Existence of God by motion? Hard to believe

[Questioning_1]

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Thelogica states in his first proof for the existence of God to be that of Motion.

I am really having a hard time understanding this concept how it relates to an ontological/metaphysical understanding of the existence of a Divine Creator.

Thomas says, “for motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuallity.” Is God potentiality or actuality?

I think i have heard it said before that God is pure act what does that mean and what does that have to do with motion?

 

[Pier]

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Thelogica states in his first proof for the existence of God to be that of Motion.

I am really having a hard time understanding this concept how it relates to an ontological/metaphysical understanding of the existence of a Divine Creator.

Thomas says, “for motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuallity.” Is God potentiality or actuality?

I think i have heard it said before that God is pure act what does that mean and what does that have to do with motion?

I can’t speak for St. Thomas, but you’re in the right place to get the answers to many of your questions…

Want to leave you a link that may also be helpful to you:

phatcatholic.blogspot.com/

God bless you!

 

[RobNY]

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Thelogica states in his first proof for the existence of God to be that of Motion.

I am really having a hard time understanding this concept how it relates to an ontological/metaphysical understanding of the existence of a Divine Creator.

Thomas says, “for motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuallity.” Is God potentiality or actuality?

I think i have heard it said before that God is pure act what does that mean and what does that have to do with motion?

Motion doesn’t mean just ‘locomotion.’ Locomotion is when an object goes from point A to point B. Motion, in the Aristotelian-Thomist sense, means all change.

One Thomist work to look at might be ‘On Being and Essence.’ That is, to glean more ideas about what Thomas means about God being pure act.

If you want to understand the arguments from motion better, I recommend reading Aristotle’s exposition of the proof in his Physics, which will give you the context that you lack here.

-Rob

 

[Questioning_1]

I can’t speak for St. Thomas, but you’re in the right place to get the answers to many of your questions…

Want to leave you a link that may also be helpful to you:

phatcatholic.blogspot.com/

God bless you!

Thank you i went to the site but couldn’t find much on there concerning philosophy or Aquinas

 

[cpayne]

Thomas says, “for motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuallity.” Is God potentiality or actuality?

I think i have heard it said before that God is pure act what does that mean and what does that have to do with motion?

Yes, God is described by Thomas as Pure Act, in a way that none of the rest of creation can be. All of creation has some measure of potentiality; i.e., it can change or have “motion.” It can decline or it can improve or it can merely change in some way. If something were absolutely perfect, it would have no way to improve. Also, if it were perfect, there would be nothing that could cause it to decline. It would be absolutely unchanging and therefore possess NO POTENTIAL AT ALL. The only way to describe such a being would be as Pure Actuality, with no potential.

Another way to put it is like this: I have potential for many things. I am potentially smarter, not as smart, heavier, lighter, older, healthier, not as healthy, no longer living, and so on. So whatever I am NOW, I am not that thing absolutely or always.

Whatever God is NOW, God is that absolutely and always: no potential, pure Actuality, in other words. By the way, this is also what is meant by the description of God as Active Intellect.

The biblical description corresponding to this is found in James: God is “The Father of Lights, in Whom is no variability nor shadow of turning.” He has no potential to vary, being already perfect.

 

[Benedict_Broere]

Hello Q,

The argument ‘motion’ is maybe hard te believe, but just look at what scientists are telling us:
13.7 billion years ago there was a huge release of energy (Big Bang) and almost immediately after that this energy turned very orderly (Anthropic Principle) into specific forces, quarks, atoms, molecules, to develop further into star-systems, stars and planets, for making it possible, one step further, for life to emerge on at least this planet Earth, resulting in the appearance of creative organisms, of which man most stand out in being a culture-creating ‘creature’, pondering on for instance the meaning of life. And all this went on against the all permeating force of decay (Second Law of Thermodynamics), suggesting a persistent drive to grow in complexity, towards an evermore interesting, alive and richly varied universe. Is there a God or anything like that responsible, out there, within us, somewhere ? Left aside any mystical experience one might have or not, my logical brain almost cries out in saying: Yes!

