Classical Theism, Interpersonal Relations, and the Receptivity of God

Abstract

A central tenet of classical theism is that God is Pure Act. Among other things, this indicates that while God can act on creatures, he cannot be acted on by those creatures, for there is no receptivity in God. Yet this seems to imply that God cannot enter into interpersonal relationships with human persons, for such relationships are intrinsically reciprocal and therefore require activity and receptivity from all participants. Since the Christian faith is ostensibly committed to the claim that God can and does engage humans in interpersonal relationship, classical theism appears to be incompatible with Christianity. Nevertheless, in this paper I propose a Thomistic version of classical theism that avoids this apparent tension. Drawing on a Thomistic philosophical anthropology, as well as recent work on the second-person relation, I suggest that there is, in fact, receptivity in God. However, I argue that God’s receptivity is a feature of his Pure Activity, and thus the claim that God engages humans in interpersonal relationship proves to be consistent with the doctrines of classical theism.

1. Introduction

One of the central tenets of classical theism is that God is Pure Act.1 The roots of this doctrine can be traced back at least to Aristotle, and it is so commonplace as to be virtually uncontested by classical theists. Yet it carries important implications for a Christian version of classical theism that are troubling. For example, the notion that God is Pure Act is often taken to imply that God is not just a being, but is Being itself. As Eleonore Stump has noted though, Being itself cannot enter into loving relationships with persons, which is a belief that is central to the Christian faith.2 Similarly, it implies that God is both immutable and impassible, for to undergo any sort of change in response to people or events in the world—in other words, to be receptive in some way toward creatures—is antithetical to the concept of Pure Activity. This is no less problematic, for mutability and passibility seem to be essential features of interpersonal relationships, and, as noted, Christians are committed to the view that God enters into personal relationship with at least some of his creatures.

In light of such worries, should Christians give up on classical theism? In my view, Eleonore Stump has successfully shown how classical theists can view God as both Being itself and as a personal being.3 Nevertheless, this second challenge remains unanswered, so I wish to address how a classical theist might affirm receptivity in God. After calling attention to the intrinsically reciprocal nature of interpersonal relationships—most notably the second-person relationship—I argue that to be in such relationships requires persons to be simultaneously active and receptive, and this holds for divine persons as well as human persons. Insofar as God enters into interpersonal relationships, it follows that there is receptivity in God. Yet I argue that this does not force us to reject classical theism, but is in fact a natural corollary of it on the Thomistic account from which I will operate.4 As we will see, on a Thomistic metaphysics, God’s Pure Activity is also a Pure Receptivity, and thus, in my view, a Thomistic framework presents a richer and more defensible version of a Christian classical theism.5

2. God as Pure Act

To say that God is Pure Act is essentially to claim that God has no unrealized potencies; God could not be more or less perfect than he already is, which includes being Goodness itself, Being itself, etc. There are numerous classical theists who defend the idea that God is Pure Act, along with an important implication of this belief, viz., that God is immutable and impassible, but for the sake of simplicity I will call attention to only two examples: Reginald Garrigou-Legrange and Brian Davies. According to Garrigou-Legrange, “God is either determining or determined… The knowledge of God is the CAUSE of our free determinations, or else it is CAUSED by them… The knowledge of God either measures things or is measured by them. Only anthropomorphism can admit the second term of the dilemma and therefore, from sheer necessity, we must keep to the first.”6 For Garrigou-Legrange, God cannot be determined by creatures, so he must therefore determine creatures. There are, of course, important implications of this position for human free will, but for our purposes we can see that such a view is rooted in the idea that God is Pure Act. If anything that God “comes to learn” about human action is a result of that human action, then humans have a causal impact on God, which is impossible.7 Creatures cannot determine God in any way on this classical theistic framework.

