Definitely not defining things into existence. Engage with serious Thomists such as Gaven Kerr, John Knasas, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Jacques Maritain, you will see beyond the prejudices of contemporary analytic philosophy and it will become clear to you why people take scholastic metaphysics seriously. There's actually been a bit of a contemporary revival by those such as Rob Koons, Alex Pruss and Ed Feser, who themselves come out of the analytic tradition.

@@peterchristeas5519 It still IS defining something into existence. Saying that existence is God's essence isn't much different from defining God as 'something that exists'. My brief comment on existence and necessity: Nothing is a perfectly possible state if affairs. Everything can be conceived if as nit existing. So, everything is contingent, nothing exists of necessity. Existence is a brute fact.

@@Nexus-jg7ev We encounter being from experience though and reason backwards from effect to cause. I'd agree with you in affirming that everything which can be conceived, which can enter into our intellect as content, can also be conceived of as non-existent. This highlights the distinction between any such essence and its act of existence. God wouldn't fall into this category though, as His essence can't be conceived of by us. He is pure existence itself, not qualified by any essence that we can grasp in the same manner we can grasp the essence of trees, cats and humans. He is pure existence itself, it does not even make sense to posit that pure existence itself is non-existent. In this manner it isn't brute because God's essence just being pure existence itself is what we can point to in order to give an account for our beliefs in His modal necessity.

@@peterchristeas5519 Why should we think that there is something whose existence is a pure essence? Why should I allow you to just define God as something whose essence is existence. Essence practically means nature, property or an attribute. Nothing can have the property of existence because existence is not a property. I don't need to know what God's essence is to conceive that he may not exist. Whatever God's essence is, it cannot include existence because existence is not an essence. You can't make something exist by just saying hat it has the essence of existence. If that were possible, you could make impossible things exist by just attributing them such an essence. If you say that the essence of a square circle is existence, that won't make it exist. Or if you define a square circle as a thing that exists, it will still not exist. You may not realise it but what you are doing really is defining God as an existing thing when you say that his essence is existence, and you also seem to assume it without argument, just by definition, which is question-begging. Please, stop using such nonsense arguments. Aquinas is too overrated. All his five ways are failures.

@@Nexus-jg7ev Existence is an indeterminate first order predicate according to the Thomist. Indeterminate meaning it doesn't add to toe conceptual content of a being, that's the form which enters the intellect. We start from the observation of existence-neutral beings. If a substrate is neutral with respect to an accident, then there is something beyond this substrate which accounts for the accident. Anything which isn't pure existence itself is existence-neutral, yet happens to exist, so it must participate in something beyond itself which can account for its existence. Nothing which is existence-neutral can ultimately satisfy the demand for this transcendent reality for the very reason mentioned. This sets up a causal regress which can only terminate in that in which there is no real distinction between essence and existence, that is, pure existence itself. This line of reasoning is found independently of the five ways. Have a read of his metaphysical treatise "de ente et essentia", chapter 4 in particular.