Deductive Development
Having established the existence of God from metaphysical, physical, and moral arguments, the theologian selects some one of the attributes that these proofs authorize him to predicate of the Divinity and, by unfolding its implications, reaches a number of other attributes. For instance, if God is Pure Actuality, that is, free from all static potency, it follows that, since change implies a transition from an antecedent potential condition to a subsequent condition in which the potentiality is realized, God is immutable. Here we reach the point where the term Attribute is employed in its strict sense.
Read more about this topic: Catholic Concept Of The Divine
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“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)