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God is. This axiom of faith is confirmed by philosophic reason which, in accordance with its own nature, seeks such a necessary and absolute being as should contain in itself its own raison d’être, explain itself by itself and suffice to explain all the rest. Starting from this fundamental idea, we have distinguished in God the threefold subject which is implied by complete existence, and the objective essence or absolute substance possessed by this subject under three different relationships, in pure or primordial act, in secondary or manifested action, and in a third act of perfect self-enjoyment. We have shown that these three relationships cannot be founded on any division of parts or succession of phases (two conditions equally incompatible with the idea of Godhead), and that therefore they imply in the unity of the absolute essence the eternal existence of three relative subjects or hypostases, consubstantial and indivisible, to which the sacred names of the Christian revelation — Father, Son and Spirit —are eminently appropriate. It now remains to define and name the absolute objectivity itself, the unique substance of the divine Trinity.
It is one; but since it cannot be one thing among many, a particular object, it is universal substance or “all in unity.” Possessing it, God possesses all in it; it is the fullness or absolute totality of being, antecedent and superior to all partial existence.
This universal substance, or absolute unity of the whole, is the essential Wisdom of God (Khocmah, Σοφία). Possessing in itself the latent potentiality of all things, it is itself possessed by God and under a threefold mode. It says itself: Jahveh qanani reshith darco, qedem miphealav, meaz — Dominus possedit me capitulum viæ suæ, oriens operationum suarum, ab exordio. And again: Meholam nissacti, merosh, miqadme arets — Ab æterno ordinata sum, a capite, ab anterioribus terræ.1 And in order to complete and explain this threefold manner of being, it adds further: Vaëhieh etslo, amon, vaëhieh shaashouim yom yom — et eram apud eum (scilicet Dominum — Jahveh) cuncta componens, et delectabar per singulos dies.2 Ab æterno eram apud eum — He possesses me in His eternal being; a capite cuncta componens — in absolute action; antequam terra fieret delectabar — in pure and perfect enjoyment. In other words, God possesses His unique and universal substance or His essential wisdom as eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Having thus one and the same objective substance, these three divine subjects are consubstantial.
Wisdom has told us in what her action consists — it consists in “composing the whole” (eram cuncta componens). She goes on to tell us in what her enjoyment consists: mesakheqeth lephanav becol heth; mesakheqeth bethebel artso, veshahashouhaï eth-bene Adam — ludens coram eo omni tempore; ludens in universo terræ eius, et deliciæ meæ cum filiis hominis3 — “rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the terrestrial world, and my delights with the sons of Man.” What then is this rejoicing of the divine Wisdom and why does she find her supreme delight in the sons of Man?
God possesses the totality of being in His absolute substance. He is one in the whole, and He has the whole within His unity. This totality implies plurality, but a plurality reduced to unity, actually unified. And in God Who is eternal, this unification is also eternal; in Him indeterminate multiplicity has never existed as such, has never been produced in act (actu), but is found from all eternity subjected and reduced to absolute unity under its three indivisible modes: unity of simple being, or unity in itself, in the Father; unity of being, actively manifested in the Son, Who is the direct action, the image and Word of the Father; and lastly, unity of being, penetrated by a complete enjoyment of itself in the Holy Spirit, Who is the common heart of the Father and the Son.
But if the eternally actual state of absolute substance (in God) is to be all in unity, its potential state (outside God) is to be all in division. This is indeterminate and anarchic plurality, the Chaos or το απειρον of the Greeks, the German schlechte Unendlichkeit, the tohu va bohu of the Bible. This antithesis of the Divine Being is from all eternity suppressed and reduced to that state of pure potentiality by the very fact and the first act of the divine existence. Absolute and universal substance belongs in fact to God, He is eternally and primordially all in unity; He is, and that is enough for Chaos not to exist. But that is not enough for God Himself Who is not merely Being, but perfect Being. It is not enough to affirm that God is; it must also be possible to say why He is. To subsist from the beginning, to suppress Chaos and to contain all in unity by the act of His omnipotence — that is the divine fact that demands explanation. God cannot rest content with being in fact stronger than Chaos, He must be so by right. And to have the right to conquer Chaos and reduce it eternally to nothingness, God must be more true than it. He displays His truth by confronting Chaos not merely with the act of His omnipotence, but with a reason or an idea. He must, therefore, distinguish His perfect totality from the chaotic plurality, and to each possible manifestation of the latter He must reply, in His Word, by an ideal manifestation of true unity, by a reason showing the intellectual or logical impotence of the Chaos that would assert itself. Containing all within the unity of absolute Omnipotence, God can also contain all within the unity of the universal idea. The God of might must also be the God of truth, the supreme Reason. To the pretensions of the infinitely manifold Chaos, He must oppose not only His being pure and simple, but also a whole system of eternal ideas, reasons or truths, each one of which, linked with all the others by an indissoluble bond of logic, represents the triumph of determinate unity over anarchic plurality, over the Evil Infinity. The chaotic tendency of every particular being to assert itself exclusively as though it were the whole is condemned as false and unjust by the system of eternal ideas which assigns to each a definite place in the absolute totality, thus displaying, alongside the truth of God, His justice and His equity.
But the triumph of reason and truth is still not enough for the divine perfection. Since the Evil Infinity or Chaos is an essentially irrational principle, the logical and ideal manifestation of its falsity is not the proper means to reduce it inwardly. Truth is manifested, light is shed, but the darkness remains what it was: et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt. Truth is a reduplication and a separation, it is a relative unity, for it affirms the existence of its contrary as such, in the act of distinguishing itself from it. And God must be absolute unity. He must be able to embrace in His unity the opposite principle itself, in showing Himself superior to it not only by truth and justice, but also by goodness. The absolute excellence of God must be manifested not only in opposition to Chaos, but also for Chaos, in giving it more than it deserves, in making it share in the fullness of absolute existence, in proving to it not merely by objective reason but by an inner living experience the superiority of the divine plenitude over the empty plurality of the Evil Infinity. The Godhead must be able to meet every manifestation of rebellious Chaos not only with an act of force suppressing the contrary act, not only with a reason or an idea convicting it of falsity and excluding it from true being, but also with a grace penetrating and transforming it and so drawing it back to unity. This threefold unification of the whole, this threefold victorious reaction of the divine principle against potential Chaos, is the inner eternal manifestation of the absolute substance of God or of the essential Wisdom which, as we have seen, is “all in unity.” Strength, truth and grace; or power, justice and goodness; or again, reality, idea and life — all these relative expressions of absolute totality are objective definitions of the divine substance corresponding to the Trinity of hypostases which possess it eternally. And the indissoluble bond between the three Persons of the supreme Being is necessarily manifested in the objectivity of their unique substance, of which the three principal attributes or qualities are mutually bound up with one another and are equally inseparable from the Godhead. God could not penetrate the Chaos by His goodness, if He did not distinguish Himself from it by truth and justice, and He could not distinguish Himself from it or exclude it from Himself if He did not contain it in His power.
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1. Prov. viii. 22-23.
2. ibid., viii. 30.
3. ibid., viii. 30, 31.
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