We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Do you believe God is pure actuality?
The basis of the classical view of God as pure actuality (actus purus) is the Aristotelian notion that potentiality is always potential for change and that something changes only because is lacks something else. So, a perfect being who lacks nothing must be devoid of potentiality, which means it must be pure actuality.
I think this perspective is misguided on a number of accounts.
First, if all our thinking about God is to be centered on Jesus Christ, the definitive revelation of God (Heb. 1:1-3), I don’t see how we could ever come to the conclusion that God is devoid of potentiality. In Christ, God became something he wasn’t previously – namely, a human being. This entails that God had the potential to become a human being. And this alone is enough to dismiss the “God as pure actuality” idea.
I would argue this insight is confirmed with every verb ascribed to God in the Bible. Whenever God acts in time, it implies that God first had the potential to do what he did and then he did it. Aristotle’s actus purus deity can engage in no such activities.
Beyond this, however, it seems to me the actus purus model of perfection is strongly counter-intuitive. We usually see potentiality as a positive thing. The more potential something has, the higher we value it, all other things being equal. For example, part of what makes us consider humans to have more value than (say) cattle is that humans have far more potential to do positive things than cattle do.
On the other hand, what analogy is there to help us understand the total absence of potentiality for positive things as being itself a positive thing? All of our understanding of God is rooted in analogies from our experience, since that about which we have no analogy is meaningless. So how are we to analogically understand God, the one who possesses all positive value, as being completely devoid of potentiality? I know of no way to do this. This suggests that not only is the concept of the supreme, perfect God being actus purus counter-intuitive: it arguably is also unintelligible.
Given our uniform experience of potentiality, it would rather seem we should conceive of God as possessing the maximal amount of potentiality for positive things.
Some classical theists object to attributing potentiality to God because they consider potentiality to be a consequence of contingency, and thus inapplicable to a necessary being. However, why must a necessary being be conceived of as being necessary in every respect? While lacking the potential to (say) cease to exist or to worsen one’s character may be considered virtues—hence God’s existence and character should be conceived of as being strictly necessary—this doesn’t entail that the actions God engages in to express his necessary character must themselves be necessary.
For God to lack the potentiality to act and experience in contingent ways would be for God to lack something praiseworthy and valuable. It would amount to God lacking freedom, and indeed lacking everything we ordinarily associate with living, personal beings.
Thus, for biblical as well as philosophical reasons, I conclude that the classical view of God as actus purus is misguided.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Classical Theism, God, Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Attributes and Character
Related Reading

If God is already doing the most he can do, how does prayer increase his influence?
Question: If God always does the most that he can in every tragic situation, as you claim in Satan and the Problem of Evil, how can you believe that prayer increases his influence, as you also claim? It seems if you grant that prayer increases God’s influence, you have to deny God was previously doing…

Making God in Our Own Image
In this video, Greg introduces the idea of how we make God into our own image instead of allowing God to define himself through the revelation of Jesus. In an interview performed by Travis Reed from theworkofthepeople.com, we have a basic, quick introduction to a core element of Greg’s theology. This is a great piece to…

What is the significance of 1 Chronicles 21:15?
“And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but when he was about to destroy it, the Lord took note and relented concerning the calamity; he said to the destroying angel, ‘Enough! Stay your hand.’” This powerful passage tells us why God sent the angel and why he changed his mind. If God…

Is it okay to masturbate?
When I as a new struggling Christian raised this topic with my pastor, I was told in no uncertain terms that God struck Onan dead for masturbating. At some point I read the passage for myself (Gen. 38:1-10) and discovered my pastor had mislead me. It’s true that Onan was punished by God because he…

A Brief Outline and Defense of the Open View
While many Christians have found the open view of the future to be the most helpful and accurate view of God’s foreknowledge of the future based on biblical, philosophical, and experiential evidence, others have criticized the view as unorthodox and even heretical. What follows is a brief description and defense of the open view prepared…

What is the significance of Psalm 106:23?
“Therefore he said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.” Moses (on several occasions, we have seen) persuaded God to change his mind regarding his plan to judge Israel. This inspired verse explicitly says that God “would destroy…