Please explain why the first cause/necessary being must be personal

[belorg]

This question is related to both of your reponses.

Is it possible to you that God was, is, able to create potentiality outside of Himself through His omnipotence? You asserted that there was nothing, besides Himself, receptive of change/potentiality. Since we can say this Pure Actual Being must have infinite active power, all which is only absolutely possible. Is it possible that He, through a process unexplainable to human thought (as is our powers of intellect and will are impossible to comprehend by animated things and inanimated things), was able to do this?

No, that isn’t possible, because ‘a process unexplainable by human thought’ still entails an extension of his ‘infinite active power’, which, no matter gow you lok at it, is a change.

 

[levinas12]

No, but these are examples of something passive or inert. The comumn does not change and neither does the apple, but the apple nor the column do anything at all with respect to the animal or you.
If it is said that the column created the animal, that seems impossible without a change in the column…

You say it: it’s an activity. An activity that has something concrete as a result is just impossible without any sort of change.

To create something is to bring something into being from nothing. But that entails a power that goes from the creator to the effect. And that is change.

… now there are separate from HIs Essence/Existence. That’s a change.

… His staus does not change, but He changes.

Thomists will probably say that something from nothing isn’t a change at all, but for something to go from non-being to being, there must be potentiality, which there isn’t.

“Change” is the actualization of “potentiality”. What this means is a being moves from being less perfect to more perfect, and “perfect” refers to “completion”, “actuality”, in the sense of a realization of essence. The assumption is that a being starts out as “incomplete”, from a position of less “actuality”. But the being has a potentiality for “more actuality”. Potentiality is the same as “essence”. And actuality is the esse of the essence.

For Thomas, “efficient causality takes place in or is ‘ontologically located’ in the effect, not in the agent: actio est in passo”. For to cause is precisely to make ‘another’ be (in whole or in part), to enrich another." (quoted from W. Norris Clarke).

In this context, “change” refers to the enrichment that takes in a being that is still “incomplete”, “less than fully actual”, with unrealized “potentiality”.

As such, change takes place in the receiver of the action.

Creation does not “enrich” God; God does not become more “actual” through creation. God already is completely “actual”, i.e., perfect, without creation. There is no potentiality in God, which, if “actualized” through creation, makes Him “better” or “more complete”. He is already the “best” in the absence of creation.

This is what is meant when we say that God’s Essence and God’s Esse are the same.

No “power” is dormant in God.

 

[belorg]

“Change” is the actualization of “potentiality”. What this means is a being moves from being less perfect to more perfect, and “perfect” refers to “completion”, “actuality”, in the sense of a realization of essence. The assumption is that a being starts out as “incomplete”, from a position of less “actuality”. But the being has a potentiality for “more actuality”. Potentiality is the same as “essence”. And actuality is the esse of the essence.

The problem is, assuming causing from nothing there is no potentiality to actualize. Nothing has no potentiality.

For Thomas, “efficient causality takes place in or is ‘ontologically located’ in the effect, not in the agent: actio est in passo”. For to cause is precisely to make ‘another’ be (in whole or in part), to enrich another." (quoted from W. Norris Clarke).

Sure, it’s to entich another. But if I enrich toy, you get something from me, hence, I change in the process. Somthing that once was mind is now yours. Something ‘of me’ has chnaged since it’s not ‘of you’.

In this context, “change” refers to the enrichment that takes in a being that is still “incomplete”, “less than fully actual”, with unrealized “potentiality”.

No, not with unrealized potentiality, but with no potenraility at all.

As such, change takes place in the receiver of the action.

The receivers get something from the creator. That is a change. Something that once belonged to the creator now belongs to the receiver.

Creation does not “enrich” God; God does not become more “actual” through creation.

That’s not the point: God ‘injects’ some of his actuality into something else. That’s a change…

God already is completely “actual”, i.e., perfect, without creation. There is no potentiality in God, which, if “actualized” through creation, makes Him “better” or “more complete”. He is already the “best” in the absence of creation.

