The Physical Essence of God

By the essence of a thing we mean that which the thing is in its fundamental being or constitution. Essence is a term derived from the Latin esse which means “to be.” The term and the idea which it expresses are simple things; they are elemental; they defy analysis into simpler forms or elements, and hence they defy definition. For a definition is always the explanation of a thing, made by analyzing the thing and presenting its elements in their clear and manifest relationships. Hence, if a thing is itself elemental and not composed of constituents, there is no analyzing it and no defining it. Of course, such a thing may be more or less satisfactorily described. If we cannot explain it by analyzing it and stating the results of analysis (that is, by definition), we can at least make a close scrutiny and study of it; we can “walk around it,” so to speak, and see it in various lights and phases, and end by telling what we have so discovered about it (that is, by description). Sometimes description does not appear to give much information or to be very meaningful; but it is best to weigh description carefully, and not toss it aside as a mere mumbling of words. Thus we must show no puerile impatience when we hear essence described by very learned and solemn philosophers as “that whereby a thing is what it is,” id quo res est id quod est. Turn the description over carefully in mind, and presently it will be found to be at least dimly illuminating. Perhaps an illustration will help to bring out its value. We may ask: what is the essence of a man? The answer must tell us what man is in his necessary constitution as man; it must name the items or elements that constitute man and only man; it must name all and only the elements required by man to be man at all. We learned the answer to this particular question long ago when, as little children, we recited our first lessons from the catechism, and said- “Man is a creature composed of body and sold… There is the definition of man, and a strict definition expresses the essence of the thing defined; and there, in consequence, you have the essence of man. Body and soul, not merely side by side, but in composition; that is the essence of man. That it is by which “man is what he is.” Our illustration has indicated,—clearly, it is hoped,—the meaning of what is called the physical essence of man. The term physical is really Greek for natural, for the Greek noun physis means “nature.” And the term nature itself comes to English from the Latin natus “born,” and literally means that which a thing is born,—or comes into being,—to be and to do. For this reason, we often hear nature defined as essence considered as the rootsource or principle of operation, or, somewhat priggishly, as essence in its dynamic aspects. But this is by the way. The physical or natural essence of a thing is the essence of the thing in itself as it exists (or is existible) among other things. Now, the metaphysical essence of a thing,—and the term metaphysical means after or beyond the physical, and suggests in another realm than the physical,—is the essence of the thing inasmuch as it is conceivable in the mind. Carefully notice that the metaphysical essence is the essence of a thing; it is no mere viewpoint of the mind, nor is it a logical entity, like an idea considered as such without reference to what it represents. The metaphysical essence is the essence of a thing inasmuch as this thing has, or can have, cognitional existence in the mind that rightly knows it. The physical essence of a reality is capable of expression in terms that point to actual elements or ingredients or parts (if it be a bodily being) ; and thus the elements body and soul which define the physical essence of man are actual parts of a man. These elements of a man constitute him in his rounded being as a thing “in nature,” that is, as a thing among things. But consider the reality called man, not in his natural existence or existibility as a thing among things, but as a thing known or knowable to the mind. By analyzing the idea man (for in this idea is man known to the mind; by this idea man has cognitional existence in the mind) we find what the idea means; we find that the idea in question represents in the mind a reality that is at once animal and rational. It represents a reality that is animal, for man means all that animal means; man means a bodily substantial being that is alive and has sentiency. The idea represents a reality that is rational, for man, in addition to having all that makes an animal an animal, has that which makes a rational being rational, namely, understanding and will. Therefore, the idea man represents in the mind a reality that is (and notice that it is not merely so regarded, or viewed) both animal and rational. Therefore, the mind sums up the intelligible essence of man as animality plus rationality. But you cannot distinguish animality and rationality as parts or elements of John Jones, as you can distinguish body and soul as parts of that interesting individual. John Jones has animality and rationality as truly as he has body and soul. But he has not these abstractly named items as physical parts, as he has body and soul as physical parts. Thus we see that,—at