God passing over people

[Rohzek]

As for the topic of this thread, an old book I have quotes Duns Scotus as follows, allegedly saying that God can force something to convert: “Deus potest de potential sua facere Unum et non creare aliud, et ita expellere culpam etsi non infundat gratiam et e converso”

I know a little Latin, but I don’t recognize a couple words their so I don’t know that full meaning of this. I doubt Scotus was a Jansenist.

God is able to make One from his ?power? and [unable] to create another, and thus expel blame; although he may not infuse grace and conversely.

I don’t recognize “potential.” You sure you didn’t misspell it?

As for the meaning, I have no idea. I may have butchered my reading of it.

 

[thinkandmull]

Oh I get it. Scotus and some nominalists believed God can give take someone’s sin away and even give them the beatific vision without a state of grace. Conversely? I don’t see how mortal sin is possible with grace, that is, I see this as a direct contradiction. However, Scotus is highly respected. This just shows, although I disagree with him, that much is left for people to speculate on. Scholastic textbooks like to leave Latin phrases untranslated to give the appearance of great knowledge, when most of what they say is not hard to understand

 

[Vico]

The quotes you provided specifically defined simple as indivisible. You are adding scholastic meaning to it. God is not necessarily as unchangeable as you may think. Sure He can’t turn evil or divide into something lower, but I think He is a highly emotional being, not some static pure act or whatever. Also, when the Church doesn’t offer an explanation for a term we are free to take it as we wish. Some mystics see God as an every revolving being of goodness, like colors constantly passing into each other. If you prefer a single white light, that’s your right. But with ecumenism the Church is not condemning the East for example for believing God has light surrounding Him as an accident.

Unchanging means remaining the same, but simple means not composite. They are different words and meanings.

The two you highlighted before refer to being one in essence: “essence, substance, or nature entirely simple” and “since the substance of the Father is indivisible, namely, simple”.

I am referring to “Firmly we believe and we confess simply that the true God is one alone, eternal, immense, and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent and ineffable” …

James 1:17 Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.

 

[Vico]

Unchanging means remaining the same, but simple means not composite. They are different words and meanings.

The two you highlighted before refer to being one in essence: “essence, substance, or nature entirely simple” and “since the substance of the Father is indivisible, namely, simple”.

I am referring to “Firmly we believe and we confess simply that the true God is one alone, eternal, immense, and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent and ineffable” …

James 1:17 Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.

I should add that the dogma of faith for this is that God is absolutely immutable.

Also see:

Psalm 10128 But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.
Malachi 36 For I am the Lord, and I change not: and you the sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Origen, C. Celts I
Chapter 21

The following is the view of Celsus and the Epicureans: Moses having, he says, learned the doctrine which is to be found existing among wise nations and eloquent men, obtained the reputation of divinity. Now, in answer to this we have to say, that it may be allowed him that Moses did indeed hear a somewhat ancient doctrine, and transmitted the same to the Hebrews; that if the doctrine which he heard was false, and neither pious nor venerable, and if notwithstanding, he received it and handed it down to those under his authority, he is liable to censure; but if, as you assert, he gave his adherence to opinions that were wise and true, and educated his people by means of them, what, pray, has he done deserving of condemnation? Would, indeed, that not only Epicurus, but Aristotle, whose sentiments regarding providence are not so impious (as those of the former), and the Stoics, who assert that God is a body, had heard such a doctrine! Then the world would not have been filled with opinions which either disallow or enfeeble the action of providence, or introduce a corrupt corporeal principle, according to which the god of the Stoics is a body, with respect to whom they are not afraid to say that he is capable of change, and may be altered and transformed in all his parts, and, generally, that he is capable of corruption, if there be any one to corrupt him, but that he has the good fortune to escape corruption, because there is none to corrupt. Whereas the doctrine of the Jews and Christians, which preserves the immutability and unalterableness of the divine nature, is stigmatized as impious, because it does not partake of the profanity of those whose notions of God are marked by impiety, but because it says in the supplication addressed to the Divinity, You are the same, it being, moreover, an article of faith that God has said, I change not.