This is what is meant when we say that God’s Essence and God’s Esse are the same.

No “power” is dormant in God.

God extends his being to somewhere else (in any case outside Him) The being that was not extended is not extended. Again: a change.

 

[levinas12]

And this is what is assumed in the Anselm’s proof:

God-without-creation is as great as God-plus-creation.

God is fully God even if there were no world at all.

A corollary to Anselm’s proof:

The world is unnecessary, purely the result of an unfathomable generosity (without any self-interest).

The world does not make God more “complete” - God does not need the world so that He can be more “actual” … so that He can tap into an unfulfilled “potentiality” … God is different from Picasso (who needs his works of art to actualize his artistic potential)

This has been called the Christian distinction (between God and the world).

 

[levinas12]

The problem is, assuming causing from nothing there is no potentiality to actualize. Nothing has no potentiality.

The receivers get something from the creator. That is a change. Something that once belonged to the creator now belongs to the receiver.

… God ‘injects’ some of his actuality into something else. That’s a change…

God extends his being to somewhere else (in any case outside Him) The being that was not extended is not extended. Again: a change.

God creates both essence (potentiality) and creaturely esse. So there is first nothing; then simultaneously both potentiality and actuality. It is in this sense that created beings are said to “receive” their nature and their existence from God. It is not that there were creatures to begin with. They literally came from nothing. God’s efficient causality is peculiar.

But I’m not sure you can say that He injects (like a vaccination) some of His Esse into the beings. There is no change in His Esse when He calls beings into existence.

Creaturely esse is distinct from His Esse. The capitalization is used to show this distinction.

But, you say, esse is esse - so how can there be a distinction?

This is where analogy is invoked. Contrary to Parmenides.

 

[Luke_K]

This talk of God being “pure act” seems untenable to me. I mean, God had the potential to create our universe, and he did. He had the potential to create a different one, but he didn’t. He does not actualize all potentialities, therefore he is not pure act. Is God being pure act a dogma or what?

This has gone off-topic, but whatever.

 

[levinas12]

This talk of God being “pure act” seems untenable to me. I mean, God had the potential to create our universe, and he did. He had the potential to create a different one, but he didn’t. He does not actualize all potentialities, therefore he is not pure act. Is God being pure act a dogma or what?

This has gone off-topic, but whatever.

Well, agreed … the discussion may have seemed to have gone off-topic …

But there may still be a connection to the original question: why the first cause must be personal. If God is not personal, then He did not create out of love. And, it could be argued that, if He is not personal and did not create out of love, then He created out of necessity. That is, He needed to create to fulfill an unactualized potentiality.

Potentiality is understood here in an Aristotelian sense, i.e., a dynamic ontological lack or absence (of actuality, of completion, of realization) that drives a being to change (like an acorn into an oak tree). What drives this process cosmologically - well, eventually, in Aristotle, it is the UnMoved Mover acting as a final cause that “attracts” or “pulls” the universe to move from potentiality to actuality. But Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is unaware of its own final causality.

In Christian philosophy, God is not just a final cause but is also an efficient cause. He causes beings to exist (both their essence and existence). As such, He is aware of these beings (unlike Aristotle’s God),

But He is not “driven” to create by a lack or an absence. He is not ontologically needy. He is already and always totally “actual”. There is no room for any more “actuality” because there is no potentiality.

God’s creating therefore is not done out of a need to fill in an absence. Only generous love (agape, no self-interest) can explain why God created the world. And, if love, then God must be personal.

That’s the connection of Pure Act and the personal.

 

[levinas12]

There is no change in His Esse when He calls beings into existence.

There is no change in His Essence (which is always and already completely actualized) as well as in His Esse.

It should be noted that God’s Essence is unlimited. The essences of all created beings have boundaries (species, genus). God’s Essence is outside the world … does not fall into a species and genus … consequently, God’s Essence does not have a boundary, a specific ontological eidos to be compared and contrasted with other essences.

