According to classical theism (as exemplified by Aquinas), God is “Pure Act”. What does that mean, you ask? Good question. The idea goes back to Aristotle, but we’ll pick it up with Aquinas.<\/p>\n
Very early on in the Summa Theologiae<\/span> Aquinas says the following:<\/p>\n For motion [motus<\/span>, i.e., change] is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. (ST I.q2.a3)<\/p>\n The first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now it has been already proved that God is the First Being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality. (ST I.q3.a1)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The first quote is from the first of Aquinas’ famous “Five Ways”. In the second quote Aquinas draws out what he takes to be the implications of the First Way: the “first mover” must be wholly “in act”. Hence, the idea that God is “Pure Act”.<\/p>\n Aquinas and other medieval theologians clearly took this to be a very important and defining attribute of God. But what does it mean? I must confess that I find the notion rather opaque. Aquinas’ discussion in the First Way suggest that “act” and “potency” satisfy at least the following contraints:<\/p>\n To illustrate, Aquinas gives one example: something that is actually hot (fire) can make something that is actually cold but potentially hot (a log) to be actually hot.<\/p>\n This suggests that Aquinas has in mind something like one of the following ways of characterizing the act\/potency distinction:<\/p>\n A. With Respect to Predication<\/p>\n B. With Respect to Perfection<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thomist Henri Renard (“The Philosophy of Being”): “Act is a perfection, and potency is capacity for perfection. Act is a reality which perfects, actuates the potency in which it is received, but in no way destroys it. Potency … is a positive capacity for receiving this perfection.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Definition (A) seems to be a tolerably clear way of articulating the act\/potency distinction with respect Aquinas’ fire-and-log example: Initially we can truly predicate “exemplifies hotness” of the fire but not of the log. As the fire heats the log, however, the log changes so that we can predicate “exemplifies hotness” of it. (Note that this is an example of deterministic causation in which one existing thing brings about a change in another existing thing.)<\/p>\n Definition (B) is murkier both because of the undefined term “perfection” and because the notion of “potency” occurs in the definition of actuality. Offhand, it’s not clear how a log’s becoming hot is a reception of a “perfection”. For some extrinsic purposes a hot log may be better than a cold one, but there doesn’t seem to be anything intrinsically better about hot logs versus cold ones. So how is it that the log itself has been “perfected”? Perhaps heat is supposed to be a “perfection” that comes to reside in the log. Okay, but how exactly is heat a “perfection”? Definition (B) doesn’t seem to fit Aquinas’ example very well.<\/p>\n One difficulty in making sense of Aquinas’ notion of God’s “Pure Actuality” is that his clear examples only support something like (A), whereas Aquinas wants something like (B). Another difficulty is that the deterministic implications of (A) work themselves into Aquinas’ theology where they create problems.<\/p>\n Principle (3), for example, is plausible when applied to inanimate things like logs, but it seems false when applied to persons. In my view, part of what it means to be a person is to have a power of self-determination, i.e., to be a self-moved mover, a self-actualizer. As a free agent I have the power to be a first cause of at least some of my own actions. For example, I can decide right now to raise my left arm. God, the preeminent agent, is free to create or not, and he is free to decide how to respond to our actions and prayers. In making free decisions we actualize a potency in ourselves. When God chooses to create he actualizes his potency to be a Creator. Or so it would seem.<\/p>\n What’s more, for Aquinas, God’s “Pure Actuality” entails God’s absolute immutability and impassibility, both very difficult doctrines to defend. On the face of it God’s freely creating (not to mention the Incarnation) is a change in God: We seem to have a state in which God alone exists followed by<\/span> a state in which God and creation exist.<\/p>\n I suspect that Aquinas’ views on God’s absolute immutability and impassibility result from over-reliance on deterministic efficient causal, fire-heating-wood examples of the act\/potency distinction, leading to an oversight of the fact that perfection in a person<\/span> consists significantly in the power of self-determination or agent causation. Furthermore, it is arguable that being in loving relationship is the highest kind of good for a person, in which case perfection in a person<\/span> also consists significantly in receptivity to another.<\/p>\n What if Aquinas had taken for his model of act\/potency something distinctively personal? Take, for example, the act of welcoming<\/span>. When person A welcomes person B, actively listens to B, etc., A opens himself to be influenced by B. A is being both active and receptive at the same time. If Aquinas had taken something like that for his paradigm of act\/potency, then maybe he could have a God who is “Pure Act” in the sense, perhaps, of “Perfect Love” as I have characterized it here<\/a>, without having to embrace either absolute immutability or impassibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to classical theism (as exemplified by Aquinas), God is “Pure Act”. What does that mean, you ask? Good question. The idea goes back to Aristotle, but we’ll pick it up with Aquinas. Very early on in the Summa Theologiae Aquinas says the following: For motion [motus, i.e., change] is nothing else than the reduction\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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