Five Books on the Nature of God,
or
On the Divine Attributes
By Girolamo Zanchi
Translated by Patrick J. O’Banion
Book 1, Chapter 1, Part 1
Volume 1 is available for order now from Merchant Royal Press
Those who know who the true God is should also take care to know what He is like, for although it is the case that whatever He is, He is by His essence, nevertheless, various properties are with good reason attributed to Him. On this account, they are properly called the attributes of God. This is the reason why God is sometimes called living and sometimes life, sometimes wise and sometimes wisdom, and so forth. Knowledge of the attributes is necessary.
In order to explain their necessity, first we must discuss the divine names.[1]
We believe that we have fully and clearly handled and explained the most difficult question of all—namely, about the one God subsisting in three persons—in the thirteen books we wrote and published.[2] That, at least, is what we intended and hoped to accomplish. Accordingly, having sufficiently understood and examined who God truly is on the basis of Holy Scripture, the method and true system of teaching demands that we next discuss the nature (or attributes) of this true God, who is eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For in Holy Scripture, we learn what He is like from His attributes.
Indeed, although God is a most simple essence in which clearly no compositeness or accidents exist, nevertheless, for our sake, so that we might better understand what He is like, He is accustomed to attribute many things to Himself, as if they were multiple qualities [qualitates]. He does this even though (as is said) there are no distinguishing features in God whereby He might be said to be this or that. Rather, whatever He is, He is thus according to His most simple essence. That is to say, His essence is good; His essence is powerful; His essence is wise, just, and merciful. In short, His essence is all that He is [Denique sua essentia est, quicquid est].
Thus, in Exodus 34:6, when God described what He was like to Moses, He first called Himself Jehovah, Jehovah. We have frequently said that this name signifies His most simple and eternal essence. But then He subjoined adjectives or attributes to it, saying: powerful, merciful, and the others that follow.
But why does He put these things in this order? So as to indicate that He is thus not by virtue of any accidents but by virtue of His most simple essence—because He is Jehovah. It is as if He had actually said: I am Jehovah, that is, essence; I am from nothing else but only from Myself, existing by means of Myself. Therefore, I am of such a character as I declare Myself to be to you—powerful, merciful, good, and so on—not by anything else but only by Myself.
This can also be applied to what He said through Isaiah: I, I am He who blots out your iniquities for My own sake [43:25]. For the meaning is that He blots out iniquities not on account of our merit but on account of His free mercy and goodness. But why does He not simply say for the sake of My goodness and mercy rather than for My own sake? He does so in order to indicate that His mercy is not something different from Himself, that is, something distinct from His essence (as is the case for us) but rather that He is good and merciful in Himself, that is, by His simple essence.
This is likewise the reason why He simply called Himself I am[3] in Exodus 3:14 (or: the One who is[4]). He clearly indicated by this name that He is the utterly simple and perfect essence, so that whatsoever is predicated of Him is predicated essentially of the whole, that He is according to His essence what He revealed Himself to be and, so, that He is the true God.
On the basis of those and other similar points, it clearly appears that no features or accidents are in God whereby He can be said to be like this or like that. Rather, whatever He is, He is according to His most simple essence.
Master Bernard [of Clairvaux] knew this doctrine well. This is why, in his treatise On Loving God, when he said that the greatest love is in God, he then added:
Yet no one should imagine that I take love here as a feature or accident of some kind (in which case—and far be it—I would be saying that, in God, there is something that is not God). Rather, it [that is, love] is the divine substance. Certainly, this is neither novel nor unusual. As John says: “God is love” [1 John 4:8]. Therefore, it is rightly said that love is God and the gift of God. Accordingly, love gives love; substantive love gives accidental love. Where it indicates the Giver, it takes the name of substance; where it indicates the gift, it is called a feature.[5]
And this is the reason why God is more truly called Life than living, Wisdom than wise, Light than luminous, and so on for the rest. Why? Because He lives of Himself not by means of life. And He is wise of Himself and by means of His essence, not by means of some other wisdom added to the divine essence. And so, insofar as He is very frequently called wise, powerful, good, and other names of this sort, which theologians calls attributes, the Holy Spirit did this [for two reasons]: partly so that we would understand, according to our capacity, what God’s essence is like and partly so that we would understand that this essence signifies a thing [res] that truly subsists in three persons rather than some abstract wisdom, goodness, and power.
God is often called by His essence in the abstract—goodness, life, wisdom—in order thereby to teach us that He both is [esse] and that He is Being [Ens], not by participation but per se and most perfectly, and that He is wise and good, not by participation (and, hence, imperfectly) but per se and most perfectly. In the same way, God is also repeatedly called in the concrete the One who is[6] righteous, living, wise, and good so we understand that He truly subsists and also that He really is most righteous and that He lives and works righteousness and other such things which would not be suitable if He were not a thing subsisting per se.
This, then, is the reason why He is sometimes called Life, sometimes living, sometimes Wisdom, and sometimes wise.
[1] Zanchi uses “names” (nomina) in a Thomistic sense of divine predicates or things predicated of God. That is, by nomina he means something broader than “proper names” and more precise than “divine attributes.”
[2] That is, in Zanchi’s De tribus Elohim (Frankfurt, 1572).
[3] אהיה.
[4] τὸν ὂντα. Wisdom of Solomon 13:1 refers to God as τὸν ὄντα. Zanchi here equates τὸν ὄντα with ὁ ὤν, which is the LXX’s rendering of אהיה (or more fully, ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν) in Ex. 3:14 (cf. Rev. 1:4, 8; 4:8). See Dennis J. McCarthy, “Exod 3:14: History, Philology and Theology,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1978): 317.
[5] Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, ed. Emero Stiegman, trans. Robert Walton, Monastic Studies 20 (Gorgias Press, 2010), 37 (12.35).
[6] ὁ ὤν.