All That God Is: John Webster and Cyril of Alexandria on Divine Aseity and Theosis
In recent years, the Church has seen a renaissance and recovery of the Classical doctrine of God. Most of this recovery has centered on doctrines like simplicity, impassibility, reactions against Eternal Subordination of the Son, and a more Classical focus on Christology. This renaissance is taking place by necessity given the recent multiplicity of false understandings regarding the doctrine of God, and therefore this should be lauded and commended. Along with the commendable work and its good fruit regarding the doctrine of God, this recent resurgence has another reason to be commended. As the Church has turned towards a more conscious upholding of Classical Trinitarianism she has done so attentive to, and for the sake of, the pastoral implications of its impact on soteriology. John Webster, a leading theologian in the Classical resurgence of theology proper, even went so far as to posit that “[t]he matter of the Christian gospel is, first, the eternal God who has life in himself, and then temporal creatures who have life in him.”¹ Webster’s life and influence are reflections of the pastoral focus on the soteric implications of theology proper. In this, the recent resurgence of theology proper is following in the steps of those who have gone before.
One cannot study the Trinitarian expressions of the creeds or confessions without being impressed with their pastoral tone. The Church Fathers, the Reformers, and the authors of the Reformation Confessions were adamant that Classical Trinitarianism must be pursued, understood, and upheld if we are to have a proper understanding of what the Triune God has accomplished on behalf of sinful man. The Second London Baptist Confession begins its confession of the Triune God by naming Him “The Lord our God.”² Our understanding of the Triune God of Scripture must not be separated from our understanding that this Triune God is our God. In the midst of the recent recovery of Classical Trinitarianism, there has thankfully—to the praise of God—been a recovery of pastoral and soteric concerns.³ A particular aspect of Classical Trinitarianism that may help us continue to recover the more pastoral nature of the study of God can be found in the study of aseity. While not the purpose of this paper, it must also be noted that all doctrine of God should not only recover the pastoral nature of theological inquiry but also the imaginative nature of such expressions. Katherine Sonderegger has noted, “[I]t is only the long poverty of our theological imaginations . . . that diverts us from the radical Uniqueness and Aseity of the one, surpassing Mystery who is God.”⁴ What it takes to speak of God’s Aseity is analogy, creature-comparison, the imagination grounded by Revelation. Again, however, to make this particular case is not the purpose of this article. For now, we restrict such ideas to the method, and pray you see the imaginative function of the theological endeavor in the article below.
A Theology of Aseity
Aseity is a term that designates the truth that God is self-existence; that God does not depend on anything to be God. In the words of Herman Bavinck, “All that God is, he is of himself.”⁵ The term is taken from the Latin phrase a se, meaning “of himself.” Before exploring what aseity entails for how we understand God, first we need to make clear how we are to understand aseity. There have been two ways of understanding aseity throughout Church history. Both of these ways are proper with one given simply to a more narrow focus, lending to a broader application. The first way to understand aseity—and the majority view throughout Church history—is aseity negatively considered.
