The aseity of God is the doctrine of God’s simplicity. Plainly stated, it teaches that God is not made of parts. When we say things such as “God is good” we do not mean that “good” exists outside of God, but that he actually is good (commutatively, good is God). It is at this point that Alvin Plantinga raises a concern which eventually leads him to deny God’s aseity. If God’s properties do not exist outside of him meaning that God is identical with his properties, God is therefore a property and cannot be a person. In order to maintain God’s personality, Plantinga sacrifices God’s aseity. Scott Oliphint summarizes the issue:

According to Plantinga, the notion of God’s simplicity is “a dark saying indeed.” It goes back, he thinks, to Parmenides, according to whom reality was “an undifferentiated plenum in which no distinctions can be made.” Plantinga has good reason to see the doctrine as “dark.” He is convinced that if God were identical with his properties, then, ipso facto, God would be a property. If Plantinga is right, then simplicity is indeed a dark saying in that its implications wind up denying the Christian God.¹

Oliphint spends much time in the subsequent chapters of his book explaining the solution to this apparent problem. If I am reading him correctly, God’s aseity needs to be understood within the Creator/creature distinction. When we say God is “good” and that people are “good” there is a fundamental difference in the “goodness” that is ascribed to each. We must understand the analogical nature of the Creator/creature distinction. People share the communicable attributes of God, but only as analogy. People have true knowledge, but only in analogical fashion. People do not know the same way as God knows.² This analogical relationship even extends to being. Oliphint addresses Plantinga’s issue by pointing out that God and His creatures do not exist in identical ways. He is I AM - we are not. Our being is analogical to God’s. An element of mystery is present here (and a large one at that!), however since we do not exist in the same way that God does, we do not have to sacrifice God’s aseity in favor of his personality. It is possible for God to be identical with his properties and still remain a se whereas creatures, by virtue of their analogical existence, are not.

1. Oliphint, K. Scott. Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2006), 94-95.↩
2. Van Til used to say we “think God’s thoughts after him on a created level.”↩