least in bodily creatures which most readily serve us for illustration,—the physical elements of a thing, the items or parts or actual constituents or ingredients of its being, are things that exist as such, and distinctly, in the thing itself, independently of the mind that knows the thing. But the metaphysical elements of a thing, the items of its metaphysical essence, are distinct elements or analogical “parts” of the thing as it has cognitional existence in the mind that correctly knows it. When you define man as, “A creature composed of body and soul,” you define man’s physical essence, and your definition is a physical definition. When you define man as, “A rational animal,” you define man’s metaphysical essence, and your definition is a metaphysical definition. In giving the physical definition of a thing, you define it by listing its necessary elements or parts; you tell how it is made up. In giving the metaphysical definition of a thing, you define it by listing the essential notes of the idea in which it is known; you tell what it means. We may close this investigation by two heavy no definitions: (a) A physical essence is an essence as is exists or is existible in the order of things outside the mind (or, as philosophers say, in rerum natura, that is, “in order of nature”) ; such an essence is the sum-total of constituent parts or perfections which make the thing the reality that it is. (b) A metaphysical essence is the essence of a thing rightly conceived or known, and consists in the knowable points of reality about the thing which mark it off in his own character, and mark it as basically distinct from everything else; and, further, these knowable points constitute the root-reason for all other points that belong to the idea of the thing. Our immediate purpose here is to determine the physical essence of God. Now, it is clear at the outset that God is not like the sun in the sky or like a man in the street; it is clear that God is not bodily. Therefore, let us eradicate sternly from our minds the too common error which identifies in meaning the terms physical and bodily, or the terms physical and material. It is true that we often use the phrase “the physical order” to indicate the realm of bodily things. But the term physical strictly means “natural” or “pertaining to nature,” and a spiritual being has its nature as truly as a bodily being. The custom of speaking of “the physical order” when we mean the bodily universe and all that pertains to it, is easily explained. For the most obvious natures are in those that lie all around us demanding our attention and obtruding themselves on our notice. Hence, the phrase, “the physical order,” is really an elliptical phrase, a handy substitute for the more cumbrous expression, “the order of bodily physes or natures.” We may use this phrase as we like, but let us keep clear minds the while and refuse to take physical as a synonym for bodily or material. As a convenient check and reminder, we may frequently recall the fact that the physical parts of a man (that is, his essential physical parts) are his body and his soul, and the soul is spiritual, not material or bodily. And so, when we come to discuss the physical essence of God, we are not to be nonplussed by the term physical used in this connection, and to feel that there must be some mistake about the whole business. b) THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD

The term perfection (as well as its adjective perfect) is sublimated to its present use. Literally, it means something thoroughly and completely made. Of course, God is not made. God is, as we have proved, the First Cause and the Necessary Being, and anything that is made can be neither first nor necessary. For it is consequent upon and therefore “second to” its maker; and it is contingent upon and “second to” its producing cause. So we lift the words perfect and perfection above their literal meaning, and understand them to mean the full and complete being which is hampered by no limitations, boundaries, drawbacks, hindrances; which is absolutely free from dependencies and influences; which is boundless and infinite. And by a perfection of God, we mean one of the special phases in which the indivisible Divine Essence is viewed by the human mind. In the next Chapter we shall discuss certain perfections of God, which, for lack of a better term, we call His properties or attributes. But here we must consider what may be called the fundamental perfections of God, and in these we discern His physical essence. We may limit these fundamental perfections to four. These indicate that God is one in Himself and one in His kind, that is, that God is one and that God is the only God; that God is without p^arts or divisions or divisibility; that God is limitlessly or boundlessly perfect; that God is a spirit. In a word, the fundamental perfections of God are unity, simplicity, infinity, spirituality. We must speak briefly of each of these perfections: i. The Unity of God. By the unity of God we indicate the one single Essence of God. By faith we know that God, who is One in Essence, is Three in Person, but this fact does not touch our present inquiry in any way. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity cannot be handled by philosophy; human reason unaided by revelation cannot prove or dis- prove it; all that can be certainly known by reason is that the mystery does not come into contradiction and conflict with rationally known truths. Therefore, the question of the Trinity is strictly theological, and has no place in the discussions of theodicy. But faith and reason are at one in their unqualified assertion that God is one Essence, one Nature, one Substance. This is what we mean by the unity of God. And the term unity also involves in itself (in the present instance) the perfection called unicity or uniqueness, that is, the perfection whereby the one God is the only God. It is a basic truth of metaphysics that every being is one; inasmuch as a thing is a thing, it is that one thing. But limited things can have others of their kind. No being can be a plurality of itself; but it can admit an equality of other things with itself. Thus Socrates is one man; there cannot be a plurality of Socrates, even if a million men are called by the same name. This one man is this one man; he has unity. But he has not unicity, for there are many other men, many other beings of the same essential kind as himself. With the First and Necessary Being this is not so. Not only is this Being one in itself with perfect unity, but it is the only thing of its kind. It has unity and unicity. It is not only one; it is also unique. These points we are now to prove. There have been people in the world’s history (and there are still some today) who thought that many gods exist; these people are polytheists, and their doctrine is polytheism. Polytheism is sometimes a belief in, and worship of, a host of invisible beings, good or bad; this variety of polytheism is demonolatry or demon worship, using the term demon in its Greek sense as a kind of angel or a kind of devil; thus the term demonolatry does not necessarily mean devil-worship. Sometimes polytheism finds expression in the worship of ancestors (this is religious animism, also anthropolatry). Sometimes it is the worship of animals (this is zoblatry) ; sometimes, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars (Sabeism) ; sometimes, the worship of natural or artificial objects in the bodily world (fetichism). A special form of polytheism limits the deities to two, a supreme Good Being and an equally or almost equally supreme Evil Being; this doctrine (called religious dualism) was professed by the ancient Manichaeans and, somewhat later, by the Gnostics. Against all these, stands our doctrine that God is one and the only God. Against polytheism we assert the truth of monotheism. That God is one and the only God is, first of all, manifest in the unity and order of the world around us; in the harmony of the universe. We find such unity and harmony in the smallest creature as well as in the whole complexity of the cosmos. Now, where there is a great and most complex design, and where this design exhibits, in the large and in its most minute details, an amazing harmony, balance, unity, it is manifest that the design is not the product of a plurality of beings but of one. Even in the little works of art and of practical utility (of art and of artisanship) that are designed and executed by men, we find one controlling plan; one architect designs a building, and though many may confer about the plans, the finished product is a unified decision which comes from, or is adopted by, one controlling or master mind. The most clever artist cannot finish a picture left incomplete, in such a manner as to deceive experts about the points or parts where the one artist left off and the other began. A lover of Dickens would instantly detect the fact that a completed Edwin Drood was not all the work of his beloved novelist, even if he had never read the part that Dickens wrote, before taking up the completed story. Now, the unity of the world, in its smallest and largest aspects, is such a unity as no human work of art or craftsmanship could ever remotely approach. It is surely manifest to the fair mind that the universe has a single Author. This is not a compelling argument; but it is a fully legitimate argument, and an extremely strong one. Even John Stuart Mill admits its force and value. He is quoted by Father Boedder, S.J. (in Natural Theology of the famed Stonyhurst Series; pp. 69-70), and from the quotation we select a sentence or two: “When once the double conviction has found entry n6 into the mind—that every event depends on antecedents ; and at the same time that to bring it about many antecedents must concur, perhaps all the antecedents in Nature, insomuch that a slight difference in any one of them might have prevented the phenomenon, or materially altered its character—the conviction follows that no one event, certainly no one kind of events, can be absolutely pre-ordained or governed by any Being but one who holds in his hand the reins of all Nature and not of some department only… . The reason, then, why monotheism may be accepted as the representative of theism in the abstract, is not so much because it is the theism of all the more improved portions of the human race, as because it is the only theism which can claim for itself any footing on scientific ground’* (Mill, Three