God has no potentiality - so He can't take on a human nature?

[StAugustine]

This is why we go by Church Fathers. A unanimous tradition of interpretation in the lived context of the Church is a sign of the direction God wants you to go in your understanding.

 

[Lucretius]

Saint Thomas understands God to be incomprehensible to creatures because God is infinitely knowable, and finite minds cannot contain and exhaust him.

We might say this is like looking at a thing and then every time we blink we see something completely different and new, or like looking at an image with infinite depth, a fractal but as novel as it is repetitious. Among infinite other analogies, all incomplete, even when taken together.

Remember what Chesterton wrote: the poet tries to get his head into the heavens; the logician tries to get the heavens into his head, and his head splits.

Christi pax.

 

[TOmNossor]

My reason for rejecting pantheism is similar to my reason for being sceptical of the hypostatic union: God has no potentialities.
A form of pantheism holds that God is the changeless soul of the changing universe, which is his body. But I reject this because God’s lack of potentialities makes this impossible.
Now I know that the hypostatic union is very different to pantheism, but it’s the same principle: surely He can’t take on a human nature.
Prove me wrong.

I am a thorough going heretic, but I think you are correct.
Here is what Eastern Orthodox scholar Jaroslav Pelikan said:

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) pp. 22
In Judaism it was possible simultaneously to ascribe change of purpose to God and to declare that God did not change, without resolving the paradox; for the immutability of God was seen as the trustworthiness of his covenanted relation to his people in the concrete history of his judgment and mercy, rather than as a primarily ontological category. But in the development of the Christian doctrine of God, immutability assumed the status of an axiomatic presupposition for the discussion of other doctrines.

I think the view that God is immutable (if God is “pure act” with no potentiality He is immutable) is the root of the contradictions you see. I just reject God’s ABSOLUTE immutability.
Timelessness can help some. The IMMUTABLE God just is the unchanging being who was hypostatically united to the human nature born of the virgin Mary. All that happened to the God/man was already part of the GOD nature.
This of course leads to an ABSOLUTE determinism in our universe. Everything that happened during the incarnation COULD HAVE HAPPENED no other way. Indeed my status as a heretic and the Catholicism of others on this thread COULD BE NO OTHER WAY. The being of God knows every act that I will perform, every belief I will hold, and my ultimate destiny in Heaven or Hell or ???.
God can be TIMELESS and IMMUTABLE, but ONLY if we are absolutely determined in everything we do. This is Calvinism of steroids, but it is IMO the only way God can eternally know everything and thus never learn/respond to real humans making real choices.
Molina’s middle knowledge largely aligns with this. God knows how all those He created will respond to EVERY situation AND He brings about the creation KNOWING all the middle knowledge and how it will all play out.
I am not a fan of this view, but if God is immutable, He is the traffic sign, but an omnipotent traffic sign that knows if you will Stop or obey the speedlimit The universe is about our reaction to the signs, but our reaction 100% a product of our DNA, out birth circumstances, and every experience we had from our time in the womb until any given future “decision.” God knows the results because of His perfect middle knowledge

Charity, TOm

 

[Lucretius]

One way we can understand saint Thomas’ doctrine of analogy is by relating it to an understanding of sacred art.

Our senses are five tiny windows into a vast reality. There is much of reality we do not see directly, but only indirectly through signs given to the senses. We don’t see the nature of things, but we know about them through its expression.

I understand the nature of water, for example, by observing the structure of the atoms that make up its molecules, how its molecules interact with one another, and how water behaves, including in tightly controlled circumstances.

Another example is in how we humans communicate. We can’t see someone’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions, but we can see their behaviors and hear their words, and by relating them to how our own thoughts, feelings, and intentions relate to our speech and actions, we can communicate through these signals.

Now, it is more difficult to know God than to know inanimate objects or even other humans, as God greatly transcends all these things. He transcends then so much that, even though he can still communicate through signs, through his reflection or likeness in creatures, these signs are much deeper and vaster and subtle than anything else.

