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God, though the name, derived from ad and tribuere, might seem to point in that direction, for
no addition was ever made to the Being of God, who is eternally perfect. It is commonly said in
theology that God’s attributes are God Himself, as He has revealed Himself to us. The
Scholastics stressed the fact that God is all that He has. He has life, light, wisdom, love,
righteousness, and it may be said on the basis of Scripture that He is life, light, wisdom, love,
and righteousness. It was further asserted by the Scholastics that the whole essence of God is
identical with each one of the attributes, so that God’s knowing is God, God’s willing is God, and
so on. Some of them even went so far as to say that each attribute is identical with every other
attribute, and that there are no logical distinctions in God. This is a very dangerous extreme.
While it may be said that there is an interpenetration of the attributes in God, and that they
form a harmonious whole, we are moving in the direction of Pantheism, when we rule out all
distinctions in God, and say that His self-existence is His infinity, His knowing is His willing, His
love is His righteousness, and vice versa. It was characteristic of the Nominalists that they
obliterated all real distinctions in God. They were afraid that by assuming real distinctions in
Him, corresponding to the attributes ascribed to God, they would endanger the unity and
simplicity of God, and were therefore motivated by a laudable purpose. According to them the
perfections of the Divine Being exist only in our thoughts, without any corresponding reality in
the Divine Being. The Realists, on the other hand, asserted the reality of the divine perfections.
They realized that the theory of the Nominalists, consistently carried out, would lead in the
direction of a pantheistic denial of a personal God, and therefore considered it of the utmost
importance to maintain the objective reality of the attributes in God. At the same time they
sought to safeguard the unity and simplicity of God by maintaining that the whole essence is in
each attribute: God is All in all, All in each. Thomas Aquinas had the same purpose in mind,
when he asserted that the attributes do not reveal what God is in Himself, in the depths of His
Being, but only what He is in relation to His creatures.
Naturally, we should guard against separating the divine essence and the divine attributes or
perfections, and also against a false conception of the relation in which they stand to each
other. The attributes are real determinations of the Divine Being or, in other words, qualities
that inhere in the Being of God. Shedd speaks of them as “an analytical and closer description
of the essence.”[Dogm. Theol. I, p. 334.] In a sense they are identical, so that it can be said that
God’s perfections are God Himself as He has revealed Himself to us. It is possible to go even
farther and say with Shedd, “The whole essence is in each attribute, and the attribute in the
essence.”[Ibid. p. 334.] And because of the close relation in which the two stand to each other,
it can be said that knowledge of the attributes carries with it knowledge of the Divine Essence.
It would be a mistake to conceive of the essence of God as existing by itself and prior to the
attributes, and of the attributes as additive and accidental characteristics of the Divine Being.
They are essential qualities of God, which inhere in His very Being and are co-existent with it.