Aseity by Negation
Aseity negatively considered is not in itself an improper way to speak of God’s self-existence. In fact, this way of speaking has and always will function as a proper way of theological contemplation. For instance, Augustine speaks negatively of God’s aseity when he speaks of creation as “not beautiful or good or possessed of being in the sense that you their Maker are. In comparison with you they are deficient in beauty and goodness and being.”⁶ Augustine, along with many theologians throughout history, made a theological statement of God’s self-dependence by comparison to creation’s dependence upon God Himself. In this way, Augustine states aseity’s truth by stating what it is not; telling us what God is not, rather than focusing on what God is in Himself. Anselm speaks in the same way when he says of creation, “[W]hat has had a past existence but does not now exist, and a future existence but does not yet exist–such a thing does not exist in a strict and absolute sense. But you are what you are.”⁷
In both cases, Augustine and Anselm are delineating what God’s self-existence means by comparison to creation. That is, they are describing God by what He is not. Again, such a designation is proper and even necessary as long as it is done cautiously. Augustine and Anselm describe God this way with caution by ensuring, according to John Webster, “[T]here is no sense that God’s supreme, self-existent being somehow requires this contrast with the creaturely, as a kind of backcloth without which its splendor could not be seen. God simply is.”⁸ Notice how Anselm positions this comparative description within the context of a broader and more positive acknowledgment of God’s aseity, “He alone has of himself all that he has, while other things have nothing of themselves. And other things, having nothing of themselves, have their only reality from him.”⁹ In other words, “God’s aseity is not a mirror image of contingency; rather, in both Augustine and Anselm it is an aspect of the divine solus, the irreducible uniqueness and incommensurability of God.”¹⁰ Everything that is not God depends on God to be what it is and that it is, but God is entirely independent “in everything: in his existence, in his perfections, in his decrees, and in his works.”¹¹
This self-existence of God is revealed, comparatively to contingent beings, in Acts 17. As Paul addresses the Athenians in the Areopagus, he appeals to the aseity of God in comparative fashion, beginning with God’s work of creation: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,” (Acts 17:24). Paul begins with God and his work of creation as the foundation for the distinction between God and creation. God made all things and therefore “does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything,” (vv. 24-25). God is not dependent upon creation to be anything. Notice, as we have seen with Augustine and Anselm, Paul’s focus is not creation, but God—although still a comparative notion of God’s self-existence. Only then, after explicating God’s essence as independent, does Paul turn to creation: “he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,” (v. 25). Paul appeals to God’s self-existence as the ground for creation’s existence, and in doing so, Paul defines God’s self-existence as what it is not and what it is. It is not dependent; it is the independent cause of all things—especially life. As the Church describes aseity by way of negation and comparison, it must follow Paul and settle the comparative language in the contextual foundation of who God is. Theology begins with God, not anthropology. Therefore, this comparative description of aseity is common and proper throughout Church history as a reflection of the revelation found in Scripture.
The problem, however, according to Webster, occurs when this “abstract contrast between self-existent and created being is allowed too commanding a role in determining the notion of aseity.”¹² Accordingly, “No longer arising in the context of explicating the perfect, self-expressive being of God,” God’s self-existence “emerges instead out of a consideration of the nature of contingent reality.”¹³ This causes the doctrine of aseity to migrate “away from the doctrine of the immanent Trinity and of the Triune God’s economy of nature and grace, and instead finds its place in a consideration of the world.”¹⁴ John Webster posits three theologians as examples of those who give too commanding a role to the comparative notion of aseity: Samuel Clarke, Schleiermacher, and Tillich. These three theologians “exemplify a basic disorder introduced into the concept of aseity when expounded in close relation to cosmology or anthropology.”¹⁵ This disorder of comparative overemphasis causes the three theologians above, in their own right, to speak of aseity as “less an affirmation of the underived beauty and goodness of God, and more a property which must be ascribed to deitas if it is properly to fulfil its function of supporting the contingent.”¹⁶
I do not believe that this problem resides within the academy’s theologians, but within the Church at large as well. Often when Christians speak of God’s self-existence, we speak of how God—unlike all of creation—is not dependent upon anything for His being, perfections, decrees, or works. While wonderfully true, this truth adopts the disorder of comparative overemphasis, attempting to define God’s self-existence primarily by what it is not: contingent creation. In doing so, the Church propagates a doctrine of God’s perfect existence in and of Himself that is “in some measure eclipsed, overtaken by a kind of ‘finite’ transcendence or aseity, comparatively rather than absolutely different.”¹⁷ The Church must be careful in how we speak of God, and the language we adopted for doing so must reflect how God Himself speaks. What one finds in Scripture is that when God speaks of His own self-existence He does so, not through a comparative negation, but through a positive affirmation of His own Trinitarian life.