God himself uses people, historical events, nations, feelings, artifacts, nature, etc. to communicate himself with, to reveal himself to, us, the consummation of this spirit being Jesus Christ himself.

Sacred art is simply an attempt by human art to present Divine realities to our minds through the senses. Sacred art is the incarnation of the Divine in human art.

Saying we understand God through analogy is simply to say we understand lofty, invisible realities through lower, visible ones. Saying we understand God through analogy is simply to say we understand God and his nature through the man Jesus Christ.

Christi pax.

 

[Lucretius]

How would you characterize absolute immutability, and how does it differ from what you believe? That is, what is the proper understanding of Divine immutability?

If the Church’s understanding of God is deterministic and static, then how is it that our sacred art is extremely dynamic and free? Have you ever seen the Sistine Chapel?

For saint Thomas, pure act, immutiblity means that God is perfect, that he is complete and whole, that he lacks no perfection.

Now, I’m not sure what you mean by absolute immutiblity, but as I hinted at in an earlier post on this thread, our understanding of immutiblity has to transcend the image of an heavy, stationary rock. I used the example of soul: soul acts on body (that is, physical matter) in a way that is neither mechanical nor interactive, and so soul is active in a way that mere physical matter isn’t. My will can move my hand, but moving my hand cannot move my will.

What we really trying to say is not that God can’t do anything new or freely, because he is merely like an unmovable, stationary rock, but that God is the most free and novel because he doesn’t have to be moved and obtain a perfection. Mind is more active than soul, and God is more active than mind. And yet, as we can see in the world, soul is less movable than matter, and yet living things are far more dynamic and free in their activity than mere matter, higher animals more so, and humans degrees of magnitude even more so than both.

God is the extreme of this hierarchy, so active that he simply doesn’t need to be moved to be perfect, and yet he is the most dynamic, to the point that he has two processions, and free, to the point he can create ex nihilo

We have to remember that immutibility, pure act isn’t to be understood as a lack, but as a transcendence of lack. Instead of heavy rocks, a better image in this instance might be a heavy storm, or a great wave: who can move the flow of the wind gust? Who can resist the rush of the water? They move us like we weigh nothing, yet what kind of power can we move them with? These metaphors are closer to the concrete meaning of the Greek energia, the Latin actus, even the English activity: as Chastek says, God is immutiblity because he is activity than anything, because he is more alive than us.

I recommend reflecting on the ideas expressed in these articles:

The Divine Immutability as Negative, not Privative

D. W. Congdon recently objected to St. Thomas’ account of divine immutabilty (ht: Siris) Perhaps the most telling failure in Thomas’ presentation of divine immutability is the inability of th…

thomism.wordpress.com

Augustine’s account of the immobility of God

Augustine understood the immutability or unchangeability of God to follow from God’s perfect truth. Book IV of De trinitate gives a good number of proof texts: [T]he essence of God, whereby H…

thomism.wordpress.com

Is natural theology necessary, given revelation?

Christian revelation implies a natural theology so far as God chose to reveal himself through terms that already had meanings. The words “Lord” and “God”, for example, were …

thomism.wordpress.com

I also recommend my Disqus post on approaching eternity (timelessness). I recommend them because I think “timelessness” can be misleading, as if God being timeless meant that he has none of the perfection of time, including the freedom of the present, as well as the determination of the past, and the potential of the future.

https://disqus.com/home/channel/glo...s_it_contradict_logically/#comment-3907367205

Christi pax.

 

[AlNg]

How would you characterize absolute immutability,

For one thing, I would suppose that absolute immutability would mean that God would not be going around changing His Mind, as the Bible indicates that He did.

 

[TOmNossor]

Lucretius,
Thank you for your response.
I read the first 3 links and have some comments that I hope to share eventually.
Your disqus . com link didn’t work for me.

I believe that when the Bible claims God is unchangeable it means what it meant to the early Jews and early Christians that God is absolutely faithful to His covenants (see my quote from Pelikan). We can rely 100% on God to be faithful. We can count on His love. He does not waiver like we do. He does not rebel like we do.