Brian Davies is another defender of classical theism, which he claims has been the dominant view for Christians throughout history, and for good philosophical reasons. Echoing Garrigou-Lagrange’s point noted above, Davies explains that for classical theists God is Pure Act, and therefore cannot be affected by anything that creatures, including humans, do. In his words:

[N]othing created can cause God to change or be modified in any way. In terms of classical theism, there is no causality from creatures to God since creatures are wholly God’s effects. Parents can act causally on their children. And children can act causally on their parents. But that is so because they belong to the same world as each other and because neither parents nor children owe all that they are to each other. According to classical theism, however, creatures constantly owe all that they are to God, and any causal activity of theirs is, first and foremost, God’s causal activity in them.8

We are wholly dependent on God for our being and our actions, but neither God’s being nor any of his actions are in any way dependent on us.9 As Thomas Aquinas would put this point, there is no real relation between God and creatures.10 And this is precisely what we ought to expect for a being that is Pure Act.

Nevertheless, the version of classical theism that thinkers such as Garrigou-Lagrange and Davies endorse might be troubling for a theist who thinks that God engages humans in personal, loving relationships.11 After all, since God is immutable and impassible, he could not be receptive to the actions of human persons, for nothing we do could have an impact on him. As a result, it is difficult to see how we could enter into anything that resembles an interpersonal relationship with God, for such relationships involve a process of giving and receiving, acting and being affected (more on this below). Of course, Davies suggests that “according to classical theism, God is not a person,” and if this is true then not only is the classical theist free to reject the notion that God enters into interpersonal relationships (since only persons enter into such relationships), but, given the structure of these relationships, the classical theist should reject such a notion.12 Yet as other Christian scholars have pointed out, there is ample evidence in the Christian Scriptures that God can and does enter into interpersonal relationships with humans.13 This has led many to reject classical theism in favor of what Davies calls “theistic personalism,”14 which is a view that, among other things, asserts that God is a loving and relational being, and as such seeks to enter into relationship with at least some of his creatures.15

While the foregoing may indicate that there is a contradiction between classical theism and the Scriptural evidence that theistic personalists have cited, and while Davies himself insists that these two positions are at odds, in what follows I wish to suggest that there is a way to square classical theism with the claim that God enters into interpersonal relationships with creatures.

3. God and Interpersonal Relationships

Thomas Aquinas is one of the best-known champions of classical theism, and thinkers such as Garrigou-Lagrange and Davies have cited him in defense of the position they hold. And this is understandable, for Aquinas maintains a number of doctrines that are essential to classical theism, including the claim that all creatures depend on God but that God does not in any way depend on creatures,16 that God is simple,17 that God is perfect,18 and that God is immutable and impassible.19 But, unlike thinkers such as Davies, Aquinas does not adhere to a version of classical theism that denies the personhood of God, nor one that rejects the possibility that God enters into interpersonal relationships with creatures. In fact, contrary to Davies’ claim that “God is not a person,” Aquinas insists that God is a person, for “‘person’ signifies that which is most perfect in all of nature,”20 and since any perfection must be attributed to God, it follows that, in addition to applying to certain creatures, “person” ought to be applied to God as well, albeit in “a more excellent way.”21 And that Aquinas accepts that God is a person should not come as a surprise. In fact, God is not just a person for Aquinas, but three persons; God is a Trinity on Aquinas’s account.22 Of equal importance, as a person (or, more aptly, persons) who is intrinsically loving and relational,23 Aquinas also insists that God engages humans in interpersonal relationship.24

