Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude:

A Catholic Metaphysics of Self-Gift

Introduction
I. Divine Simplicity as Eternal Self-Gift: A Catholic Metaphysics of Relational Plenitude

In embarking on this work, I recognize that the doctrine of divine simplicity faces two urgent tasks. First, it must be rescued from the aridity of purely abstract speculation and restored to its proper place as the living wellspring of every relationship. Second, it must be clearly explained, for its importance is great and yet it is widely misunderstood, and even by those who should know better. My thesis is therefore plain: God’s simplicity is the eternal self-gift of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The one actus purus, pure actuality without the slightest potentiality, entails that in God essence and existence coincide perfectly and no real composition is possible.¹ Such perfection, however, does not consign God to solitary stillness. The Father eternally begets the Son in an unceasing act of love, and the Father together with the Son breathes forth the Holy Spirit, the living Gift who unites them. Each divine Person fully possesses the one undivided nature while expressing that nature through a distinct relation; thus simplicity and Trinity stand together as two inseparable aspects of the same indivisible reality.

My method rests on four guiding principles. First, analytic precision: every theological claim will be mapped onto the classical grammar of actus and potentia, substance and accident, person and relation, ensuring that our terms remain exact and avoid equivocation. Second, metaphysical primitives: certain truths, for example that “God is love” and that the good diffuses itself, are accepted as irreducible starting points.⁵ Third, phenomenological saturation: following Jean-Luc Marion, I will show that divine self-communication always overwhelms created categories while at the same time grounding them.⁶ Fourth, fidelity to tradition: Scripture, conciliar definitions, patristic witnesses, scholastic doctors, and modern voices will all appear verbatim so that theological creativity remains rooted in the Church’s rule of faith.

The opening section, “Divine Simplicity and the Trinity of Self-Giving Love,” therefore aims to display how the one simple essence subsists in three co-equal and co-eternal Persons, without division and without composition. The paradox celebrated by Gregory of Nazianzus, “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three, no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One,”⁷ receives its metaphysical explanation in Thomas Aquinas’s account of actus purus and real relations. Augustine’s identification of God with love, understood as lover, beloved, and the love that unites them, confirms that simplicity is the true fountain of relational plenitude.⁸ Altogether these patristic and scholastic insights reveal that divine simplicity is not a barren monolith but an inexhaustible life of self-communication, and that the Trinity is the luminous form in which that life is eternally expressed.

End-Notes (Section I)
1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 1; q. 3, a. 4 ad 1.
2 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), De fide catholica, ch. 1.
3 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions VII.12.18.
4 John 1:14.
5 1 John 4:8; Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Divine Names IV.1.
6 Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, 2.
7 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, § 41.
8 Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity VIII.12.

II. Triune Simplicity: The One Divine Act of Self-Gift

I have come to regard divine simplicity not as a remote doctrinal curiosity but as the very key that unlocks the dynamic life of the Trinity. To speak of God’s simplicity is to affirm that the divine essence is undivided, lacking no perfection, utterly incapable of composition. Yet this oneness is anything but a static isolation; it is the ground from which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally communicate themselves to one another.

The early Church Fathers were insistent on this dual affirmation. On the one hand, they upheld God’s freedom from all potentiality; on the other, they celebrated God’s inner relational life. The luminous sentence just quoted from Gregory of Nazianzus holds both poles in tension. I often invite students to picture a single source of light—a sun—whose rays refract in three directions; the rays are not separate lights but modes of the one radiance. In the same spirit, Thomas Aquinas teaches that God is ipsum esse subsistens, Being itself subsisting, and that every creature is a being by participation in that first, simple act of existence.² God’s act of being is therefore not a property belonging to some higher genus; it is His very essence. Creatures, by contrast, possess being only insofar as they share in that one divine act. Thus, between Gregory’s poetic insight and Aquinas’s metaphysical clarity, a coherent vision emerges: divine simplicity entails that the Trinity’s inner relations are neither accidental nor supplementary but are the one essence subsisting under three relational aspects.

