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

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David:

“Good grief, man, what happened to the spiritual part of me that forms my soul? Isn’t that part of ME and isn’t that part of the Holy Spirit. Or do you believe that the spiritual nature of the soul is some ethereal substance other than the same substance that is the Holy Spirit, and what could that possibly be?”
Interpret it as: “the spirit: isn’t it part of ME, and isn’t that (the spirit) part of the Holy Spirit?” Or, does God make two different “spirits?” If that is the case, then are we to believe that we are inhabited by an alien? I interpret it as two separate concepts. In other words, Spirit = Spirit. I think the same word was chosen by the translators because there was a similarity, perhaps even more than a simple similarity from the original writing. It’s difficult to simplify what is very complex, with that I agree, but, think it through.

Yppop, correct me if I am wrong.

God bless, David
jd
You are wrong J.D… The Holy Spirit is not part of your soul. That is Pantheism. Your soul is a created spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Eternal, Uncreated Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who is Eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.

You really do need to read the Catechism and thoroughly!!! Where did you ever get such ideas???

Linus2nd
 
I was wondering about this too.

From the Catehcism scborromeo.org/ccc/para/327.htm

I can certainly find the same idea in Augustine.

Maybe yppop is talking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?

God bless,
Ut
Excellent. If everyone would just do the logical thing and read the Catechism!!! So much error could be avoided!!!
Such notions are a perfect illustration of what I meant in another thread that " Philosophy and Theology can Endanger the Soul. " The Church’s teaching is the ultimate measure against all human endeavors to discover truth must be measured. If man does not have the humility to be guided by the truth the Church offers, he always winds up in error.

But some people, lacking humility, insist that they have some " special " access to truth.

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P1A.HTM

Linus2nd
 
You are wrong J.D… The Holy Spirit is not part of your soul. That is Pantheism. Your soul is a created spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Eternal, Uncreated Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who is Eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.

You really do need to read the Catechism and thoroughly!!! Where did you ever get such ideas???

Linus2nd
it would be better to say that the Holy Spirit indwells in your heart. At the deepest level of the heart is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Not sure how that jives theologically but when we talk about the spiritual life this is big at-least in ignasious (I can’t spell 😦 ) spirituality
 
The universe even now adds up to “nothing” or “sum zero energy”. Here’s a couple of links illustrating or stating the point.

So it came from nothing, adds up to nothing, and will go to nothing, and vanish, which is consistent to say the least.

So even as you dispute God’s creating the universe from “nothing”, you don’t seem to be aware that you are living right now in a universe that adds up to “nothing”.

I mean, if you were God, with thousands of years of first hand experience of the human race with its endless violence, wars, rapes, murders, abortions, pornography, exploitation, cruelties, slavery, torture, vindictiveness, carelessness, injustices etc. etc., would you give it a really solid universe? Would you think such a creature deserved one?

Or would you set up what appeared to be something of substance, an immense stage prop so to speak, as the human race went through the motions, and you sorted out the sheep from the goats. And then do away with the original false stage prop, and bring in a real new heavens and earth for those who have proven their worth?

That’s how I see it. The present set up adds up to nothing, difficult as that is to accept with our senses.

livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html

astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html

curtismenning.com/ZeroEnergyCalc.htm
And that is incorrect. Please read the Catechism, paragraphs 325-367 here : vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P1A.HTM

Human knowledge must always be guided by Faith. We live in a real world. That is what God has Revealed and that is what the Church teaches.

Linus2nd
 
it would be better to say that the Holy Spirit indwells in your heart. At the deepest level of the heart is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Not sure how that jives theologically but when we talk about the spiritual life this is big at-least in ignasious (I can’t spell 😦 ) spirituality
I am writing this to see what I think and to clear my confusion.

You are suggesting that the Holy Spirit indwells in everyone’s heart. I suppose this means that heart=love. This would mean that at deepest level of the heart is a love that is totally giving, I suppose, without any interest other than the good of the other.
That love for God or one’s neighbor could be said to be similar to the love between the Father and the Son and represented by the Holy Spirit.

Reluctantly I must admit that being a sinner, what seems to be in my heart is a considerable amount of dirt. My aim is to be clean of heart to be able to see God. With His grace may we all do so.

The way it is phrased above could be misinterpreted to mean that within us, who we really are is god and that somehow he has forgotten himself but we can find him if we go deep enough. This is wrong.
 