newadvent.com/fathers/0416.htm

 

[thinkandmull]

God can be unchangeable in one sense and yet not in another. Your position is un-ecumenical. Since the Church says “since the substance of the Father is indivisible, namely, simple”, we believe that God cannot divide his nature like a worm, for example, that splits off into two new bodies. That statement has nothing to do with Eastern Christian theology, nor does it mean we have to believe God’s ideas are Himself, because it leads to the idea that we are nothing in relation to God, which I think is taking things too far; if He decides **non-necessarily **to create, than the contingent idea of us **in His mind **must be nothing to Him in order to perverse this unchangeableness. Other understandings of God don’t have this problem

 

[thinkandmull]

Using your strict exegesis, you would have to interpret Hebrews 4:15 (“He was tempted in every way that we are, but without sin”) to mean that Jesus was tempted to masturbation and fornication as we and St. Paul were.

The only time someone has an argument from any quotation is when his interpretation is the only interpretation possible.

 

[thinkandmull]

God is able to make One from his ?power? and [unable] to create another, and thus expel blame; although he may not infuse grace and conversely.

I don’t recognize “potential.” You sure you didn’t misspell it?

As for the meaning, I have no idea. I may have butchered my reading of it.

Scotus must be saying here that God can reside within a person in a sense even when the will is refusing Him; that God can reside without consent in any part except the will. I would like to see the context of this.

I like writers who try to see God’s activity “outside the box” because there is much we don’t know about the supernatural. For example, how could a God who never was tempted be or have a nature better than some who has resisted temptations with their free will?? Aquinas’s descriptions of God’s essence are hopeless in trying to answer this question

 

[Vico]

God can be unchangeable in one sense and yet not in another. Your position is un-ecumenical. Since the Church says “since the substance of the Father is indivisible, namely, simple”, we believe that God cannot divide his nature like a worm, for example, that splits off into two new bodies. That statement has nothing to do with Eastern Christian theology, nor does it mean we have to believe God’s ideas are Himself, because it leads to the idea that we are nothing in relation to God, which I think is taking things too far; if He decides **non-necessarily **to create, than the contingent idea of us **in His mind **must be nothing to Him in order to perverse this unchangeableness. Other understandings of God don’t have this problem

Being unchangeable is based upon being eternal. As St. Augustine explained:
“The eternity of God is His Essence itself: which has nothing mutable in it. In It there is nothing past, as if it were no longer, nothing future, as if it had not yet been. In It there is only , is,’ that is, the present” Enarr. in Ps. 101, 2, 10

 

[Vico]

Using your strict exegesis, you would have to interpret Hebrews 4:15 (“He was tempted in every way that we are, but without sin”) to mean that Jesus was tempted to masturbation and fornication as we and St. Paul were.

The only time someone has an argument from any quotation is when his interpretation is the only interpretation possible.

Christ’s human nature was free from all concupiscence, just as Adam was with his human nature, but unlike Adam, Christ withstood the test showing perfect resistance and this is a permanent help to the faithful.

Hebrews 4:15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I like writers who try to see God’s activity “outside the box” because there is much we don’t know about the supernatural. . .

This would be the royal we - “I”. Seems to me Vico knows what he’s talking about.

 

[Rohzek]

Well, my question would be this. I do not dispute that God’s essence does not change. However, does he not also have a mind as well? Some might say this violates the simplicity principle, but I see no reason why it should.