To press further, I turn to Catherine of Siena’s mystic dialogue, where she hears God speak: “The soul cannot live without love … and, by love, I created her.”³ This revelation strikes at the heart of ontology itself: love is not one attribute among others, but the very substance of being. If God is love, then simplicity is relational from the first moment. The common theological categories—reason, power, will—must be re-read in light of the fact that the divine essence is nothing other than the Father’s free self-giving to the Son and their mutual forth-breathing of the Spirit.

Catherine deepens the image when she addresses the Trinity as “a fire ever burning and never consumed.”⁴ The metaphor maps precisely onto the doctrine of actus purus: divine being is pure, self-diffusive energy, eternally pouring itself forth without diminution.
Gregory of Nazianzus likewise affirms that relational distinctions do not divide the divine essence, for the Persons are “lives and light … each one God, if contemplated separately … the three God, if contemplated collectively, because their activity and nature are the same.”⁵ His balanced caution—“unity is worshipped in Trinity and Trinity in unity”⁶—keeps us clear of both tritheism and modalism.

Finally, Augustine provides an ontological grammar of love with his triad lover–beloved–love,⁷ a formulation that converts every divine attribute into a modality of self-gift.
When we weave together Catherine’s mystic encounter, Gregory’s poetic exultation, Augustine’s analogical vision, and Aquinas’s metaphysical rigor, we arrive at an integrated account of triune simplicity. Love and being are one and the same: God is self-giving love, and to be is to give and receive love within the divine communion.

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End-Notes (Section II)
1 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, § 41.
2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 44, a. 1.
3 Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of Divine Providence, ch. 88.
4 Catherine of Siena, Prayers, Prayer 12.
5 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, § 14.
6 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 23, § 11.
7 Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity VIII 10.

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III. Analogy and Participation: Creaturely Integrity in the Economy of Self-Gift

Having grounded ourselves in the dynamic life of the Trinity, God’s one simple act of self-communication subsisting as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we now turn our gaze to the cosmos of creatures. If God is actus purus and creatures receive their being by participation, how do we speak coherently about finite realities without dissolving them into God or severing them entirely from Him? The doctrine of analogia entis, the analogy of being, supplies the needed middle way, preserving both the transcendence of God and the integrity of creatures.

Being and Goodness: The Boethian Paradigm
Boethius lays the classical foundation in The Consolation of Philosophy:
“It then follows that everything, because it exists, is good. And it also follows that whatever falls from goodness ceases to exist.”¹
The convertibility of being and goodness immediately re-orients our metaphysical categories. If existence and goodness are convertible, every creature is good to the extent that it participates in being. Boethius’s insight liberates us to see every breath, every heartbeat, every living creature as an imprint of the Good who is its source.
He continues,
“[T]he supreme God is to the highest degree filled with supreme and perfect goodness … true happiness is to be found in the supreme God.”²
Here Boethius turns from the general principle of being–goodness to the personal source: God alone is Goodness simpliciter, and true beatitudo belongs to Him. In ethics seminars I contrast two models of human flourishing. The consumerist model pursues ever-new satisfactions that collapse into ennui; the Boethian paradigm locates happiness in the one Good who is Being, so every finite delight becomes a limited radiance of infinite divine happiness.

Augustine echoes the point:
“Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil … is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good.”³
Augustine’s doctrine of privatio boni clarifies that evil has no ontological status of its own; it is merely the absence or distortion of the good that should be present. This prevents us from reifying evil into a cosmic counter-power and prepares us to understand the Cross as God’s greater good drawn from the shadow of privation.

Scriptural and Magisterial Anchors
Catholic teaching roots the analogy of being in both Scripture and magisterial definitions. Paul proclaims in Athens, “In him we live and move and have our being.”⁴ All creaturely existence unfolds within that divine milieu. Lateran IV adds a safeguard: “Between Creator and creature no similarity can be so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them.”⁵ This formula steers us between pantheism, which conflates God with creation, and deism, which severs God from creation, anchoring us in a real analogy that respects both continuity and transcendence. Vatican II supplies an ethical corollary: “Man … cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”⁶ Participation is therefore not only ontological but moral, since persons image the Trinity when they live as self-gifts.