I am writing this to see what I think and to clear my confusion.

You are suggesting that the Holy Spirit indwells in everyone’s heart. I suppose this means that heart=love. This would mean that at deepest level of the heart is a love that is totally giving, I suppose, without any interest other than the good of the other.
That love for God or one’s neighbor could be said to be similar to the love between the Father and the Son and represented by the Holy Spirit.

Reluctantly I must admit that being a sinner, what seems to be in my heart is a considerable amount of dirt. My aim is to be clean of heart to be able to see God. With His grace may we all do so.

The way it is phrased above could be misinterpreted to mean that within us, who we really are is god and that somehow he has forgotten himself but we can find him if we go deep enough. This is wrong.
granted I’m new to this who anthropology of the heart so I’m not sure if I can explain it that well. This idea of your heart is a very spiritual thing and I haven’t had much spiritual theology yet.

see Catechism 368 2562 2563

also see Jesus of Nazareth (not sure what part) pg. 92

again I’m new to this idea of the heart so far my education has been very philosophical so the theology of the heart and spiritual theology has yet to come for me in formation.
 
Shoe:

That’s largely correct. The difficulty for physics (and for me) is including “space” into that admixture. What is “spirit?” And, at the same time, what is “space?” I contend that space (that is, continuous space) is absolute nothingness. I contend that it has another name: “spirit,” although “spirit” may be a word that is much more pregnant with meaning than the word “space.” But, how could they be different in reality?

God interacts with everything that we know to be physical. Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombiere have written treatises that specifically state:

Treating of the Will of God St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, teaches that it is the cause of all that exists. (St. Thomas, Sum. p. 1, q. 19, a. 4; St. Augustine, De Gen.) The Psalmist tells us that “all that the Lord wills He does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the deeps.”(Ps. 134:6) Again in the Book of the Apocalypse it is written: "Worthy art thou, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created all things, and because of thy will they existed and were created. "(Apoc. 4:11) - Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence
What is God’s “Will?” Is it like ours, that is something that comes into His mind then is externalized by His hands, or His work? Or, is it something that He internalizes? Do we, and all that is physical, really exist separately from Him? If, in fact, we do, then how is it possible that “the Will of God which from nothingness drew out the universe with all its grandeur and all that lives in it, the earth with all that is on it and beneath it, all creatures visible and invisible, living and inanimate, reasonable and without reason, from the highest to the lowest.” - ibid
The moment that men make a thing separate from themselves, those things are set loose: we lose touch and control. They remain separate from us by a greater or lesser extent of space. But that is not so with God. He remains in absolute touch and control with every single one of his creatures. "Nothing happens in the universe without God willing and allowing it. This statement must be taken absolutely of everything with the exception of sin. ‘Nothing occurs by chance in the whole course of our lives’ is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, ‘and God intervenes everywhere.’ - ibid
How is this possible if God is separated from all things (his creatures) by a greater or lesser extent of space (colloquial meaning)? How does God affect the physical without somehow being a part of the physical?

I contend that God is Infinite Space; that God completely fills all of that 99.9999999999+% gap that does not consist of dimensionless particles (and, dimensionless particles cannot displace Him). God supplies that which we sense as separate physicality. Some call Infinite Space, “Infinite Nothingness,” and that’s fine so long as they realize that it is not truly nothing (in the colloquial sense), but rather that it is Something - it fact it is more than just "something,: it is all there is. You see, God is Infinite, in the most profound sense of that word. St. Thomas knew this.

The infinite is divided first of all into the actual and the potential infinite. The actual infinite is (nominally) defined as that to which there is no limit in perfection.(Sum. cont. Gent., Bk. I, ch. 43; Bk. III, ch. 54; Com. on On the Heavens, Bk. I, les. 29.) God is infinite in this sense because no perfection whatsoever is lacking to Him. A series of numbers would be actually infinite if it contained all possible numbers and if, as a result, no new number could be added to the series. The universe would be infinite in its extension if it filled all possible space and if, as a result, it could not be increased in size. - General Science of Nature

jd
Again, your thinking here is incorrect. The Church nowhere teaches that God is " Infinite Space. " Nor does St. Thomas. God is indeed Spirit, the One, absolutely Simple, Intelligent Spirit. If God were " Infinite Space " that would be identifying God with His creation, a form of Pantheism. It is true that God works innermostly in all of His creation and there is no place in His creation in which He is not present by His Substance. But He is not present as in a place, He is present as the cause of their existence, and as directing all things according to the Wisdom of His Governance and Providence.

