Chapter V:
CHAPTER V: WHAT GOD IS
Whether God can be defined.
§ 89. We are asking two questions here: (I) Whether God can be defined. (II) How God is to be defined, if indeed it is somehow necessary to define God. To the first question we respond in the negative: (1) On the basis of a lack of genus. Whatever lacks its own true, logical genus cannot be defined because genus is an essential part of a definition. God does not have His own true, logical genus because if such a genus were to exist, it would be stated univocally, essentially, and equally about God and about His creatures—something that cannot be done because God as Creator and His creation differ infinitely between themselves, and there is nothing one can state about both equally. (Cf. John of Damascus, De orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 13; Keckermann, Syst. theol., bk. 1, p. 6; and Goclenius, Probl. logic., part 2, c. 15, p. 51, where they deny that there can be a genus in the definition of God.) Thomas goes on in this way, [ST,] p. 1, q. 3, art. 5:
Something is in a genus (1) simply and properly, for example, species; (2) by reduction, for example, principle and privations. In this way a point and oneness are reduced to the genus of quantity. In neither way, however, is God in a genus. He is not in a genus as a species. [a] A species is established from the genus and the difference. But that from which the difference is taken is related to that genus from which it is taken as actuality is related to potential. However, in God potential is not joined to actuality. [b] In Metaph., bk. 3, the Philosopher shows that being [ens] cannot be the genus of anything because every genus has differences that are outside the essence of the genus, but we can discover no difference that is outside being. [c] The things that belong to one genus share in quiddity but differ according to being [esse]. But in God, His being [esse] and that which He is, that is, His essence [essentia], are not different. Furthermore, God is not in a genus reductively because the principle reduced in any genus does not extend itself beyond that genus. Thus a point is not a principle except of continuous quantity. But God is the principle of all being [esse].
Scotus (Sent., part 1, dist. 3, q. 5) disputes these statements of Thomas “because being is a univocal genus for God and creatures.” He forms this proposition: “We can concede that a concept does exist, a predicable concept common to God and to creatures, a concept in itself about their ‘what’ and their first mode [de eis in quid et primo modo per se].11 For we cannot know God in Himself (because such knowledge is intuitive and beatific) nor can we know Him in a simple concept proper to Himself (because nothing is understood in this way without first being known in itself). Therefore we know Him in some concept common to Him and to creatures.” Piscator supports Scotus in Thes. theol., vol. 1, disp. 2, th. 3, p. 76, where he says: “We set up the word ‘spirit’ as the genus in the definition of God because it is used synonymously to refer to God and angels and the souls of men.” However, Biel correctly warns: “A univocal is taken in a broad or in a strict sense. If we take it in the strict sense for a predicable concept about many things that have a perfect likeness to each other, then there is no concept univocal to God and to creatures” (1, Sent., dist. 2, toward the end of q. 8).
If you say, “Nevertheless there is still an analogous genus,” we respond. God is infinite. He is utterly simple and admits no composition of material and form nor of genus and difference nor of subject and accidents nor of actuality and potential nor of 
and 
nor of individual substance [suppositum] and nature. But whatever has its own genus is in some way finite and composite. God is simply infinite. Therefore. If God and the angels had an analogous genus, there would be a certain proportion between God and angels. Yet there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite. In whatever way the word “spirit” is attributed to God, it is not attributed to angels in the same way because in God there is not some thing that is spirit, is essence, is infinite, etc., for He is His own infinity. Therefore this is predicated of God not only [as of one who is] excellent but [as of one who is] completely unique.
