essence

In my gift-ontology, essence is what something is, the nature considered as intelligible content. In God, essence must be treated under the simplicity constraint. The divine essence is not a component that could be shared out among persons, and not an abstract nature behind God. It is the one simple divine actuality itself. To say that the persons share the essence is not to say they share a common part; it is to say each is wholly the one undivided divine life. The essence is identical with the one divine act. This is why relational language can be so strong in this approach: in God, relations of origin are not external ties added onto essence, because that would make essence a substrate. Instead, the relations are identical with the essence by non-composition, while remaining really distinct from each other by relational opposition.