will smooth the way to some explanation, so far as it can be given by us. « Not as in other things, to which some power of acting is given by nature, is one thing considered in power and another in the completion of act (in God): for example, we always say that the power of ships belongs to the shipbuilder who has the art, but then he is in act, when he now puts his knowledge into the work itself. It is not so in that blessed life, but everything that is understood in it is act and action, while the will passes without any intervening means to the appointed end. »⁸ St Gregory of Nyssa says this in cont. Eunom. XII. p. 340. In God, therefore, the will is not a faculty of willing, which is now in act of volition, now not; now in this, now in another act of willing: but will is one act of willing, always the same in itself, since the divine essence and substance is itself, by itself, infinite substantial volition. For neither are essence and will distinguished as a subject to be perfected and a perfecting form, nor will (βούλημα) and volition (βούλησις) as faculty and act; but essence, will, and will in its act or volition are one in reality, and are distinguished only according to the consideration of our mind. « For as truly as you are, you alone know, who are immutably and will immutably. And your essence knows and wills immutably, and your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably » Aug. Confess. XIII. c. 16.

Now it is asked how liberty can exist in this same will, along with this identity of the act of willing with the divine essence, and therefore along with the full immutability and necessity of the act in itself. The explanation must be sought from the very infinity of the act. Just as the divine intellect is an actual infinite comprehension of the divine essence, infinite truth, with which the intellect itself is identified and in which all truth is comprehended: so the divine will is an actual infinite delight and necessary love of the divine essence as of infinite good, with which love itself is identified. Because the good in which love rests in full essential sufficiency and beatitude is infinite, that substantial act does not necessarily have some participated good as its object; yet that same infinite act of volition can regard participated goods, so that they have existence from that good, through it, and toward that infinite good. But this regard and this terminating in finite goods cannot be by a volition superadded and accidental; for this is repugnant to absolute, substantial, immutable volition: but only the substance itself under its formal reason, insofar as it is infinite will, can immediately, by itself (that is, with no other act of volition intervening), regard and as it were stretch out to a participated good, without any change in itself, just as one act of understanding is at once extended to all intelligible things. This is what St Gregory of Nyssa says: « without any intervening means will (substantive) passes to the appointed end » and as it were is stretched out (ἀμέσως τοῦ βουλήματος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ πρόθεσιν τέλος μεταδιαταμένου). It is clear, therefore, that in God, even when we consider free volition which has an outward term, there is not a power of acting and an act; but there is only act, whose term can be now this and now that, which adds something not to the act itself but to the object to which it reaches out. And so it is clear that no composition from a power of acting and free act can be conceived in God.

Hence from what has been said it follows how great is the difference between divine volition and our volitions, and between the reason of divine liberty and of ours, or of created liberty in general. Our volition is an accident and a modification of the substance, which can be or not be, and can be one thing or another. But while some determinate act of our will is present, its terminating in the object is intrinsic to it, necessary, not free. We are therefore free in our will only insofar as the volition itself is in our power, so that it be or not be, be this or that; but our liberty does not lie in this, that the terminating of an already posited volition toward its object depends on our choice. On the contrary, the act of the divine will, or divine volition, is substance and really the very essence of God; it is therefore in itself one substantive act, necessarily existing. The terminating of this act toward its object, indeed the chief object, namely the goodness of the divine essence with which it is identified, is absolutely necessary; but its regard for secondary objects, the participated good, is most free. Therefore the liberty of God does not lie in this, that the act of will can be or not be, or that in itself it can be one way or another; but in this, that the infinite substantial volition of infinite good can, without any change in itself, be as it were extended toward goods distinct from God, so that they be; or not be extended toward their existence, in which case, given that hypothesis, they will not be. In other words we can say this same thing. The one divine act of willing, which wills (loves) the infinite good of the divine essence and in this good rests with full beatitude, necessarily indeed wills this good in itself, but does not necessarily will it with imitation in participated goods, or without such imitation outward: freely, therefore, it wills both imitation, and this rather than another of its degrees, and its negation. The reason of this liberty is that analogical imitation of the infinite exemplar, whether it exists really or does not exist, adds nothing to perfection nor takes away. The reason of immutability, moreover, is that not another act but one infinite substantial act of willing the divine essence wills at once its imitation in participated goods, or the negation of imitation; and because this relation to one term or the other adds nothing to the substantial act itself, but all the diversity resides on the side of the term. Therefore the liberty of a creature is (active) indifference toward an act, which is an accident and not a substance; the liberty of the Creator is indifference of the termination in the act, which is substance necessary in itself and immutable. Cf. S. Th. cont. Gent. I. c. 82.

For a fuller explanation of the act of the divine will, which is directed ad extra, that is, to something distinct from God, three things may be considered: immanent act in itself, efficiency or the very becoming ad extra (transient action), and relation of the creature to God. Immanent act is really the divine substance itself, under the formal reason that it is infinite substantial volition, with a connotation of the thing willed outside God. This connotation adds nothing to God himself or to the infinite volition, yet from it the will is called, e.g., creating. Since, therefore, both the substantial will itself, as is self-evident, and the connotation of the work with respect to some temporal difference of the future, are from eternity, it is understood that the will, or the action, e.g. creative, in God is eternal⁹.

Transient action, or the becoming itself, is not formally in God, but is in the creature; and so it begins in time, or with time, and is something distinct from God no less than the creature itself. Hence, if it is ever read in the Fathers that the action of God is distinct from God, it must be explained: transient action is distinct, I concede; immanent action, I subdistinguish: it is distinct from the substance of God according to reason, I concede; it is really distinct, as it is in God, I deny. (Cf. PP. apud Petav. l. V. c. 12. coll. 13.)

Finally, concerning relation, it must be held thus. Relation is the order of one thing to another: therefore when two things are really ordered to each other, the relation is mutually real, as that of father (under the formal reason by which he is father) to son, and of son to father. But when one thing has a real ordering to another, yet this other does not thence receive any new order by something real superadded, but is only conceived as relative because the other is really referred to it, the relation is real in the one only; in the other it is called a relation of reason, that is, one which is conceived by us only, on account of the real order of the other. Thus knowledge in a created mind has a real order and relation to the thing actually known; but the thing known has only a relation of reason to the knower: for nothing is posited in that thing from the fact that it is and is said to be actually known; but it stands in the same way whether or not it is known. In this way, the creature, having in its whole existence a real dependence on God, has a real relation to God: God, however, is conceived only as having a relation to the creature because the creature is referred to him; but God does not in any way depend on the creature, nor is anything posited in God by which he is ordered to the creature; whence this relation of God to the creature is not real, but of reason only (cf. S. Th. de potent. q. 7. a. 10.).

Therefore no mutation, or metaphysical composition, much less a physical one, can be feigned in God from relations of this kind to what is outside him. St Augustine explains what these relations are, and how they are understood to induce no mutation, and therefore no composition, as follows. « How, then, shall we hold that nothing is said of God by accident, except because nothing accrues to his nature by which it would be changed; so that these are relative accidents which accrue together with some change in the things of which they are said: as a friend is said relatively, for he does not begin to be a friend unless he has begun to love. A coin, when it is called a price, is said relatively; yet it is not changed when it begins to be a price (the whole change, and the real relation, is in the men who value it). If, therefore, a coin can so often be called relatively without any change in itself, how much more easily must we understand of that immutable substance of God, that something is said relatively to the creature in such a way that, although it begins to be said temporally (e.g. creator, lord, etc.), nevertheless nothing is understood to have accrued to the very substance of God, but to that creature to which it is said » Aug. Trin. l. V. n. 17. (Cf. supra th. XXI. n. 2°.)