 

[thinkandmull]

Yet the Bible says “tested in EVERY way”. So you’d have to admit verses and statements have to be seen in their proper sense. Eternity in no way means their can be no change whatsoever. God’s **knowledge **and decision to create is from eternity, but it is not necessary. Nor are Catholics bound to believe that God is outside time absolutely. Probably from reading Ott and others, Vico you have the false assumption that Scholasticism is Catholicism

 

[thinkandmull]

In my own readings, I take some things in the Bible more figuratively than most, and I don’t take Church statements to mean more than what they have to say/

For me, God is like an all-powerful kindly old man who created the world and myself. I don’t try to hopelessly try to pin philosophical thoughts on him like some (yes I’ve read the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles very carefully). What or who made him God? Why is God the Father God the Father instead of me or the someone I know? Did reality just do this, or more for the scholastics, is He just “that” and “that is that”? Take a child (baptized) who upon his first moral decision decides not the sin and overcomes the temptation. How can the sweet old man in the clouds be greater than the child when He has never been tempted and never strived for anything before? Even though one of the Persons of the Trinity was tempted as human, he really could not sin so the temptation was not like our temptations. These questions make me realize that there is much about God and reality that I do not know. However, Thomistic descriptions of a NATURE possessed by person(s) God that is most perfect are sidestepping the issue. It in no way satisfies my question of who and what God is. To be logically honest, you’d have to admit I have a good point on this

 

[davidv]

In my own readings, I take some things in the Bible more figuratively than most, and I don’t take Church statements to mean more than what they have to say/

For me, God is like an all-powerful kindly old man who created the world and myself. I don’t try to hopelessly try to pin philosophical thoughts on him like some (yes I’ve read the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles very carefully). What or who made him God? Why is God the Father God the Father instead of me or the someone I know? Did reality just do this, or more for the scholastics, is He just “that” and “that is that”? Take a child (baptized) who upon his first moral decision decides not the sin and overcomes the temptation. How can the sweet old man in the clouds be greater than the child when He has never been tempted and never strived for anything before? Even though one of the Persons of the Trinity was tempted as human, he really could not sin so the temptation was not like our temptations. These questions make me realize that there is much about God and reality that I do not know. However, Thomistic descriptions of a NATURE possessed by person(s) God that is most perfect are sidestepping the issue. It in no way satisfies my question of who and what God is. To be logically honest, you’d have to admit I have a good point on this

You pinned philosophical thought one God by calling Him a "all-powerful kindly old man "
Why do you ask “what or who made” God? Don’t you agree with the Church that He is uncaused?

 

[Vico]

Yet the Bible says “tested in EVERY way”. So you’d have to admit verses and statements have to be seen in their proper sense. Eternity in no way means their can be no change whatsoever. God’s **knowledge **and decision to create is from eternity, but it is not necessary. Nor are Catholics bound to believe that God is outside time absolutely. Probably from reading Ott and others, Vico you have the false assumption that Scholasticism is Catholicism

Oh no I do not have that assumption. I do post from St. Thomas Aquinas and all the councils but I like to use the patristic sources the best. I am Byzantine Catholic, but most people here are Latin Catholic (of the Catholics).

 

[Vico]

Yet the Bible says “tested in EVERY way”. So you’d have to admit verses and statements have to be seen in their proper sense. Eternity in no way means their can be no change whatsoever. God’s knowledge and decision to create is from eternity, but it is not necessary. Nor are Catholics bound to believe that God is outside time absolutely. Probably from reading Ott and others, Vico you have the false assumption that Scholasticism is Catholicism

St. John of Damascus, DE FIDE ORTHODOXA: AN EXACT EXPOSITION O: L.2, C.20 *CHAPTER XX. Concerning the natural and innocent passions.

• We confess, then, that He assumed all the natural and innocent
  passions of man. For He assumed the whole man and all man’s
  attributes save sin. For that is not natural, nor is it implanted in us by
  the Creator, but arises voluntarily in our mode of life as the result of
  a further implantation by the devil, though it cannot prevail over us
  by force. For the natural and innocent passions are those which are
  not in our power, but which have entered into the life of man owing
  to the condemnation by reason of the transgression; such as
  hunger, thirst, weariness, labour, the tears, the corruption, the
  shrinking from death, the fear, the agony with the bloody sweat, the
  succour at the hands of angels because of the weakness of the
  nature, and other such like passions which belong by nature to every
  man.

