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    There is no act-potency distinction in God; God is actus ... — Carmelics
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    Home/Divine Attributes
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    There is no act-potency distinction in God; God is actus purus, pure act, wholly actual.

    Divine Attributes
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.God is the absolute.
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    • 2.An absolute cannot lack anything nor does it have any need to develop itself: it is, eternally, all that it can be.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.God's free decision to create rather than not create implies a real distinction between what God does and what God could have done otherwise.
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    • 2.A being whose every aspect is wholly necessary and fully actualized cannot be the subject of genuine contingent acts like creation or providential response.
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    • 3.If divine freedom is real, then God possesses unrealized possibilities, which entails something analogous to potentiality.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hegel argues that a being defined as pure, undifferentiated actuality with no internal distinctions is formally equivalent to pure nothingness.
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    • 2.Actus purus, lacking all internal negation and differentiation, cannot serve as the ground of a world characterized by determinacy and distinction.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A being whose every aspect is wholly necessary and fully actualized cannot be th...Actus purus, lacking all internal negation and differentiation, cannot serve as ...An absolute cannot lack anything nor does it have any need to develop itself: it...God is the absolute.
    +3 moreShow less
    God's free decision to create rather than not create implies a real distinction ...Hegel argues that a being defined as pure, undifferentiated actuality with no in...If divine freedom is real, then God possesses unrealized possibilities, which en...

    Similar

    Angels possess a conceptual — not real — composition of potency and ac...78%God is free of matter-form composition, potency-act composition, and e...75%The active intellect is always in act and never in potency.75%Disjunctive pairs like 'infinite'-'finite' and 'act'-'potency' meet th...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: divine-simplicity
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    God is the absolute. An absolute cannot lack anything nor does it have any need to develop itself: it is, eternally, all that it can be. This implies that there is no act-potency distinction in God, no unrealized powers or potentialities. In the classical phrase, God is actus purus, pure act, wholly actual. James Dolezal puts it very well when he writes, “The consideration of God as ipsum esse subsistens and actus purus is crucial for any confession of God’s absolute existence” (Dolezal, 214).

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit