A Quote by Baruch Spinoza

God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.

Baruch Spinoza

Quote Topics

Also Attributes Attributes Of God Cause Definite Efficient Essence Existence Expressed Fixed God Individual Manner Modes Nothing Only Things Which

Quote Author

Baruch Spinoza
Dutch - Philosopher
November 24, 1632 - February 21, 1677

The attributes of God have been carefully explored. But the Devil's attributes have been left vague. I think I've found one of them. It is he who puts the prices on things." "Doesn't God put a price on things?" "No. One of his attributes is magnanimity. But the Devil is a setter of prices, and a usurer, as well. You buy from him at an agreed price, but the payments are all on time, and the interest is charged on the whole of the principal, right up to the last payment, however much of the principal you think you have paid off in the meantime.

Robertson Davies

All attributes ascribed to God are attributes of His acts, and do not imply that God has any qualities.

Maimonides

While love is one of God's attributes, it's not his only attribute. God is also holy and just.

Robert Jeffress

Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.

J. I. Packer

God is Godless. God is an idea that we have, another construct, a prop, which doesn't suggest that God doesn't exist. God is existence. But your idea of God and existence are two different things at the moment.

Frederick Lenz

My Calvinism persuades me that we are open to God, in the sense that we are not delimited, not organisms with fixed attributes in the manner of the other creatures, but are instead participants in a reality that utterly exceeds our powers of description.

Marilynne Robinson

The gnosis of God is intermediate between immoderation, which is ascribing human characteristics to God, and negligence, which is denying any attributes to God. . . The Truth lies in the balance between the two extremes.

Ibn Ata Allah

When we go deep within, into the deepest recesses of our hearts, we commune with God through meditation. It is through meditation that we can know that God is both with form and without form, with attributes and without attributes.

Sri Chinmoy

God's purpose for man is to acquire a seeing eye and an understanding heart." "God gave you life and bestowed upon you his attributes; eventually you will return to him." "The rewards of life and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the light of God.

Rumi

The universe shows us the life of God, or rather it is in itself the life of God. We behold in it his permanent action, the scene upon which his power is exercised, and in which all his attributes are reflected. God is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence, but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive.

Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

Whoever possesses God in their being has Him in a divine manner, and He shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see.

Meister Eckhart

What is the result of our investigation of the Moslem idea of God? Is the statement of the Koran true, "Your God and our God is the same"? In as far as Moslems are monotheists and in as far as Allah has many of the attributes of Jehovah we cannot put Him with the false gods. But neither can there be any doubt that Mohammed's conception of God is inadequate, incomplete, barren and grievously distorted. It is vastly inferior to the Christian idea of the Godhead and also inferior to the Old Testament idea of God.

Samuel Marinus Zwemer

When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving (all these are attributes of God), to be generous, to love their follow men, to regard this present age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them.

Saint John Chrysostom

Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust, not in the living God but in dying men. The unbeliever denies the selfsufficiency of God and usurps attributes that are not his. This dual sin dishonors God and ultimately destroys the soul of man.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

This "new" idea of God proposes that all the characteristics traditionally attributed to the purely external God are, in an important sense, attributes of this inner force of consciousness. When this inner energy of higher consciousness is experienced, it then becomes clear that such an energy permeates the entire universe. In this way, it is through self-knowledge that the existence of an external God is verified and understood.