God: His Existence & Attributes

Establishes from Scripture, Tradition, and the Vatican Council's definition that unaided human reason can know God through the created universe and the facts of the supernatural order, refutes the theory of innate ideas, and addresses Traditionalism and Atheism as erroneous responses to the knowability of God.

Treats the quality of man's earthly knowledge of God: its necessarily abstractive, analogical, and imperfect character as taught by Scripture, the Fathers, and the Scholastics; the threefold mode of knowing God (via affirmationis, negationis, eminentiae); and three theological conclusions on divine ineffability, the composite character of our conception of God, and its truth despite imperfection.

Establishes in three theses that bodily vision of God is absolutely impossible, natural intellectual vision is supernaturally impossible, and the beatific vision is a real de fide article; treats the light of glory as its necessary medium; and reconciles the dogma of divine incomprehensibility with the intuitive vision enjoyed by the Blessed in Heaven.

Refutes the heresy of Eunomius, who claimed an adequate human comprehension of God, and the system of Ontologism, which posits an immediate intuitive vision of God in this life; demonstrates that both contradict the dogmas of divine incomprehensibility and the necessity of the lumen gloriae, and examines why St. Augustine cannot be claimed as an Ontologist.

Surveys the seven holy names of God in the Old Testament and their New Testament equivalents, including the etymology and theology of the Tetragrammaton; then examines the distinction between the Divine Essence and the divine attributes, rejecting Heretical Realism (Gilbert de la Porrée, Palamites), Nominalism (Eunomians, Ockhamists), and Scotist Formalism in favor of the Thomistic virtual distinction.

Surveys and rejects three untenable accounts of the divine metaphysical essence (Nominalist 'sum of perfections,' Scotist infinity, Thomist intellectio subsistens), then establishes aseity (self-existence, autonouia, actus purissimus) as the true fundamental attribute on the authority of Scripture, Tradition, and philosophy.

Opens Part III with a classification of the divine attributes (negative/affirmative; incommunicable/communicable; quiescent/operative; transcendental/predicamental), then establishes in two articles that God is absolutely perfect (autoteles, panteles, hyperteles) as de fide, and that He is actually infinite (infinitum categorematicum) as de fide — both deduced from aseity and confirmed by Scripture, Tradition, and scholastic philosophy.

Three articles establish God's transcendental unity (substantially de fide), absolute simplicity (de fide — Fourth Lateran Council, Vatican Council), proved in seven theses excluding every form of composition; and numerical unicity (de fide — Vatican Council), defended against Polytheism and Dualism.

Three articles establish God as Absolute Ontological Truth (He is truth itself and the cause of all creaturely truth), Absolute Logical Truth or Absolute Reason (God's self-knowledge is identical with His Essence), and Absolute Moral Truth — His veracity and faithfulness — proved de fide from Scripture and the Fourth Lateran and Vatican Councils.

Three articles show God as Absolute Ontological Goodness (He is the highest and fullest being, exemplary cause of all creaturely goodness), Absolute Ethical Goodness or Holiness (de fide — His will is essentially and necessarily good), and Absolute Moral Goodness or Benevolence (God wills what is good for His creatures with a love that creates goodness).

Defines beauty (following St. Augustine and St. Thomas: completeness, due proportion, and splendour), proves that God possesses these three elements in an absolutely eminent degree, and shows that the divine beauty — unlike created beauty — excludes all corporeal conditions and is known to us only analogically.

Chapter II opens the Categorical Attributes. §1 proves God is Absolute Substance (not accident or mode) against Spinoza's Pantheism — de fide from Vatican Council. §2 treats Absolute Causality or Omnipotence: God can do all that is intrinsically possible, de fide, with refutation of Finite Godism, Dualism, and Manichaeism.

§3 proves God's absolute incorporeity (He is a pure spirit with no body or corporeal qualities) de fide from Fourth Lateran and Vatican Councils, refuting Anthropomorphism. §4 proves God's absolute immutability (He cannot change in any way — de fide), showing that change implies imperfection and that Scripture's anthropomorphic expressions must be interpreted figuratively.

§5 treats God's Eternity (the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life — Boethius's definition) as de fide, distinguishing it from sempiternity and aevum. §6 treats God's Immensity (His uncircumscribed presence everywhere possible) and Omnipresence (His actual presence everywhere that anything exists) — de fide — with three modes of presence (per essentiam, per potentiam, per gratiam).

Chapter III opens with the attributes of Divine Life. §1 treats the mode of God's knowledge: it is essentially self-knowledge (de fide), immediate and intuitive, not discursive; God knows Himself perfectly and comprehensively, and this self-knowledge is the foundation of His knowledge of all other things.

§2 treats Omniscience. Article 1: knowledge of the purely possible (scientia simplicis intelligentiae) — de fide. Article 2: knowledge of vision of all contingents including cardiognosis — de fide. Article 3: foreknowledge of free future acts — de fide, against Socinians, with presentation of Bañezian and Molinist solutions.

Article 4 of §2 treats God's foreknowledge of conditionally free future acts (the Scientia Media controversy): Molinism defended as most probable against Bañezianism. §3 treats the medium of Divine Knowledge: God knows all things in and through His own Essence — not through extrinsic species — the highest theological certainty.

Chapter IV treats the Divine Will. §1: God's will is necessary with respect to His own goodness but free with respect to creatures (de fide) — refuting Pantheism and Necessitarianism. §2: God wills Himself necessarily and creatures freely; He wills the salvation of all (sufficient grace) and predestination of the elect.

§3 treats the virtues of the Divine Will. Article 1: God's Justice — distributive, commutative, and vindicative; His punitive justice is de fide (Trent; Vatican Council). Article 2: God's Mercy — misericordia as the primary attribute of God in His outward activity, not opposed to but presupposed by His justice; mercy and justice are ultimately identical in the divine Essence.