But while no one contests Aquinas’s status as a classical theist, it is difficult to see how the claim that God is a person, as well as the claim that God engages creatures in interpersonal relationship, could be compatible with classical theism. To see why this might be the case, it is worth calling attention to a characteristic feature of interpersonal relationships, and I will take the second-person relation as a paradigmatic example. As I have argued elsewhere,25 for a second-person relation to obtain it is not enough that Rhonda thinks about Brian in a certain way (i.e., as a “you”), but that each interacts with the other.26 For instance, Rhonda might think of Brian as “you” when she tries to get his attention to tell him about free tickets that she was given to the symphony: “Tony gave me his tickets to the concert tonight. Would you like to go with me?” But if Brian fails to hear her, or if he ignores her for whatever reason, then they have not established an I-You relationship. This is not because Rhonda fails to think of Brian in a second-personal way, nor due to any deficiency in her efforts, but rather because in order to engage another successfully in an I-You relationship it is necessary that both persons contribute to that relationship. It is an interaction that involves activity and receptivity on both sides. For instance, if Brian hears Rhonda’s invitation but does not appreciate classical music, he will likely decline her offer. But in his rejection he enters into a second-person relationship with her, for in this moment of engagement they each become the other’s you. He might say, “Thank you, but I’m not a fan of classical music, so you might ask Barbara to go with you instead.” Of course, if Rhonda would still like Brian to go to the concert with her then she may attempt to persuade him to reconsider his position on classical music, perhaps calling his attention to features of classical music that he does appreciate (e.g., comparing it to music that she knows he likes). Brian will respond in turn, possibly by giving reasons why he still doesn’t want to go, and the conversation will progress until Brian either agrees to accompany her or else offers a final refusal. But regardless of how simple or complex the interaction becomes, such conversations could not occur if Brian or Rhonda is merely talking at the other. Rather, for a second-person relationship to obtain each must interact with the other.

The foregoing indicates that the causal activity involved in a second-person interaction is not like other, non-personal causal activity. When a stove heats a teapot, there is a unidirectional causal activity in which the stove acts on the teapot and the teapot comes to acquire the heat of the stove. There are always (at least) two relata in such a causal relation, with one serving as agent and the other as patient.27 The second-person is not like this, however. On the contrary, it is a bidirectional relation in which both relata are agent and patient throughout the transaction. When Rhonda attempts to persuade Brian to expand his musical horizons, she must make her case in a way that is convincing to Brian, and to do this she must be attentive to whether her efforts are succeeding. And when Brian responds, he must be involved in a similar process. In other words, such a conversation does not merely involve activity on the part of one person and passivity on the part of the other, but activity and passivity from both throughout the interaction. Indeed, to be active in this sort of second-personal engagement is to be simultaneously receptive, for one could not engage another as her “you” without being receptive to the second-personal mode of address of the other. And while there are many ways to engage another second-personally that do not involve verbal conversation, I would maintain that this bidirectional structure is an intrinsic feature of all second-personal activity.28

With this brief account of the second-person relation in place, return to the idea that God engages human persons in interpersonal relationship (which Christians, including Aquinas, accept). If this is true, then there must be some sense in which God is both active and receptive toward the human person with whom he engages second-personally. Indeed, if bidirectionality is an intrinsic feature of second-person relationships, then participants must be active and receptive throughout the exchange, and this will hold whether the second-person relationship obtains between two human persons or between a human and God. Thus, if we adopt the claim that God can engage Rhonda second-personally, then God’s second-personal activity in relation to Rhonda involves a receptivity toward her.

That there is receptivity in God should not be a surprise to any Christian who accepts that God is a Trinity. While a full understanding of the Trinity is not only beyond the scope of this paper but also beyond human comprehension,29 Christians traditionally have held that the Second Person is “begotten, not made,” and that the Third Person “proceeds from the Father and the Son.”30 As W. Norris Clarke understands such beliefs,

[W]e find that giving and receiving are integral and inseparable aspects of the very fullness of perfection in the loving communion of persons within the unity of one divine nature, that actually constitutes the very infinite fullness of perfection of being itself in its highest realization. For just as the Father’s whole personality as Father consists in his communicating, giving, the entire divine nature that is his own to the Son, his eternal Word, so reciprocally the Son’s whole personality as Son consists in receiving, eternally and fully, with loving gratitude, this identical divine nature from his Father. The Son, as distinct from the Father, is subsistent Receiver, so to speak.31