Essays on Religion, pp. 132ff.). We have proved, by compelling argument, that God is the First and the Necessary Being. Now, there cannot conceivably be a plurality of such Beings. How can a plurality of beings all be first? And, if they could, how could they be distinguished one from another, not in our minds but among themselves? For a being which exists of necessity is Self-existent Being. If two or more such Beings could exist, how could they be distinct Beings, that is, really a plurality and not one single Essence? Could they be distinguished by self-existence itself? No; for in this they are at one. Could they be dis- tinguished by something necessarily connected with self-existence? No; for what is necessarily connected with self-existence belongs to all self-existent things and is not conceivably a mark of distinction among them. Could they be distinguished by some characteristic which does not necessarily belong to selfexistence? No; for such a characteristic would be an accidental thing (or an accident, as philosophers say), and there cannot be anything accidental in a being which is not subject to causes; and no selfexistent being is conceivably subject to causes; it cannot be affected by accidents at all. We are driven to conclude that the apparent plurality of selfexistent Beings is only apparent; that in reality there can be but one Self-existent Being. This must be the First and the Necessary Being, or God. Therefore, God is one. Therefore, God is unique. St. Thomas Aquinas puts the argument in this way, “If Socrates were this man by the same thing that makes him a man, there could not be a plurality of men any more than there can be a plurality of Socrates. But God is His nature. That whereby God is God, is that whereby God is this God. And hence it is impossible that there should be more than one God.” The unity of God is quite simply and directly proved by the fact that He is infinite and by the fact that He is absolutely simple. We do not offer these proofs here for we have not yet established iiS the infinity and simplicity of God. But we shall presently set forth these truths, and then we shall hark back to the present consideration, noticing how the unity of God is inescapably proved in the perfections mentioned.

2. The Simplicity of God. By the term simple we mean indivisible. A simple thing has no parts, and hence it cannot be divided into parts. Contrasted with a simple thing is a composite or compound thing; such a thing has parts, and can be distinguished, and often physically divided, into its parts. Some creatures are physically simple; such, for instance, is the human soul; such also is any substantial form of any substance. But creatures all admit a metaphysical composition, inasmuch as they are essences which have received existence, they are subsistent things in certain respective orders of nature, and so we say they are compounded of essence and existence and of subsistence and nature. Moreover, all creatures are compounds of potentiality and actuality, for they are actualizations of what could be, and they are subject to (substantial or accidental) change, and thus they are (actually) what they are, and they are (potentially) what they can become. Further, there is in creatures a logical composition inasmuch as they can be classified by the mind in groups, classes, kinds, marked by generic and specific differences; in this sense the essence man is seen by the mind to be “composed” or “compounded” of the genus animal and the specific difference rational. Now, when we say that God is simple we mean that there is in God no composition, no compounding, no putting together of elements or parts; and we assert that from God all composition is excluded, physical, metaphysical, logical. Although, as we shall see, the mind does make distinctions in God, and we speak of different and distinct attributes and perfections of God; and, although the mind has some ground and justification for such distinction, the mind, nevertheless, does not consider God in any sense as a composite of all these perfections, but always reminds itself of the fact that in God all perfections are identified in the absolutely simple unity of the one and indivisible Divine Essence. God is the First and the Necessary Being. Now, such a Being cannot conceivably be compounded or composed. The First Being cannot be a composite being, for any compounding requires a cause that is prior to the being compounded, that is, a cause which brings the elements into union. And the Necessary Being cannot be a composite being, for a composite being is contingent upon the union of its parts or elements; and contingency is the flat contradictory of necessity. So much for a general proof. We may profitably say a brief word to show that the various types of composition are necessarily excluded from God. (a) In God there is no physical composition. For physical composition means the putting together of literal parts, that is to say, of parts of which some at least are bodily parts, and the whole composite resulting is a body. But God is not bodily. For a body is always a thing that is subject to movement by something not itself, whereas, as we have distinctly proved, God is the First Mover Himself Unmoved. (&) In God