This is probably the most important article about God’s attributes, certainly those about His incommunicable attributes. This attribute makes Him the one and only God. This attribute, aseity, allows God to exist only from himself. He is not a creature. He is THE being.
Our God is not an idea. He is a real thing; He is a being that really exists. God really existed before the foundation of the world, and is separate from the created world. He does not need the created world, but the created world needs everything from Him.
God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, which is common to all His attributes. We know God by His attributes and nothing else about God except what He has revealed to us through His Word. We have no idea about His essence or substance, and don’t need to know it.
Being has been defined as “absolute existence in a complete or perfect state, lacking no essential characteristic; essence.”[1] God is THE being of the universe. He is a real, substantive, essential existence. God is distinguished from all other beings by His absolute perfection.
The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism defines God pretty thoroughly as He “who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the council of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.”[2]
We don’t have any information about God’s essence or substance, but we do know about His attributes, and we know that the attribute that defines God as the source of Himself is aseity.
ASEITY
Aseity describes God’s being as self-existent. One dictionary defines aseity as “existence originating from and having no source other than itself.”[3]
Aseity is an attribute of God, which says that He is different from any other being, thing, or object. As the prophet wrote, “[F]or I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me”(Is. 46:9). He is the uncaused cause and the uncreated Creator. He is different from anything else because He is not caused and independent of anything else. He is the source and continuance of everything.
One of God’s incommunicable attributes is aseity (or self–existence). His aseity means He is often said to be the necessary cause of His being. God is independent in everything, and His aseity is independent of everything. All things exist because of Him. He is the ultimate ground of all things.
His aseity is why He is immutable, and remains the same always. As John 5:26 says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”
As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Paul is correct because of God’s incommunicable attribute, aseity.
CONCLUSION
God is independent and without any constraints from anything or anyone. He is different from every being. Everything else depends on something to exist. God freely exists and is not dependent on anything from the outside; because of this, He is infinite and eternal.
The incommunicable attribute known as aseity (or self–existence) is the attribute of independent self-existence. It comes from the Latin meaning “from oneself.” He is the uncaused cause and the uncreated Creator because He is the originator, existence, and sustainer of everything.
God is complete in every way, and His source is Himself. He does not need the created world in any way, but the created world needs him in every way. He is completely autonomous, and everything He wills comes to pass.
[1] Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Deluxe Edition 2001), p. 189.
[2] The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms with Proof Texts, chpt. 2, § 1 (The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2005, 2007).
[3] Webster’s, p. 121.
