Pure Actuality and Immutability
Many theists who subscribe to divine immutability and timelessness follow Aquinas in holding that God is Pure Act. For Aquinas, this means not only that God is completely determinate and without any residual indeterminacy or "potency" but also that God is existence or "actuality" pure and simple (ipsum esse subsistens, actus purus, etc.), without any limitation. Accordingly, there are degrees of being. God exists in the fullest possible sense exhibiting all pure perfections to the highest degree. God's essence is therefore said to be identical with his existence. What he is, the very fullness of being, guarantees that he is. Creatures exist in a diminished sense, however, and exhibit perfections only to a limited degree as constrained by their natures or essences. Thus, in creatures there is a real distinction between existence and essence. What they are does not suffice to guarantee that they are.
From this perspective, change requires that actualization of a potency. God is essentially Pure Act and so lacks potency. So God cannot change. Immutability, in short, is necessary to secure the Creator-creature distinction.
I think this argument is fallacious. And to explain why I'd like to consider what it could mean to say that God's essence is identical to his existence.
The key word here is "essence". In one sense, that term denotes the qualities or properties that are necessary to a thing. Thus, it is generally held by theists that God is essentially (i.e., necessarily) good. In no possible world is God evil, unjust, or nonbenevolent. But not all of God's qualities can be essential in this sense. For theists also generally hold that God is free with respect to all sorts of things, such as whether to create and which sort of world to create. That God is the creator of Adam and Eve is, for example, not necessary, for God need not have created them at all. So if we say that God existence is identical with his essence, then we cannot take "essence" to mean that which is necessary to God. Instead, we have to construe "essence" in a broader sense to refer to all those properties that in fact characterize God, whether necessarily or not.
So we arrive at a conception of the divine essence that contains two different sorts of properties: (1) properties that are necessary to God (like goodness), and (2) properties that God possesses contingently (like being a creator). What this means is that the fullness of being (pure actuality) is compatible with multiple possible determinations. Pure actuality in that sense is compatible both with God's being a creator and with his not being a creator.
But if God's being Pure Act is compatible with multiple possible determinations, then there is no obvious contradiction in God's changing with respect to some of his contingent properties all the while remaining Pure Act. In other words, being "Pure Act" in the sense of the fullness of being does not automatically entail being completely determinate without any potency.
As for whether the contingency of creation implies potency in God, Aquinas' would reason something like this:
- Whatever is in potency with respect to some determination can only acquire that determination through the agency of something that is in act with respect to that determination.
- Nothing can be both in potency and in act with respect to the same determination at the same moment.
- Therefore, whatever is in potency with respect to some determination can only actually acquire that determination through the agency of something else. (1,2)
- If creation involved the actualization of a potency in God, then something apart from God would have to actualize that potency. (3)
- But apart from creation there is nothing apart from God.
- Therefore, if creation involved the actualization of a potency in God, then creation would be impossible. (4,5)
- But creation is possible.
- Therefore, creation cannot involve the actualization of any potency in God. (6,7)
posted by Alan Rhoda @ 12:25 AM
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12 Comments:
Super discussion; it's so hard to find a debates about thomism on blogs. Now to your argument which I'm of course obliged to partially object to.
A thomist would concede that free choice is self-determination, and also that self determination was an unlimited perfection, and as such it can be said of God.
But thomists distinguish between self determination as it exists in us, and as it exists in God. In us, self determination comes along with lack, privation and potency. For example, I choose to eat because I am hungry. Here there is both free choice, but also a need that is moving me. The choice is both freely chosen, and moved by another- in different respects, to be sure- But the same action in us is both self determined and being moved by another.
When we Thomists say self- determination of God, we mean that he only has the perfection of self determination, with no concomitant lack or privation contained in some potency.
Now if you want to say that free choice essentially requires a certain lack contained in potency, such that it would be impossible to have free choice and yet lack nothing, that's fine- but that does not seem to be implied by your argument: you seem to be saying that free choice, taken by itself, is a certain perfection. Thomists agree, and this is why we say that God is both free, and has no potency toward change in any way; for potency always comes along with the lack of the thing to which a thing is in potency. In fact, the Thomist goes even futher than this: because God has absolutely no passive potency to be moved by another, he is ONLY self- determined. God's immutability can be seen as a certain source of his absolutely free choice; and his absolutely fre choice can bee seen as requiring immutability.
(1) is false on Thomistic terms as well. Aquinas does allow it for univocal causation, but in equivocal causation it's (strictly speaking) false, although if we introduce the formal/eminent distinction we can create a closely analogous principle. The only principle that covers all possible cases is the one he uses in the Five Ways (which is sometimes mistranslated as something like your (1)), and which in your terms would be:
(1) Whatever is in potency with respect to some determination can only acquire that determination through the agency of something that is in act.
Or, in other words, whatever is potential can only become actual through the agency of something actual. Free choice is not a counterexample to this; in free choice what is potential becomes actual through something that is already actual. I'm also a little mystified by your claim that the actualizing of free choice doesn't require that the agent be in some respect potential and in some respect actual at a time. After all, free choices don't just leap into existence independently of any actual agents. So, since the agent is potential for the actual choice made in some respect and to be so necessarily has to be actual in another way (he actually exists and actually is able to choose), I don't know what you meant there.