I agree with @AINg that the Bible speaks of God changing. I consider it somewhat beautiful that the Old Testament prophets interact with God and God is SO OPEN to their (name removed by moderator)ut that His plans are changed (that is what the Bible says and I do not consider divine immutability to be MORE VALUABLE than genuine Divine-human interactions).

I hope to interact with your links and more of your questions later. And can you get the disqus to work.
Charity, TOm

 

[HarryStotle]

Lucretius:

Having no potential means not being moved by anything

Do our prayers move God to help us ?

Perhaps your prayers move you to be helped by God who is the Pure Act of Existence Itself?

Analogically, like a plant opening itself to the light of the Sun, perhaps?

 

[AlNg]

Perhaps your prayers move you to be helped by God who is the Pure Act of Existence Itself?

Analogically, like a plant opening itself to the light of the Sun, perhaps?

So, after hearing our prayers, God does help us?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Perhaps your prayers move you to be helped by God who is the Pure Act of Existence Itself?

Analogically, like a plant opening itself to the light of the Sun, perhaps?

So, after hearing our prayers, God does help us?

God helps us even before we pray. In fact, we pray because God has helped us, and we become more disposed to accept and act on God’s help because he first helped us.

The key question is one of accepting God’s help which is being poured out upon us constantly, like the sunlight. Problem is we keep heading for the shady places because of our lack of courage, lack of fortitude and apathy, but God’s help is always available.

God has literally turned himself into food for us. So your question is like asking whether food helps us to properly live out our lives after we eat it.

 

[Lucretius]

I don’t think the Church, or at least saint Thomas, understood Divine immutiblity to mean that God cannot “change his mind.” What he understands immutiblity to mean is that Abraham, Moses, Christ’s humanity, the saints, or any creature, don’t have any knowledge or ability exterior to God that can act on God and make him change his mind or will.

This is why I used the image of a strong wind or wave: what power can change their direction? Immutibility isn’t a defect in God, but his very strength and wisdom.

Did Abraham or Moses (I mention them because their intercessions seem to be the greatest examples of what you speak) use some sort of power on God to change his mind, or did Abraham and Moses bring to light to the Father something already within God?

Abraham’s and Moses’ intercession for mercy reveals how much they began to prehend God not as mere justice, but as mercy and love. Christ’s perfect intercession indicates he comprehends God, completely understands him, which is another way of saying he is God.

If we understand intercession like this, instead of it contradicting immutiblity, it gives us rather a glimpse of what it is like to participate in the Divine Life, and how deeply we are in and will be involved in God’s own conversation with and within himself. The Father converses with the Son while they converse with and in the Spirit, and we sons of God converse to the Father, like the Son and through the Son, while enlightened by, empowered with, and dwelling in unity with, the Spirit. There’s a reason the most ancient prayers of the Church, all the way up to the Eucharist pray in the contemporary Mass of Blessed Paul VI, are addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

Abraham, Moses, and the saints are then like mirrors through which God sees his mercy reflected. While Abraham, Moses, and the saints are made in God’s Image, and in this sense reflect it, Christ is that Image, the fullness of God, in which they were made. Intercession and prayer are something like God reflecting on himself, begetting his Image, seeing the Son, and by extension those made through the Son, in the Son, made in his Image, the saints. Prayer isn’t us acting upon God’s mind or will, but rather us partaking in God’s own thinking through his Son, and loving by his Spirit: prayer is sharing in God’s interior life.

Rather than contradicting the doctrine of immutiblity, the beauty you see can only be understood through the doctrine! If there is anything wrong with your comment, it is that you say this is only “somewhat” beautiful…

Christi pax.

 

[Lucretius]

According to my computer, there is nothing wrong with the Disqus link. What comes up when you click it?

Here’s another article you might want to reflect on too: Siris: Aquinas & Immutability

Don’t forget about those comments you promised: you better be as immutable with your promises as God is with his

Christi pax.

