Entry 0251: God's Existence and God's actus
essendi
It
is well known that the question “Does God exist?” had an affirmative answer
before the time of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The discovery of the notion of actus
essendi was not needed to put to rest the issue of God’s existence. The
historical path of the philosophical demonstration of the existence of God is
the historical path of a judgment of existence applied to God.
The
issue of the definition of the essence of God in terms of the metaphysical
principle of actus essendi, on the other hand, is not only an issue
different from the issue of God’s existence, it is also an issue that took a
different historical path in its development. Aquinas was indeed able to
express the human intellect’s awareness of the real in the technical
terminology of the actus essendi, but there is no question that before
the discovery of the notion of actus essendi, answers to the question
“Does God exist?” had been given in terms of a judgment of existence.
In
his understanding of esse, Aquinas distinguished clearly between the esse
that answers the question of existence (an sit) and the esse that
connotes the metaphysical principle of actus essendi. And here something
that may seem obvious needs to be emphasized. After the discovery of the notion
of actus essendi, the issue of how to reason and conclude correctly
about God’s actus essendi is not to be confused with the issue of how to
reason and conclude correctly about God’s existence.