When a Christian asserts that the Son is “begotten, not made,” Clarke interprets this doctrine to indicate an activity of receiving, one in which being begotten entails the reception of being without in any way diminishing the co-eternality or co-divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity. Aquinas himself uses different language in his discussion of the Trinity, referring to the “processions” of the Persons within the Trinity.32 But, in my view, Aquinas’s notion of “procession” also implies relations that involve giving and receiving between the Persons of the Trinity, for, regardless of how we work out the details concerning the nature of procession, there must be some relation between the one proceeding and the one from whom he proceeds, presumably with the one who proceeds receiving something that is given by the one from whom he proceeds.33 And such a claim gains support when we notice that the term “person” signifies relation for Aquinas when referring to the persons of the Trinity.34 So, it is plausible to think that while Aquinas uses different language from that of Clarke, they are each expressing the same basic idea: the Trinity consists in persons who are engaged in a dynamic interpersonal relationship—one that includes giving and receiving. Hence, at least for a Christian who affirms the doctrine of the Trinity, there should be no major obstacle to accepting that there is some kind of receptivity in God.

Nevertheless, while the claim that there is receptivity in the inner life of the Trinity may not be objectionable, the same cannot be said for the claim above that God is receptive to humans in his attempts to engage us second-personally. After all, among other things, to assert that God can enter into a relationship with creatures in which there is activity and receptivity appears to violate the doctrines of immutability and impassibility. In the remainder of this paper I will offer a series of arguments to suggest that this is not as troubling as it might initially appear to the classical theist. In fact, I will suggest that the claim that God is receptive to human persons is consistent with a Thomistic version of classical theism.

4. Classical Theism and Divine Receptivity

As far as I can tell, there are two primary reasons that would lead a classical theist to reject the claim that there is receptivity in God toward human persons: (1) it makes God mutable and passible and, perhaps worse, (2) it makes God’s activity dependent on humans. I will address each of these worries in turn, and in the process defend the claim that divine receptivity is compatible with classical theism.

I noted above that to enter into an I-You relationship it is necessary that each participant is active and receptive simultaneously throughout the interaction; it is an intrinsically bidirectional relation. This holds regardless of whether the persons involved in the I-You relation are human or divine, and thus it would seem that if God is to enter into any second-person relationship then he must be affected by the you that he engages. If this is true, then it would mean that God can be acted upon by a human person, which implies that he is both passible and mutable. This is clearly antithetical to classical theism. So, if interpersonal relationships involve activity and receptivity on both sides of the relation, then how could it be possible for God to enter into such relationships on a classical theistic framework?

The Thomistic version of classical theism that I am proposing has a straightforward response to this supposed difficulty: receptivity is not the same thing as passivity. While I have largely used the terms “passivity” and “receptivity” interchangeably thus far in this essay, following thinkers such as W. Norris Clarke I would suggest that these terms are not always synonymous. In fact, we can conceive of receptivity as a form of activity; or, to put it more precisely, receptivity is constitutive of interpersonal activity.35 As we saw above, one cannot be active second-personally without being receptive to the other. It may be true that when a human person is engaged in a second-person interaction there is some kind of passivity involved. For example, when Rhonda learns something new about Brian (e.g., that he does not appreciate classical music), or when Brian is persuaded by Rhonda that he should expand his musical taste, they each gain something that they previously lacked (i.e., new knowledge and a new appreciation for a different type of music, respectively). But even though this sort of passivity is involved in most human-human interpersonal relationships, it remains true that the activity involved in a second-person interaction could not obtain without a corresponding receptivity. For Rhonda to interact with Brian second-personally she must not only engage Brian as her you, but also be engaged by Brian as his you. Indeed, if the I-You is bidirectional in the way that was outlined above, then Rhonda could not actively engage Brian second-personally unless Brian also engages her second-personally. To be active in a second-personal way involves this receptivity toward the other within the second-person relation, and thus this receptivity is constitutive of one’s own activity. If we understand receptivity in this way, then the claim that God is receptive is perfectly consistent with the classical theist’s insistence that God is Pure Act, for some activity is constituted by interpersonal receptivity. Or, to put this the other way around, receptivity so construed just is activity.

