God cannot be pure actual and prime mover

[STT]

Pure actual cannot be prime mover since there is no potentiality left in Existence who is Him, God, to create.

 

[Kei]

Undergoing change is not what is essential to acting. What is essential is “bringing out an effect in another”.
I can be said to teach regardless if I just type stuff out on a keyboard online or give a lecture.

While in our experience, act is done with change (ie moving fingers or talking, respectively), to apply the same to all things is a fallacy of accident.

 

[Wesrock]

I agree with Kei.

There is also a difference between passive potency in God (that God could be other) and active potency (that God could have done other). There is active potency in God, but not passive potency. God remains immutable, though, because a change in God’s intellect or will would be a change in God’s passive potency. To see that, recall that God’s divine simplicity means that his intellect is his will is his essence, a change in the will would be a change to God’s essence.

 

[STT]

How Existence cannot have passive potency?

 

[Vico]

Pure actual cannot be prime mover since there is no potentiality left in Existence who is Him, God, to create.

God (pure act, i.e., absolute perfection): actuality precedes potentiality.
Creature: potentiality precedes that of actuality.

 

[STT]

Why actuality precedes potentiality in case of God and how that is related to OP?

 

[Vico]

Why actuality precedes potentiality in case of God and how that is related to OP?

Because God is pure actuality. Something that is potential is something that has not yet come to be.
It relates to the OP because the claim is that there can be no potentiality left. The would mean nothing could be created.

 

[STT]

Because God is pure actuality. Something that is potential is something that has not yet come to be.
It relates to the OP because the claim is that there can be no potentiality left. The would mean nothing could be created.

I see what do you mean with precede. And yes, there is no potentiality in Existence therefore there should be no possibility to create, no motion, etc.

 

[Usagi]

“God is existence” is a true statement in that God is the underlying foundation of all being. But there are (created) things that exist and are not themselves God. Those can and do have potential and motion.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

Because God is pure actuality. Something that is potential is something that has not yet come to be.
It relates to the OP because the claim is that there can be no potentiality left. The would mean nothing could be created.

I see what do you mean with precede. And yes, there is no potentiality in Existence therefore there should be no possibility to create, no motion, etc.

God brings things into existence from nothing.

 

[Wesrock]

Vico:

Because God is pure actuality. Something that is potential is something that has not yet come to be.
It relates to the OP because the claim is that there can be no potentiality left. The would mean nothing could be created.

I see what do you mean with precede. And yes, there is no potentiality in Existence therefore there should be no possibility to create, no motion, etc.

The Prime Mover puts other things in motion without moving himself.

 

[STT]

“God is existence” is a true statement in that God is the underlying foundation of all being. But there are (created) things that exist and are not themselves God. Those can and do have potential and motion.

God is not Existence if there are created things.

 

[STT]

Here, I am talking about a contradiction. If God is Existence then there should be nothing but Him. That is must be true since Existence is exhaustive. Therefore He cannot be prime mover. Prime Mover is only an acceptable concept if we believe that Prime Mover is not Existence so there a room for created things.

 

[Wesrock]

Here, I am talking about a contradiction. If God is Existence then there should be nothing but Him. That is must be true since Existence is exhaustive. Therefore He cannot be prime mover. Prime Mover is only an acceptable concept if we believe that Prime Mover is not Existence so there a room for created things.

All things that exist, by the mere fact that they do exist, participate in God, who is Subsistent Being, and instantiate a limited (conditioned) mode of existence. All things but God don’t have different types of existence itself, but are merely existence with an additional limiting factor (the essence). The difference between creature and God is not in the principle of existence but in their principle of essence.

 

[Usagi]

As I was trying to say in that last post, “God is Existence” is intended to mean “God is the principle by which things exist,” not “God is the only thing that exists.”

 

[Vico]

…
God is not Existence if there are created things.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Existence

Whatever has reality of its own and not merely in potency or in the powers of its causes. That which really is. The fundamental actuality of any being insofar as it is being; it is the being in act. Thus the act of being, or the act of existence by which a substance or an essence is and not only may or can be. It corresponds to the scholastic term esse, namely that something is, and not merely essentia , or what it is.