Aristotelian View of God - The Principles of Being

The Principles of Being

See also: Categories (Aristotle) and Substance theory

In the metaphysical order, the highest determinations of Being are Actuality (entelecheia - Greek: ἐντελέχεια) and Potentiality (dynamis - Greek: δύναμις). The former is perfection, realization, fullness of Being; the latter imperfection, incompleteness, perfectibility. The former is the determining, the latter the determinable principle. Actuality and potentiality are above all the Categories. They are found in all beings, with the exception of the Supreme Cause, in whom there is no imperfection, and, therefore, no potentiality. God is all actuality, Actus Purus.

All other beings are composed of actuality and potentiality, a dualism which is a general metaphysical formula for the dualism of matter and form, body and soul, substance and accident, the soul and its faculties, passive and active intellect. In the physical order, potentiality and actuality become Matter and Form. To these are to be added the Agent (Efficient Cause) and the End (Final Cause); but as the efficiency and finality are to be reduced, in ultimate analysis, to Form, we have in the physical order two ultimate principles of Being, namely, Matter and Form. Aristotle's Four causes -- Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final—are seen in the case, for instance, of a statue:

• The material cause, that out of which the statue is made, is the marble or bronze.
• The formal cause, that according to which the statue is made, is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter.
• The efficient cause, or Agent, is the sculptor.
• The final cause is that for the sake of which (as, for instance, the price paid the sculptor, the desire to please a patron, etc.) the statue is made.

Mere potentiality without any actuality or realization (Prima materia in Latin) nowhere exists by itself, though it enters into the composition of all things except the Supreme Cause. It is at one pole of reality, He is at the other. Both are real. Primordial matter possesses what may be called the most attenuated reality, since it is pure indeterminateness, God possesses the highest and most complete reality, since He is in the highest grade of determinateness. To prove that there is a Supreme Cause is one of the tasks of metaphysics the Theologic Science. And this Aristotle undertakes to do in several portions of his work on First Philosophy.

In the Physics he adopts and improves on Socrates' teleological argument, the major premise of which is "Whatever exists for a useful purpose must be the work of an intelligence". In the same treatise he argues that, although motion is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of movers and of things moved. Therefore there must be one, the first in the series, which is unmoved, to provide movement without being moved: described in Greek as proton kinoun akineton and in Latin as primum movens immobile.

In the Metaphysics he takes the stand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought (noesis noeseos). The Supreme Being imparted movement to the universe by moving the First Heaven, the movement, however, emanated from the First Cause as desirable. In other words, the First Heaven, attracted by the desirability of the Supreme Being "as the soul is attracted by beauty", was set in motion, and imparted its motion to the lower spheres and thus, ultimately, to our terrestrial world.

According to this theory God never leaves the eternal repose in which His blessedness consists. Since matter, motion, and time are eternal, the world is eternal. Yet, it is caused. The manner in which the world originated is not defined in Aristotle's philosophy.