The Suspended Middle: Przywara’s Rhythmic Ontology
Erich Przywara sharpens the doctrine in Analogia Entis:
“Creaturely being is a suspended middle between God and nothingness.”⁷
This suspended middle captures the ontological tension of creatures, neither self-subsistent nor sheer negation, but poised between fullness and abyss. I invite students to picture a tight-rope walker balanced between the gulf of non-being and the summit of divine being, held aloft by God’s one actus purus.
Przywara adds,
“Between Creator and creature every likeness is always outdistanced by an ever-greater unlikeness (maior dissimilitudo).”⁸
Finite likeness allows meaningful God-talk; ever-greater unlikeness guards mystery. In homiletics this reminds us that calling God “Father” is a true metaphor, yet it demands humility, lest we imagine God as a mere super-parent.
He then supplies the constructive maxim gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam, grace does not destroy but perfects nature, showing that sanctifying grace elevates rather than overrides our humanity.
Pushing the metaphor further, Przywara observes that being unfolds as a rhythm, an oscillating suspended middle that points beyond itself.⁹ (This sentence summarizes Przywara’s argument, cf. Analogia Entis, 159.)
Finally he cautions,
“The analogy of being is no bridge constructed from below to above; it is the very oscillation that both separates and relates Creator and creature.”¹⁰
Analogy therefore is not a static span we engineer; it is a living movement holding likeness and unlikeness in fruitful tension.

Creaturely Integrity and Metaphysical Clarity
Analogy and participation together safeguard integrity on both sides. Boethius shows that every existing thing is truly good; Augustine shows that evil is privation; Przywara shows that the creature stands in rhythmic tension with its Source. In causal reasoning this framework explains how God can act without usurping secondary causes, for divine causality empowers created agents rather than eclipsing them. In pastoral practice the same vision grounds ecological ethics: if every creature shares, however finitely, in God’s being, then caring for the natural world becomes stewardship of a sacramental reality. Creation is no mere warehouse of resources; it is a web of finite participants in the divine dance.

End-Notes (Section III)
1 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy IV pr. 2, trans. Slavitt.
2 Boethius, Consolation III pr. 10, trans. Watts.
3 Augustine, Confessions VII.12.18.
4 Acts 17:28.
5 Lateran IV, De fide catholica ch. 1.
6 Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes § 24.
7 Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis (2014), 210.
8 Ibid., 117.
9 Ibid., 159.
10 Ibid., 68.

IV. Primitives & Saturation: Foundations of a Relational-Gift Metaphysics

In the preceding sections I hopefully established well that divine simplicity is the self-communication of the Trinity and that creatures exist by analogy and participation in the infinite actus purus. We now turn to two further pillars of the framework: the primitive principles that serve as irreducible explanatory termini, and the saturated givenness that describes how divine self-communication overwhelms yet grounds our conceptual grasp. Drawing on Jiří Benovsky’s account of primitives and Jean-Luc Marion’s doctrine of saturated phenomena, we will unpack each dictum in turn, showing how they jointly enable a metaphysics of gift that is both rigorously analytical and profoundly receptive.

I. The Role of Primitives in Metaphysical Theorizing

At the heart of any systematic metaphysics lie a handful of primitive concepts, starting-points that cannot be reduced to more basic elements yet structure the whole theoretical edifice. Benovsky explains:
“All metaphysical (and other) theories have something in common: they all contain primitives.”¹
No theory is fully self-grounding; eventually certain basic notions must simply be accepted. In our project the deepest primitive is the triune self-giving of God, captured in the brief formula “God is love.”

“Metaphysical theories are equivalent if they do the same job in the same way.”²
Hence different lists of primitives can do identical work so long as they fill the same roles. We prefer primitives that echo Scripture and Tradition: “God is love,” “the good diffuses itself,” “being is pure act,” though a different framework might convey the same truths in altered form.

“Primitive problem-solvers are the pillars that sustain the structures of our theories.”³
Remove one pillar and the building collapses. In class I compare a three-legged stool: take away the leg marked “God is love” and nothing remains to sit on.

