By His Own Act, Stan is Halfway Home; But He Needs To Act On The Inside

Today, Stan has taken a giant leap forward in the gospel mission of loving others. Unexpected, really.

Stan is clear that true live, divine love is an act in creation! Further, Stan is clear that god’s love in creation is all act with no remainder left over. God’s love is complete action. I applaud him for affirming the perfect fullness of god’s love.

Stan is halfway home to realizing the gospel message: god so loved. 

As he says, there is no quantity indicated by “so”. It’s “quality,” he says. But I don’t think he realizes the perfect fullness, the absolute completeness of the love of god that he, today, so well affirms. Does he know not what he says?

As Aquinas reminds us, god is not created, god has no limitations, god is one entirely. If his is powerful, then god is all powerful. If god is just then god is absolutely thoroughly just outside of which there is no thing. There is no remainder in god. As Aquinas says, god is eternal, therefore there no lingering capacity - or, as he says, no potency - remaining. Nothing is left unused, unexpressed.

Nothing unacted.

“The being whose substance has an admixture of potency is liable not to be [exist] by as much as it has potency [to be]; for that which “can” be [potency for being], can [thereby, also] not be. But God, being everlasting, in his substance cannot not be [have any remainder of being unexpressed, unacted]. In God, therefore, there is no potency to being….

The first agent, therefore, namely God, has no admixture of potency but is pure act.”

God is all act in god’s self. All the time.

So Stan bravely affirms that god’s love is, like his power and his justice, in full action all the time, perfectly and completely for eternity. There is no remainder, unused, at any time. Ever.

Think about that!!!

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Unfortunately, as his characteristic radical protestant anxiety about being human kicks in, he needs to disparage the acts of our emotional lives. How can he say that the feelings of human love, human compassion, human friendship are not acts of or moral Will? I have love and compassion and friendly feelings all the time toward many many people when most of the time the time, of course!, I’m not acting on them. How can anyone get anything done?

Not only that, envy, jealousy, hate, these are feelings which are sins precisely because they are morally wrong and spiritually death dealing.

But in our minds, we have a Will and a conscience that provokes our Will to choose to fell love or jealousy to choose to feel compassion or hate, friendship or envy. When we exercise our Will to write the narrative of our intentions and inner judgments, we are acting. Acting in way that have interior consequences.

And because we ARE beings with an admixture of “potency”, of potential, we always have love and compassion and friendship… unacted upon. Because our powers of love have to be moved by something else. By our Will.

God’s love is perfectly full act that is not moved by something else other part of god somewhere else in god’s being. God’s being is eternal unity, perfectly full, perfectly complete, outside of which there is no thing. 

Gods is love. There is nothing outside god’s love, which Stan has affirmed is perfect and eternal act.

Stan is halfway home. 

Will he keep acting to keep himself half blind?