All, then, He assumed that He might sanctify all. He was tried and
overcame in order that He might prepare victory for us and give to
nature power to overcome its antagonist, in order that nature which
was overcome of old might overcome its former conqueror by the
very weapons wherewith it had itself been overcome.

The wicked one, then, made his assault from without, not by
thoughts prompted inwardly, just as it was with Adam. For it was not
by inward thoughts, but by the serpent that Adam was assailed. But
the Lord repulsed the assault and dispelled it like vapour, in order
that the passions which assailed him and were overcome might be
easily subdued by us, and that the new Adam should save the old.

Of a truth our natural passions were in harmony with nature and
above nature in Christ. For they were stirred in Him after a natural
manner when He permitted the flesh to suffer what was proper to it:
but they were above nature because that which was natural did not
in the Lord assume command over the will. For no compulsion is
contemplated in Him but all is voluntary. For it was with His will that
He hungered and thirsted and feared and died.

 

[thinkandmull]

Aquinas in his work trying to “prove” that there can be an eternity of causes past mentions that many holy writers thought that God could even change the past. Aquinas uses it as a possibility, but in his Summa Theologica he has an article arguing that this is actually impossible. So among men regarded as wise there is disagreement even on issues like that. With regard to the divine, we are like a creature who is given to understand numbers 2 and 4, but not the inbetween (3) or even 1 of which the first numbers are composed.

 

[Richca]

Aquinas in his work trying to “prove” that there can be an eternity of causes past mentions that many holy writers thought that God could even change the past. Aquinas uses it as a possibility, but in his Summa Theologica he has an article arguing that this is actually impossible. So among men regarded as wise there is disagreement even on issues like that. With regard to the divine, we are like a creature who is given to understand numbers 2 and 4, but not the inbetween (3) or even 1 of which the first numbers are composed.

There cannot be an infinite number of efficient causes ordered per se. This is the argument of Aquinas’ second proof for the existence of God.

 

[Richca]

Yet the Bible says “tested in EVERY way”. So you’d have to admit verses and statements have to be seen in their proper sense. Eternity in no way means their can be no change whatsoever. God’s **knowledge **and decision to create is from eternity, but it is not necessary. Nor are Catholics bound to believe that God is outside time absolutely. Probably from reading Ott and others, Vico you have the false assumption that Scholasticism is Catholicism

Eternity applied to God means immutability as time involves succession. Aquinas says “the idea of eternity follows immutability as the idea of time follows movement.” As Vico noted in post #206, the CCC#202 quotes Lateran Council IV as God being unchangeable. This means that if God could change somehow, then he wouldn’t be unchangeable. Accordingly, God is absolutely unchangeable, he is the infinitely perfect being who possesses the whole fullness of being at once and not in succession.

Thus, the word of God says “all good giving and every perfect gift* is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.” (James 1: 17).

And, “Of old you laid the earth’s foundations;
the heavens are the work of your hands.They perish, but you remain;
they all wear out like a garment;
Like clothing you change them and they are changed,
but you are the same, your years have no end.” (Psalm 102: 26-27).

And “For I, the LORD, do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

In a word, if God could change than he wouldn’t be God.

 

[Rohzek]

No one seems to be getting at what I’m proposing here. Perhaps the nature of God is unchangable, but need this also apply to his mind? This does not seem plausible, as God more or less constitutes a psychic continuity, by which use humans within our own logical framework judge persons as persons. So by having personhood, God must have a mind.

Therefore, we must justify the statement that a perfect mind reaches a state that is static. That would be a much more difficult case to make, but I wonder if anyone here is willing to make it? Anyone willing to go down the rabbit-hole with me?