And God’s Essence is always and already completely actualized.

That’s why God is described as Actus Purus. First, because He has no ontological lack, absence, or potentiality that needs to be fulfilled. Second, because His Essence is unlimited, without boundaries.

By the way, because God has no limits, no boundaries, and is competely actualized, His Essence and His Esse are one and the same.

Isn’t it wonderful how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together?

 

[levinas12]

Something that once was mine is now yours. Something ‘of me’ has changed …

Not necessarily. God is not like us. He can create without “decrease” or “increase” in His Being. It’s not like He is giving us a part of His Estate. And it’s not like He is becoming a better Person through giving. He neither “loses” or “gains”. He does not change at all.

God is not like Picasso. Picasso needs a work of art to be an artist. God does not need creation to be God. God-without-creation is just as “great” as God-plus-creation.

This, by the way, is the implicit assumption of Anselm’s proof.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

This talk of God being “pure act” seems untenable to me. I mean, God had the potential to create our universe, and he did. He had the potential to create a different one, but he didn’t. He does not actualize all potentialities, therefore he is not pure act. Is God being pure act a dogma or what?

This has gone off-topic, but whatever.

As levinas said, it’s connected to your question. We conclude that potentiality was created by God outside of Himself, done so out of freedom with Agape love. Not only does that establish personal connection but what else proves why God must be personal is that creation was not a once-and-for-all event able to direct itself. God is ever present in our existence, directing unintelligible unconscious things to final causes, even ourselves but not invalidating our free will but only leading us to choices in our lives to freely choose what He wants or what we want.

The question by belorg is how did potentiality come to be if all there was, was actuality (or more plainly, all that was, was God)?

Belorg’s conclusions are (please correct me if I’m wrong belorg, sorry if there is a screwup)

1. Potentiality is co-eternal with the Pure Actual Being.
   or
2. The Pure Actual Being was the recipient of change.

1 is false because potentiality cannot be the necessity of itself, nor can it move/change itself. Thus potentiality came to be not of own it’s action, but an outside agent that is Pure Act.

2 is false due to many reasons but most evident (in my own opinion) is that if this is the case, this would follow a creatio ex deo atemporal existence. This would entail a incorruptible good universe since God is incorruptible, which is false for we have corruptible good. Thus we have creatio ex nihilo, the separate state of existence that is corruptible from the perfect being who is incorruptible.

Conclusion, potentiality was created outside the Pure Actual Being. “Outside” encompassing an unexplainable way how God was able to be all of existence and yet create a existence outside of Himself through omnipotent active power. Even though there was no recipient of change but Him, was able to create a recipient.

Not all mysteries are explainable by human thought, once again observe the hierarchy of existence. Material causes, being an unconscious and unintelligible things, have no awareness of anything (itself or outside of itself). Inanimate things (like plants) have inherent powers of absorption of nutrient and reproduction, unintelligent of anything outside of itself. Animated things, like animals, have all properties of things below it and have a higher inherent power that of locomotion and sensation and aware of things outside of themselves but unintelligible of things are that are not inherently known to them. Human beings have all casual powers of physical existences plus intelligence and will, but unaware of the immaterial world and higher beings and the Pure Actual Being. Thus requiring a revelation to humans from the immaterial world in some form for humans to intellectually grasp, even though not fully, that world.

If we are unable to fully grasp the immaterial world, how do you think you’ll even grasp a fraction of God’s omnipotence, let alone His existence?

I don’t know why that’s hard to accept when free will is an even greater creation then that of potentiality outside of God. To think we are created and yet have powers of total free will is still beyond me.

 

[belorg]

The question by belorg is how did potentiality come to be if all there was, was actuality (or more plainly, all that was, was God)?

