System of Sacred Theology · §3.5.7 · Ludwig Crocius

II. God's nature viewed in essence and persons

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II. The nature of God is viewed in essence and persons. Knowledge of the one essence is sought from the book of nature and of Scripture jointly: knowledge of the three distinct persons from the book of Scripture alone.

That the name of essence truly belongs to God we understand from this, that He is the first and highest being, on whom all other beings depend. But if He is being, He certainly has essence: since by it being is necessarily defined. And because God has essence from Himself and not from elsewhere, and therefore possesses it perpetually, He is also said to be essence in the abstract: from which Jerome (tome 2, letter to Damasus): One, he says, and only nature of God, which truly is. For that which subsists does not have from elsewhere, but is its own. The rest which are created, even if they seem to be, are not, because once they were not, and can again not be what they were. God alone, who is eternal — that is, who has no beginning — truly holds the name of essence.

Concerning the name of the persons from Scripture (1 John 5:7; Hebrews 1:3) it will be seen more inwardly.

Latin

II. Natura Dei spectatur in essentia & personis. Cognitio unius essentiae petitur e libro naturae & scripturae conjunctim: cognitio trium distinctarum personarum ex libro scripturae tantum. Essentiae nomen vere Deo convenire, ex hoc intelligimus, quod is est ens primum & summum, a quo caetera entia omnia dependent. Si vero ens est, utique habet essentiam: cum per eam ens necessario definiatur. Et, quia Deus essentiam a seipso habet, & non aliunde; ideoque eam perpetuo possidet; in abstracto quoque essentia esse dicitur: unde Hieronymus tom. 2. epistola ad Damasum: Una, inquit, Dei & sola natura, quae vere est. Id enim, quod subsistít, non habet aliunde, sed suum est. Caetera, quae creata sunt, etiamsi videntur esse, non sunt, quia aliquando non fuerunt, & possunt rursum non esse quod fuerunt. Deus solus, qui aeternus est, hoc est, qui exordium non habet, essentiae nomen vere tenet. De nomine personarum e scriptura 1 Joh. 5.7; Heb. 1.3. interius videbitur.

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About this text

Ludwig Crocius's System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636), all four books: theology and its rule in Scripture; man's last end, death and the resurrection; God, the Trinity, creation, providence and sin; and the grace of Christ, the Word and sacraments, faith, the Christian life and prayer.

Ludwig Crocius (1586–1655) taught theology and philosophy at Bremen and sat as a delegate at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). A Calvinist of the irenic school, he spent his career seeking common ground between the Reformed and Lutheran churches.

His System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636) is a full Reformed dogmatics in the high-orthodox style: precise definitions, ordered questions, objections raised and answered.

Date1636 AD (Bremen; Reformed professor)

EditionSyntagma sacrae theologiae (Bremen: Berthold Villerian, 1636)

English follows the 1636 Bremen Latin (Berthold Villerian), read chapter by chapter from the SLUB Dresden page images, with a machine reading of the same pages as a check. No modern English was copied. The author index at the end of the volume is not translated.

Reference

VD17 14:684303C. SLUB id335860389.

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