So far so good. But if God can enter into an interpersonal relationship with a creature, then it would appear that he would undergo a change when a human person reciprocates and a relationship is thereby established. After all, it is natural to think that when a human person enters into an I-You relationship she undergoes some change. When Brian responds to Rhonda’s effort to engage him second-personally, for example, both Rhonda and Brian acquire properties that they previously lacked. Likewise, they each change from not being in a second-person relationship to being in a second-person relationship. And, at least on many traditional versions of Christianity, there are people with whom God is not currently in a second-person relationship—e.g., those who have not yet accepted God’s offer of grace (and therefore are not in a second-person relationship with him), or those who do not yet exist. If we suppose that at time t1 Rhonda is not in a second-person relationship with God, but at t2 she enters into such a relationship with him, then it would appear that between t1 and t2 God has undergone a change from not being in a second-person relationship with Rhonda to being in a second-person relationship with her, and as a result likely acquires some new property (or properties) from this new relationship. This would make God mutable, which would be deeply problematic for a classical theist, to say the least.

Yet if we take seriously the claim that God can be receptive without change in the inner life of the Trinity, then why not suppose that there is something analogous happening when God engages a human person? Indeed, since there is a form of receptivity in the Trinity that is consistent with God’s Pure Activity—for receptivity is a mode of activity—then receptivity as such need not imply that a person who is receptive must undergo some change in the act of receiving. Of course, it is true that in most human-human second-person relationships the participants acquire something that they previously lacked, and to acquire something new implies that the participants undergo some change. This is because human participants are typically passive in at least some respect toward the other person in such relationships, which is to say that they have some passive power actualized when acted on by the other participant. But passivity is not intrinsic to interpersonal relationships, and this is precisely because, as we saw above, receptivity is not the same thing as passivity. So, while a person cannot be active second-personally unless she is someone else’s you (which means she is receptive), this does not imply that a person must passively undergo some change when she is someone else’s you. In fact, we do not even need to suppose that passivity is necessarily involved in human-human second-person relationships. For example, it would be natural to think that Rhonda is the same self-conscious subject within her I-You relationship with Brian that she is outside of it; Brian doesn’t enhance her status as a person simply because he is now engaging her as a you, or vice versa.36 Rhonda thus does not change qua person when she is in an interpersonal relationship with Brian. Further, Brian and Rhonda could engage in a conversation—which involves being in an I-You relationship—in which neither learns anything new.37 In such a case, both participants would be active and receptive without acquiring some new property (in this case, knowledge). Moreover, if we take marriage as an example of a kind of extended interpersonal relationship, then two persons who are married could be in an ongoing second-person relationship such that after the relationship is formed there is no period at which either fails to be the other’s you. In marriage, then, two persons could stand in an interpersonal relationship without undergoing any change. So, even at the human level we can imagine cases in which being receptive within an interpersonal relationship does not involve passivity. Of course, in most (if not all) human-human interpersonal relationships there is some kind of passivity involved in one or both participants when interpersonally engaged. But the point here is that the participants would only be mutable or passible if some sort of passive power is actualized during the interpersonal relationship. Since a distinction can be made between passivity and receptivity, though, and since we can imagine cases in which one could be receptive without having any passive powers actualized, we clear the way to see that God could be involved in an interpersonal relationship with a creature without positing any passive powers in God, and therefore without suggesting that God is mutable or passible.

Further, while there is not space to flesh this out fully here, it may be useful to recall a distinction that classical theists have employed since at least Boethius—the eternality-temporality distinction.38 If God is an eternal being (that is, if God exists outside of time), and if we accept that interpersonal receptivity is included in God’s Pure Activity, then we might think that God could be eternally receptive to Rhonda’s reciprocation without undergoing any change when Rhonda does reciprocate. In other words, since classical theists have been willing to grant that there is some sense in which God is eternally active in relation to creatures, if receptivity is constitutive of interpersonal activity then to be eternally active in relation to creatures includes being eternally receptive to the reciprocation of those creatures when he works to enter into interpersonal relationships with human persons. In fact, if we place the doctrine of immutability alongside our revised understanding of Pure Activity, we could say that God is not more or less receptive in his eternal present whether we reciprocate or not, for, as Pure Act, he is already as active/receptive as he can be.39 Thus, we need not think that there would be any change in God when we reciprocate, even if our reciprocation produces a change in us. Positing receptivity in God therefore does not run afoul of the doctrines of immutability or impassibility.