St. Thomas explains how God works innermostly in His creation in S.T.,1,8, a1: " I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (Question 7, Article 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

Reply to Objection 1. God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things; as was shown above in this article. "

Linus2nd
 
I admittedly have not been following this topic too closely. However I’ve been trying to start studying Aquinas and this passage may be relevant as to the relationship between God’s act of being and creation’s act of being.
From the notion of God, as from a point of vantage, the possibility that other beings should exist can clearly be seen. Should they be created, such beings would be like God in a remote way, yet in a true way. God is not contained in any genus, wheras all created beings are contained in some genus and in some species. Their likeness to God is thus bound to be a very remote one. Still, God is Being, so that everything that in any way is, must resemble the First Cause. This kind of resemblance is what Thomas calls an “analogy,” by which he means a resemblance that does not consist in belonging to the same genus, or to the same species, but simply in sharing in the most common of all formalities, which is being. This is the most common of all formalities because it is found in all that which is not nothing. God is being itself, or, as they say, by essence; other things are beings by participation only, but of them, as of God, it can be said that they are, and this is precisely a relation of analogy. There is then a resemblance between Being and beings. It is written in Genesis (1:26): Let us make man to our image and likeness. There is at least one sense in which this is true, and this first sense is presupposed by all the others: to be necessary implies a certain likeness to HE WHO IS.
From Elements of Christian Philosophy by Etienne Gilson
 
Again, your thinking here is incorrect. The Church nowhere teaches that God is " Infinite Space. " Nor does St. Thomas. God is indeed Spirit, the One, absolutely Simple, Intelligent Spirit. If God were " Infinite Space " that would be identifying God with His creation, a form of Pantheism. It is true that God works innermostly in all of His creation and there is no place in His creation in which He is not present by His Substance. But He is not present as in a place, He is present as the cause of their existence, and as directing all things according to the Wisdom of His Governance and Providence.

St. Thomas explains how God works innermostly in His creation in S.T.,1,8, a1: " I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (Question 7, Article 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

Reply to Objection 1. God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things; as was shown above in this article. "

Linus2nd
Excuse me for asking this but I must.
What the heck are you saying here?

Infinite space would be problematic because…
that would be identifying God with his creation?

Can you please put this into terms I can understand? Talk to me like I am a two year old.

Did God identify with his creation by sending his son to man?
 
Excuse me for asking this but I must.
What the heck are you saying here?

Infinite space would be problematic because…
that would be identifying God with his creation?

Can you please put this into terms I can understand? Talk to me like I am a two year old.

Did God identify with his creation by sending his son to man?
I’m not asking anything. A previous poster had said that God " was Infinite Space." I think he was trying to explain how God is present in all things because this is the constant teaching of the Church and also the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.

God cannot be identified with any of His creatures, either individually or universally. That would be Pantheism. So while God is present by His Substance in all creatures, he is not a part of them, Nor are they a part of Him. He is necessarilly present to creatures, and innermostly, because He keeps them in existence and governs all things by His Providence. The latter is what the quotation from Thomas explains.

Of course God sent his Son in the Person of Jesus Christ. And in that case His creation is indeed identified with His Divinity. But this is a special case, a Divine Miracle. It is not to be interprted as demonstrationg a general truth in regard to the rest of His creation.
And ideed it demonstrates God’s love for His creation generally and for Man in particular.

I hope that helps.

Linus2nd
 
I admittedly have not been following this topic too closely. However I’ve been trying to start studying Aquinas and this passage may be relevant as to the relationship between God’s act of being and creation’s act of being.

From Elements of Christian Philosophy by Etienne Gilson
Good quote polytropos. I seem to remember reading this in Feser’s Aquinas. Our act of being is similar to God’s, but only by analogy.
Still, God is Being, so that everything that in any way is, must resemble the First Cause. This kind of resemblance is what Thomas calls an “analogy,” by which he means a resemblance that does not consist in belonging to the same genus, or to the same species, but simply in sharing in the most common of all formalities, which is being.
The thing Aquinas is trying to avoid here is rendering our act of being to be the same thing as God’s act of being. Similar means, not identical. Resemblance means, not the same as.