Aseity by Affirmation
Aseity must not be spoken of in merely negative terms—defined by what it is not. When this happens, aseity then takes on what Webster calls “a subordinate characteristic (God’s ‘not being from another’)” that eclipses aseity’s “primary meaning (God’s ‘being in and from himself’).”¹⁸ Michael Allen writes of aseity that it comprehends both “negatively, that God does not receive being from another” as well as “positively, that God possesses life in and of himself.”¹⁹ How has the Church spoken in the past about this positive conception of the self-existent life of God? Throughout the Early Church we find expressions of God’s self-existence as positive affirmations of the Triune life of God. Webster is again helpful here, “[T]rinitarian teaching offers a conceptual paraphrase of the life of God . . . It is as Father, Son and Spirit that God is of himself, utterly free and full, in the self-originate and perfect movement of his life.”²⁰ This is, as Katherine Sonderegger names it, “Divine Aseity in its Triune Structure.”²¹ For Sonderegger, and the Church Fathers, “[T]he Triune Life of God is the Fiery Explosion of God’s Uniqueness, His Exceeding Mystery and Aseity.”²² To understand this we need the enriching Word to deposit a work of the Spirit upon our imaginations.
To define the self-existence of God as Triune life is to understand aseity “in terms of fullness of personal relations. Aseity is life: God’s life from and therefore in himself. This life is the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit.”²³ Aseity, therefore, must first be defined by the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit in relation to the Father; it must begin, not with its relation to creation, but with the Trinitarian relations of the three Persons in One.²⁴ God is underived self-existence precisely as the God of eternal generation and spiration. This grounds aseity in the from-ness of the Triune life as a from-ness that constitutes the eternal communion of God. If it is true that “the Father and the Son know each other, the one by begetting, the other by being born,” then it remains true that the communion-life of the Triune God is one of Father, Son, and Spirit in their relation to one another.²⁵ All that God is, He is of Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit.
Jonathan Edwards famously said that “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, his own essence and perfections.”²⁶ I would add to Edwards that this self-enjoyment is expressed in Triune love of eternal generation and spiration, of self-existent paternity, sonship, and procession. This is the heart of the Christian confession of aseity: the Triune life-fellowship of God as all that God is of and from Himself. As Matthew Barrett writes, “To affirm God’s aseity is to say, first and foremost, that he is life in and of himself, and on that basis he must be self-existent and self-sufficient.”²⁷ Scripture reveals the Father as He who “has life in himself,” (Jn. 5:25); the Son in whom “was life,” (Jn. 1:3); and the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of life,” (Rom. 8:2). God’s existence in Himself is invariably tied to life. Such a positive conception of aseity is taken up throughout the Old Testament as God declares Himself to be He who is (Exod. 3:14)—whose essence is existence without any relation to creation. In fact, this relation-less self-existence is an existence of communion, but communion not with creation. This life-existence is one of eternal Trinitarian communion. Scripture’s positive affirmation of God’s aseity does not derive merely from comparative negation but also from a revealing of God as life in Himself.
“The Trinity isn’t for anything beyond itself, because the Trinity is God,” writes Fred Sanders. He continues explaining this positive conception, “God is God in this way: God’s way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all eternity, perfectly complete in a Triune fellowship of Love.”²⁸ If God, in and of Himself, is “that being who exists as the Triune love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit,”²⁹ then He must be self-existent since existing for another—dependent upon another—would imply a lack within the Triune life of God. The beautiful wonder of aseity is the inner life of God “in the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds . . . a livelier life than any other life,” and the fact that we know this is “a medicinal correction to our sick, self-centered thinking.”³⁰ The Triune God is life; the Triune God is life. As all good is derivative of its cause in God so all life and being is derivative of its cause in the life-fellowship of the Triune God. It is as a derivation of God’s perfect life that all men “live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28).
