Why God (the creator) should be pure actual (changeless)?

[setarcos]

No. Change is the actualization of potential. You need to show why a potential being necessarily requires an actualization of potential in its creator. Its already be explained that a cause can exist simultaneously with its effect without change.

Here is a problem I’ve been wondering about. Perhaps you can help. How is it that a creator with no potential can originate a creature with potential? Because the creator has to sustain all such potential in the creature any so called free will in the creature would necessarily be expressed as change in the creator. In order that we be truly free to choose the choice must be made ex nihilo at the moment its made or else it would not really be free will but merely the will expressed out of the already established potential of a multitude of possibilities each with no potential within its frame of reference rendering any will expressed within it not free. Either there’s a multitude of each of us out there in which all potential is established, without change in the creator, simultaneously, or by the collapse of these potentials into a free will choice by the creature change has occurred in the creator by sustaining the creatures choice. Hopefully you can get the gist of the dilemma I’m describing as this is a very preliminary sketch.

 

[Wesrock]

Here is a problem I’ve been wondering about. Perhaps you can help. How is it that a creator with no potential can originate a creature with potential?

I see no cause for confusion on this. Why couldn’t He?

Because the creator has to sustain all such potential in the creature any so called free will in the creature would necessarily be expressed as change in the creator.

This just seems to misunderstand potential. Potential has no real being… otherwise it’d be actual. It’s the actual being that’s sustained, and the actual has inherent in what it is potential. And the creator doesn’t change. You change. He doesn’t. His act before you do something is the same act after.

In order that we be truly free to choose the choice must be made ex nihilo at the moment its made or else it would not really be free will but merely the will expressed out of the already established potential of a multitude of possibilities each with no potential within its frame of reference rendering any will expressed within it not free.

Er… no. I don’t know where to start. The will is inclined towards certain ends and moved by the objects it desires. For example, if the person sees an apple or thinks of an apple, the apple becomes the object of the will and the will is moved by it to make a choice. There’s nothing ex nihilo a out it. The possibilities aren’t from nothing. All that’s required for free will is that the choice it makes is voluntary, not involuntary. Is your inability to speak Cantonese at this second a lack of free will? Or are your potential states of being (speaking Cantonese) limited? The limit doesn’t make it involuntary.

Either there’s a multitude of each of us out there in which all potential is established, without change in the creator, simultaneously, or by the collapse of these potentials into a free will choice by the creature change has occurred in the creator by sustaining the creatures choice. Hopefully you can get the gist of the dilemma I’m describing as this is a very preliminary sketch.

You’re thinking of God as having some type of chronological and sequential existence, where Him before your choice is different (or “before”) Hom after you made your choice.

 

[GLam8833]

I think that you(plural) have missed the point,
God is LOVE, and He creates out of LOVE,
that’s why he should be pure actual(change-
less). See Ps. 130:7 Anything that fails to Love…
God and Neighbor is missing the mark, and
is in danger of being cut off from His Presence.

 

[setarcos]

I see no cause for confusion on this. Why couldn’t He?

Since the potential to change takes place within the creator who’s been defined as having no potential either the potential to change has to be separated from the creator or it has to be only an apparent change which in actuality is no change at all. The apparent change from our perspective would merely be a delusion sustained by God. Free will would be a delusion. Unless you redefine Gods having no potential as not applying to what takes place within him which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

This just seems to misunderstand potential. Potential has no real being… otherwise it’d be actual. It’s the actual being that’s sustained, and the actual has inherent in what it is potential. And the creator doesn’t change. You change. He doesn’t. His act before you do something is the same act after.

Potential IS an actual state that a being can possess. Either a being has actual potential or it doesn’t. In sustaining a being in actuality the beings qualities which it has must also be sustained or else it would be a different being without those qualities. In actualizing a being you actualize its potential to whatever degree. You unnecessarily limit the actual. Ask yourself, what are you actualizing when you actualize the being? Is it possible to actualizing a being that somehow has the ability to neither change nor stay the same? The qualities may be different for each actualized being but each actualized being must have some qualities. You’ve merely moved the problem one being down. God sustains the actual being which sustains the actual potential? The change never the less takes place within the creator any way you slice it. Unless like I stated before the change is actually no change at all but only an apparent change from our perspective. I was afraid I wasn’t presenting my problem properly. In order for no change to take place in the creator all potentialities must have existed eternally with the creator as cause and effect “simultaneously” along with the laws governing why a cause is a cause to a particular effect and not the other way around, In other words the flow of entropy with a direction from our perspective.

