Deity and Decree Quotes

“The creature is finite, so its comprehension and expression are finite. God is infinite, and the finite cannot contain the infinite. You will sooner capture the ocean in a thimble than you will contain God in your thoughts or words:”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“The origin of the decree is God himself without relation to any other force or cause, simply because no other being exists apart from God decreeing its existence.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“The decree is the act of God by which he determines, absolutely, the existence and infallible future (or futurition) of all that is outside of himself, to the praise of his own glory, the first cause and Director of all things, the Antecedent and Governor of all events.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“By virtue of the divine essence being numerically one, and the three persons being distinctions of subsistence in the one divine essence, they are indivisibly united. Each one has the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“Any affirmation of subordination that one affirms about the Son, if it is affirmed with regard to his divinity, is dangerous and unacceptable because God is simple, and whatever we affirm about the divinity of one person applies equally to the other two. There is an order, or taxis, in the subsistences, but not a priority or subordination.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“The same argument applies to the Holy Spirit. The essence of the Holy Spirit is the divine essence. The Holy Spirit has the whole undivided divine essence. He is, therefore, God, in himself.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“Of each person, we can ask, “Does the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, have the whole divine essence?” We answer, “Yes,” and we say, therefore, that each one, in himself, is God with respect to the divine essence. Then we can ask, of each one, “In what manner does this person have the divine essence?” And we answer that The Father is of none, the Son is begotten eternally of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. The result is that the essence of the Son is the divine essence. The Son has the whole undivided divine essence. He is, therefore, God, in himself. But his subsistence, the way in which he has the whole divine essence, is from the Father. He is God, in himself (essence), but not of himself (subsistence).”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“The Father is the principle of origin of the persons of the Holy Trinity: He is not a principle of nature or time. The Father is called principle, but neither the Son nor the Spirit has had a beginning. The Son originates from the Father in respect of the mode of subsistence in the essence, not in respect of the essence itself.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“The Father is not without the Son, the Son is of the Father, the Holy Ghost is of the Father, and the Son. The Essence absolutely considered, is common to all the three Persons, but non communicated; for the Son is God of himself, and the Holy Ghost is God of himself, no less than the Father is God of himself. Hence there is an Original in regard of the manner of the Essence, but not in regard of the Essence itself.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“Bucanus, Norton, and Maccovius explain.[94] When we speak simply of the Son without the Father, we avouch truly and properly that he is of himself, and call him God, because of himself he has his being, and all that he has; and therefore we call him one alone beginning [or, origin]. But when we point at that relation which he has with his Father, we justly make the Father the beginning of the Son, and say that the Son received all from the Father, John 3:33. For the Essence is one thing, and the manner of subsisting another. Hence it is that the Schoolmen say, that the Son is by himself, not of himself. So the Essence of the Son is without beginning, but the Father is the beginning of his Person.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“the Father is the divine essence subsisting in the Father who begets, the Father is God in, and of, himself. The Son and the Holy Spirit are also God, in themselves, but not of themselves.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“Candy bars are sold with the tagline, “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Sometimes the difference between a good mood or a bad one is some chocolate and caramel. Candy bars can change us. Anything can. Now I ask you, is God like this? Is I AM WHO I AM like this? No. God is not drawn to perceived good or repulsed by perceived evil. God does not have passions. In light of God’s immutability and impassibility, we must read the Scriptures in such a way that the affections of God are not affects, but effects. They are effects, changes that God causes in our experience. They are not affections, new dispositions or states of being which we have caused in God.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree

“Being free from all passive potency means that there is no agent that can or could operate upon God as a patient. There is no one and no thing that could exercise a force on, or against, God to change him. God is incapable of being a patient. Will the thing created overpower the Creator? Furthermore, in the creation in which we live, God not only cannot be a patient, but is always an agent. We teach in our catechisms that God has decreed all things, and that he fulfills all his holy will.”
― Samuel D. Renihan, Deity and Decree