12.2 Life of created beings

One essential corollary of Postulate 7 concerns the sort of things that God can create given his nature determined by this and previous postulates. Theism says that all life originates from God. From this, we have the Argument from Life Itself, which concludes that created beings cannot have entirely their own life in themselves. God cannot make created beings to have life in themselves. Suppose that it were possible that

1. God did create something that lived from itself.
   Then
2. That thing would have as one of its attributes life itself.
   So
3. That thing would have as one if its attributes God.
   Then, since
4. God is One (by Postulate 2),
   we should conclude:
5. That thing would not be distinct from God.

Applying this logic to the Christian quotation of the footnote at the beginning of this chapter, we would have to conclude that Jesus, since he has life in himself, is therefore not distinct from God. That he is of the same substance as God is the orthodox position in that religion.

This above reductio argument implies that created beings do not, and cannot, have life in themselves. There is no elementary particle and no fundamental energy that is its own source of capacities for change. From the previous chapters, we conclude that finite objects do not have being in themselves nor do they have love in themselves. In theism, these conclusions are not independent claims after all, since God’s being is love, and that love is life itself.