God’s Aseity (uniqueness)

The Westminster Confession of Faith is an excellent summary of Reformed Christian doctrine that was written in 1646. In it, there is a summary of God’s aseity, copied below:

God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving (adding to his nature) any glory in, by, unto and upon them.

That’s a good definition of God’s aseity because it communicates the truth that God alone is both self-existent and self-sufficient. This is because only God possesses life in and of himself. This means that only God is truly independent, because he alone possesses the fullness of life in and of himself.

Outside of God, no one possesses the quality of aseity, because all other beings depend on God for life – both for their existence and sustenance / preservation. That includes plants and animals, angels and demons, people, planets, oceans and galaxies. Since all things were created by God, are sustained by God, and exist for God, all things rely on God for their existence, and without God, they would no longer be.

The word ‘aseity’ comes from the Latin phrase a se (pronounced as it’s written), which literally means ‘from himself’. God owes his existence to no one, because his existence is wholly a se, from himself. 

God’s aseity also guards the perfection of all his other attributes. Since God is the One who possesses the fullness of life in and of himself, he can choose to create finite beings in his image – which he has done with human beings – and yet maintain the distinction between himself and them by creating them ‘dependent’ by nature. All people need a father and a mother; they need to eat and sleep; they need friends; they need to learn, grow, develop, etc., but not so with God. Because God is a se, he is perfect in and of himself. He has no needs, he lacks nothing, he depends on no one.

This truth can be confronting for some who have been taught that God was somewhat incomplete before he created the world, and that he made man to fill a relational void that existed within himself. But this is not the case at all. God’s aseity guards us from such false, romantic ideas, by reminding us that God was perfectly happy and holy, in and of himself, even before he created the world. And God is just as happy now as he was before sin came into the world. And he’ll be just as happy after Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. This is because he does not depend on his creation, at all.

God remains just as righteous, just as holy, just as loving, just as powerful, just as glorious, just as sovereign, just as supreme, just as wise … as he ever was before, or ever will be. It is because of God’s aseity that we can proclaim the wonderful truth that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Because he does not depend on anything that he has made to be who he is. He remains infinitely perfect, all the time.

God’s aseity is also expressed in his triune nature. God was ‘love’ before he created people to love, because for all eternity he existed in the perfect love that existed between the three perfect persons that make up his perfect triune being – Father, Son and Spirit. And so it was right (and a revelation to us!) when Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). 

Because of God’s triune nature, we see Jesus and the Holy Spirit possess the same attributes as God the Father, and possess them a se, from themselves, because of who they are. Authority to create, sustain and save are qualities that are shared between all three persons of the divine Trinity, and this is why we always see God work as Father, Son and Spirit to create, sustain and save whatever he has willed.

It is also because of God’s aseity that he does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, since he himself gives all mankind life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24–25). God owes us nothing, and there is nothing that we have that God needs. Those who live, belong to him, and when we sin we have no excuse before him. As 12th Century English Theologian, Anselm, said, “all being is contained in him.” 

God’s aseity guards us against thinking we can somehow add to what God already has, or from thinking that we can provide something to God in order to save ourselves from the mess that we are in because of sin. It reminds us that if there is anything good or worthy of praise in the world, it has come from him, and it should cause us to worship him, not because he needs it, but because we realise how much we need him. 

And finally, it reminds us how desperately we need Jesus, our all sufficient Saviour, who did not come because he had to, but because he was willing to give what is his by nature, to us by grace. How foolish we were to think that we could offer him anything, since all things are his by nature. What we have been given from him by grace, we should seek to use according to his will.

This passage of scripture teaches us about God’s aseity, particularly in v. 14 where God refers to himself as “I AM”, which implies self-existence and divine independence. Although we see this in Exodus 3, we will need to jump around the Bible to get a better understanding of what it means for God to be a se, a being who exists in and of himself.