In the same way that we cannot understand aseity apart from the Trinity, we cannot understand any of the attributes of God apart from aseity. As is the case with all of God’s attributes, God’s simplicity refuses to allow any real composition in God. This doesn’t mean that God’s aseity is His immutability, but it does mean that we cannot consider one attribute as part of a multiplicity of attributes that make up God. Therefore, because God is a se (from or of Himself)—because God is self-existent—He must also be self-divine, self-wise, self-virtuous, self-attesting, self-justifying, self-empowering, self-knowing, and self-excellent.³¹ As Bavinck puts it, “In this aseity of God, conceived not only as having being from himself but also as the fullness of being, all the other perfections are included. They are given with the aseity itself and are the rich and multifaceted development of it.”³² Because God’s self-existence is His Triune life-fellowship, God’s self-existence is not just pure being but the fullness of being, as the Father, Son, and Spirit communion in perfect unity with one another. This is pure life—pure being—to its fullness.
This fullness of pure life helps us to expand further on our definition of aseity so far. All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit—in abundance, wealth, and fullness. In short, “All that he has, he is, and he has all and more.”³³ According to Michael Allen, divine fullness is signaled, or pointed to, by the doctrine of aseity, and “is first and foremost a reality within the divine life.”³⁴ God—in and of Himself—is “full with life, light, and all bounty. He possesses these realities in and of himself as the Triune God, such that his fullness is that of the eternal Triune relations and of the distinctly Trinitarian unity.”³⁵ This is the infinity of God shining light upon the aseity of God; the freeness of God from limitations illuminating the freeness of God from dependence. Here is the Infinite as Triune life-fellowship within and of Himself; the fullness of the living God. Therefore, when Christians confess God’s richness as a se, in and of Himself, they confess God’s existence “as the one who possesses all fullness and whose own character is rich. He not only has what he has by himself—rather than from another—but he has it excessively.”³⁶
Conclusion
All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit—in abundance, wealth, and fullness. Scripture attests to God as One who is not like creation; One who is pure and absolute being. This existence is a life that is entirely independent of all things outside itself. Negatively considered, the doctrine of aseity expresses the reality that God, unlike creation which exists as dependent being, God exists in and of Himself as utterly dependent upon nothing for Him to be anything. God does not depend on creation to be Creator; He does not depend on man to be just or good; He does not depend on space to be transcendent or on time to be eternal. All that God is, He is of Himself. God is independent as such because of the Triune life-fellowship that just is. This brings us to the positive consideration of aseity. Positively considered, aseity expresses the reality that God, as Father, Son, and Spirit, is a life-fellowship of Triunity. God’s self-existence is “self” precisely in that God the Father generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. God’s self-existence is “existence” precisely in that Triune relationship of life. A life of infinite communion in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have wonderfully loved one another. All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit. Finally, aseity must necessarily contain the truth that this self-existence is a Triune life-fellowship in which belongs an infinite and immeasurable fullness. A fullness “of greatness, power, glory, victory and majesty, an immeasurable fullness that God enjoys in and of himself.”³⁷ All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit—in abundance, wealth, and fullness.
