by Jimmy Stephens

The Argument:

Let’s recap the discussion as it stands—please correct me if I’ve misunderstood any points.

Initial Claim:

• CLAIM: If God is Actus Purus, He is vacuous.
• REASON GIVEN: According to the linked video, God avoids vacuousness because He is self-conscious. This self-consciousness is possible because each person of the Trinity is conscious of themselves as distinct from the other persons.

Objection One:

• OBJECTION: This reasoning relies on univocal predication.
• ELABORATION: The concept of divine consciousness does not need to function in the same way as human consciousness; for instance, it does not necessarily involve a distinction from another being.

Objection Two:

• OBJECTION: Presenting the Trinity as three self-conscious persons implies three distinct wills and knowledge within God.
• Note: The direct contradiction between this point and the concept of God as Actus Purus hasn’t been explicitly covered, or I may have missed it.

The Response:

The first objection suffers from two key flaws. First, it does not logically follow that because God’s mind is transcendent and beyond univocal predication, He can be unitarian in mind. The mere fact that God is not subject to univocalism does not allow us to infer anything specific about His nature. This is akin to arguing that because God’s life does not function like human life, He could theoretically kill Himself eternally and still live—a clearly spurious conclusion.

Second, the accusation of univocalism ironically undermines itself. God has provided sanctioned analogies in revelation for us to use. When the objection employs terms like “function,” “pure act,” “conscious,” or even the simple verb “is” in reference to God, it assumes these terms can be intelligibly predicated of God without falling into univocalism. Thus, the objection self-destructs by relying on the very univocalism it seeks to critique.

As for the second objection, it is even more problematic. There are three ways to interpret it:

1. As a mere assertion: In this case, it can be dismissed just as easily as it was stated.
2. As the conclusion of an unstated argument: If so, we’re still waiting for the biblical support.
3. As an implicit appeal to human analogies: The objection likely assumes that human wills and consciousness provide a template for understanding the divine, which not only collapses into the first objection but also reveals itself as another form of univocalism.

In summary, while the first objection collapses under its own weight, the second compounds the error by relying on the very fallacy it aims to expose.