I like the last part of the quote as well:
There is then a resemblance between Being and beings.
It is written in Genesis (1:26):
Let us make man to our image and likeness.
There is at least one sense in which this is true,
and this first sense is presupposed by all the others:
to be necessary implies a certain likeness to HE WHO IS.
Thinking out loud:

The key to Linux’s objections though is his concept that it is logically impossible for God to create something out of nothing.

So he resorts to the idea that God creates something out of himself. Even if that part of himself is only being itself. So he is trying to move the argument from analogy to identity.

I think my main objections to this are:


  1. *]It relegates God to the position of Mechanic.
    *]It seems to weaken God’s power. God cannot create anything, but can only build on himself.
    *]It would seem to imply that at some level, the universe would be identical to God.
    *]It is not clear to me that creation from nothing is a logical contraction. I see no logical contradiction in saying that a being with sufficient power can create something out of nothing. It makes that something completely dependent on that being’s power. In the end, it is God’s Act that creates us. I don’t see why this must equal his act of being itself. This would seem to imply that God cannot create anything outside of himself. God would be self contained. I see this as an arbitrary limitation on God’s power.

    God bless,
    Ut
 
David:

“Good grief, man, what happened to the spiritual part of me that forms my soul? Isn’t that part of ME and isn’t that part of the Holy Spirit. Or do you believe that the spiritual nature of the soul is some ethereal substance other than the same substance that is the Holy Spirit, and what could that possibly be?”

Interpret it as: “the spirit: isn’t it part of ME, and isn’t that (the spirit) part of the Holy Spirit?” Or, does God make two different “spirits?” If that is the case, then are we to believe that we are inhabited by an alien? I interpret it as two separate concepts. In other words, Spirit = Spirit. I think the same word was chosen by the translators because there was a similarity, perhaps even more than a simple similarity from the original writing. It’s difficult to simplify what is very complex, with that I agree, but, think it through.

Yppop, correct me if I am wrong.

God bless, David
jd
Hi David,

Did this answer your question? My interpretation of JD’s interpretation is that spirit is spirit regardless of whether it is our spirit or the Holy Spirit. … which seems to contradict the teaching of the catholic faith, unless we say spirit and Holy Spirit are similar and resemble each other by analogy… which seems to bring us back to the similar but different idea…

God bless,
Ut
 
Hi David,

Did this answer your question? My interpretation of JD’s interpretation is that spirit is spirit regardless of whether it is our spirit or the Holy Spirit. … which seems to contradict the teaching of the catholic faith, unless we say spirit and Holy Spirit are similar and resemble each other by analogy… which seems to bring us back to the similar but different idea…

God bless,
Ut
Not really, as we have not heard from yypop as to his intent in using the words he used. This topic is difficult enough without the use of ambiguous language.
 
I admittedly have not been following this topic too closely. However I’ve been trying to start studying Aquinas and this passage may be relevant as to the relationship between God’s act of being and creation’s act of being.

From Elements of Christian Philosophy by Etienne Gilson
My favorite Thomistic commentator. Chapter 7 explains it all.

Question. How did you get that quotation onto this post? Did you scan, save, then copy and send?

Linus2nd
 
Not really, as we have not heard from yypop as to his intent in using the words he used. This topic is difficult enough without the use of ambiguous language.
Agreed 🙂

yppop? Can you clarify?
 
Haven’t scanned the entire thread, but yesterday I came across this website indicating that in physics virtual particles apparently can spontaneously appear from “nothing”, albeit for a brief time:

infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html

If this is the case I think it would be the greatest challenge to the cosmological or first cause argument.
 
Good quote polytropos. I seem to remember reading this in Feser’s Aquinas. Our act of being is similar to God’s, but only by analogy.

The thing Aquinas is trying to avoid here is rendering our act of being to be the same thing as God’s act of being. Similar means, not identical. Resemblance means, not the same as.

I like the last part of the quote as well:

Thinking out loud:

The key to Linux’s objections though is his concept that it is logically impossible for God to create something out of nothing.

So he resorts to the idea that God creates something out of himself. Even if that part of himself is only being itself. So he is trying to move the argument from analogy to identity.

I think my main objections to this are:


  1. *]It relegates God to the position of Mechanic.
    *]It seems to weaken God’s power. God cannot create anything, but can only build on himself.
    *]It would seem to imply that at some level, the universe would be identical to God.
    *]It is not clear to me that creation from nothing is a logical contraction. I see no logical contradiction in saying that a being with sufficient power can create something out of nothing. It makes that something completely dependent on that being’s power. In the end, it is God’s Act that creates us. I don’t see why this must equal his act of being itself. This would seem to imply that God cannot create anything outside of himself. God would be self contained. I see this as an arbitrary limitation on God’s power.

