Transcription
Is a fallacy.
Can you tell me what a fallacy is?
Got my whiteboard.
Yeah.
I had a quick question. Someone mentioned on your last stream about, uh, God being pure act in the incarnation. How that it's, uh, it's an issue. It's problematic. And you said that, uh, something along the lines of how if he's always actualizing everything and he's actualizing one hypostasis, why isn't he actualizing the other two? Right?
Um, could a Roman Catholic counter that by saying that he can't actualize the other two because it's logically impossible?
No, the argument is not that he's actualizing other persons. The argument is that a being that is pure act has to have something other than himself or itself to actualize. That's what in Aristotle the word means. So Aristotle believes that the first cause is a first actualizer. He's pure energy, pure action. So there's always something other than himself.
Now the reason that we don't apply that argument necessarily, you could make an argument about generating of the sun, right? Because if God is pure act, then what is the distinction between generating and spirating? There would be a real distinction in the Trinity, right? But this is, this is just to speak of God in essence, definitionally God via substance as pure act. And the problem is that in Aristotelian philosophy, pure act means that he's eternally pure act. He's always pure act. To act means to actualize. He's not actualizing himself. So Aristotle said he's always actualizing the other, something other than himself. So the argument is not about other persons. It could be, but it's not about that. It's about creation. Aristotle believes that there's an eternal prima materia, prime matter, that the first actualizer is eternally actualizing. Does that make sense?
Yes. Because if that's what he is by definition, he's going to, it's going to necessitate him actualizing something.
From all eternity.
Correct. Yeah.
Yeah. So there's never a time when he wasn't actualizing creation and then he changed to become the actualizer of creation. That would mean, if that happened, that would mean he has potential. And in Roman Catholic theology, in terms of especially Thomism, but generally speaking in Roman Catholic theology, uh, God has absolutely no potential, no active or passive potential in any sense at all. Period. That's why Basil says in Hexamaron 2 that Aristotle's argument is stupid because if God is an eternal actualizer as a first principle, then he must have a second principle that he always actualizes. So there's a necessary relationship between the actualizer and what he actualizes, between God and creation. That's an eternal creation.
But this is not my argument. It's just Basil's argument in Heximer 2. He says Aristotle's stupid because he has a diad. So that's why it's two persons is because the material world that the first actualizer is eternally actualizing is itself another eternal principle. So Basil says, well, that's basically a two-headed god. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes sense. But I thought that, uh, the idea of him being pure act causes problems for the incarnation. I thought someone mentioned.
Why it does? Because how does one hypostasis enter into a mode of being that the other two do not?
Yeah. And that's where I was going to ask, could they counter that by saying that the other two can't enter into a mode of being because it's logically impossible or something?
Why would it be logically impossible for the Father and the Spirit to do it, but not the Son? I mean, I don't understand how that's even a coherent argument. It just sounds like it sounds like an ad hoc rescue. The problem is with the doctrine of simplicity and with the doctrine of pure act. They're defining God in essence as pure act. St. Maximus does not define God in his essence as pure act. He defines God as pure act in contrast to creatures. But in essence, we do not know what he is. So they collapse the two distinctions. They collapse oikonomia into theologia proper. Do you understand?
Yes.
And yes, you could take the look, the pure act simplicity argument will apply to any level of distinctions in God if you wanted to, right? So in other words, we could apply it to the distinction between generating and spirating. Is that a real distinction? Sure. Okay. Then is it something that's in the essence? How is God pure act if there's two different things going on in God? Right. And then their other doctrine of absolute divine simplicity probably doesn't even allow for a distinction.
What do you mean their other doctrine?
Well, if God is absolutely simple, how can he have distinctions within himself? Right.
Right. So in other words, modal collapse argument does point out problems in any attempt to make distinctions in God that are only virtual, nominal, or conceptual.
Okay. The distinction between generating and spirating is not virtual. It's not nominal. It's not conceptual. It is, but it's it's you can conceptually distinguish because it's really distinguished. This is the whole paper, *capa epinoia*, that Bradshaw has. So can we make a conceptual distinction between, uh, generating and spirating in our minds? Yes. How can we do that? Basil says because it's a real distinction. What your mind is predicating is predicating on the basis of what's really distinct. Because there is a real distinction between generating and spirating, you can really distinguish those things in your mind. And some distinctions are purely conceptual. Right? The distinction between, uh, bachelor and unmarried man is a conceptual distinction. There's not a real distinction in reality between those two things, right? But in our mind, we can distinguish them linguistically. But there is a real distinction between the Son and the Spirit because there's a real distinction between generating and spirating. Okay? So is that an action of the essence or an action of the persons? Well, it's an action of the person of the Father. That's why you have to begin your Trinitarian theology not with the essence of God, but with the person of the Father. And that's what the Cappadocians do. So the Roman Catholics just simply don't accept Constantinople I and the Cappadocian teaching, and they think they do. They can say all day long that they do, but in fact, they don't. And I, I'm almost done with this whole PhD thesis on that very topic. Right. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity. The whole book, the whole PhD thesis is about the fact that the Cappadocian doctrine of divine simplicity and distinctions in the Trinity is different from the Augustinian, Latin, and Anselmian, Thomistic West.
Well, yeah. I mean, why is this even controversial? It's like, how many, I mean, we had medieval councils called the Palamite Councils that already told us this a thousand years ago, so we shouldn't even have to debate this 800 years ago. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Uh, no, that was it. Thank you.