there is no metaphysical composition. God is the First and Necessary Being, and is therefore self-existent, that is, He exists by His essence; existence and essence in such a Being must be absolutely identified. Further, God is Pure Actuality, for the First Being owes nothing to causes and cannot be affected by causes, that is, cannot become or be actualized; in a word, such a Being has no potentiality in Itself, but is purely Actuality. Hence, God is not a compound of essence and existence, of actuality and potentiality. In a word God is not metaphysically compounded. (c) In God there is no logical composition. For we have seen that God is one God and the only God, and this by a requirement of His Being and Essence. He is not, therefore, classified by the mind as a certain kind or a certain genus of reality, marked off by special difference from other realities of the same general kind. For the Divine Essence is the only thing of its kind; it is absolutely unique, and so is not subject to a literal classification by the mind. In God, therefore, there is no logical composition. God is thus seen by reason as a Being that is necessarily simple with complete and absolute (i. e.» unqualified, unconditional) simplicity. But how does it happen, then, that we speak of God’s perfections as distinct realities? We speak of God’s unity, His simplicity, His infinity, His spirituality. Presently we shall speak of His power, His immensity, His ubiquity, His knowledge, His will. In a word, we make distinctions in God, and we ask how we may do so if God is wholly one and simple in Himself. The answer lies in the fact that the limited human mind cannot deal with the unlimited Divine Essence except by taking aspects and views suited to its own limited nature. The mind can obtain knowledge of God, granted that this knowledge is never adequate; and it must do this in its own way according to the old axiom, quidquid accipitur ad modum accipientis accipitwr, “Whatever is taken in, is accepted according to the capacities of the receiver.” Well, then, are the distinctions we make in God purely rational or purely logical distinctions? That is, are they distinctions which have no foundation outside the mind, but are invented, so to speak, by the mind itself to enable it to deal in some fashion with the object considered? No; the distinctions we make in God are indeed rational or logical; they are not real distinctions, that is, they are not distinctions on the part of the divine Reality considered; we have just seen that there are no real distinctions in God (except, of course, that one real distinction of Persons, with which theodicy has no concern). But the mind has some basis in reality for its distinctions in God. For, granted that all the perfections of God are one with His undivided Essence in the most perfect identity, the human mind which apprehends these perfections and this Essence has its direct and proper experience with limited things which, in point of power, knowledge, will, and so on, present really distinct aspects to its view. In a creature, power is really distinct from knowledge, mercy is really distinct from justice; unity is really distinct from will. And, while the perfections of creatures are referred to God, partly in a figurative or analogical way, and partly in a formal but transcendent way, it is these perfections of creatures that give the mind its basis for making distinctions in God. Therefore, the mind has not a literal and perfect foundation for such distinctions, nor is it without foundation altogether; it is said to have an imperfect foundation in reality for the distinctions it draws in the one indivisible God. From the simplicity of God it follows that God is perfectly complete in Himself. Not having parts, He is not conceivably the part of something else. For God, the First Cause of all things cannot be iden

I2Z tified with the effects which He produces; the efficient cause is always essentially distinct from its effect, and God is the Efficient Cause of all positive reality. Further, if God were to enter into composition with any creature as its part, He would have to do this as its matter or its form. But God is not matter, for matter is potential and God is Pure Actuality. Nor can God be the form of anything, for such a form is shared or participated unto the in-formed and completed reality of which it is a part, and as such, that is, as a part, it is subsequent to what it is in its own distinct essence. But God is not subsequent to anything; He is absolutely and perfectly the First Being. Further, the form of anything, coming into union with matter to constitute the thing, actualizes its own potentiality; but God is in no sense potential, but is Pure Actuality. Hence God cannot be part of anything else., He cannot be the “soul of the world” as the Stoics thought; He cannot be spread out or manifested “in parts” as the pantheists think; He cannot be identified with the creatural world as a whole (for the world is not simple) nor as its part. The simplicity of God is a cogent proof of His unity, For that which is simple is manifestly one in itself. And if the simple being is also the First and the Necessary Being, it follows that it cannot be a plurality, but is one and unique.

