Divine attributes
The Holy Trinity in stained glass at Holy Family Church, Teconnaught
| |
| Conciliar confession | Lateran IV; Dei Filius, chapter I |
|---|---|
| Catechism | CCC 199–221; 39–43 |
| Thomistic loci | ST I, qq. 3–11, 14, 19 |
| Doctrinal standing | The perfections of the one simple God are Catholic doctrine; their scholastic division is theology |
Divine attributes are the perfections that belong to the one divine essence, known truly though never comprehensively from creation and from God's self-revelation, and identical with that essence in God himself.[1][2]
The perfections of the one God
Dei Filius confesses one living and true God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection, a singular, altogether simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, really and essentially distinct from the world, most blessed in himself and from himself. The Catechism receives that confession and names God holy, wise, just, merciful, faithful, truth, goodness, and love. These are not ornaments hung on a bare identity.[1]
Because God is absolutely simple, the attributes are not parts. God is his goodness, his wisdom, his power, his life. Finite minds distinguish the names because they know the one fullness by many limited concepts. The distinction of attributes in our knowledge is therefore real as a distinction of concepts with a foundation in the eminence of the divine being. It is not a distinction of things inside God.
Thomistic unfolding from simplicity
Thomas orders the treatise on the one God so that simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, omnipresence, immutability, eternity, and unity are treated before the operations of intellect and will. Summa theologiae I, questions 3 to 11 supply that grammar. Question 3 denies composition in God, including the composition of essence and existence. Question 4 treats perfection. From these, the other names are not arbitrary additions. They are what must be said once it is granted that God is the first actuality, without potency, limit, or dependence.[3][4]
Intellect and will follow. God knows and loves, not as a subject acquiring acts, but as the act itself of knowing and loving. Providence, predestination, and the divine names then have a place. The order is pedagogical and metaphysical. It is not a claim that a Christian must learn the questions in that sequence in order to pray. It is a claim that the names hang together, so that a God who could change, or who could be improved, or who could receive being, would not be the God the Creed confesses.
True knowledge, analogical speech
Human reason can know from created things that God exists and that he possesses in a transcendent way the perfections found in the world. Revelation gives sure and higher knowledge, because God names himself and acts in history. Language about the attributes remains analogical. Words such as good, wise, and father apply to God neither in exactly the same mode as to creatures nor as empty metaphors. Every creaturely limit is denied; the perfection is affirmed in an eminent way.[5]
Negative attributes—simplicity, infinity, immutability—remove creaturely composition and restriction. Positive attributes name what God is. Communicable attributes can be said analogically of creatures; incommunicable ones belong to God alone. Those divisions, familiar in the manuals and in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, are pedagogical. They are not a second list of gods. All the names terminate in the one simple essence.[6]
Trinity, school lists, and preaching
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit possess one undivided essence and therefore one eternity, omnipotence, knowledge, will, goodness, and glory. No divine Person has a third of God or a private set of attributes. The Persons are distinguished by the relations of origin, not by unequal perfections. Operations toward creation are common to the Three, though revelation appropriates certain works in a way that manifests the personal properties.
Scholastic catalogues of attributes are servants of this confession. They are not themselves a defined table. To say that God is holy, merciful, and almighty is to teach Catholic doctrine. To explain how those names are identical in the thing and distinct in our concepts is theology, in Thomas's case at a very high rank. The second labor may not contradict the first, and the first does not wait upon the second to be true.[6]
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 First Vatican Council, Dei Filius — Dogmatic constitution on God the Creator, the natural knowability of God, the distinction and harmony of the natural and supernatural orders, and the gratuity of revelation.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 199–221 — Authoritative confession of the one God, his name, simplicity, fullness of being, and the identity of his essence with his existence.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 3 — Divine simplicity, including the identity of God's essence with his existence and the denial of composition in God.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 4 — Divine perfection and the pre-existence of creaturely perfections in God.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 39–43 — Authoritative teaching that purified creaturely language truly attains to God while remaining analogical and forever surpassed by the divine essence.
- Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Divine Attributes — Public-domain treatment of the divine perfections, their division, and the conciliar confession of Vatican I.