Belorg’s conclusions are (please correct me if I’m wrong belorg, sorry if there is a screwup)

1. Potentiality is co-eternal with the Pure Actual Being.
   or
2. The Pure Actual Being was the recipient of change.

I would formukate 2) as ‘Pure act did change’, because ‘recipient’ has the connotation of being passive.

1 is false because potentiality cannot be the necessity of itself, nor can it move/change itself. Thus potentiality came to be not of own it’s action, but an outside agent that is Pure Act.

I am not sure anout that. It sounds a lot more logical than the alternative. Sarting out with a changeable entity at least accounts for change.

2 is false due to many reasons but most evident (in my own opinion) is that if this is the case, this would follow a creatio ex deo atemporal existence.

That’s not a problem: just remove the ‘ex deo’ and conceive of this Actual Being as non-personal.

This would entail a incorruptible good universe since God is incorruptible, which is false for we have corruptible good.

That’s amatter of opinion. Maybe the ‘corruptible good’ part is merely an illusion.

Conclusion, potentiality was created outside the Pure Actual Being. “Outside” encompassing an unexplainable way how God was able to be all of existence and yet create a existence outside of Himself through omnipotent active power.

If God was all of existence, it is not just ‘unexplainable’ how anything can be created outside him, it’s logically impossible for anything to exist outside of him.

Not all mysteries are explainable by human thought, once again observe the hierarchy of existence. Material causes, being an unconscious and unintelligible things, have no awareness of anything (itself or outside of itself). Inanimate things (like plants) have inherent powers of absorption of nutrient and reproduction, unintelligent of anything outside of itself. Animated things, like animals, have all properties of things below it and have a higher inherent power that of locomotion and sensation and aware of things outside of themselves but unintelligible of things are that are not inherently known to them. Human beings have all casual powers of physical existences plus intelligence and will, but unaware of the immaterial world and higher beings and the Pure Actual Being. Thus requiring a revelation to humans from the immaterial world in some form for humans to intellectually grasp, even though not fully, that world.

Sorry, but that sound like a cop-out. “We theists can explain the cause of the universe.”

-Of yes? “Yes, the universe is in an unexplainable way created by an unexplaineble entity”

• Very impressive.

If we are unable to fully grasp the immaterial world, how do you think you’ll even grasp a fraction of God’s omnipotence, let alone His existence?

Isn’t is a good idea then , to become somewhat more intellectually honest and admit that at the basis of it all lies a mystery and that calling it ‘God’ or even ‘personal’ is unjustified?

I don’t know why that’s hard to accept when free will is an even greater creation then that of potentiality outside of God. To think we are created and yet have powers of total free will is still beyond me.

The obvious answer to that problem is: we probably do not have free will.

 

[belorg]

Not necessarily. God is not like us. He can create without “decrease” or “increase” in His Being.

But not without change.
If something belonging to you becomes what it wasn’t before, or ends up somewhere it wasn’t before, that is a change.

God is not like Picasso. Picasso needs a work of art to be an artist. God does not need creation to be God. God-without-creation is just as “great” as God-plus-creation.

Just as great, maybe, but not ‘competely the same’.

This, by the way, is the implicit assumption of Anselm’s proof.

Yes, but we were talking Thomism here, Anselm is a different matter, although equally worth discussing;

 

[belorg]

But He is not “driven” to create by a lack or an absence. He is not ontologically needy. He is already and always totally “actual”. There is no room for any more “actuality” because there is no potentiality.

God’s creating therefore is not done out of a need to fill in an absence. Only generous love (agape, no self-interest) can explain why God created the world. And, if love, then God must be personal.

That’s the connection of Pure Act and the personal.

Generous love or agape is a need. the need to share his love. If God feels a need, then God is not Pure Act. So, God’s creation is done out of God’s need to share his love.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

God creates both essence (potentiality) and creaturely esse.

God creates new essences. But esse in and of itself is never nothing.

It is in this sense that created beings are said to “receive” their nature and their existence from God. It is not that there were creatures to begin with. They literally came from nothing. God’s efficient causality is peculiar.

