How does God create "the act of existing" out of nothing?

[Linusthe2nd]

Re: How does God create “the act of existing” out of nothing?

---

Quote:
Originally Posted by prodigalson2011
… But this seems more in keeping with the idea that God is the necessary condition for the esse of creation while not being the esse of creation Himself.

I think so too.

Peter, you said this:

Quote:
Creation has reality and is essentially distinct from God.

How can a thing have reality distinct form God if it does not have its own esse? For that matter, how can anything be real without esse?

God bless,
Ut

---

Exactly!

Linus2nd

 

[utunumsint]

This is very interesting. Consider the difference between light that is generated by the sun and light that is reflected by another body such as the moon.

Consider being in the same “light” so to speak. God as Being itself actualizes creation in the same way that sunlight “actualizes” or makes apparent heavenly bodies that do not “create” their own light.

In a sense, the esse of created things is “reflected esse” in the sense that as created essences they reflect the “esse” of God in order to become existing things. In this sense, they do not have their own esse but by virtue of their created essence they “instantiate” the esse of God in particular modes as their essential capacity as creatures in relation to Creator allows.

We would not say the moon creates its own light as we would not say creatures have their own being or esse, but, at the same time we would not say the moon is dark or creatures “non-existent” because of the capacity of the moon to reflect sunlight and the capacity of creatures to particularize the esse of God which is “reflected” by their created essence in a limited but substantial way.

So, to modify my visual aid:

• The sun is like God’s inner life (including his esse). That which exists.
• The sun generates light (the esse that belongs to God alone).
• Now I imagine essences as a massive film reel circling the sun.
• The light hits the film (created essences).
• The essence reflects God’s esse back in a constrained way. This would seem to indicate that God’s esse has been modified in the process. God’s esse has been limited.

I suspect that this would be unacceptable to you as a consequence, because God would be limited in the process. Unless we say that the reflected essence and esse is not God’s esse. But creation happens at this point. Then we have another scenario. Perhaps something like this:

• The sun is like God’s inner life (including his esse). That which exists.
• The sun generates light (the esse that belongs to God alone).
• Now I imagine essences as a massive film reel circling the sun.
• The light hits the film (created essences).
• The essence reflects a created esse back in a constrained way.
• God’s esse is unchanged.

What do you think?

God bless,
Ut

 

[Linux]

"*In late 1323 or early 1324 Eckhart left Strasbourg for the Dominican house at Cologne. It is not clear exactly what he did here, though part of his time may have been spent teaching at the prestigious Studium in the city. Eckhart also continued to preach, addressing his sermons during a time of disarray among the clergy and monastic orders, rapid growth of numerous pious lay groups, and the Inquisition’s continuing concerns over “heretical” movements throughout Europe.

It appears that some of the Dominican authorities already had concerns about Eckhart’s teaching. The Dominican General Chapter held in Venice in the spring of 1325 had spoken out against “friars in Teutonia who say things in their sermons that can easily lead simple and uneducated people into error”.[14] This concern (or perhaps concerns held by the archbishop of Cologne, Henry of Virneburg) may have been why Nicholas of Strasburg, to whom the pope had in 1325 given the temporary charge of the Dominican monasteries in Germany, conducted an investigation of Eckhart’s orthodoxy. Nicholas presented a list of suspect passages from the Book of Consolation to Eckhart, who responded sometime between August 1325 and January 1326 with a lost treatise Requisitus, which satisfied his immediate superiors of his orthodoxy.[14] Despite this assurance, however, the archbishop in 1326 ordered an inquisitorial process.[13][15] At this point he issued a Vindicatory Document, providing chapter and verse of what he had been taught.[16]

Throughout the difficult months of late 1326 Eckhart had the full support of the local Dominican authorities, as evident in Nicholas of Strasbourg’s three official protests against the actions of the inquisitors in January 1327.[17] On 13 February 1327, before the archbishop’s inquisitors pronounced their sentence on Eckhart, Eckhart preached a sermon in the Dominican church at Cologne, and then had his secretary read out a public protestation of his innocence. He stated in his protest that he had always detested everything wrong, and should anything of the kind be found in his writings, he now retracts. Eckhart himself translated the text into German, so that his audience, the vernacular public, could understand it. The verdict then seems to have gone against Eckhart. Eckhart denied competence and authority to the inquisitors and the archbishop, and appealed to the Pope against the verdict.[15] He then in the spring of 1327 set off for Avignon.