“A problem-solver is a primitive that is there to solve a problem.”⁴
Participation answers why creatures exist yet remain distinct, simplicity secures divine freedom from potency, and gift explains the overflowing character of God’s being.

“Primitives are individuated by what they do, what their functional role in a theory is.”⁵
“God is love” stays primitive because it anchors the ontology of self-gift; attempts to define it more deeply merely re-introduce the same notion under a new name.

II. Phenomenological Saturation, the Overflowing Gift

While primitives supply conceptual footing, phenomenological saturation names the way we experience divine self-communication. Marion writes:
“The more the reduction reduces (itself), the more it extends givenness, so much reduction, so much givenness.”⁶
Setting aside preconceptions does not create a void; it widens the horizon of what can be received.

“It is therefore necessary to admit the fact of givenness as the ultimate authority.”⁷
For theology this means that Scripture, liturgy, and lived grace outrank abstract postulates.

“There are phenomena of such overwhelming givenness… that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded, saturated!”⁸ (quotation punctuation streamlined)
Saturated phenomena exceed the knower’s grasp. The supreme case is God’s own self-gift. Retreatants often say that a decisive moment of prayer “cannot be put into words”; Marion gives that confession philosophical voice.

“If the given gives itself as a call… what is shown always stays behind and late in comparison with what gives itself.”⁹
Divine gift addresses us before we can describe it, summoning a response that becomes part of the revelation.

“Religion attains its highest figure only when it becomes established by and as a revelation.”¹⁰
Sacraments are the clearest example, for God gives Himself in humble signs and those signs become the very medium of His presence.

“Revelation presents itself in a horizon only by saturating it.”¹¹
At Mass the familiar elements of bread and wine are not erased; they are filled to overflowing with real presence.

III. Integrating Primitives and Saturation

Primitives such as “God is love,” “the good diffuses itself,” “being by participation,” “pure act,” and “self-gift” serve as the load-bearing columns of the system. Saturated givenness describes the experiential surplus that keeps those columns from turning into sterile abstractions. Together they yield a metaphysics that is both conceptually precise and permanently open to the excess of grace. In preaching and catechesis the combination lets us root doctrine in clear terms while inviting believers into an encounter that always surpasses those terms.

IV. Conclusion

A Catholic metaphysics of relational gift stands on two legs. Primitive principles provide coherence; saturated givenness supplies wonder. Keep both in view and the intellectual edifice remains stable without becoming brittle. Subsequent chapters will apply this dual insight to creation, sin, Incarnation, Eucharist, and eschatology, presenting each doctrine as a new moment in the single economy of the triune self-gift.

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End-Notes (Section 4)
1 Jiří Benovsky, Meta-Metaphysics (2016), 4.
2 Benovsky, Meta-Metaphysics, 4.
3 Benovsky, Meta-Metaphysics, 22.
4 Jiří Benovsky, “Primitives,” in Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics (2020), 22.
5 Benovsky, Meta-Metaphysics, 4.
6 Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness (1998), 203-4.
7 Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics (2013), 7.
8 Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, 2.
9 Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, 10.
10 Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed (2008), 22.
11 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, 37.

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Section V. Creation & Sin (re-revised)

In the unfolding harmony of the triune simplicity, creation sounds the first outward chord of Trinitarian self-gift. It is not a necessary emanation, still less a mechanistic projection; it is an opus amoris, a bridge freely stretched from the uncreated Good to finite participants. Il Dialogo of Catherine of Siena offers the clearest image of that bridge:
“I have made a Bridge of my Word, my only-begotten Son … so that, crossing the deep flood, you may not be drowned.”¹
The incarnate Word is therefore the concrete span by which nothingness is crossed and being bestowed. Creatures do not claw their way to God; they are carried across by the very One who unites both shores.

Catherine enlarges the picture:
“That Bridge reaches from heaven to earth, joining the lowliness of your humanity to the greatness of the Deity.”²
Creation thus opens a reciprocal communion. Divine descent summons creaturely ascent without confusion or loss on either side. A third stroke completes her triad:
“Raised on high and yet touching earth, the Bridge remade the road so that humanity might come to true happiness with the angels.”³
Transcendence and immanence therefore embrace; history itself already bears the weight of future glory and invites every creature to walk that graced roadway.

