Act-of-gift in Dryer’s Gift-Ontology

The giver-side actuality as gift names what God is as giving, without implying any new state in God. In the divine case, “act-of-gift” names God’s own identical self-giving by non-composition. This is not devotional language added after metaphysics. It is a control-term that governs placement. It blocks any account in which giverhood is a role, an acquired feature, a superadded determination, or a status constituted by creaturely reception. It also refuses any under-personal “essence behind the Persons” to which relations are later attached, since in God relation is not an added link but the very mode of the one divine reality subsisting personally by relations of origin. The act-of-gift is therefore the triune life itself, personally as origin: from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Said in classical idiom, act-of-gift is the same divine actuality named by actus essendi subsistens, now spoken under the revealed grammar of Father, Son, and Spirit. See also the Primitive.

Primitive: Act-of-Gift (giver-side actuality)