Actuality and Potentiality

Actual: what is.

Potential: what may be.

When something actualizes it ceases to be potential and at once becomes what is. What is actual is not, is no longer, potential. If something is merely potential it is not actual.

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction states that something cannot at once be and not be. X cannot be at once X and not X. Nothing can be both potential and actual.

God knows all that is actual. Everything that is is contained in the mind of God.

God also realizes the potentiality of all things. All that may be is known by God.

But what of what will be? Does God know what potentialities will become actualities?

If God knows what will be what will be is actual rather than potential. Similarly what will not be is also not potential, it is nothing. If all is actual and nothing is potential there is no choice. We are no freer than Hamlet was in the mind of Shakespeare. All is written and time passes like the pages in a book. The story is written. We play our parts till it ends.

But would we fault Hamlet for his actions? Would God fault us for merely playing the role assigned to us in this story? God is just and justice entails responsible action. One cannot be responsible for an action unless they freely choose it. Since God is just we know that man freely chooses his actions. If man freely chooses his actions he has the potential to choose good or bad—not all is actualized. If not all is actualized not all is known by God.

The lesser cannot create the greater. The unfree man in an unfree world cannot create freedom. But a perfectly free Being could create freedom. To do this the Being would have to limit its knowledge. For if all is known, all is actual (for one can only know the actual). If all is actual there is no potential. If there is no potential there is no freedom.

Why would God limit His knowledge? Certainly He could and He has. At one moment in history God limited his power and splendor and took on the form of a humble, finite man. He did this in order to bring salvation to all man kind. Who is to say He would not limit His knowledge of the future in some way so as to allow for potentiality and the freedom of man?