 

[StAugustine]

No God cannot Change his mind. If he did it would mean he went from imperfection to perfection, from a lesser Good to a higher good, from a bad idea to a good idea, and this is incompatible with perfection in God.

Every single tragedy in your life was not a plan b. Work that out!

 

[Lucretius]

I agree, God cannot change his mind in the sense he can learn something he didn’t know before.

Saint Thomas does says though there are some ways we can speak of God “moving:”

Augustine there speaks in a similar way to Plato, who said that the first mover moves Himself; calling every operation a movement, even as the acts of understanding, and willing, and loving, are called movements. Therefore because God understands and loves Himself, in that respect they said that Godmoves Himself, not, however, as movement and change belong to a thing existing in potentiality, as we now speak of change and movement.

(Summa Theologiae, the First Part, Question 9, Article 1, reply to Objection 1: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1009.htm#article1)

If we understand the intercessions of Abraham and Moses and the saints as I outlined above, we could say that they move God insofar as God is moved by his Son, his conceived Image, and the saints share in this motion in being made in and dwelling in the Image of God, sons in the Son. This is why St. Paul says God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.

Christi pax.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

St. Thomas Aquinas absolutely did believe that God was entirely immutable.

On the contrary, It is written, “I am the Lord, and I change not” (Malachi 3:6).

I answer that, From what precedes, it is shown that God is altogether immutable.

First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.

Summa Theologiae Part 1. Question 9. Article 1.

 

[StAugustine]

Basically God has his synergistic moments. And monergistic. Without contradiction! I agree.

 

[Lucretius]

What I’m dispelling is the idea that God being immutiblity means that God is like stationary rock. Immutiblity is also dynamic. Immutibility is better visualized like a powerful, unresistible wind, in my opinion.

I’m also dispelling the notion that immutiblity means that our prayers are not real conversation with God, as if sharing in the Divine Life meant being pasted on top of God, instead of us sharing in the conversation of truth and love between the Father and Son in the Spirit.

All we have to remember here is that this conversation and “movement” doesn’t involve something being added to God, or involve God learning something be didn’t know, or some power acting on God from without. Or, to use the traditional language, movement in God cannot involve passive potential reducing to act. Or at least, it is what I tried to convey:

God has no potentiality - so He can't take on a human nature? Philosophy

I agree, God cannot change his mind in the sense he can learn something he didn’t know before. Saint Thomas does says though there are some ways we can speak of God “moving:” Augustine there speaks in a similar way to Plato, who said that the first mover moves Himself; calling every operation a movement, even as the acts of understanding, and willing, and loving, are called movements. Therefore because God understands and loves Himself, in that respect they said that Godmoves Himself, not, how…

Christi pax.

 

[Benadam]

I think you are right about Pantheism’s concept.That it is unreasonable. The idea that creation is reformed God stuff doesn’t square with the meaning of the word as it pertains to creating all that is.

I think a creation absent of the freedom to reject it’s hypostatic union with God would make the idea reasonable. No self determined creatures.determining themselves to not be the creature God intended.

With the union of divine and human natures the freedom to self determine is immutable. Divine will doesn’t cooperate, per sey with mutable human will but presents to the human will a virtue that the human will is attracted to and is always submissive and determined to be what God intends. God’s will as pure act as it was in the Person of Jesus is not fettered by potential reduction. The fundamental purpose of every act of a being in a state of potential is to reduce it’s potential end to actualize it’s ultimate end. To bring potential being into actual being.

There was no potential to reduce to act for Jesus. Jesus freedom to will wasn’t fettered by a need to actualize potential. He wasn’t fettered by the need to fulfill an ultimate end in God but to fulfill His purpose as God. His will was immutable and His freedom was pure act. There was no becoming this or that, He was not determining Himself as a human would be He was not a self determined being He is determined being. All these attributes that humans may possess are what God is and that was true with Jesus. He didn’t come to be our savior, He came as our Savior. The human nature assumed by God the Son as it’s life principle, was immutable perfected growth determined rather than being determined perfected rather than perfecting.