(2) We respond in the negative on the basis of God’s perfection. God is the supreme being [ens], and He is sheer and purest act [i.e., actuality]. Because He is the supreme being, therefore He has nothing that is superior to Himself. But whatever is defined properly is defined through something prior to it (6. Top., 3). Because He is purest act, therefore He has nothing of potentiality or passive potential12 mixed with Himself. In a definition, however, genus is like potential and material, and specific difference is like act and form. Difference is not essence in the same way as genus, but differs from genus according to essence. The essential properties of God, however, do not differ from deity itself but really [realiter] are the divine essence itself. Therefore the essential properties of God prove no real difference in the deity. Just as prime matter cannot be defined properly and perfectly—because it is sheer potential and because of its minimal entity13—so also, conversely, God cannot be defined because He is sheer actuality and because of His supreme entity.14
The Damascene writes that God is 
[“essence beyond essence”] (Dial., c. 4), determined and restricted to no genus of being but including within Himself all genera of being in infinite ways. In this life we cannot look upon the essence of God with our eyes, grasp it with our minds, or speak of it with our lips. How, then, would we be able to define it perfectly? (See Exod. 33:20; 1 Cor. 13:13; and be sure to see Augustine’s book De cogn. verae vit., c. 3). The same Augustine denies “that the word ‘substance’ befits God, because there is nothing in Him as in a subject, because He is utterly simple. Furthermore, the word ‘essence’ befits Him in such a way that He alone should be called ‘essence,’ for He alone truly is [est], because He is unchangeable” (De Trinit., bk. 7, c. 4). The Damascene, De orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 16: “It is impossible for nature fully to comprehend the supernatural. Furthermore, if knowledge is of things that are, how can there be a knowledge of what is beyond being [
]?” Scaliger, Ex. 365, section 4: “In ancient philosophy, God is said to be 
, and this word moves Him beyond all substance because He is not substance like our substance.” Thomas, 1. Sent., dist. 8, q. 4: “God cannot properly be called ‘substance,’ yet in a broad way He can be called ‘substance,’ which is understood to be above every created substance.”
(3) We respond in the negative on the basis of sufficient enumeration. If God were capable of being defined properly, that would be either an essential or a causal definition. It cannot be essential because that consists of genus and specific difference. But now God does not have any univocal genus with other beings nor is His most simple essence composite from genus and difference. In addition, the definition cannot be causal because God is the cause of all things and there is no cause of God. He is without cause, without beginning, etc.
(4) We respond in the negative on the basis of the agreement of the ancients. Pythagoras said he would define God to be “the greatest of the highest numbers above the next number.” With this obscure enigma, he wanted to indicate that people were seeking in vain to determine who God is. We know the story of Simonides, who intended to explain to King Hieron what God is. He received two or three days to deliberate, and when he had multiplied that period several times, he finally said: “The more I think, the less I find out.”15 Socrates (bk. 3, c. 5 in Historia tripart., bk. 6, c. 31) and Nicephorus (bk. 10, c. 15) tell about Evagrius, that he forbade rash and unthinking debate about God and prohibited the definition of the Divinity in every way. He said: “Definitions are of composite things. But every proposition has either a genus that is predicated or a species or difference or characteristic or accident or a statement made up of these. But none of the things we have said can be comprehended in the Holy Trinity. Therefore because He is unspeakable, let Him be worshiped in silence.” Cyprian, preface to his book De operibus Christi cardinalibus, p. 228: “The Divinity is not definable.” Hilary, De Dei Patris et Filii unit., p. 766: “The names attributed to God are significations of divine works and dispositions; nevertheless they do not for that reason define God Himself.” Hilary, De Trinit.: “Surely this is God: When He is explained, He cannot be explained; when He is evaluated, He cannot be evaluated; when He is defined, He increases with His own definition.” In Contra Eunom., p. 111, Basil proves with many arguments that “God cannot be comprehended with the mind nor explained by definition.” Augustine, De Trinit., bk. 2, p. 15: “It is perfect wisdom to know God in such a way that, though you know He is not unknown, you still know that He is beyond explanation. We must believe Him, understand Him, worship Him, and speak of Him in these offices.” Augustine again, De cogn. verae vit., c. 7: “As that supreme Spirit that is God cannot be thought out properly by any intellect, so He cannot be defined or determined properly by any definition.” The Damascene, Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 4: “It is impossible to say what God is according to His substance.” We can add to these quotations (which serve as an introduction) the statement of Theupolus in Acad. contempl., bk. 1, c. 2, where he writes on the basis of an idea of Plato: “As we should consider God the best-known of all, so we should consider Him the most unknown of all. He is best known from His own nature; He is most unknown to us. It is well-known that He exists; what He is, is totally unknown. Therefore, as to be known by man exactly, it is not at all possible to express Him exactly by name and to explain Him by definition.”