 

[Questioning_1]

Yes, God is described by Thomas as Pure Act, in a way that none of the rest of creation can be. All of creation has some measure of potentiality; i.e., it can change or have “motion.” It can decline or it can improve or it can merely change in some way. If something were absolutely perfect, it would have no way to improve. Also, if it were perfect, there would be nothing that could cause it to decline. It would be absolutely unchanging and therefore possess NO POTENTIAL AT ALL. The only way to describe such a being would be as Pure Actuality, with no potential.

So just to get it straight–

We are motion

We are not perfect seeing if we were, there would be no chance of decline or improvement
and
if we were perfect there would be no potential

Only God is perfect and has no potentiality.

–Say more on God as act and his potency–

 

[Pete_1]

ok, i will try help (i have limited knowledge on this )

A plant is** actually** green
It is potentially yellow (if it is starved of light)

For something to be brought from potentiality into actuality it needs something already in actuality to do this.

E.g a block of wood is potentially a wooden rabbit but for it to be made inot one it needs an **actual **carver to do the work not a potential carver.

So before the universe exisited it was potentially a universe, it needed a creator already in act i.e God to bring the universe from potentiallity into **actuality.

Therefore if the universe has not always exisited (this is impossible) it must have been created by a creator that was in actuality at the time.
**
im adding more…

 

[Pete_1]

We see in nature that there are degrees of perfection i.e sewage smells worse than flowers, one man is ‘gooder than another’. Therese degrees of perfection imply a perfect being one that is pure act, not potentially good , but one that is good. Therefore, God is infinatley:
Mercyfull
Good
powerfull
omnipotent
omnipresent.
etc.

God can not be for example mercyless as this would imply limits to his mercy (mercylessness is the absence of mercy) and therefore God would be only potentially mercyfull.

I hope this helps could someone still clarify why God must exist today?

 

[ilovekittens]

Therefore if the universe has not always exisited (this is impossible)

im adding more…

Why is that impossible?

 

[Questioning_1]

But what exactly is motion here and where does it fit in?

Am I the only one who is struggling with this idea?

 

[Pete_1]

Motion is the movement from potentiallity into actuality

i think

 

[Pete_1]

for something to move into actuality(eg a statue) from potentiality(a block of marble) it needs something already in act to do this( a craftsman):

At the beginnning of the universe the universe was moved from nothing(potentially a universe) into actually a universe by God (who was already in act)

 

[Pete_1]

Why is that impossible?

Matter in the universe is constantly being brought into and out of existance (i think this is true), i.e it is finite, therefore the universe (which is composed of matter) is not infinate.

That’s the best i could come up with, i read a much better argument somewhere but i could not remember it hahaha.

 

[cpayne]

Aquinas actually proceeded on the Aristotelian assumption that the universe HAD always existed and did not come into existence.

It still needs a creator because it changes (which, Questioning, is a better way to think of motion). Because the universe is changeable, in motion, contingent in its existence, it needs a Necessary Cause even to exist today. So perhaps a better way to think of creation is as an ongoing process—if God didn’t continually exist, as the cause of the universe, the universe would not continue to exist.

Earlier, Questioning, you had asked for more on God as active intellect with no potential. Okay, look at it this way: Because God has no potential, everything He is He is absolutely and eternally, in a way nothing else could be. So I might be loving, wise, and strong (occasionally), but I have the potential to change and I also cannot be those things absolutely. Since God cannot change and has no potential, if He is loving, wise, and strong, He is also Love, Wisdom, and Strength—all of which the Bible uses to describe God (God is love, God is my strength, etc.). As Love, God has no potential to become “more loving.”

You ask about motion. Let’s think of it as change, which is how Aquinas thinks of it. All things changeable require something to move that change, from Potential change to Actual change (as Pete just posted). The thing that moves the change must itself be Actual.

Here’s the key: The universe, being changeable and contingent, might not exist. Yet here we see it existing, in its moving, changeable, contingent character. So the universe itself requires an Actual cause that moved it from Potentiality to actually existing (as it does now). The cause has to be outside the natural universe, even if the natural universe has always existed.