A soul assumed by God is beatified and Glorified. This is fulfilled human life and it’s intended and ultimate end in immutable life with God. This is the human soul of Jesus when He was conceived.

Divine Nature assumed human nature and human nature meets it’s immutable pure act with God

 

[TOmNossor]

Your non-working link has worked! I am not sure what MY problem was.

I don’t think the Church, or at least saint Thomas, understood Divine immutiblity to mean that God cannot “change his mind.”

I think a few folks have disagreed with this already. Aquinas takes the scriptures where God changes his mind and claims this is just our human way of understanding, but that God’s will never changes. It is not that we cannot change God’s will just as we cannot change the direction the wind blows, it is that God’s will doesn’t change. I believe God’s eternal will concerning His covenantal faithfulness never changes, but that in GENUINE response to His children He changes His plans. And He does not change His plans like a computer program responds to different (name removed by moderator)uts from different people, but like a person in dynamic relationship with their beloved.

When I read that God’s immutability is not intended to make God a “rock,” I have no problem with this. God is dynamic in ways that a rock is not within Aquinas and Molina.

However, when I read that “immutability is not intended as privation,” I see basketball players and jockeys. One might say that size of a typical jockey is not privation so they would be great basketball players because they possess all extraordinary physical characteristics, but this is not true.

One might say it is “mystery,” but I do not see sufficient value in absolute immutability. I admire St. Teresa and Pope John Paul II a great deal. 20 years ago (when they were alive), my faith that St. Teresa and JPII would not conspire to form a brothel was certain. While St. Teresa and JPII were not immutable and they (IMO) could change and were physically capable of forming a brothel, I do not need to postulate that they are immutable to have complete and total faith they would not. God, Father/Son/Holy Spirit, has shown Himself to be far more worthy of my faith than St. Teresa and JPII. God’s immutability is IMO a philosophical response to a lack of faith. God could be the size of a jockey and have speed and jumping abilities that more than make up for His size on the basketball court, but I should not claim that God has the size of a typical jockey and the size of a typical basketball player.

I am sure my basketball player and jockey analogy has holes, but I hope it makes sense.

Charity, TOm

 

[Lucretius]

I believe God’s eternal will concerning His covenantal faithfulness never changes, but that in GENUINE response to His children He changes His plans.

I’m not sure, though, what you understand of God’s immutablity to be, and how that is opposed to what you call the “absolute immutablity” of the Fathers and saint Thomas.

Or to put it another way, can you give examples of God changing?

However, when I read that “immutability is not intended as privation,” I see basketball players and jockeys. One might say that size of a typical jockey is not privation so they would be great basketball players because they possess all extraordinary physical characteristics, but this is not true.

I’m not sure how your analogy critiques the doctrine of Divine immutablity. When we say that immutablity is not a privation, we mean that immutablity is a perfection. We mean that God doesn’t change in the sense that he learns something he didn’t know before, or he obtained some perfection he didn’t have before. In other words, immutablity just means that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect, and not only that he has perfection (where this perfection is alienable from his being), but he is perfection.

You keep focusing on how God relates to us in the order of salvation, but the first questions for the theologian, which immutablity is the answer for, are questions about God’s omniscient, omnipotence, and perfection. To say that God is absolutely immutable then is to say that God is absolutely wise, or absolutely powerful, or absolutely perfect. I don’t think you disagree with God being these qualities though.

Now, that said, St. Thomas does say that there are ways we can talk about God moving, which I cite in a post I linked below. I recommend looking at it, because it helps better understand what I’m trying to say about immutablity’s relation to intercession, and how God really is moved by us, but in a way that isn’t in conflict with what saint Thomas means by immutablity: God has no potentiality - so He can't take on a human nature? - #96 by Lucretius

I have another question: what do you think of St. Paul’s theology in how salvation and mercy is a grace, unmerited?

Christi pax.