    God bless,
    Ut

  1. /start tangent

    Maybe we can look at this Act in a different way, focusing instead on what kind of Act we find in the Christian God? It is an Act of Love. I found this interesting quote in an introduction to Von Balthasar.

    catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0486.html
    St Thomas, adapting Aristotle, had defined God’s nature as pure act. This seemingly technical abstraction is totally transformed once we realize that the “act” in question is an act of love. It is therefore an act of seeing, of beholding, of giving (revealing) and receiving (adoring). It is a Trinitarian act; an act involving three Persons in the relationship of Giver, Recipient and Gift. Love is at the heart of being, and its dynamism is at the heart of knowing: it is the “code” that enables us to read the meaning of things.
    One more particular application of this insight might be mentioned: an application of relevance to contemporary feminism. There is always a close integration in Balthasar’s thinking between seemingly abstract theological conclusions, cultural critique (thus social science) and spirituality. The tradition that God, being “pure act”, could contain no trace of passivity had become associated with the tendency in Christian thought to assign a lower place to woman and to the so-called “feminine” virtues.
    In modern society, which increasingly values the hard, driving mechanisms of technological progress and economic competition, theology inevitably becomes entangled with the same attitude. According to Balthasar, on the other hand, to receive something from another is not at all a weakness or imperfection, but intrinsic to the nature of what it is to love. If gentleness and openness to others, or “Receptivity”, is a feminine virtue, it is also an essential dimension of God. This means that theology is free to revalue the feminine – and the spirit of childhood. Love Alone contains the following famous passage:
    “But whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens… where ‘faith’ and ‘knowledge’ are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of ‘knowledge’, and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation – a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated – a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique” (pp. 114-15).
    I’m not sure how this applies to the debate at hand, except to refine the concept of God as “the act of existing” and how the concepts of potential and actuality might be concepts inherent in the Trinity itself and 😉 by analogy, to us.

    Maybe it clarifies how God can be both totally transcendent and immanent.

    /end tangent

    God bless,
    Ut
 
Originally Posted by JDaniel
David:
From Yppop’s post #76
Good grief, man, what happened to the spiritual part of me that forms my soul? Isn’t that part of ME and isn’t that part of the Holy Spirit. Or do you believe that the spiritual nature of the soul is some ethereal substance other than the same substance that is the Holy Spirit, and what could that possibly be?
[Linus] Interpret it as: “the spirit: isn’t it part of ME, and isn’t that (the spirit) part of the Holy Spirit?” Or, does God make two different “spirits?” If that is the case, then are we to believe that we are inhabited by an alien? I interpret it as two separate concepts. In other words, Spirit = Spirit. I think the same word was chosen by the translators because there was a similarity, perhaps even more than a simple similarity from the original writing. It’s difficult to simplify what is very complex, with that I agree, but, think it through.
Yppop, correct me if I am wrong.
God bless, David
You are wrong J.D… The Holy Spirit is not part of your soul. That is Pantheism. Your soul is a created spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Eternal, Uncreated Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who is Eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.
You really do need to read the Catechism and thoroughly!!! Where did you ever get such ideas???
Linus2nd
Linus,
I believe you have misconstrued my comment that JD is referring to above when you write: “The Holy Spirit is not part of your soul.”
In the first sentence of my comment I make it clear the “part” I am talking about is the “spiritual part”. When in my second statement, I refer to “part of ME” and “part of the Holy Spirit” I am referring not to the person of the Holy Spirit as you misinterpreted it, but to the spirit with which the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with God the Father and Son. As JD pointed out there cannot be more than one spiritual substance, and I believe that it is the same spirit that confers a hylomorphic nature to our being. Because God is omnipresent, we are immersed in the spirit of God.

But as long as you are invoking Catechism, here is the prayer I often say when I need a little boost of intellectual insight:

*Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.
Heavenly King, Consoler Spirit, Spirit of Truth, filling all things present everywhere and,
treasure of all good and source of all life, come dwell in us, cleanse and save us, you who are All Good. *

Please explain what “filling all things present everywhere” and “come dwell in us” mean, surely it isn’t pantheism?

Your compatriot on the right side of the battle,
Yppop

JD
You are right on, contact me if you want to continue our discussion.
 
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