This necessary, actually existing with no potential, unchanging, non-natural cause, Aquinas concludes, is what we call God.

 

[Doug50]

Why is that impossible?

It’s the space/time problem. All motion in the universe exists in time. You can’t have an infinate time into the past since you could never get to the present. Time must have had a begin. Time can exist into the future. You can have an eternal universe with time into the future but tha’s not the same as infinate time.
windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/Eternal.html

What’s the fate of the universe based upon current evidence? It’s going to be a cold dark place as stars burn out from using up the availabe hydrogen…even black holes will disapear. We are currently in the “matter era” of the universe but even matter won’t remain since it will decay…even blace holes will evaporate.

kheper.net/cosmos/universe/universe.htm

 

[Benedict_Broere]

“All motion in the universe exists in time.”

I always thought that the time-space-vacume comes with matter and that if there is no matter, that than there wouldn’t be any time-space (Relativity Theory).

Concerning the future of the universe most models (Big Crunch or Big Stretch) leave out creatures like us: creative organisms. There is also the possibility of Omega (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).

I also would like to add that traditional God-proof these days mostly is considered anachronistic, while just looking at the behaviour of the universe even gives someone like Richard Dawkins the notion that there is more to it than just matter moving about (at least this latter I saw passing by while surfing on the internet lately).

 

[Questioning_1]

Aquinas actually proceeded on the Aristotelian assumption that the universe HAD always existed and did not come into existence.

This necessary, actually existing with no potential, unchanging, non-natural cause, Aquinas concludes, is what we call God.

Aquinas took most of this idea of a prexistant universe from Aristotle? So what exactly did Aristotle say about this?

What did he say about the universe?
Motion?
Cause and effect?

 

[bogeydogg]

The idea of motion, as has been stated already, is that everything changes. The idea is that since everything changes it must have a source which does not change.

You were born some time in the past. You will die some time in the future. During that time you will change, you are not constant and neither are you self-existent. You require air, water, food, etc. to support your life and therefore you cannot exist under your own power. That is you cannot attribute your existence to your own ability to exist. The side effect of this is that you change and one day you will not exist anymore, at least not in this form.

OK?

Since you began to exist you must have a cause (parents) and if your parents began to exist then they must also have a cause, and so forth. However the progression of causality cannot be infinite because infinity does not exist in reality because nothing can be quantified in an infinite series.

For example. If I have an infite number of M&M’s and I gave you all the green ones then you would have an infinite number of green M&M’s and I would still have an infinite number of the others. Therefore Infinity/x = infinity. It’s an absurd postulation.

Also consider the mathematical equation for infinity. lets us say that ‘m’ = any real (positive) number.

m/0 = infinity. Since nothing multiplied by zero can equal a real number then anything divided by zero is infinite. However let’s balance the equation.

0(m/0) = 0(infinity)
the answer you get is m=0, which again is an absurdity.

OK?

Since you cannot exist apart from a supporting ecosystem and you began to exist and you change and someday you will cease to exist, then you must owe your existance to an anticedent cause and the series of causes cannot be infinite therefore there must be a First Cause. This Cause must have the power of existence within its own being (ontology) and it must be within itself self-existent. If such a being were self-existent then it would never die because it would exist under it’s own power. It also would never have begun to exist because then it would owe its own existence to something else and therefore would not be self existent. It also could not have created itself because then one would postulate that it would have been it’s own anticedent cause, that is it would have existed before it existed, and that is not possible.

OK?

So, since you change and do no exist under your own power, then the power to exist lies outside of you or anything else which changes. This power therefore must exist within a being who is self existent and St. Thomas postulated that such a Being is the First Cause, God.

Clear as mud?

 

[Questioning_1]

So what Thomas is basically saying is if everything in the world of experience is changing ie. in motion.

and that change consists from non existent being to potency to actuality,

that change from potency to actuality requires something in act to explain it than there must be something purely in act with no potential that is the cause and source of all motion ultimately.

equaling God???

???