excellence. God was the Existent One. His whole identity was wrapped up in the name: “I will be
what I will be.” All God’s other perfections are derived from this name. He is supreme (summum)
in everything: supreme being (esse), supreme goodness (bonum), supreme truth (verum),
supreme beauty (pulchrum). He is the perfect, highest, the most excellent being, “than whom
nothing better can exist or be thought.” All being is contained in him. He is a boundless ocean of
being. “If you have said of God that he is good, great, blessed, wise or any other such quality, it is
summed up in a single word: he is (Est). Indeed, for him to be is to be all these things. Even if you
add a hundred such qualities, you have not gone outside the boundaries of his being. Having said
them all, you have added nothing; having said none of them, you have subtracted nothing.”3
Scholasticism as a whole fell in line with this view,4 also treating this attribute under the name
of the “infinity” or “spiritual greatness” of God,5 or under that of the “aseity” of God, meaning that
as the “supreme substance,” God is “what he is through or by his own self.”6 Later Roman Catholic
theologians as a rule also proceeded from this aseity or independence.7
In this regard the Reformation introduced no change. Luther, too, on the basis of name yhwh,
described God as the absolutely existent one and as pure being. Yet, refusing to dwell on abstract
metaphysical descriptions, Luther swiftly passed from “the hidden God” (Deus absconditas) to
the “God revealed in Christ” (Deus revelatus in Christo).8 Melanchthon in his Loci describes God
as “spiritual essence.” While Lutherans usually adopted this description, they often added the
qualifying words “infinite,” “subsisting of himself,” or “independent.”9 Among the Reformed this
perfection of God comes more emphatically to the fore, though the word “aseity” was soon
exchanged for that of “independence.” While aseity only expresses God’s self-sufficiency in his
existence, independence has a broader sense and implies that God is independent in everything:
in his existence, in his perfections, in his decrees, and in his works. Accordingly, while in the past
theologians mostly used the name yhwh as their starting point,10 in later years God’s
independence occurs most often as the first of the incommunicable attributes.11
Now when God ascribes this aseity to himself in Scripture, he makes himself known as absolute
being, as the one who is in an absolute sense. By this perfection he is at once essentially and
absolutely distinct from all creatures. Creatures, after all, do not derive their existence from
themselves but from others and so have nothing from themselves; both in their origin and hence
in their further development and life, they are absolutely dependent. But as is evident from the
word “aseity,” God is exclusively from himself, not in the sense of being self-caused but being from
eternity to eternity who he is, being not becoming. God is absolute being, the fullness of being,
and therefore also eternally and absolutely independent in his existence, in his perfections, in all
his works, the first and the last, the sole cause and final goal of all things. In this aseity of God,
conceived not only as having being from himself but also as the fullness of being, all the other
perfections are included. They are given with the aseity itself and are the rich and multifaceted
development of it. Yet, whereas in the case of this perfection the immeasurable distinction
between the Creator and creature stands out vividly and plainly, there is nevertheless a weak
analogy in all creatures also of this perfection of God. Pantheism, indeed, cannot acknowledge