A Soteriology of Aseity
The recent surge in writings on the doctrine of God is to be commended and praised, for multiple reasons. One of those reasons is the pastoral implications of the doctrine of God; pastoral implications that, by this point, should be clear regarding the aseity of God. The Church has not spoken of the aseity of God in and of Himself without speaking of the work of God in redemption. Often this relation has been posed as a question entailing the gospel and salvation in light of the aseity of God. But might the Church be better served by viewing redemption and salvation not as merely an addition, or issue to be resolved, in light of aseity, but as a truth that—in and of itself—is made beautiful by aseity?³⁸
Aseity by Negation
“If God were not life in and of himself, if he were not independent of us,” writes Barrett, “then he would not be worthy, qualified, or able to save us, let alone worthy to receive worship and praise . . . the gospel depends on a God who does not depend on us.”³⁹ It is the wonder and foundation of all grace that God, who is self-sufficient self-existence, would turn towards man in salvation. In fact, aseity beautifies the grace of God by highlighting the independence of God as savior. God’s relation to creatures is of necessary consequence to the study of aseity, then, because it is God’s independence from creation that makes Him able to save lost creation. If theology misses this point, “it would in fact fail to grasp the real content of God’s aseity, even in its ‘internal’ dimension,” because, according to Webster, “The movement of God’s Triune life has its perfection in and of itself, and is utterly sufficient to itself; but this perfect movement is not self-enclosed or self-revolving . . . it is also a movement of self-gift.” In short, “Of himself, God is gracious.”⁴⁰
Previously considered, aseity by negation was the concept of God’s self-existence studied through the lens of a comparative imagination. God is self-sufficient independence apart from creation or any thing that is not God. All that God has, He has of Himself. The question then is not, “How do we understand God’s saving of man in light of His independence,” but, “How does our understanding of God’s independence beautify God’s saving of man?” All theology must first begin with God, but it must also aim for beauty. How our theology would be enhanced, and the Church’s witness served, if we began to have an important place for beauty and the imagination in our theological endeavors. A great place to start might be God’s aseity and our salvation. Here, in God’s self-existence, we see aseity beautify soteriology by negation. God’s work in salvation is a wonder of grace precisely because God is not dependent upon the one He saves. Therefore, all of God’s saving work is entirely a free work of love; not to satisfy something lacking in God, but to satisfy something lacking in man: communion with God. God is glorified in salvation not as an addition to a lack of glory, but because salvation reveals the self-sufficient glory within the Trinitarian life. The aseity of God and His fullness can give a “new perception” of grace since “the bestowal of a blessing to another can only truly be called grace . . . when the one bestowing the gift has all that they need and needs nothing from the object of that gift.”⁴¹
Aseity by Affirmation
“The good news of salvation,” writes Sanders, “is ultimately that God opens his Trinitarian life to us . . . the thing itself is God’s graciously taking us into the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be our salvation.”⁴² This notion of being drawn into the life-fellowship of God by grace is found throughout the Early Church and Reformation. In the Early Church, Cyril of Alexandria exemplifies, more than any other, the notion of this union. Commenting on John 14:20, Cyril famously wrote, “There was no other way for humanity, being of a perishable nature, to escape death except to . . . participate once again in God who holds all things in existence and who gives life through the Son in the Spirit.”⁴³ Man, by his very nature, is corrupted with death; but God, by His very nature, is the incorruption of life itself. Therefore, according to Cyril, for man to escape death he must—in some sense—partake of life itself. While many Protestants will find this language of participation foreign, Cyril is merely expounding on 2 Peter 1:4, and what it means that we are “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” In expounding on 2 Pet. 1:4, Bavinck follows Cyril and considers the life of God which “consists in that perfect activity of God through which he perfectly knows and loves himself and lives according to his holy nature in blessedness. Our spiritual life is similar to and an image of that blessedness.”⁴⁴ Once again, we are encountered by the need for an enriched imagination.
Previously considered, aseity by affirmation was the concept of God’s self-existence studied through the lens of the self-sufficient Trinitarian life-fellowship of God. The question then is not, “How can I be a good person,” but, “How can I have life as one who is by nature under death?” If the divine nature is, in and of itself, incorruptible and self-sufficient Triune life-fellowship, then what it means to partake of that nature is to be partakers of that incorruption; to be partakers of the life in and of God by grace; to be in union with Christ and in fellowship with God. As we saw earlier, John’s Gospel reveals a positive and affirmative delineation of God’s aseity as life, but John’s Gospel does so as it affirms our share in that life, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will . . . For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,” (Jn. 5:21, 26).
