The 60-Second Aquinas
Lesson
Act and Potency
August 19, 1998
When the devil told Adam and Eve that they would become like God if they ate the forbidden fruit, he was LYING!
That is no surprise, I hope.
But, it’s tempting to think that when we die we will be like God. We recognize that we are created in the image of God, and that we are intellectual beings. It is tempting to think that once we are rid of the corporeal existence of our bodies that we will be like God.
This is not quite right, either.
First, Aquinas points out that anything that is created takes its existence from the Creator, but does not equal the Creator by definition. An acorn may take its existence from an oak tree and might grow into a similar oak tree, but it does not BECOME the original oak tree.
Second, our existence and relationship to God deals with act and potency, something Aquinas speaks often about: "The supreme intellectual being, God, is pure act. Other intellectual substances have something of act and of potency…And the lowest among intellectual substances, that whereby man understands, has, so to speak, intellectual being only in potency" (Compendium Ch. 76)
Explanation of The 60-Second Aquinas Lesson