1. Goodness diffuses itself

Medieval thought crystallises Catherine’s intuition in the axiom bonum est diffusivum sui – goodness pours itself out. Aquinas echoes the point:
“Goodness and being are really the same in things, differing only conceptually; and because being is the first actuality of every thing, goodness likewise follows upon being.”⁴
Every creature is good by the very fact that it exists; Genesis presents the insight as liturgy, “God saw all that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). The universe is, from its first moment, a festival of donated goodness. Yet that goodness is contingent; it can be welcomed or refused, and there the drama of sin begins.

2. Privation, not rival power

Augustine defines evil in the Enchiridion:
“Evil has no positive nature; the loss of good has received the name ‘evil’.”⁵
Sin is therefore a tear in the fabric of participation, never an equal counter-principle. When the creature turns from the bridge it drifts toward non-being. Because the bridge is Christ Himself, every rejection of grace is at root a rejection of Him in whom all things hold together. Spiritual death is thus parasitic upon the gift it denies.

3. Freedom, risk, and responsibility

Hans Urs von Balthasar states the ground:
“God is love … and the world-order stands upon that ultimate ground.”⁶
Created freedom is the risky yet necessary space where finite love can echo infinite love. Hence,
“There is nothing equivocal about God’s action toward humanity; it is sheer good, springing from love that seeks only to give itself.”⁷
If that love is refused, disorder follows, yet the archetype in God, Balthasar notes, “keeps the creature safe” even in estrangement.⁸ The moral life is genuinely dramatic:
“Because the actors enjoy real freedom, they bear real responsibility for their performance.”⁹
The doctrine of creation therefore undergirds an ethic of stewardship, solidarity, and repentance. To misuse freedom is to chip away at the very bridge that secures our being; to use freedom well is to strengthen that span for all creation.

4. Cross and re-creation

The fracture of the first bridge is not the final word. Mysterium Paschale shows how the forma servi of the Crucified becomes the definitive relaying of the span:
“At the lowest pitch of self-surrender, the splendour of the forma Dei shines out.”¹⁰
The wood of the Cross is the timber that repairs creation; baptismal waters flow beneath, carrying the repentant back onto firm ground. Circle thus meets circle: creation, fall, and redemption form successive movements within one continuous opus, the economy of the triune self-gift. The bridge that began in the Father’s love now stands in the risen Christ, upheld by the Spirit, awaiting the day when every creature will cross into the liberty of the children of God.

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End-notes (Section V)
1 Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of Divine Providence, Treatise §§ 290-95.
2 Catherine, Dialogue, Treatise §§ 296-97.
3 Catherine, Dialogue, Treatise §§ 300-301.
4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 1 ad 1.
5 Augustine, Enchiridion XI.
6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 165-66.
7 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama I, 16.
8 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 168-69.
9 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama I, 130.
10 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, 17.

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Section VI. Incarnation & Eucharist

In the drama of salvation, the Incarnation and the Eucharist stand as twin pinnacles of divine self-communication. Having seen how the Trinity’s simple act of love brings creation into being, and how sin fractures participation in that love, we now witness God’s decisive entrance into our human condition and His continuing gift of Himself in sacrament. In the Incarnation the eternal Word becomes flesh so that the human race may be healed, deified, and drawn into divine life; in the Eucharist that same self-gift is sustained under the signs of bread and wine, enabling us to abide in Christ and Christ to abide in us.

1 The Incarnation: God Becomes Bridge

Catherine of Siena’s image of the Bridge prepared by God through the Word reaches full clarity in the Incarnation. She writes:
“Wherefore I have told you that I have made a Bridge of My Word, of My only-begotten Son… I have given you the Bridge of My Son, in order that, passing across the flood, you may not be drowned.”¹
This Bridge is none other than the eternal Son, consubstantial with the Father, who steps into the chasm between divinity and humanity. In that gift the flood-waters of non-being are spanned, securing our passage into uncreated life. Catherine adds that the Bridge “reaches from heaven to earth, joining the earth of your humanity to the greatness of the Deity,” and that it is “lifted on high yet at the same time joined to the earth, reforming the road so that man might come to true happiness with the angels.”² Earth and heaven are thus knit together, and the way of communion is definitively restored.