Where Christ is by nature fellowship with God as God, we who are in Christ become partakers by grace of fellowship with God.⁴⁵ To follow the expression of Aquinas, participation means “something receives in a particular way that which belongs to another in a universal way,”⁴⁶ and what we participate in through our union with Christ (what we receive in a particular way) is that communion and fellowship Christ has wholly by nature (universally). In this sense, we remain creatures and our communion with God remains a communion of creature to Creator. That is, we are children by grace through the Son who is so by nature. In short, we participate as creatures in what Christ is as Creator. Therefore, it is through and in Christ that this union and fellowship with God takes place. It is Christ (God who took on flesh) who is now seated in the heavens and who brings us into the Triune life-fellowship of God. This is only possible because we have been raised up into that life “with Christ . . . For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” (Col. 3:1-3). Commenting on Christ’s statement to the disciples in John 14:20, Cyril asks what Christ means when he says, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” (Jn. 14:20). According to Cyril, Christ, “being Life by nature, joined you through [himself] to God the Father, who is also himself Life by nature, thus putting you in communion, as it were, and making you partakers of his incorruptibility.”⁴⁷ The “incorruption” of God is His a se self-sufficient Triune life; the inner-Trinitarian fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. And so, while we remain what we are, and while the creator-creature distinction remains, we—by grace and in Christ—become partakers of fellowship with the God who is fellowship. It is Christ who takes us up into the fellowship of God, and the Spirit who indwells us who brings that life to us. While emphasizing that “believers do not share in any way at all in the substance of God,” Cyril and the Classical doctrine of positive aseity taught “that we nevertheless do participate in the fellowship that the persons of the Trinity have with one another.”⁴⁸ That is, the classical tradition exemplified in Cyril of Alexandria “guards sedulously against any idea of mystical absorption into God, [and] tirelessly promotes a personal concept of participation in which we share in the very love between the Father and the Son.”⁴⁹
The preceding case is the protestant view of union with Christ in light of the aseity of God. As Jordan Cooper makes clear regarding 2 Pet. 1:4, For both Luther and Calvin, “Peter is speaking about an actual participation in divinity,” but, as should also be made clear, both Luther and Calvin are careful “not to teach an absorption of the human nature that would destroy the distinction between the creature and Creator, and they do this by placing theosis into the context of the transfer of divine qualities, primarily immortality.”⁵⁰ This immortality, or fullness of life, in God is the fellowship and communion of the Triune God. Therefore, if we are united to Christ who is life then we must be united to God who has life in and of Himself—who is a se. This is the wonder and beauty of the aseity of God: that God, who is life in and of Himself, would unite us to Christ and give us a share in communion with Him; a share, in this strict sense, in the life of God. Fred Sanders summarizes this view of our union with Christ well when he writes, “True religion is a divine life, and by definition divine life is something found in the living God. Our salvation [consists] in the union of that divine life with what we are in ourselves.”⁵¹ In other words, “An hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,” and to give it freely (Jn. 5:26). For, the life of God does not stay hidden within, but is communicated to the Son so that the life of God “might flow to us.”⁵² It is in this sense that Peter says, according to Luther, “through the power of faith . . . we are partakers of and enjoy the fellowship and communion with the divine nature.”⁵³
Conclusion
All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit—in abundance, wealth, and fullness. From this fullness of life, God gives himself. The wonder and beauty of the gospel is aseity in two forms. Negatively considered, the aseity of God highlights the wonder of the why of salvation. That God, who is fullness of independent and self-sufficient life, would save sinners who are entirely dependent upon God and who add nothing to God: this is the wonder of all wonders! A God who exists, needing nothing for all eternity, in infinite self-sufficiency, saves sinners by pure grace. There is nothing in God that requires Him to seek and save the lost, and yet He does so. Positively considered, the aseity of God highlights the beauty of the what of salvation. That God, who is by nature fullness of immeasurable inner-Trinitarian joy and love, would bring sinners—who are by nature children of wrath—into a participation of his life-fellowship: this is the beauty of redemption! A God who exists in perfect fellowship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, communions in fellowship with sinners through Christ. God is lifeand in Christ we are made alive.