While there is more that we might say here, in my view the foregoing provides a sketch for why a classical theist should not think that divine receptivity toward humans is incompatible with the doctrines of immutability or impassibility. But what about the worry concerning divine dependence? As I described the second-person relation above, to engage another second-personally is only possible if both participants contribute, and thus the second-personal activity of one participant depends on the second-personal activity of the other. If this is true, then it would seem to follow that God’s activity when he engages a human person in an interpersonal relationship is, at minimum, interdependent with that human person, and this would make God dependent on creatures in at least some respect. If this objection holds, then, to borrow language from Garrigou-Lagrange, it would imply that God’s activity is “determined by” human reciprocation. And this might lead to another worry for classical theists, for if God’s interpersonal activity with Rhonda is dependent on Rhonda’s reciprocation, then if Rhonda does not reciprocate (or does not reciprocate as fully as she might) then God’s own interpersonal activity appears to be deficient in some way. At minimum, it would seem that God has failed in something that he sought to achieve, and is less active than he might otherwise have been. These are outcomes that no classical theist could accept.

Before addressing this worry, it is worth noting that this sort of objection is not unique to the claim that God enters into interpersonal relationships with humans. In fact, there are a host of similar issues that require clever maneuvering from classical theists. For example, petitionary prayer involves asking God for something that God is free either to grant or deny, but many classical theists are convinced that it is reasonable for humans to engage in petitionary prayer. But if God can and does respond to petitionary prayer, then there is some sense in which God’s decisions and actions depend on human persons.40 In a similar vein, on one conception of God’s love for human persons, this love involves a desire for the good of the beloved and union with the beloved, both of which are desires that are only ultimately fulfilled if the beloved—in this case, a human person—enters into union with God. But insofar as many persons do not enter into union with God, it follows that God’s desires are not always fulfilled.41 In these cases, the fulfillment of God’s desires depends on the human person involved. There are, of course, a number of ways that classical theists can and have explained things such as petitionary prayer and God’s desires regarding humans, and I do not have space to rehearse those arguments here. I introduce such dilemmas only to note that the apparent challenge facing the claim that there is receptivity in God is not unique. On the contrary, classical theists in the Christian tradition will have to face problems such as this at some point.

But the Thomistic version of classical theism that I am defending here can face the challenges noted above. Consider first the objection that the failure to establish an interpersonal relationship with a human person implies some deficiency in God’s efforts. Imagine a case of a mother whose child has suffered an injury and is unconscious in the hospital. While sitting with her child the mother would likely talk to him, offering him words of comfort even though he cannot hear her. She may also do things such as stroke his hair, kiss his forehead, sing to him, etc.—she will do everything she can to interact with her child, even knowing that her efforts will be unsuccessful. In normal circumstances, doing these things would put her into a second-person relationship with her child, but since he cannot reciprocate no second-person relationship is established.

Is there anything deficient in this mother’s efforts? Of course not. She is doing all that is in her power to engage her child second-personally. As should be clear, the failure to establish a second-person relationship has nothing to do with the mother’s efforts, but is a result of the fact that such a relationship can only be established if both persons contribute—the I-You is a relation that can only be co-actualized, and in this case the child is in a condition such that he cannot do his part. What we see here is therefore not a deficiency in the mother, but a confirmation of the fact that an interpersonal relationship cannot be brought about through the efforts of one person acting alone. And the same is true for God when a human person fails to reciprocate. A second-person relationship between God and a human person can obtain only when each person contributes, but it does not follow from this that God’s actions are deficient in any way when a creature does not do her part.

