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permanence or absolute independence. Another passage is repeatedly quoted as containing an
indication of the essence of God, and as the closest approach to a definition that is found in the
Bible, namely, John 4:24, “God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and
truth.” This statement of Christ is clearly indicative of the spirituality of God. The two ideas
derived from these passages occur repeatedly in theology as designations of the very Being of
God. On the whole it may be said that Scripture does not exalt one attribute of God at the
expense of the others, but represents them as existing in perfect harmony in the Divine Being.
It may be true that now one, and then another attribute is stressed, but Scripture clearly
intends to give due emphasis to every one of them. The Being of God is characterized by a
depth, a fullness, a variety, and a glory far beyond our comprehension, and the Bible represents
it as a glorious harmonious whole, without any inherent contradictions. And this fullness of life
finds expression in no other way than in the perfections of God.
Some of the early Church Fathers were clearly under the influence of Greek philosophy in their
doctrine of God and, as Seeberg expresses it, did not advance “beyond the mere abstract
conception that the Divine Being is absolute attributeless Existence.” For some time theologians
were rather generally inclined to emphasize the transcendence of God, and to assume the
impossibility of any adequate knowledge or definition of the divine essence. During the
trinitarian controversy the distinction between the one essence and the three persons in the
Godhead was strongly emphasized, but the essence was generally felt to be beyond human
comprehension. Gregory of Nazianze, however, ventures to say: “So far as we can discern, ho
on and ho theos are somehow more than other terms the names of the (divine) essence, and of
these ho on is the preferable.” He regards this as a description of absolute being. Augustine’s
conception of the essence of God was closely akin to that of Gregory. In the Middle Ages too
there was a tendency, either to deny that man has any knowledge of the essence of God, or to
reduce such knowledge to a minimum. In some cases one attribute was singled out as most
expressive of the essence of God. Thus Thomas Aquinas spoke of His aseity or self-existence,
and Duns Scotus, of His infinity. It became quite common also to speak of God as actus purus in
view of His simplicity. The Reformers and their successors also spoke of the essence of God as
incomprehensible, but they did not exclude all knowledge of it, though Luther used very strong
language on this point. They stressed the unity, simplicity, and spirituality of God. The words of
the Belgic Confession are quite characteristic: “We all believe with the heart, and confess with
the mouth, that there is one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God.”[Art. I.] Later
on philosophers and theologians found the essence of God in abstract being, in universal
substance, in pure thought, in absolute causality, in love, in personality, and in majestic holiness
or the numinous.