In Avignon, Pope John XXII seems to have set up a two tribunals to inquire into the case, one of theologians and the other of cardinals.[17] Evidence of this process is thin. However, it is known that the commissions reduced the 150 suspect articles down to 28; the document known as the Votum Avenionense gives, in scholastic fashion, the twenty-eight articles, Eckhart’s defence of each, and the rebuttal of the commissioners.[17] On 30 April 1328, the pope wrote to Bishop Henry of Virneburg that the case against Eckhart was moving ahead, but added that Eckhart had already died (modern scholarship suggests he may have died on 28 January 1328).[18] The papal commission eventually confirmed (albeit in modified form) the decision of the Cologne commission against Eckhart.[13]

Pope John XXII issued a bull (In agro dominico), 27 March 1329, in which a series of statements from Eckhart is characterized as heretical; another as suspected of heresy.[19] At the close, it is stated that Eckhart recanted before his death everything which he had falsely taught, by subjecting himself and his writing to the decision of the Apostolic See. It is possible that the Pope’s unusual decision to issue the bull, despite the death of Eckhart (and the fact that Eckhart was not being personally condemned as a heretic), was due to the pope’s growing fear of mystical heresy, and pressure from his ally Henry II to bring the case to a definite conclusion.[20]*"

What are these statements that are Characterised as heretical according to the papal bull?

 

[Linux]

It is interesting that Eckhart was a Neoplatonists

 

[Linux]

God in Creation

“The self-manifestation of God in the Trinity is followed by his manifestation in his creatures. Everything in them that is truly real is God’s eternal being; but God’s being does not manifest itself thus in its entire fullness (101, 34; 173, 26; 503, 26). In this antithesis may be expressed the relation of Eckhart’s philosophy to panentheism, both as regards similarities and differences. According to Eckhart, God’s creatures have not, as Thomas Aquinas held, merely ideal preexistence in God, i.e. their conceptual essence (essential quidditas) coming from the divine intelligence, but their existence (esse) being foreign to the divine being. Rather, the true being of creatures is immanent in the divine being. On the other hand, every peculiarity distinguishing creatures from each other is something negative; and in this sense it is said that the creatures are a mere nothing. Should God withdraw his being from his creatures, they would disappear as the shadow on the wall disappears when the wall is removed (31, 2). This perishable being is the creature confined within the limits of space and time (87, 49). On the other hand, every creature, considered according to its true entity, is eternal. It is obvious that this necessarily involves a modification of the idea of creation. Even Augustine of Hippo and others like him felt this difficulty. While they did not, as did Eckhart, connect the existence of the world with the being of God, they did consider it wrong to attribute to God any temporary activity. Albert the Great, one of Eckhart’s masters, tried to avoid the difficulty with the sentence, “God created all things from eternity, but things were not created from eternity”; but this is more easily said than conceived. According to the bull of 1329 (p. 2), Eckhart asserted that “it may be conceded that the world was from eternity.” It is impossible here to investigate this view further; but reference must be made to the close relation into which Eckhart brings the process of the Trinity and the genesis, or progress, of the world, both of the real and the ideal world (76, 52; 254, 16; 284, 12; cf. Com. in Genes., ALKG, ii. 553, 13-17).”

Nothing here says that the idea of God conjoining his esse to the potentiality of a distinct essence in order to actualise and sustain their distinct essence is a heresy.

 

[Linux]

Today there is universal agreement among scholars and historians that his condemnation by Pope John XXII was unjustified.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Today there is universal agreement among scholars and historians that his condemnation by Pope John XXII was unjustified.

Scholars and historians are not the Magisterium of the Church. Besides, I already made clear that not he, but certain of his propositions, were condemned. He was not condemned because he pled that anything he said that ran contrary to the faith he so did out of ignorance, not willfulness. For a person to be condemned as a heretic, he must willfully defy the Church. He did not; he recanted and submitted to the Pope. And I actually found only a few hours ago the very papal bull wherein those propositions were condemned, and I have to say, I don’t think he was as misinterpreted as many of my sources made him out to be. On the contrary, the statements included therein seem to carry your argument to its logical conclusion, which is exactly where those of us who have taken the opposite position from you have been saying it goes all along.