2 Deification: Humanity’s Destiny

Gregory of Nazianzus marvels:
“What greater destiny can befall man’s humility than that he should be intermingled with God, and by this intermingling be deified…?”³
In the hypostatic union the Son truly assumes human nature, without confusion yet without remainder, so that fallen humanity is healed and elevated. Hans Urs von Balthasar stresses the Trinitarian rhythm at work: the Father’s eternal self-gift is received and returned in the thanksgiving of the Son and made present by the Holy Spirit.⁴ On the cross the forma servi descends to the lowest point, and precisely there the forma Dei shines forth.⁵ Sovereignty is revealed not as coercive force but as absolute love expressed in kenosis.⁶ Thus the Crucified stands at the meeting point of God and the world in a single act of love.⁷

3 The Eucharist: Body Given, Blood Poured

At the Last Supper Christ fashions a lasting sacramental extension of the Incarnation. He takes bread:
“This is my Body, given for you…”⁸
then the cup:
“This cup is the new covenant in my Blood.”⁹
These words anticipate the cross, making Himself the perpetual Bridge between God and humanity. In John 6 He deepens the promise: “My flesh is true food and my blood true drink… whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”¹⁰

4 O Sacrum Convivium: Aquinas on the Sacred Banquet

Thomas Aquinas sums up the mystery in his antiphon:
“O sacrum convivium… the memory of His Passion is renewed,
the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us!”¹¹
Every Mass therefore confers four inseparable goods: real reception of Christ, memorial of the Passion, infusion of grace, and a foretaste of glory.

5 Real Presence and Participation

Through transubstantiation the substances of bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ while their accidents remain. This change guarantees three linked realities:

Real Presence – Christ is truly and substantially present.
Continuity with the Incarnation – the Word still takes tangible flesh for our life.
Participation – communicants share in the hypostatic union, entering Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

6 Eucharist as Bridge and Fulfilment

Catherine’s Bridge reappears sacramentally: the Bread of Life spans the gulf of sin and death. Ordinary elements are “overrun, flooded, saturated” (Marion’s language) by infinite Presence, and faith alone can receive the excess. Each celebration allows us, in seed, to experience Gregory’s divinising intermingling and Aquinas’s pledge of future glory.

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End-notes (Section VI)
1 Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of Divine Providence, Treatise §§ 290–95.
2 Ibid., §§ 296–301 (paraphrased).
3 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 30 § 3.
4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, 8.
5 Ibid., 17.
6 Ibid., 32.
7 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord 1, 567.
8 Luke 22:19.
9 Luke 22:20.
10 John 6:55–56.
11 Thomas Aquinas, “O Sacrum Convivium,” in The Aquinas Prayer Book, 84–85.

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Section VII. Eschaton & Synthesis

As this metaphysical exploration draws to a close, we turn with wonder toward the eschaton, the final consummation of all things. The same divine simplicity that undergirds creation and redemption now yields its last and richest fruit, namely the glorification of creatures and the harmonious uniting of all reality in the boundless self-giving of God. Here the suspended tension that characterises creaturely existence finally rests in the beatific vision, freedom reaches its fullest expression in love, and the cosmic drama attains the “all in all” of divine plenitude.

1 The Suspended Middle Fulfilled

Erich Przywara observes in Analogia Entis that

“The most formal foundation of a creaturely metaphysics is the suspended tension between consciousness and being.”¹
Every finite creature longs for the fullness of being yet recognises its own dependence. In our framework this longing is answered by real participation in the divine actus purus. Creatures are upheld by God’s continuous self-gift and freely respond in acts of knowing and loving. The tension persists throughout earthly life, but Christian hope promises its resolution from within, not by erasing creaturely distinctness but by perfecting it. In the beatific vision consciousness and being coincide, and creatures share, as far as possible, in God’s own act of knowing and loving.