Conclusion
Recently, the Church has seen a work of God in the recovery of Classical doctrines of God such a simplicity, immutability, and the Trinity. This recovery has been driven by recent proposals that alter Classical theology proper in a way that undermines the Christian hope in salvation and redemption. Continuing this pattern of recovery for the sake of our hope, the present paper has highlighted the aseity of God as a truth that does just that. The modern Church’s concept of aseity is often and overwhelmingly given over to view of negation; a view that defines aseity by what it is not. While this view is helpful, it was not the focus of the Classical view. While theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, John Webster, and Cyril of Alexandria gave credence and weight to the negative view of aseity, they gave far more time and weight to the positive notions of aseity. The Classical doctrine of aseity speaks often of God as He who is not dependent like creation, but it speaks far more often of God as He who is life in and of Himself. This Trinitarian construction of aseity, in light of God’s independence from all things, can serve the Church in recovering the more pastoral focus of aseity, and the necessary place of the imagination for theology. Aseity is not simply an abstract and theoretical doctrine of who God is in and of Himself. Rather, aseity encompasses who God is in and of Himself and for us, in more ways than we can imagine—but we must try. The hope of the Christian rests on a God who is not dependent upon us, and the hope of the Christian is life with God. Aseity, therefore, grounds (negatively) and beautifies (positively) the redemption of sinful man. All that God is, He is of Himself—as Father, Son, and Spirit—in abundance, wealth, and fullness, and from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (Jn. 1:16).
¹ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 143.
² 2LBCF 2.1 (1677/89).
³ James Dolezal, All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 197.
⁴ Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 170.
⁵ Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 236.
⁶ Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 224.
⁷ Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies, G. R. Evans (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998), 100.
⁸ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 15.
⁹ Anselm of Canterbury, On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies, G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 194.
¹⁰ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 15.
¹¹ Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 236.
¹² John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 15.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ Ibid, 16.
¹⁵ Ibid, 18.
¹⁶ Ibid.
¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Ibid, 19.
¹⁹ Michael Allen, “Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch,” Reformed Faith and Practice 1, no. 1 (2016): 8.
²⁰ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 19.
²¹ Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Processions and Persons (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2020), 315.
²² Ibid, 325.
²³ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 20.
²⁴ Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 11-27, trans. John Rettig, FOTC 79 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 197.
²⁵ Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, FOTC 45 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 234.
²⁶ Jonathan Edwards, Discourse on the Trinity in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol 21, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (London: Yale University Press, 2002), 113.
²⁷ Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 56.
²⁸ Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 2010), 62.
²⁹ Ibid.
³⁰ Ibid, 81.
³¹ MattheIbid, 81.w Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 56., 65-66.
³² Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 238.
³³ Michael Allen, “Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch,” Reformed Faith and Practice 1, no. 1 (2016): 8.
³⁴ Ibid, 7.
³⁵ Ibid, 7-8.
³⁶ Ibid, 10.
³⁷ Scott Swain, The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 153.
³⁸ John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 143.
³⁹ Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 69.
⁴⁰ Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 69.
⁴¹ Michael Allen, “Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch,” Reformed Faith and Practice 1, no. 1 (2016): 10.
⁴² Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 2010), 98.
⁴³ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, ed. Joel C. Elowsky, trans. David R. Maxwell, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 188.
⁴⁴ Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. 1, Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 264.
⁴⁵ Daniel A. Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 200.
⁴⁶ Thomas Aquinas, An Exposition of the ‘On the Hebdomads’ of Boethius, trans. Janice Schultz, Edward Synan (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 19.
⁴⁷ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, ed. Joel C. Elowsky, trans. David R. Maxwell, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 188.
⁴⁸ Donald Fairbairn, “Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50, no. 2 (2007), 304.
⁴⁹ Ibid, 307.
⁵⁰ Jordan Cooper, Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 88-89.
⁵¹ Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 2010), 116.
⁵² John Calvin, The Gospel According to St John 1–10 (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1959), 131.
⁵³ Martin Luther, Commentary on Jude and Peter, ed. John Nichols Lenker, Luther Classic Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publishing, 2005), 236.