5. The Infinity of God. The term infinity, with its adjective infinite, comes from the Latin in, a negative particle, and finis “end,” “boundary,” “limit.” Thus the literal meaning of infinity is “boundlessness,” “unlimitedness.” When we say that God is infinite, we mean that there is, and can be, no limit or boundary to His being or His perfections. And, since God is simple, His infinite perfections are not parts or elements of His Divine Essence, or qualities which that Essence enjoys, but they are identified, in measureless degree, with the Divine Essence Itself. The First and Necessary Being must be infinite. For limitation always involves a cause of limitation, and there is no cause that can exercise causal limiting action upon that which is absolutely first and therefore prior to every cause of every kind. One might be tempted to say, “A limitation means a lack, and a lack does not require a truly efficient cause, but is a deficiency.” But such a limitation as we here consider is not a mere lack, but a positive imposition of boundaries. And such a limitation certainly does require a true efficient cause. Consider the point from this angle: When anything is given, it is given in a certain measure, for that which is capable of transference by gift is not infinite or, at least, cannot be infinitely imparted. If a man gives his boy ten dollars he gives so much; but he also, quite as definitely, gives no more. What is given is necessarily finite. But the truth goes farther than this. What is not given,—and we mean, of course, actuality which is not given,—is necessarily infinite. For perfection (i. e., actuality) which is unreceived, ungiven, has about it nothing that could limit it. An unmixed perfection contains in itself no requirement for limitation, and indeed no possibility of being limited except under the action of limiting external causes. Now, the perfection of God is ungiven and unreceived; it is perfection in the highest, purest, unmixed sense; it is perfection not subject to causal action since it is identified in the simple and first Actuality with the Divine Essence of that Actuality. Nothing conceivable, then, could limit it; it must, of necessity, be infinite. There is ever a tendency on the part of proud and impatient minds to dismiss as impossible what is found to be unimaginable. The imagination cannot adequately picture infinity, and hence there is a temptation in certain minds to say that infinity is either impossible or unknowable. But, it may justly be retorted, the mind can understand infinity, can know what it means, even though the imagination is powerless to picture it adequately. The imagination cannot picture the object of any idea adequately, even the object of the most finite or least universal of ideas. But this does not hinder the mind from knowing that object. The imagination is ever a great help to the mind, offering its images in illustration and analogy when they are not available as more direct expressions of the meaning of the mind’s ideas and thoughts; and indeed the mind arises to its concepts from the images of the imagination which reflect the findings of the other senses. The imagination is tireless in its presentation of images; it furnishes endless illustrations. And, as a man, studying the copious printed pictures which accompany a scientific treatise, may learn from them something of the nature and trend of the treatise itself, though he be unable to understand its terms, so may the mind (even more surely and powerfully) come to the knowledge of the realities which imagination most imperfectly suggests. For the rest, if imagination cannot adequately picture infinity, neither can it adequately picture an actuality which is first and yet not infinite. The mind inevitably reaches out and infers infinity; it affirms infinity; and this is true of the mind of the doubter and the atheist as surely as it is true of the mind that stands open to fact and to faith. To the one, infinity is doubtful, but the region of the dubious stretches away endlessly unto the very infinity that is doubted; to the second, infinity is denied, but an infinite nothingness remains. Those that complain of the limitations of the imagination, and base their doubts or denials of infinity upon that limitation, are most unreasonably trying to make the imagination something other than it is; they are trying to make it in all respects the equal of the mind or intellect itself, whereas it is, by its nature, on a lower plane, and is meant as a means by which a man mounts upward to the region of intellectual knowledge. No man complains that his eyes cannot take in all the world at one glance, nor does he declare world-travel impossible because he does not clearly see at the outset all possible paths that his eager feet may follow. In his own way, man certainly can know, and indeed must know, what infinity means; man can know, and inevitably does know, that the absolutely first actuality must be infinite. Human knowledge of infinity, like human knowledge of anything, is necessarily finite and not fully comprehensive; but it may be true knowledge as far as it goes. Therefore, it is a foolish and futile objection to infinity that finds it inadmissible on the grounds of limitations in a necessarily limited human faculty. The infinity of the First and Necessary Being is a compelling proof of the unity of that Being. Perhaps the most forceful way of setting out that proof is that called the demonstratio per absurdum which is the indirect but inescapable evidence of the truth by reason of the impossible character of its contradictory. Let us suppose then that