Meaning of aseity | Babel Free

Definitions

Usually ascribed to deity: the attribute of being entirely self-derived, in contrast to being derived from or dependent on another; the quality of having within oneself the entire reason for one's being; utter independent self-existence and self-sustenance.

countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“He is Spiritual, for were He composed of physical parts, some other power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus be contradicted.”

“All the theistic arguments — the ontological, the moral, the cosmological, and the teleological — are interpreted in the light of experience and given an empirical form. God thus becomes "the Absolute of experimental religion." On the one hand, we have the moral attributes which include holiness, justice, love, and mercy, and on the other hand, the metaphysical attributes as aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.”

“Many other theologians, several of them being Thomists, hold that self-subsisting Being is what constitutes the divine nature. Among the Thomists holding this opinion we have Capreolus, Bannez, Ledesma, Contenson, Gotti, and more recently del Prado and Father Billot. We find this view expressed in the twenty-third proposition of the Thomistic theses approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies (1914): “The divine essence, in that it is identical with the actuality of the divine being in act, or in that it is the self-subsisting Being, is proposed to us as constituted, as it were, in its metaphysical aspect, and by this same furnishes us with the reason of His infinite perfection.” But Suarez says that it is better to posit the fact itself of aseity as the principle from which the divine attributes are derived.”

“One might object that in fact we are concerned here with an essential unoriginatedness of the Father, hence practically with aseity. Yet it sounds as if the notional unoriginatedness of the Father were intended. This objection rests on a misunderstanding. In the self-communication of God, which does not let the communication lifelessly coincide with the communicator (this has still to be shown), the essence of unoriginatedness shows itself in its concreteness: divinity (aseity) which can communicate itself without thereby losing itself, yet without ultimately merely keeping to itself, for this would do away with the character of a self-communication. Hereby we refer concretely to the “person” of the Father, who is not only “fatherhood” (hence “notionality”), but the concrete God in the unity of essential aseity and notional fatherhood, concrete unoriginatedness. Should one say that something similar may be said also of Son and Spirit, we reply that it is true of them as communicated, insofar as they themselves are constituted by the fatherly self-communication. In other words, we can never conceive of a divinity which does not exist either as that of the Father or of the Son or of the Spirit.”

“‘Transcendence’ — he is the Lord, perfect in freedom, sovereignty, aseity, uncontained, unrestrained, self-willing sovereign God.”

CEFR level