Things like:

*10. We are completely reformed into God and changed into him; in a similar manner as in the blessed sacrament the bread is changed into the body of Christ: so I am changed into him that he himself produces me as his own being, the same as he, not as something similar to him; it is true by the living God that there is no distinction.

1. Everything that God the Father has given his only begotten Son in his human nature he has also given to me: I am not left out in anything, neither in holiness nor in unity; he has given me everything that he has given him.
2. Everything that sacred scripture says of Christ is also completely brought to truth in every good and godly person.
3. Everything that is proper to the divine nature is also proper to the just and godly person; thus such a person does everything God does and has created heaven and earth together with God, brings forth the eternal word and God does not know what to do without such a person.
4. The good person is God’s only begotten Son.
5. The noble person is every only begotten Son of God that the Father has begotten in eternity.
6. The Father begets me as his only Son and as the selfsame Son. What God does is one: that is why he begets me as his Son without distinction.
7. Every distinction is foreign to God, as well in nature as in persons. To wit: his very nature is one and pure unity. Every person is one and pure unity as is his nature.
8. All creatures are pure nothing; I don’t say they are insignificant, or something in someplace, but that they are absolutely nothing.*

And such, I believe, is the logical end of an “esse est Deus” philosophy.

(The full bull can be read here: scribd.com/doc/9651895/Bull-In-Agro-Dominico-by-John-XXII )

 

[Linux]

Scholars and historians are not the Magisterium of the Church. Besides, I already made clear that not he, but certain of his propositions, were condemned. He was not condemned because he pled that anything he said that ran contrary to the faith he so did out of ignorance, not willfulness. For a person to be condemned as a heretic, he must willfully defy the Church. He did not; he recanted and submitted to the Pope. And I actually found only a few hours ago the very papal bull wherein those propositions were condemned, and I have to say, I don’t think he was as misinterpreted as many of my sources made him out to be. On the contrary, the statements included therein seem to carry your argument to its logical conclusion, which is exactly where those of us who have taken the opposite position from you have been saying it goes all along.

Things like:

*10. We are completely reformed into God and changed into him; in a similar manner as in the blessed sacrament the bread is changed into the body of Christ: so I am changed into him that he himself produces me as his own being, the same as he, not as something similar to him; it is true by the living God that there is no distinction.

1. Everything that God the Father has given his only begotten Son in his human nature he has also given to me: I am not left out in anything, neither in holiness nor in unity; he has given me everything that he has given him.
2. Everything that sacred scripture says of Christ is also completely brought to truth in every good and godly person.
3. Everything that is proper to the divine nature is also proper to the just and godly person; thus such a person does everything God does and has created heaven and earth together with God, brings forth the eternal word and God does not know what to do without such a person.
4. The good person is God’s only begotten Son.
5. The noble person is every only begotten Son of God that the Father has begotten in eternity.
6. The Father begets me as his only Son and as the selfsame Son. What God does is one: that is why he begets me as his Son without distinction.
7. Every distinction is foreign to God, as well in nature as in persons. To wit: his very nature is one and pure unity. Every person is one and pure unity as is his nature.
8. All creatures are pure nothing; I don’t say they are insignificant, or something in someplace, but that they are absolutely nothing.*

And such, I believe, is the logical end of an “esse est Deus” philosophy.

(The full bull can be read here: scribd.com/doc/9651895/Bull-In-Agro-Dominico-by-John-XXII )

Nothing said here relects my argument. Seems to me that once again, instead of rationally facing my arguments you are reduced to fear-mongering. Also, the papal bull does not only contain what he was condemed for (some kind of mystical heresy) but also that which was merely suspected of heresy but not shown to be heretical.

 

[utunumsint]

Hi Linux,

Can you tell me how I can say “I am”, or do anything, and not have a direct experience of the esse of God? - if what you say is true.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Linux]

Hi Linux,

Can you tell me how I can say “I am”, or do anything, and not have a direct experience of the esse of God? - if what you say is true.

God bless,
Ut

When you say i am, you cannot possibly be saying it in a sense that identifys your essence with the act of existing. You experience God indirectly though the actuality of your essence. You experience your essence directly.

 

[utunumsint]

When you say i am, you cannot possibly be saying it in a sense that identifys your essence with the act of existing.

Why? Saying I am presupposes existence. It is a statement about existence. Specifically, my existence, but existence non the less for that.