§ 90. Vorstius fights for the opposite position in his treatise De Deo, p. 234: “The fact that God is called ‘the supreme being’ does not cause Him to be under no genus at all and to be restricted by no difference to a definite species.” In the same treatise, p. 198: “God is included in a category [praedicamentali] of substance, is included in a genus of things, and is contained under a genus.”
In favor of this opinion one can form the following argument: If we cannot define God, we cannot know Him. We respond. We must distinguish: (1) Between a perfect definition that is in exact harmony with the precision of logical precepts and any kind of description taken from Scripture. (2) Between knowing and comprehension, between 
[“knowledge”] and 
[“comprehension”]. We comprehend what we know perfectly. We know perfectly that which we know as far as it is knowable. We indeed know God, but we do not comprehend Him, that is, we do not know Him perfectly because He is infinite. Here, however, we should note that the knowledge of God taken from the Word can be called “perfect” both by reason of its purpose (because it is sufficient for salvation) and in comparison to natural knowledge (which is quite dim and imperfect). (3) Between the knowledge of God in this life and in the other life. The former they call the knowledge of the pilgrim, the latter, the knowledge of the comprehender; the former, the knowledge of the way, the latter, the knowledge of life and fatherland. The intuitive definition is the most perfect of all, but we shall see God face-to-face in the life to come. Therefore we shall know perfectly and learn from Him the perfect definition. (4) A definition of His name can be given, but not of His essence.
How God should be defined.
§ 91. (II) The second question is how God should be defined. Various definitions are given by philosophers and church writers. Some of these are more complete than others, and here we shall report on some of them in order to make a comparison. Philosophers have partly drawn their descriptions from the light of nature and partly brought them home with them from travels they took to Egypt (where God’s people were). Hermes Trismegistus (according to Alexander of Hales, p. 1, q. 7, memb. 1) defines God in this way: “God is an intellectual sphere whose center is everywhere but whose circumference is nowhere.” Others attribute that definition to Empedocles. A circle is an absolutely complete figure, having no end. Therefore it is used to designate the infinity and immensity of God. However, Scaliger (Ex. 363) disapproves of this definition and says: “He badly assigns a midpoint to the Infinite and in giving the circumference makes it finite. Then if the circumference will be everywhere, it will also be in the middle, and that will become the center that has a circumference.” A symbolic description, however, cannot be adjusted to the laws of a logical definition nor does Trismegistus say that there is a God whose middle is in the center but whose circumference is everywhere, as Scaliger indicates. Rather, he says that God is an intellectual sphere whose center is everywhere but whose circumference is nowhere. That is, He is circumscribed by neither time nor place.
The same Hermes calls God “the act of all potentials and the potential of all acts” (Pymander, c. 2). The same Trismegistus: “God is both the things that are and those that are not.” God is the things that exist not formally “but both eminently and causally.” He gives being and preserves it for all beings. God is the things that are not, “potentially,” because through His power [potentia] “He calls the things that are not as being” (Rom. 4:17). The statement of Sirach 43:27 is in agreement with this: “God is the all.” To Plato, God is “eternal mind, the cause of every good in nature.” He is “the life immortal, the self-sufficiency for true happiness, the eternal being, the cause of every good instinct.” Aristotle, Metaph., bk. 12, c. 7: “God is the best and eternal life. God is the supreme being [ens], he is the being of beings, the first principle of every motion, itself unmoved.” The author of the book De mundo writes, c. 6: “God is mightiest in power, most beautiful in beauty, immortal in life, strongest in virtue.” Ibid.: “God is in this world as a pilot on a ship, as a driver in a chariot, as a director in a choir, as the law in a state, as a general in an army.” Apollo of Colophon was asked what God was and responded: “He is self-generated, untaught, without mother, unmoved, a name but not set apart by a word, dwelling in fire. This is God.” According to Laertius in bk. 1, c. 5, Cicero said: “God himself, as he is understood by us, cannot be understood in any other way than [as] a mind turned loose, freed, and separated from every mortal materiality, a mind that senses and moves all things and that is itself endowed with eternal motion.” Seneca, Natural. quaest., bk. 1: “What is God? The mind of everything, because you see the whole and you do not see the whole.” Cf. the definition of Parmenides according to Bede (in Boethius, De Trinit., vol. 8, col. 1106), of Cleanthes according to Clement of Alexandria (Protrept., p. 25), of the Stoics in Laertius (on the life of Zeno, bk. 7, p. 450), in Galen (De philos. hist., c. 17), of Socrates in Plutarch (De placit. philos., bk. 1, c. 7), etc.