But what about the fact that God’s second-personal activity is dependent on the reciprocation of a human person? Would this not, as Garrigou-Lagrange feared, imply that God is “determined” rather than “determining?” Even if we accept that there is nothing deficient in God’s activity without reciprocation, it would still be the case that God cannot be fully active second-personally toward Rhonda unless Rhonda reciprocates, which makes God’s activity at least partially dependent on Rhonda.

This sort of worry, however, is misguided. As we saw above, we can conceive of interpersonal relations in which one (or both) of the persons is receptive without being passive, and this allowed us to suggest that God could be receptive to a human within an interpersonal relationship without violating the doctrines of immutability or impassibility. That is, God can be receptive to the interpersonal activity of creatures without undergoing any change. For similar reasons, we can say that God’s activity, including his second-personal activity with Rhonda, need not be dependent on or determined by Rhonda. After all, it would presumably be the case that God’s activity is dependent on Rhonda if he cannot act in the same way toward Rhonda without Rhonda’s contribution, e.g., if Rhonda were to give something to God in the interaction that contributes to his activity in some way. But this is not the case. One way to see this is to note that, at least for any classical theist who rejects Pelagianism, Rhonda cannot, through her own efforts, give anything to God (in this case, reciprocate God’s offer of interpersonal relationship) unless she is assisted by God’s grace. Further, Rhonda’s very existence, including any and all of her activities, is given and maintained by God; she is wholly dependent on God. In light of this, if Rhonda comes to reciprocate God’s offer of interpersonal relationship and God is receptive to her reciprocal second-personal activity, this is only possible because (1) God makes it the case that Rhonda exists as the kind of being who is capable of reciprocation and (2) assists Rhonda by giving her what is needed so that she can reciprocate. Thus, whatever Rhonda “gives” to God when she reciprocates is not anything that she had on her own, but was itself a gift from God in the first place. At worst, what Rhonda “gives” to God when she enters into an interpersonal relationship with him is a form of “re-gifting,” so to speak, for she could not give anything to God that God did not give to her, or that God did not already possess in its fullness independently of her. So, even granting that there is a kind of interdependence involved in the actualization of a particular interpersonal relationship, we can nevertheless conceive of a way to suggest that God’s interpersonal activity/receptivity toward Rhonda is exactly the same regardless of Rhonda’s response to him. Hence, there is no reason to suppose that God’s receptivity toward creatures entails any sense in which God’s activity is dependent on those creatures.42

While there are likely several objections that a classical theist might raise to the claim that there is receptivity in God, there is a final worry that I would like to address that I think is particularly salient. I have claimed that on a Thomistic version of classical theism God is capable of entering into bidirectional interpersonal relationships with creatures. I have presented a number of arguments to show how these claims are consistent with classical theism, but even if a classical theist is willing to grant these points such arguments only yield the conclusion that there is receptivity in God if we suppose that “person” and “interpersonal relationship” mean the same thing when applied to God that they do when applied to humans. To put this another way, one might think that the conclusion I wish to draw only holds if such terms are understood in a univocal sense. But classical theists, especially those in the Thomistic tradition, have long maintained that the sorts of terms that are employed when referring both to God and to creatures should not be taken in a univocal sense.43