2 Rest, Vision, and Love

Augustine captures the goal with lapidary clarity:

“There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise.”²
Rest is the completion of every desire, vision is unmediated participation in divine truth, love is entry into the eternal exchange among Father, Son, and Spirit, and praise is the natural overflow of that communion. The beatific state therefore realises relational plenitude, turning the old tension between finitude and aspiration into an everlasting hymn of delight.

3 Divine Sovereignty as Love

Hans Urs von Balthasar insists that

“God is love … the order itself is sustained by the ultimate ground, which is love.”³
Eschatological order is not imposed by force; it blossoms from the logic of self-giving perfected in Christ. The world, renewed through the Paschal Mystery, will share more abundantly than ever in that order, each creature retaining its identity while enjoying full participation in divine life.

4 Freedom and Responsibility to the End

Balthasar also warns that freedom is never eclipsed:

“Since the actors enjoy genuine freedom, they also bear genuine responsibility for their own performances.”⁴
Even in glory the creature remains a responsible partner, freely echoing the divine Yes. Final harmony emerges from the joyful consent of all intellects and wills, not from mechanical subjugation.

5 The Cosmic “All in All”

Paul gives the eschatological horizon:

“…when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”⁵
Distinction is not destroyed; it is saturated with presence. The risen Christ, as the new Adam, leads creation into the Father’s embrace, and the Spirit diffuses that filial life throughout the renewed cosmos. Every intellect is illuminated by one Light, every will delighted in one Good, every body transfigured by one Glory.

6 Synthesis, from Simplicity to Plenitude

The journey we have traced can now be seen as a single arc:

Divine Simplicity and Trinity: one actus purus subsisting as Father, Son, Spirit.
Analogy and Participation: creatures share being and goodness without losing distinctness.
Primitives and Saturation: first principles such as “God is love” stay irreducible, while divine gift continually exceeds our concepts.
Creation and Sin: the world is a gratuitous extension of love, wounded yet still upheld.
Incarnation and Eucharist: the Word enters history and abides sacramentally, bridging sin and death.
Eschaton: creaturely tension rests in vision, freedom ripens into responsible communion, and God becomes all in all.

Each chapter has shown how the classical categories of actus and potentia, substance and accident, analogy and participation serve as vessels for the drama of divine generosity. These concepts remain servants to the living realities found in Scripture, liturgy, and the daily experience of grace.

7 The Journey Ahead

True metaphysical reflection cannot be separated from worship and mission. To confess God as all in all is already to be drawn into that reality by faith, hope, and love. The vision of relational plenitude calls us to live even now as citizens of the coming age, embodying self-giving in every relationship, stewarding creation with Eucharistic gratitude, and awaiting the final rest with joy. In this synthesis we glimpse the grand design of mercy where every act of divine gift, whether eternal, creative, redemptive, or sacramental, converges in Augustine’s four-fold beatitude, Balthasar’s loving order, and Paul’s cosmic harmony. In the end everything will be sheer gift, pure love, and undivided communion in the eternal life of the Trinity.

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End-Notes (Section VII)
1 Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, 67.
2 Augustine of Hippo, City of God XXII.30, 830.
3 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 165–66.
4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama I, 130.
5 1 Cor 15:28.

Conclusion

Divine simplicity, we have argued, is not an austere mathematical unity but the living wellspring out of which every act of God flows. Because the one actus purus subsists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each Person “expresses the single simple essence through a distinct mode of self-donation.” ¹ In that inner life being and loving are one, and the energies of creation, redemption, and consummation are nothing more than the outward reverberation of that inexhaustible gift.

Creation is the first echo of Trinitarian love. It is neither a compulsory emanation nor a utilitarian projection; it is a gratuitous diffusion of goodness in which every creature receives existence without diminishing the Giver.² Sin wounds the fabric of participation, yet even the wound is circled by mercy, for the Word who built the bridge of being crosses it in person. The Incarnation reveals, as Hans Urs von Balthasar never tires of saying, that “love alone is credible,”³ and the Eucharist extends that same logic by turning the most ordinary elements of bread and wine into the very substance of divine self-gift. Jean-Luc Marion’s dictum, “so much reduction, so much givenness,”⁴ explains why: when the appearances are reduced to humility, the excess of Presence can finally flood the horizon.