§ 92. Among the church writers, we come across these definitions: Dionysius, De nomin., bk. 2: “God is all things that are and none of those things that are.” Justin, Contra dogm. Arist., p. 86: “God is singular and one. He has had a god or gods neither before nor after Himself. He has neither a coeternal subject nor opposite. He has an incorruptible nature or essence, an efficiency of operating that no hindrance at all impedes. He is the Architect of the entire world.” Lactantius, De ira Dei, bk. 1: “God is an incorporeal mind, which is diffused throughout the nature of all things; indefinite, but giving a living sense to all animate things.” Nazianzen, Orat. in pat.: “God is light—the highest, inaccessible, and ineffable light. He is not comprehended by the mind nor specified by word, but He is without beginning and without end.”
Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 8, before the middle of c. 9: “God is the maker of created things, the light of things being known, the good of things being done. From Him we have the beginning of nature and the truth of doctrine and the happiness of life.” In QQ. V. ac N. T., q. 1: “God is the simple Spirit of nature, the unapproachable light, invisible, inestimable, infinite, perfect, in need of nothing, eternal, omnipotent, all-possessing, rich, good, just, severe, merciful, clement, patient.” De spiritu et anim., c. 63: “God is that alone which is and who is. He is that than which nothing greater, nothing better, nothing more pleasant can be thought of. He is life, wisdom, light, truth, goodness, eternity, the greatest good, sufficient in Himself for all things, in need of nothing, whom all things need for their being and for their well-being.” Again: “He is truth without deceit, goodness without wickedness, happiness without misery.” De quant. anim., c. 33: “God is the Creator of all things. From, through, and in Him are all things. He is the unchangeable principle, unchangeable wisdom, unchangeable truth, unchangeable eternity, unchangeable virtue, unchangeable love; the one, true, and perfect God who has never not existed and who will never not exist, who has never been otherwise and who never will be otherwise. Nothing is more secret, nothing more present, than He. It is difficult to find where He is, more difficult to find where He is not. Not all can be with Him, and without Him no one can be.”
Bernard, De consid., bk. 5, col. 1049:
God is omnipotent will, most benevolent virtue, eternal light. He is unchangeable reason, highest blessedness. He creates the mind to participate in Him, gives it life to perceive Him, moves it to desire Him, widens it to grasp Him, justifies it to merit Him, kindles zeal to produce fruit, moves it to goodness, directs it to fairness, strengthens it to virtue, shapes it to kindness, modifies it to knowledge, moderates it to wisdom, visits it for comfort, illumines it to knowledge, perpetuates it to immortality, fills it for happiness, surrounds it for security. He loves as love, knows as truth, sits as fairness, rules as majesty, controls as principle, protects as safety, works as might, reveals as light, assists as pity.
In Medit., c. 1: “In Himself God is incomprehensible because He is the beginning and the end. He is the beginning without beginning, the end without end. Among the angels He is desirable because they desire to gaze upon Him. Among the saints He is delightful because they take great pleasure and are joyful in Him. Among creatures He is admirable because He creates all things powerfully, controls all things wisely, dispenses all things kindly. Among men He is lovable because He is their God and they are His people.”