there can be a plurality of infinite beings, at least two. We shall call these A and B. Both are infinite. How, then, will you distinguish one from the other ? The minute you draw a line of distinction or of demarcation between them, you put a limit on both, and neither is infinite. Here you have the absurdity (which you cannot escape if infinity is pluralized) of two beings which are infinite and not infinite at one and the same time! Look at the same thing in a slightly different way: The infinity called A has its own perfections in measureless degree, identified with its essence. It is infinite, remember, and therefore no conceivable perfection is absent from it. Now, the infinity called B also has its own perfections in measureless degree, identified with its essence. B is infinite, and no conceivable perfection is absent from it. But if A’s perfection is its very own, it is absent from B, and B is not infinite. So too, B’s perfection belongs to B (not to A) and therefore A is not infinite. Again we come to the absurd and impossible conclusion that A and B are both infinite and not infinite. Manifestly, this cannot be. We can only conclude that a plurality of infinities is impossible. The infinite Being is necessarily one and only; It has unity and unicity. Further, the infinity of God is absolute proof of the simplicity of God. For no separate and distinct perfection can be infinite in its own sphere, since a plurality of infinite perfections is a plurality of infinities, which we have just shown to be impossible. God’s perfections are therefore identified; they are one. But God cannot be one in Being with one infinite perfection distinct from His Being, for here again would be a plurality of infinities. Therefore,

God, in Being (essence, existence, nature, substance} and in perfections must be absolutely one and indivisible, and all perfections must be one identical thing with the Divine Essence Itself. In a word, God must be absolutely simple. Thus we see how the fundamental perfections of God (called distinct perfections to suit our mode of understanding and of study, and distinct, in consequence, by a rational or logical distinction, granted such distinction has a basis in reality) are proof one of the other. Here again, we see suggested the truth that any serious consideration of the human mind leads to and indicates God, if carried far enough. Take up what subject you will in the wide circle of human experience and you take up a point on a definite radius that inevitably leads direct to the Infinite Centre of all.

4. The Spirituality of God. That God is a Spirit is already proved in the foregoing arguments. For God is simple, and no bodily actuality is simple. God is one and unique, and no bodily being is necessarily so. God is infinite, and a bodily being is, by definition, mensurable (at least internally, as philosophers put it) and is so limited. Therefore, God is not bodily. But, you may say, granted that He is not bodily, it need not follow that He is a Spirit. There are creatures (like any minor substantial form; say, for example, a plant-soul) that are simple but not

IZO spiritual. True, but such simple creatures are not also unique and infinite; they are ever dependent for existence and operation upon other and, indeed, bodily things. But God is Pure Actuality, completely self-sufficing, completely self-existent, entirely necessary. Such a Being has no dependencies, but must exist in a supersubstantial way in Its own right. And a being that exists in its own right is either a body or a spirit. But, as we have seen, God is not a body. God, therefore, is a Spirit.

c) THE PHYSICAL ESSENCE OF GOD The physical essence of any actuality is, as we have seen, the sum-total of the perfections that constitute it. Now, the sum-total of the perfections that, so to speak, constitute God in His own proper Being independently of the view of the mind, are the perfections we have just considered: unity, uniqueness, simplicity, infinity, spirituality. These perfections, in boundless and essential identity, constitute the physical essence of God. We may put them all briefly in the little formula we once learned from our catechism, and declare that, “God is a Spirit infinitely perfect.” This is a physical definition of God; it expresses God’s physical essence. That God is a Spirit, we have amply proved. And the phrase “infinitely perfect” necessarily includes boundless simplicity and unity; for the phrase means infinite and allperfect.

Summary Of The Article

In this Article we have learned the meaning of the terms essence; physical essence; metaphysical essence. We have found that the physical essence of a thing is the sum of elements or perfections that constitute it in its proper being, independently of the view of the mind that knows it. We have defined metaphysical essence as that item or element in the reality under examination (radically present to the reality but not necessarily a formal part in the reality) which evokes in the mind which knows the reality a true and penetrating knowledge of it, and which serves the mind as the basis of all that is essentially referable to the known reality. We have discussed the fundamental objective perfections of the First and Necessary Being, that is, of God, and we have found these to be unity (with uniqueness or unicity), simplicity, infinity, spirituality. We have summed up these perfections in a physical definition of God, that is, in a definition which expresses the physical essence of God. Such a definition may be formulated as, “God is the one, simple, infinite, Spirit,” or, “God is a Spirit, infinitely perfect.”