Dependence: It is a mark of Christian philosophy generally to stress the dependence of created beings on God.
God's being good might be understood in terms of God's being good to us, where us includes all created rational beings, or all created sentient beings, or whatever class of created beings to which one thinks that God has a special relationship.
From this first difference follows a second, namely, that created being is being by virtue of being related to an agent, whereas uncreated being has no relation.
The synod stated explicitly that the Holy Spirit, not a created being, is of the same substance as the Father and the Son, and it clearly defined the Christological terms "person" and "substance".
How then do we distinguish uncreated being from created being and the various forms of created being?
The primitive active power of a substance, Leibniz tells us, is "a nature or an internal force that can produce in it, in an orderly way all the appearances or expressions it will have, without the help of any created being" (New System GP iv 486/AG 1486/AG
One could also ask how Aquinas's view of God's essential simplicity and immutability is compatible with the view that God's eternal choice could be otherwise and the voluntary acts of created beings could be other than what is known by God.
"The whole system of created beings in comparison of him is as the light dust of the balance" ("Miscellanies," no. 1208; Edwards 1957–, vol. 23, 133).
If God exists necessarily and is essentially the creator and the redeemer of created beings in need of salvation, this implies it is not possible for there to be no creation, or for there to be no fallen creatures; God could not have avoided creating beings in need of redemption.
The first and the fourth are God as beginning and end; the second and third are the dual mode of existence of created beings (the intelligible and the sensible).