Er… no. I don’t know where to start. The will is inclined towards certain ends and moved by the objects it desires. For example, if the person sees an apple or thinks of an apple, the apple becomes the object of the will and the will is moved by it to make a choice. There’s nothing ex nihilo a out it. The possibilities aren’t from nothing. All that’s required for free will is that the choice it makes is voluntary, not involuntary. Is your inability to speak Cantonese at this second a lack of free will? Or are your potential states of being (speaking Cantonese) limited? The limit doesn’t make it involuntary.

The ex nihilo is the collapse of the potential into a choice. The possibilities would have to be created from nothing in order to sustain “free” will. The substances on which and governing laws within which the free will must make its choices are what is not ex nihilo. For instance my free will can bring into existence my ability to speak Cantonese in the future if I so choose to learn the language and can do so. Or I may choose not to learn the language and so eliminate that reality from my future. I have to work within the limits God has imposed upon his creatures but the freedom to choose a future reality must be ex nihilo, in other words it must come from me and not from God and it must actualize something which has no existence except that given it by my will in order for my will to be truly free and the only way for God to have no potential is if any potentialities I may actualize already exist in his sustenance before their actualization. If my will is truly free any potential actualities – a world in which I learn Cantonese because I chose to as opposed to one in which I don’t because I didn’t choose to – must be created ex nihilo. If God must have no potential he must sustain both potentialities indefinitely from the beginning making my free will choice only apparent to me but not actual because both choices are sustained by God. There would be one of me knowing Cantonese and one of me not knowing Cantonese but no single me having made a free will choice. If one potential collapses with only the other potential sustained by God because of my free will choice then God must change in his state of potentiality having gone from sustaining more than one actuality to a single actuality based on my choices.

You’re thinking of God as having some type of chronological and sequential existence, where Him before your choice is different (or “before”) Hom after you made your choice.

I’m already stated that time is not a factor to consider in Gods existence. This does not belie the problem I am describing concerning our free will and Gods potential.

 

[setarcos]

I think that you(plural) have missed the point,
God is LOVE, and He creates out of LOVE,
that’s why he should be pure actual(change-
less). See Ps. 130:7 Anything that fails to Love…
God and Neighbor is missing the mark, and
is in danger of being cut off from His Presence.

The “point” of the discussion does not go away because God has been defined as Love. How is it that how God has been defined can be rectified with what we know of reality compared with what we can understand about our own definitions of God?

 

[STT]

He believes that God had to change from not creating to creating, and from indecision in will to decision in will, and that this requires time, and if so, the idea that God could create time is therefore contradictory, because it can’t factor into the equation before it exists.

Of course, God never changed from not creating to creating, or from indecision to decision, nor is there a reason why God’s knowledge and will require time to be, given that it has no physical processes or “processes” at all and God does not know or act discursively or ratiocinately. But as often as it’s been mentioned, it doesn’t sink in.

There would be nothing if God wouldn’t create any thing so the “state of existence of only God” is the default. We then could have two state of existences “God only” and “God and the creation” depending on God’s decision. This embeds God in time which time is supposed to be a part of creation. That is the contradiction. You say that the state of existence of “God and the creation” is the default. This means that God cannot decide. God in your view is pure actual therefore it is obvious that He cannot decide.

 

[STT]

Or at least, the start of the universe is the initial state chronologically.

Please read post #43.

 

[STT]

That depends. If you define paradox as 2 “a self-contradictory and false proposition” then yes it would indicate a problem with our reasoning. I’m more inclined to go with def. 1 “a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.” according to dictionary.com.
This definition #1 is demonstrated by quantum mechanics in which things can be in multiple states at the same time. Theories like quantum mechanics can be demonstrated as truths Mathematically but conceptually the human brain cannot comprehend them. We are wired to believe either a thing is black or it is white for instance but cannot be both at the same time. You cannot conceptualize this reality yet it can be mathematically demonstrated to be true within the theory and yes the model of reality this theory represents actually demonstrably works in our “world”. LED lights for instance work because of the principles discovered and modeled by Quantum Physics…along with many other devices we use. The famous physicist Richard Feynman has said “Its safe to say nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Einstein famously refused to believe in it because he just couldn’t wrap his head around quantum entanglement–“spooky action at a distance” he called it. Yet there it is…consistently being proven correct in its predictions through experimentation. If the worlds most intelligent beings cannot understand, that is mentally comprehend, the reality they are living in what hope to comprehend what’s beyond our reality in the realm God dwells in?

