Aristotle said God is pure actuality (energeia).
Plotinus said there is another god prior to pure actuality, a god of pure potentiality (dynamis).
Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church have followed Aristotle in stating that God is actus purus.
It seems that there is a strong anti-Catholic movement that follows Plotinus.
Has anyone given serious thought to this issue who could explain it further or recommend further reading?
You might have to do a little more reading regarding Plotinus and Platonists. Especially given the fact that it seem you are trying to grasp what Plotinus was saying through medieval Scholastic terminology.
I would actually start directly with Plotinus’
Enneads.
As to his conception of God, its a lot more nuanced than saying “its a God of Pure Potentiality.”
Plotinus conceived of the Universe in terms of a hierarchy, with a highest principle giving rise to a second Principle which in turn gives rise to a third Principle, etc.
All these Principles transcend the Physical World, although for the sake of understanding Plotinus tends to use colorful analogies to try and convey the ideas we are dealing with here.
At the top of the System lays “The One” and beneath it lays a Secondary Principle “The Intellect” , beneath that lays “The Soul” (not an Individual Soul, but more like the World-Soul spoken of in Plato’s Timaeus), and beneath that lays Nature.
Aristotle’s Prime Mover, whose Primary Activity is to Contemplate Itself (remember,
Aristotle gave a proof of the existence of God based on his
Physics. Aquinas uses a
Metaphysical justification which we inherited from the Rabbinical scholar Moses Maimonides who in turn got it from the Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina…who thought Aristotle’s “proof” based on Physics was sorely lacking).
In this respect, the Prime Mover resembles “The Intellect” of Plotinus’ metaphysical system. It is a Mind
knowing all there is to know without using discursive reasoning.
But it is not the -primary- principle of the Universe. That is Reserved for “the One.”
His “One” is Identified with Plato’s “Form of the Good” from the Republic.
The One is a Principle of Unity. And here we are using “Unity” in the way that the philosopher Parmenides would use it. The More Unity possessed by a thing, the More Real it is. So a Rose in the ancient mind, has more Unity than an Army to use an analogy. An Army is composed of individual parts (people) that can act autonomously. Therefore an Army is not an Essential/Basic thing.
From this we can derive certain characteristics of what the One
is not.
The One is
not a body, because a body can be broken down into Parts.
The Soul is Immaterial, but it too also has Parts. I can refer you to Plato’s Phaedrus or Phaedo for that.
The Forms (from Plato’s Republic amongst other places), are more Fundamental than a Soul, yet it too has a problem.
The Forms are a Multiplicity contained within a Divine Mind. It doesn’t possess that overarching sense of Unity.
This places the “One” outside of the Realm of what is Intelligible and Knowable.
It also explains why human language ultimately fails in trying to “speak about” God. We can call God “Good”, or “Righteous,” or “Beautiful,” but these terms do not completely encompass God’s nature or to use an Aristotlean term, his Essence.
To put it bluntly, they are just labels by which our tiny monkey brains attach to the “Being that is Like No Other.”
We are extrapolating very Human qualities onto something that well beyond us.
This is why some of our saints cans say “God’s love is not human love.”