So, as far as I can see, the Thomistic case for immutability is not affected by the instance of libertarian freedom. So if that case fails it must be for some other reason.
Shulamite,
You assume that potency as applied to free choice invariably implies a lack or a need in the sense of a "passive potency". This is in line with the Thomistic idea that whatever is moved from potency to act must be so moved by another. But I don't think that's right. I think God can be in potency with respect to several possible courses of action prior to deciding among them without that implying any "passive potency" in God.
In other words, you reason thus: (a) God is supremely perfect, therefore (b) God is self-determined and free; therefore (c) God has no passive potency; therefore (d) God is immutable. Accordingly, you see my denial of (d) as incompatible with (a) and (b) and (c).
From my point of view, (d) simply doesn't follow from (c). Hence, I say that denying (d) is not incompatible with God's being perfect or having self-determining freedom. And I would go further. I would argue that (d) entails the denial of (b) because, as I've been arguing, the exercise of self-determining freedom implies a transition from volitional indeterminacy to volitional determinacy.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for offering an improvement on (1). I should have been more careful and made allowance for the possibility of 'eminent' causation, as you put it. That emendation certainly makes the first premise more plausible.
But your revised version of (1)--let's call it (1*)--taken at face value is too weak to generate an argument for divine immutability. We both agree that the argument I gave for divine immutability was flawed because premise (1) is false. But if we replace my (1) with your (1*), then (3) no longer follows. What's more, your description of free choice as involving something potential "becoming" actual does not seem to fit well with divine immutability. If free choice involves becoming and there can be no becoming in God, then God cannot exercise a free choice.
Finally, you say, "I'm also a little mystified by your claim that the actualizing of free choice doesn't require that the agent be in some respect potential and in some respect actual at a time." I understand your puzzlement. That would be an odd thing to say. But it's not what I said. I never denied that prior to a free choice an agent would be both actual and potential in some respect. What I denied was that the agent would be both actual and potential in the same respect.
Alan: What's more, your [Brandon's] description of free choice as involving something potential "becoming" actual does not seem to fit well with divine immutability.
Tom: Nor is it enough to secure the 'freedom' choice. Unconditionally determined but contingent choices fit the bill--they are potential and "become." God may so determine me to choose X in Y at t. Before choosing X in Y the choice in question is potential. Then it "becomes." But since God unconditinally determined that I choose X in Y I'm not free in the libertarian sense.
Tom
On a slightly-related matter, there is a discussion of Presentism on the new blog Metaphysical Values. I recommend it.
http://metaphysicalvalues.blogspot.com/2006/08/defining-presentism-real-problem_21.html
Alan,
It's likely I'm just misunderstanding what you mean by (3), I don't see your point about (3) not following from the modified (1) (let's call it (1)*) and (2). (2)'s point, I take it, is that nothing can be at once potential and actual in the same respect; given this, (3) follows fairly easily from (1)*: Whatever is potential can't be actual with respect to the determination for which it is potential, and nothing potential can acquire its determination except through the agency of something actual; so it follows that whatever is potential can only acquire its determination through the agency of something that is not itself, which looks like (3) to me.
My point about free choice was not intended to say anything about God, since it was not put forward as a theory of free choice, but as an argument against your counterexample. To be more exact, it was put forward to point out that free choice would be an implausible candidate for a counterexample for (1)* even with regard to human free choices. Nothing about this requires that all free choices must be analyzed as cases of 'motus'; in fact, the point is that even the free choices that one would think to be the most plausible candidates for being counterexamples would not be counterexamples to (1)*.
Hi Brandon.
OK, first, for easy reference:
(1*) Whatever is in potency with respect to some determination can only acquire that determination through the agency of something that is in act.
(2) Nothing can be both in potency and in act with respect to the same determination at the same moment.
(3) Therefore, whatever is in potency with respect to some determination can only actually acquire that determination through the agency of something else.
Now, the reason why (3) doesn't follow from (1*) and (2) is because (1*) allows for the possibility that something that is in potency with respect to some determination might acquire that determination from itself by virtue of being in act with respect to some other determination.
Alan,
Sorry, I've been out of town for a while. You say
"From my point of view, (d)[God is immutable] simply doesn't follow from (c) [God has no passive potency]."
But no passive potency means no ability to change. I don't get it, do you agree that there is no potency in God?
I don't see how something can be "in potency" without implying that there is some passive potency in it. The adjective "passive" was only added to make it clear that I was talking about potency, properly speaking; in other words "what can be" as opposed to "what is".
The intentional free state you say exists in God is one in which some choice can be, but is not. This "is not" is a lack.
shulamite: The intentional free state you say exists in God is one in which some choice can be, but is not. This "is not" is a lack.
Tom: Hi shulamite.
I take it by "lack" you mean some deficiency in terms of perfection. But why believe that divine potential is by defintion a deficiency of some perfection?
Tom
Hi Tom,
Yes, I say that to lack something is a privation, and that privations, as privations, are imperfections. This doesn't strike we as a particularly controversial point: non- being is imperfection.
Said another way, being as being is good.
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