Out of nothing comes nothing, so can you explain how God got a universe from nothing?

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Generous love or agape is a need. the need to share his love. If God feels a need, then God is not Pure Act. So, God’s creation is done out of God’s need to share his love.

Need implies a lack of something. You are confusing the contexts in which the word “need” is used. There is two types of need, there is a need for that which somebody “lacks” (for example, a person needs crutches in-oder to walk because they have an imperfection in their legs) ; and there is the kind of need which is implied by function and natural identity (for example a circle needs to be round in order to have the nature of a circle; but this fact doesn’t imply that a thing isn’t already the nature of a circle. Its merely explaining what a thing must be in-order to have a particular identity). The latter applies to God, but the former most certainly does not. God is his Act, Gods will is perfectly united with his nature. Gods existence is an act of love, and thus God is pure act because his will is a perfect expression of his existential nature which is love. God loves because God already has it in his nature to a perfect degree, not because he lacks it. To give is a selfless act. It is to share something one already has in themselves. In that respect God is not giving because he needs something he lacks in himself, but rather God gives because it is the “nature” of “love” to share its perfections. Given that God’s existence is identical with his will; because God has no beginning, his creative will has no beginning, and thus his creative act is eternal; this is to say it is not something which takes place in time, but rather the universe is that which God has forever willed into being as the creative object of Gods timeless will and nature. There has never been a time when God has not been a first cause.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Sorry, but that sound like a cop-out. “We theists can explain the cause of the universe.”

-Of yes? “Yes, the universe is in an unexplainable way created by an unexplaineble entity”

• Very impressive.

.

What you have written is a straw-man and a cop out. To say there are things that we cannot know about God, which is perfectly reasonable given the fact that we are finite beings, does not mean that the inference of his necessary existence is invalid.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

belorg

Generous love or agape is a need. the need to share his love. If God feels a need, then God is not Pure Act. So, God’s creation is done out of God’s need to share his love.

Not sure I follow this. Since God exists outside time and outside the Creation, He exists without a need. Only creatures have needs that, in time, are satisfied by each other or by God. Since God is self-sufficiently eternal, what does He need?

The Creation is an expression of God’s love. Since God is love, God does not need to love in the sense that we need to love.

 

[belorg]

Need implies a lack of something. You are confusing the contexts in which the word “need” is used. There is two types of need, there is a need for that which somebody “lacks” (for example, a person needs crutches in-oder to walk because they have an imperfection in their legs) ; and there is the kind of need which is implied by function and natural identity (for example a circle needs to be round in order to have the nature of a circle; but this fact doesn’t imply that a thing isn’t already the nature of a circle.

A circle is and has always been round? it is not that to be round, the circle has to do something.

Its merely explaining what a thing must be in-order to have a particular identity

First, this refutes the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but more imporatnatly: thuis makes the universe necessary. God could not have chosen not to create the universe, which denies God’s free will.

 

[belorg]

What you have written is a straw-man and a cop out. To say there are things that we cannot know about God, which is perfectly reasonable given the fact that we are finite beings, does not mean that the inference of his necessary existence is invalid.

The inference of his necessary existence is based on tyhe alleged inability to give an explanation without invoking God.
To admit that you can see no logically possible way for God to create from nothing means that creation from nothing,should be dismissed until it is shown that it is at least possible.

 

[belorg]

belorg

Generous love or agape is a need. the need to share his love. If God feels a need, then God is not Pure Act. So, God’s creation is done out of God’s need to share his love.

Not sure I follow this. Since God exists outside time and outside the Creation, He exists without a need. Only creatures have needs that, in time, are satisfied by each other or by God. Since God is self-sufficiently eternal, what does He need?

Yes, only creatures have needs, so since God apparently has needs, He is not a creator but a creature.

The Creation is an expression of God’s love. Since God is love, God does not need to love in the sense that we need to love.

He apparently need to express His love in order for His love to be perfect.