The Damascene sets forth this detailed description from Dionysius, c. 15: “God is the cause and beginning of all things; the essence of all that is; the life of the living; the reason of rational beings; the intellect of intellectual beings; the restoration and resurrection of those who fall away, on the one hand, and the renewal and reforming of nature for those who are corrupt, on the other; the holy foundation of those agitated by an unholy restlessness and the stability of those who stand; the road and uplifting guidance of those being led up upon it and the Father of those made by Him” (Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 2 and 8). C. 16: “He is being beyond being, deity above deity, beginning before beginning.”
Cf. Justin (Dial. cum Tryph., p. 170), Irenaeus (bk. 2, c. 47), Tertullian (Contra Marcion, bk. 1, p. 148; Adv. Judaeos, p. 120; De Trinit., p. 598; Apolog., c. 16; Contra Prax., p. 405), Hilary (De Patr. et Fil. unit., bk. 1, p. 756), Arnobius (Adv. gentes, bk. 1, p. 23), Nazianzen (Orat. 38, which is In Christi nativ., p. 587; Carmina, p. 1017), Basil (Homily 1, Hexaem., p. 25), Rufinus (Expos. symb.), Augustine, (De Trinit., bk. 1, c. 2), Cassiodorus (on Psalm 2), Hymnum, Scaliger (De subtil.). The Hebrews set forth a brief description: “God is Jehovah Elohim,” that is, one eternal, utterly simple essence of three persons.
§ 93. Furthermore, in order to give a more accurate judgment on these and similar descriptions of God, we should note that the description of God taken from Scripture ought to have five parts: (1) essence; (2) essential attributes; (3) three persons, distinct from each other by hypostatic character; (4) external works, in which the individual persons reveal themselves; (5) God’s benefits, both general (toward the entire human race in the creation and preservation of the world) as well as special (toward the Church).
God is an utterly simple spiritual essence; infinite; of limitless goodness, wisdom, and power; just; and truthful—namely: the Father, who from eternity begot His Son, His image, and who created and preserves all things through the Son in the Holy Spirit; the Son, who was begotten of the Father from eternity, who in the fullness of time assumed human nature and in it carried out the work of redemption; the Holy Spirit, who proceeds ineffably from the Father and the Son from eternity, who was poured out visibly upon the apostles and still today is sent invisibly into the hearts of believers, and who through the preaching of the Gospel gathers the Church from the whole human race and sanctifies it to the glory of God’s name and the eternal salvation of those who believe.
§ 94. 1 John 4:8 provides a practical definition: “God is love.” All God’s works proceed from love, and the Holy Spirit, who proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, is the substantial love of the Father and of the Son. In time God created all things out of love. Out of love He sent His Son to carry out the work of redemption. Out of love He gives His Holy Spirit, who kindles similar impulses in the hearts of believers. Out of love He will let the blessed gaze upon Him face-to-face in eternal life. God concealed [Deus absconditus] in the category of substance is incomprehensible, indescribable, beyond our grasp and knowledge. But God revealed [Deus revelatus] in the category of revelation is correctly defined by “love” because He does all things in love and from love. Therefore as a practical definition of God is taken from love, so also the practical knowledge of Him consists in love. There is no profit at all in subtle debating about God while meanwhile not loving the highest good, the substantial love. All of God’s works and benefits, which He furnishes to the human race, are directed only to this: to draw us to love God. Love not only caused God to create all things for man’s sake but also caused God Himself to become man. Therefore those hearts must be harder than steel if they are not softened by so great a fire of love that they do not love God their Creator, God their Restorer, God their Sanctifier, etc.
11 Micraelius describes Plato’s “first mode” of genera as dealing with “essence,” that which pertains to the definition of a thing (Lexicon philosophicum, s.v. “modus”).
12 That is, the capability to be acted upon by something else, as opposed to “active potential,” which is the capability of acting upon something else.
13 “Character of being,” that is, because it is so low in the scale of being, as something nonactual.
14 That is, God’s essence is the highest of all beings.
15 Cf. Luther on John 17:3 (1528), WA 28:91–92.