The truth cannot be self-contrary because we could have concept like “truth and untruth could be real at the same time”. That could not be real.

 

[STT]

I concur.

STT, if by ‘create’, you mean “take existing materials and transform them into some other object”, then yes, one can do this without ‘purity’ (however, I’d have to understand the implications of what you mean by that term, as well; I think you mean “pure actuality”).

Yes. We do even have more. We can break the chain of causality too.

On the other hand, if you mean true creation – that is, creation of things from nothing (i.e., “ex nihilo”), then I would respond that the only one who has the power to do that is God (for a variety of reasons).

Creation of things from nothing is problematic since it requires two states of existence one follows another (this is true because it requires time which it is itself a part of creation (things)).

 

[setarcos]

The truth cannot be self-contrary because we could have concept like “truth and untruth could be real at the same time”. That could not be real.

The key is that it “seems self-contradictory” not that it is. It only seems that way as I have demonstrated because our human minds are not capable of comprehending, in a meaningful way, the reality of the thing that is true. The model Quantum mechanics describes of reality has been demonstrated time and again to be a true model of reality.

 

[GLam8833]

The “point” of the discussion does not go away because God has been defined as Love. How is it that how God has been defined can be rectified with what we know of reality compared with what we can understand about our own definitions of God?

Love is the Depths of God’s mysteries, we must “graduate”
to Love to the measure of the fullness of Christ. 1 Cor. 13:11
Eph. 3:17-19 Love is the Greatest of the things that are
eternal.(1 Cor. 13:14) It therefore is the one that is changeless.
God’s will is for us to grow in Love towards our bros. and
sisters in Christ, see the first Epistle of John chapter 3:23-24.

 

[setarcos]

Love is the Depths of God’s mysteries, we must “graduate”
to Love to the measure of the fullness of Christ. 1 Cor. 13:11
Eph. 3:17-19 Love is the Greatest of the things that are
eternal.(1 Cor. 13:14) It therefore is the one that is changeless.
God’s will is for us to grow in Love towards our bros. and
sisters in Christ, see the first Epistle of John chapter 3:23-24.

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut, it is appreciated. Your missing the gist of the thread I believe. God has been defined. It matters not if you bring the word love into the discussion and use it to prove Gods changelessness. You’ve merely exchanged one word for another but haven’t rectified the problems of changelessness and God being discussed. If Love is a changeless state then the creature with potential could never love freely. The love Adam and Eve had for their creator could never have been compromised in transgression unless you believe love is its own entity or the capacity to Love doesn’t effect the state of the lover and vice versa. Also if Love is changeless there is no growth in Love to be had. You either have love or you don’t.

 

[GLam8833]

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut, it is appreciated. Your missing the gist of the thread I believe. God has been defined. It matters not if you bring the word love into the discussion and use it to prove Gods changelessness. You’ve merely exchanged one word for another but haven’t rectified the problems of changelessness and God being discussed. If Love is a changeless state then the creature with potential could never love freely. The love Adam and Eve had for their creator could never have been compromised in transgression unless you believe love is its own entity or the capacity to Love doesn’t effect the state of the lover and vice versa. Also if Love is changeless there is no growth in Love to be had. You either have love or you don’t.

Love is NEVER changeless, it is a Living mystery, we can never say
that we Love perfectly, ever!! Only God can Love perfectly, as
shown by His act of Love on dying for us on the Cross, therefore
Love is the goal of our faith of whom Christ is the author and perf-
ector. Heb. 12:2. In Fact we(The believers in Christ) will spend
Eternity together trying to fathom the length, the breadth, the
height and the depth of God’s Love which is BEYOND knowing!!
See Eph. 3:18-19

 

[setarcos]

Love is NEVER changeless, it is a Living mystery, we can never say
that we Love perfectly, ever!! Only God can Love perfectly, as
shown by His act of Love on dying for us on the Cross, therefore
Love is the goal of our faith of whom Christ is the author and perf-
ector. Heb. 12:2. In Fact we(The believers in Christ) will spend
Eternity together trying to fathom the length, the breadth, the
height and the depth of God’s Love which is BEYOND knowing!!
See Eph. 3:18-19

That’s good n well and all but would you care to address the reasoning in my statement instead of merely spouting hyperbole about love without thinking about what your statements imply?