You experience God indirectly though the actuality of your essence.

How so?

God bless,
Ut

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think so too.

Peter, you said this:

How can a thing have reality distinct form God if it does not have its own esse? **For that matter, how can anything be real without esse? **

God bless,
Ut

Aquinas, for one, argues that the potentialities that “exist” in things are real but not actualized, not “in being” at that time. Wax has a very “real” potential to melt, that is a potential that is not actualized (does not come into being) until heat is brought to bear. When heat is applied the potential is actualized.

In this sense, matter and form are potential aspects of a human being. When the actualizing power of God (pure act or esse) is brought to bear, then a human being is actualized (comes into being.) This is akin to your light analogy shining through the film reel. Absent God’s act or esse, humans have no esse, no existence.
.

 

[utunumsint]

Aquinas, for one, argues that the potentialities that “exist” in things are real but not actualized, not “in being” at that time. Wax has a very “real” potential to melt, that is a potential that is not actualized (does not come into being) until heat is brought to bear. When heat is applied the potential is actualized.

In this sense, matter and form are potential aspects of a human being. When the actualizing power of God (pure act or esse) is brought to bear, then a human being is actualized (comes into being.) This is akin to your light analogy shining through the film reel. Absent God’s act or esse, humans have no esse, no existence.
.

Yes, but human beings, unlike wax or animals, have a intellectual awareness of their own being. They do not have an awareness of God’s being.

To use my analogy, human beings, because it is in their essence to be self aware, have a direct knowledge of a power that actualizes their being. They are aware of being. Human beings can certainly understand that they don’t have it in themselves to cause their own being, but it still is their own being. Right?

Whenever a person says, I am x or this is y, they are talking about things that exist. The very word am, or is, is an expression of this awareness. They can conceptually abstract from the essences of everything to being itself. , but in actual experience, no one has a direct experience of being itself. Only of this being and that being. We only ever directly experience being constrained by essences or a possible list of potentialities and final causes in the essence of each thing.

But these beings are truly real, even though only contingently real.

So are all of these things distortions of being itself? Mangling the perfection of the only real esse? Of do they have an esse all their own?

God bless,
Ut

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yes, but human beings, unlike wax or animals, have a intellectual awareness of their own being. They do not have an awareness of God’s being.

**To use my analogy, human beings, because it is in their essence to be self aware, have a direct knowledge of a power that actualizes their being. They are aware of being. Human beings can certainly understand that they don’t have it in themselves to cause their own being, but it still is their own being. Right?
**
Ut

I have often wondered what John meant by Christ being the “Light” that shines in all men. I suspect what he means is that conscious awareness itself is only possible to the extent that “Christ” or Being is present. This goes back to the fact that human potentiality is not actualized until esse (Actus Purus or Being Itself) is the causative agent.

We are “enlightened” by God’s presence through Christ, the Light. Somewhere behind the reality of our consciousness is Christ. It is Christ that allows awareness of Being in Truth (for Aquinas, Being, Truth and Goodness are convertible) by bringing us into being, but, at the same time, sin (separation from the Light, from Being itself) blocks the full realization of the creative power of God. He cannot actualize our full potential without our cooperation and sin impedes that cooperation. Truth (Being) is immediately available to us (i.e., is within you) because Christ is Truth, Goodness and Being that is the “Light” that makes our “knowing” or awareness - in the sense of true knowing or true awareness - possible.

If it was merely our own “esse” we were dealing with we could only know in a relative sense what we are. Awareness in a limited sense of self-awareness could only be possible because we are a limited “self” or limited existent. We could only know what we think we are relative to the limited being (recall that Being and Truth are convertible) of what we currently are. We could have no knowledge of truth in itself or the full truth about ourselves. In order to know Truth in itself Truth must make Itself present to us. In order to know ourselves as we truly are, Truth itself would have to be present to us, but how would that be possible unless Being itself were present to us.

If Christ is the Light in the sense of the Truth Itself (and Aquinas insists that Truth, Goodness and Being are convertible) then Christ is Being Itself present to us which allows us to know the Truth Itself and to be joined with Being Itself in Him. That would be the only way that a true awareness of ourselves as we really exist could be possible. Otherwise, our knowledge of ourselves would be necessarily fractured and Christ would not be the “Light” that shines in all men.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Yes, but human beings, unlike wax or animals, have a intellectual awareness of their own being. They do not have an awareness of God’s being.

