Pure Actuality: Some Application 2

ON IDOLATRY

The doctrine that God is purely actual implies that God is more unlike the creation than anything could possibly be, and this implies that all forms of idolatry are forms of blasphemy, which are really violations of the second/third commandment.

First, let’s examine the claim that being purely actual is more unlike the creation than anything could possibly be. A purely actual being has no potentialities whatsoever. All beings with potentialities derive their actuality from the one and only purely actual being (I will post something soon on why there can be only one purely actual being). But every being other than the purely actual being has potentialities. The easiest way to see this is to consider the potentiality for non-existence. Every being other than a purely actual being can fail to exist.* The only being that cannot fail to exist is the purely actual being. It has no potential to cease to be. God as purely actual is the ground of all other beings. All other beings get their being from God. All other actual beings are actual in virtue of God’s actualizing them. That is true of everything other than the purely actual being.  Consider the actual state of affairs of your knowing something. At one time you did not know that thing. Now you do. You have actualized a bit of knowledge. But the purely actual being’s activity is necessary for that movement from potentially knowing x to actually knowing x. All, literally all, actual things, owe their being actual to God’s activity. But God does not owe His being actual to the activity of anything at all. He just is purely actual. And this implies that in God there is no division, no real distinction between anything. In God, in the purely actual being, knowledge cannot be distinct from power, or love, or goodness, or truth, or beauty, or justice, or…. The purely actual being cannot have any real distinctions within itself, because that would imply a difference between it and whatever it is that is distinct from it. But then we would have a purely actual being AND whatever it is that is distinct from it. So, we arrive at the doctrine of divine simplicity. The purely actual being and the absolutely simple being are the same being.

What all of this implies is that nothing that exists in all of creation (not matter, not souls, not angels, not any instance of knowledge, power, goodness, love, etc….) is the exact same as God. For each created thing, no matter what it is, is a mixture of actuality and potentiality. In virtue of being actual, created things are like God, who is purely actual. But no created actuality can be identical to anything that God is. Our making images—golden, silver, bronze, stone, wood, straw—of God is bad because whatever it is that we make is something that is farther removed from imaging God than we are. Our actuality is greater, in lots of senses, than any image we might make of him. Our images of God are, in effect, images made by images. And nothing in creation (Jesus, remember is fully human AND fully God) can be more than an image. Treating the image as though it is identical to God is like treating a doll as though it is identical to your child. This is true of images we make—statues, pillars, buildings, money, cars, sports, politics, science, etc—and true of those that we don’t. Furthermore, this implies that none of our ideas or concepts can possibly perfectly represent God.

Those who have defended the doctrine that God is pure actuality itself have also brought attention to dangers of conceptual idolatry. Since, our concepts are acquired by interaction with the created realm, our concepts cannot be exact representations of anything in God. All concepts represent, in their primary sense, mixtures of potentiality and actuality. This is even true of our concepts of abstract objects. We acquire those by stripping away various particularities—we all have the concept of a human which we acquire by removing the various particularities of individual humans. So, the concept itself is acquired by our intellects abstracting away from the specific features of something. The concept is made actual by removing things that are merely potential, not essential, features of it. So, no concept perfectly matches the purely actual being. Indeed, our concept of a purely actual being is merely similar to the purely actual being itself. We are to worship God, not our concept of God. Our concepts of God, just like all of the creation, are images of Him, but can never exactly represent him or anything that He is. If we forget that, we are liable to idolatrous thinking or conceptual idolatry.

The upshot of all of this is that all of our talk and thinking about God is, when done rightly, analogical. Indeed, it seems the all of the creation—everything that exists other than God—is analogical, and analogical through and through. Here’s a famous example of this idea of analogy:

Some meals are healthy.

Some complexions are healthy.

Some organisms are healthy.

Note how the first two uses of ‘healthy’ are analogical, depending on a grasp of the third, more fundamental use of the term. ‘Healthy’ in its primary sense refers to the functioning of an organism. The other uses of ‘healthy’ relate to that primary use. Meals are healthy (or unhealthy) by their contribution to the functioning of the organism that eats them, whereas complexions are healthy (or unhealthy) by representing or being signs of health in the organism.

Given all that has been said then all of our thoughts about God—all attributions to God of power, goodness, knowledge, wisdom, love, beauty, justice, anger, sorrow, etc—are analogical in a similar way that the health example reveals. But it’s even more extreme. Since God is pure act (we are supposing), and nothing else that is actual is purely actual, all creaturely instances of attributes that can be applied to God are impure or somehow related to the more fundamental reality of God. The power, goodness, knowledge, etc. of the purely actual being is the primary and all other cases are like those but are not the primary or most real instances. Just as healthy meals or complexions are not the most genuine, most real, fundamental, pure health, so the goodness, power, knowledge, etc of a creature is not the most genuine, most real, fundamental, or pure. The purely actual being is the paradigm. Everything else is an image. But remember that’s everything else—our thoughts, concepts, words, etc. So we cannot escape the analogy. We cannot comprehend the reality that the analogies point to. My existence is like God’s existence in various ways, but God exists more fully, more purely, more completely, than I do (or anything I have ever encountered in creation). And what it is to exist more fully, more purely, more completely than anything in creation cannot be comprehended by us. God is literally incomprehensible. He is beyond the creation in more ways than we can imagine or conceive or comprehend.

Idolatry essentially denies that. It reduces God to a creature, to a mere image. Think of someone you love. Do you love that person, or do you love your image of that person? The latter is gross, nasty, disgusting. It’s like loving the photo of the person more than the actual person. When we engage in idolatrous thinking and living we misrepresent God to the world. It’s like spreading lies about someone you deeply admire or love. It’s like ruining their reputation, spoiling their name, and turning others away from them. That’s what idolatry does. And that’s what blasphemy does. Blasphemy is so bad because it points others away from God, the one who truly heals and makes all things new; the one who brings fullness of life; the one who satisfies our deepest longings. Blasphemy spreads lies of God and directs ours and others’ attention, love, and worship to another. And that’s why the third commandment is so important. The third commandment tells us not to misuse or carry the name of God in vain. Doing so is a form of idolatry. And we do that whenever we, while carrying the name of God, point others away from him. May our lives, words, thoughts, and actions, point others to the spring of life and love; the one who alone truly is.