Summary
Aseity
Aseity is a rarely used word for a foundational truth about God: He exists from Himself. The term comes from the Latin a se ("from oneself"), and it names the truth that God's being is uncaused, underived, and dependent on nothing outside Himself. He simply is.
Scripture reveals this attribute most directly at the burning bush. When Moses asks for God's name to bring back to Israel, the Lord answers, "I AM WHO I AM... say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you'" Exodus 3:13-14. At first the response can sound thin, even evasive. But the name itself communicates the greatness of God: His existence is grounded in Himself. As Jesus would later put it, "the Father has life in himself" John 5:26.
Because God exists simply because He is, He is absolutely self-sufficient—dependent on no one and no thing. This is no minor point. If God were dependent on something outside Himself, our confidence in Him would be only as strong as whatever He leaned upon. Aseity also means God is not composed of parts, for what is composed of parts can come apart and depends on those parts to exist. Instead, God is His attributes: God is love 1 John 4:8, God is wisdom, God is all-knowing, God is perfect—each attribute is the whole of who He is, not a piece bolted onto Him.
Aseity belongs to God alone. We are tempted to imagine that we share in it—that we are self-made, self-sufficient, the source of what we are and what we have achieved, dependent on no one (perhaps not even God, except for the occasional boost). One phone call in the night, one diagnosis, and the illusion shatters. Creatures do not have life in themselves; we are fragile, contingent, and held in being moment by moment by the One who is. To think otherwise is, plainly, pretentious nonsense.
The great I AM does not leave us in that pretense. In John 8, Jesus declares, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" John 8:58. His hearers reached for stones because they understood exactly what He had claimed: to be God in the flesh. Throughout the Gospel He keeps taking that divine name on His lips—I am the light, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life. And this great I AM goes to the cross to bear the sin of the world, including the proud sin of creatures pretending to a self-sufficiency that belongs only to God, and He says to us, "I forgive you."
When a child asks, "Who created God?"—the answer, in one word, is aseity. No one. He is uncreated, uncaused, the only being who exists necessarily and of Himself. Discovering this attribute is meant to produce not cold abstraction but joy and renewed confidence: the God on whom we depend is the God who depends on nothing, and therefore He cannot fail us. For a fuller treatment, see “Aseity" 6-12-22.
Video citations
- “Aseity" 6-12-22 — What you open your Bibles, please, with me, to the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that on page 47 for our study this…