give itself reality (esse), nor can its participation in reality (esse), which is universal, guarantee its essential particularity (essentia). Nonetheless this fundamental quality of creaturehood (its unlikeness to God) must have some basis in God himself if it is to be posited at all. Of course it cannot be said that the substance possessed in common by the Divine Hypostases is like that being in which all finite beings share; after all, these finite beings are precisely not identical with their