Sustainer Actualizer and Necessary Being
May this work be a channel of the graces of the Holy Spirit to you. In my writing titled “Justification of God” I explained my argument for the existence of God, or because God is Existence Himself, then it is simply the argument for God. In this writing I shall elaborate why God is necessary in all conditions of the universe. God is necessary not only in a universe which has a beginning, rather it is also necessary for a universe which has infinite regress. In other words, infinite regress does not contradict the idea of First Cause, or as First Cause is not so appropriate a term in this case, I call Him the Sustainer Actualizer.
The argument does not
in fact involve change at all. It has nothing to do with beginnings or ends. It
deals only with the fact that there is anything which exists at all. Now I have
obtained a term from a friend that will be useful here, that is called subsistence,
or “self-supporting”. Instead the argument deals with how an object can exist. It
is often the view that only changing objects require a higher cause or
actualizer. I disagree, all objects require an actualizer, which now is not
simply an actualizer, but instead is a sustainer.
Remember, when an
object exists, we can infer that the object is possible and it is certain. However,
a possible object is only certain and continues to be certain when there is
higher actualizer which ensures its certainty and actuality. Since this object
is assumed to have no beginning in existence, it has always been there, then we
do not say that the object is actualized, but it is sustained by a sustainer,
the Sustainer Actualizer. In other words, the possibility is certain only
because the Sustainer Actualizer has defined the possibility to be certain. All
things are possible, but not all are certain. The distinguishing factor of the
certainty of things is precisely the Sustainer Actualizer.
Therefore, for there
to be any object, eternal or not eternal, there has to be a Sustainer
Actualizer. This means even in an infinite regress, the existence of that
infinite regress is sustained by the Sustainer Actualizer, had the Sustainer
Actualizer “chose” the infinite regress to collapse, it can collapse at any
moment chosen by the Sustainer Actualizer. So, the relationship between the Sustainer
Actualizer and the actualized or sustained world is an eternal relationship. The
Sustainer Actualizer determines the sustenance to occur from eternity, and so
the Sustainer Actualizer remains necessary, and because we call whatever that
being is as God, God is necessary.
There is another way
that God is necessary. The first attribute of God is to prove that there is a
such a thing as a being without a beginning. We often think of beginning as in
time, but we have to think of beginning as simply meaning a thing whose existence
is sequential, it proceeds from a possible state to a certain state, in other
words it is actualized. That which is actualized in sequence, such that there
is a before it is actual, is dependent upon another thing for its actualization.
If the system of change has no beginning, then that system of change did not
require any further actualization. It means it has always been actual, it is fully
actual.
Such a being is also existentially
and actually independent of anything else, it has no necessity or need of
another being to actualize itself. We call such a being God. God has no
beginning, which means He is infinite, He is fully actual, and He is simple. From
these 3 fundamental attributes flows out all other derivative attributes of
God. Now if one were to claim an infinite regress, then they are to accept
immediately that they have just claimed God. That which has an infinite
regress, that is without beginning, is precisely God.
In a way, only God
exists, there is only one Reality and that Reality is precisely God. For God
has no beginning and Reality has no beginning. One might say that God is undefined,
but He is definable, in a sense. His definition is precisely the negation of
all things which He is not. Composition, Potentiality, and Finitehood, these
are the things absolutely lacking in God. God is Simplicity, Actuality, and
Infinity. It can be said that God is the whole, while the things below are “parts”
of the Reality that is God. However we interpret God after that, logic will
always lead us to the existence of the Necessary Being, that is God. May this
work glorify the Holy Spirit now and forever.
Comments
Post a Comment