I think this is an error. They have an awareness of something, which is in fact God’s being, but they do not understand it as God’s being. The feeling does not have a name attached.

In a similar way, I might happen upon the president of France, but not know he is the president of France. I could become quite familiar with this man without knowing who he is.

 

[Linux]

Why? Saying I am presupposes existence. It is a statement about existence. Specifically, my existence, but existence non the less for that.

“I am” is God; in otherwords he is identical with the fact that he exists; he is his act of existing and that is the fundemental reason why his being is eternal and perfect. Creatures are not.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Linux,

You keep reapeating the folloThe way I read it is that you are saying God creates essences that are conjoined to esse to the degree that their specific essences allow.

They do not have their own esse, but they are called beings analogously and they glorify God to the extent they they are sustained in God’s act of reality
wing thoughts:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Analysis of Your Principles Errors

Aquinas, through the references I have provided, shows that your principle concepts cannot be true.

I don’t know the source of your inspiration but it cannot be greater than Thomas himself or greater than those of Etienne Gilson who is the most qualified of his commentators of the past century.

One source of your misunderstanding is your confusion over the meaning of essence and the relation of esse to it. It is true that essence and esse are distinct in all beings except God, in Whom they are identical.

It is true that essence limits the esse received. You have elevated this truth to a level not justified. Because, in created beings, essence and esse are, together, the principles which compose a being, that is a particular substance. The accent here is on substance, not essence. It is the substance which exists, not the essence. The essence exists only as a principle of the composite substance. And the esse composes, not with the essence, but with the substance. It is the substance, whole and entire, that is created ( per Thomas as I have shown umptine times here and there). The essence and the esse are concreated as principles of the substance.

Another problem is that you seem to think that there is only one being and than is the Being of God. You have never proved this assumption, it seems to be a self evident fact in your philosophy. What is the source of this novel concept? Having accepted this novel concept, you are left with no choice but to make the errors which follow from it.

It leads to conclusions which no Catholic can accept as representing a true representation of the genuine relationship between God and created beings. Your basic assumptions and conclusions cannot be accepted as representative of Catholic Dogma and/or of Catholic teaching.

Catholic Dogma must be taken at face value. If it is susceptable of finessing, of embracing novel concepts, then it cannot be said to be the Truth open to all the faithful. But rather, the real Truth could only be known by a few intellectuals with special insights not available to the masses. This is a very dangerous idea.

Now if your ideas were compatible with Catholic Dogma, as you claim, then don’t you think that the Catholic Church would have taken them into account and included these ideas in its Defined and Ordinary teaching. But it has not done so. Therefore your ideas must be rejected.

Linus2nd

Something very odd. I couldn’t get rid of the double line. Why?

 

[Linux]

Substance describes an essence as it is existing or actual. That does not make substance identical to esse. Esse is not a “property” of a substance, which is obvious since esse is required inorder for a substance to exist.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Substance describes an essence as it is existing or actual. That does not make substance identical to esse. Esse is not a “property” of a substance, which is obvious since esse is required inorder for a substance to exist.

You misunderstand all together. Instead of rushing to respond, why not go back and read the quotations from Thomas I have given you?

The emphasis is on substance, not on essence. True, essence limits esse, but it is the substance that is a being, not the essence. Now if you think your sources are greater than Thomas, it is time you disclose them. I know you wouldn’t claim that your own thought is greater than that of Thomas.

Linus2nd

 

[Linux]

Another problem is that you seem to think that there is only one being and than is the Being of God. You have never proved this assumption

1. Out of nothing comes nothing; for if something was created out of nothing this would contradict the absolute distinction between existence and non-existence - the fact that existence is the antihesis of nothing. Negation is not a being, a negation of being cannot become a real negation of being. It makes no logical sense to say that existence begins to exist, since the fact of its beginning contradicts the fact that it is the act of existing. Existence just exists.
2. Existence is not a genus in which there are distict species of existing. Hence Existence is an absolute. Thus God cannot create a differerent kind of existing or limited forms of existing. It makes no logical sense. However there can be difference or distinction in created essences but only because they are not indentical to esse. They do not have their own esse.

This is the reason i say that God is the only esse. Nothing you have said up untill this point has refuted these two indisputable facts.