The journey presses forward to the eschaton, where Erich Przywara’s “suspended tension between consciousness and being”⁵ is resolved from within, not by dissolving created distinction but by perfecting it. Augustine foretells the rhythm of that state—“rest and see, see and love, love and praise”⁶—while Paul gives its cosmic measure: God will be “all in all.”⁷ Freedom is not eclipsed; it matures into a joyous consent that mirrors the Son’s eternal fiat.

Holding this grand arc together is a twofold method. Analytic precision secures every statement in the classical grammar of actus and potentia, substance and accident, person and relation. Phenomenological saturation keeps those concepts supple before mystery, guarding theology from the twin perils of sentimentality and arid formalism. Doctrine thus becomes a ladder sturdy enough for reason yet porous enough for awe.

What, then, remains? Contemplation, so that the heart can receive the saturated phenomenon of divine love. Communion, so that relationships can echo intratrinitarian generosity. Stewardship, so that creation is treated as “a festival of donated goodness.” Witness, so that the world may learn—by deeds more than words—that love alone persuades.

When the final bridge is crossed and the liturgy of history closes, every intellect will be illumined by one Light, every will delighted in one Good, every body transfigured by one Glory. Simplicity will unveil itself as plenitude, and plenitude will be eternally new because it is eternally gift.

End-Notes

Robert Moses Dryer, unpublished lecture notes on Trinitarian metaphysics.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible (Ignatius Press, 2004).
Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness (Northwestern University Press, 1998), 203.
Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, trans. Betz & Hart (Eerdmans, 2014), 67.
Augustine of Hippo, City of God XXII.30.
Holy Bible, 1 Cor 15:28.

Primary Sources

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Pt. I. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Burns & Oates, 1920.
———. “O Sacrum Convivium.” In The Aquinas Prayer Book, trans. Robert Anderson and Johann Moser, 84-85. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2000.
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Trans. Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997.
———. Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity. Trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin, 1961.
———. On the Trinity. Trans. Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991.
———. The City of God. Trans. Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin, 2003.
Bible, The Holy (New Revised Standard Version). London: HarperCollins, 1989.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
———. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. Victor Watts. London: Penguin, 1999.
Catherine of Siena. The Dialogue of Divine Providence. Trans. Algar J. Thorold. London: Kegan Paul, 1907.
———. Prayers. Trans. Suzanne Noffke. New York: Paulist Press, 1983.
Council of the Lateran IV. “De fide catholica.” In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, vol. 1, 230-31. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations. Trans. Charles G. Browne and James E. Swallow. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1894.
Marion, Jean-Luc. Reduction and Givenness: Phenomenology after Heidegger and Metaphysics after Kant. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
———. Givenness and Hermeneutics: Père Marquette Lectures. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013.
———. The Visible and the Revealed. Trans. Michael J. Talbot. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names. Trans. Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

———. Love Alone Is Credible. Trans. D. C. Schindler. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. (Love Alone is Credible – Hans Urs von Balthasar – Google Livres)
———. Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. Trans. Aidan Nichols. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990.
———. Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 1 Prolegomena. Trans. Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988.
———. Theo-Logic, vol. 1 The Truth of the World. Trans. Adrian J. Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000.
———. The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1 Seeing the Form. Trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982.

Secondary and Philosophical Works

Benovsky, Jiří. Meta-Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. ((PDF) Givenness and Hermeneutics: The Saturated Phenomenon …)
———. “Primitives.” In Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, ed. Francesco Gualdi and Michael J. Raven, 22-35. New York: Routledge, 2020.
Przywara, Erich. Analogia Entis: Metaphysics — Original Structure and Universal Rhythm. Trans. John R. Betz and David Bentley Hart. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014.

Magisterial Documents

Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.
Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). In The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, 199-308. New York: Herder & Herder, 1966.