As I suspect would be true for any classical theist, I am happy to grant that terms that can be applied both to God and to creatures should not, indeed cannot, be used in a univocal sense. Fortunately, I am not presupposing any sort of univocity here. But it is equally important to note that, like anyone in the Thomistic tradition, I am also not suggesting that terms such as “person” or “interpersonal relationship” are wholly equivocal either. Indeed, on the Thomistic framework, language that we use to describe God and creatures is neither univocal nor equivocal, but analogical. Unsurprisingly, there are many ways that one might construe analogical concepts, and a full discussion of the nature of such concepts is outside the scope of this paper. But one way to understand analogical concepts that I find particularly helpful for our purposes is that such concepts identify a “similarity-in-difference” in the things to which they refer.44 For example, there are many types of living things—from bacteria, to redwoods, to human beings. All of these are alive, and, among other things, life involves a kind of activity that is not found in non-living things. But notice that while it is true that all of these things are alive, the activity of a bacterium is quite different from that a human being. And if we suppose that “life” is an analogical concept, then when it is applied to things such as bacteria and to humans we do not need to think that it picks out an identical property in each. The same might be said when we use a term such as “know.” Rhonda may know that 3 + 3 = 6 and also that her baby loves her, but “know” means something different in each of these cases. Nevertheless, this is not to say that “know” is equivocal across these two cases; instead, we can think of knowledge as another analogous concept. In such examples—and there are many others that we might employ—we identify a similarity between instances of a concept that prevents us from claiming that the concept in question is wholly equivocal, but we also identify differences in such instances that prevent us from offering a fully univocal definition.45 In such cases, we are dealing with an analogical concept. (Notice that if one were to employ a concept that meant precisely the same thing in every instance, then that would be a univocal concept, not an analogical one. In a similar way, if one were to employ a concept that meant something entirely different in each instance, then that would be an equivocal concept, not an analogical one. In light of this, if there is genuinely space in our metaphysics and epistemology for analogical concepts, then independently of the things or activities to which they refer it could not be the case that a single account could fully define an instance of that analogical concept, nor could that concept map perfectly onto any particular instance. After all, if it did then it would no longer be analogical, but univocal. As Clarke explains, such concepts therefore necessarily involve “flexibility, indeterminacy, or vagueness right within the concept itself, with the result that the meaning remains essentially incomplete, so underdetermined that it cannot be clearly understood until further reference is made to some mode or modes of realization.”46)

When God is active and receptive in the inner life of the Trinity, this interpersonal activity surely goes far beyond the sort of interpersonal activity in which a human being could fully engage, as well as beyond what a human being could comprehend. Further, for God to be receptive to human reciprocation in his Pure Activity from all eternity will certainly not be identical to Rhonda’s receptivity toward Brian in a human-human second-person relationship. But it does not follow from this that these different instances have nothing in common. On the contrary, if we adopt the claim that such concepts are analogical, then this is to accept that the things to which these terms apply do, in fact, have something in common, even if they are not identical. I would suggest that what they have in common is the dynamic nature of the activity/receptivity that is constitutive of interpersonal activity, even though this activity/receptivity will manifest itself in different ways in each instance. Thus, even if one were to deny that terms such as “person” and “interpersonal relationship” are not univocal concepts (as I do), we can still maintain that there is receptivity in both God and creatures.

5. Conclusion

What I have sketched here is not intended to be the final word on receptivity in God. In fact, in many ways this is simply the beginning of the discussion. But in my view the foregoing shows that classical theism is compatible with the claim that there is a kind of interpersonal receptivity in God, including receptivity toward humans. If this is true, then it may prove that a Thomistic version of classical theism has resources that non-Thomistic versions do not, and this might in turn reveal additional ways in which the God of Christianity is consistent with the God of the philosophers.47

Before closing, however, I would like to make a final note about what I take to be the ontological framework undergirding the Thomistic version of classical theism that I have defended. As alluded to above, more often than not classical theism is informed by the metaphysics of Aristotle. On such a model, God is entirely active, causing all that exists in the created world but never affected by anything in that world. But as I noted in a different context,48 on such a model God appears to be something like an enhanced version of Aristotle’s “magnanimous man,” a being who does not need anything from inferior beings, nor would he (or could he) desire anything from those inferior beings.49 Such a God may sometimes choose to bestow gifts on those creatures, but he would not be interested in receiving anything from them. While Aquinas was certainly influenced by Aristotle, this is not the portrait of God that he paints. Nor should we expect Aquinas wholly to adopt an Aristotelian portrait of reality. After all, for Aristotle what we find at the core of reality is Pure Act, whereas for Aquinas Being at its height is Three Persons who are engaged in such an intimate interpersonal relationship that they share one Being. More importantly, Aquinas’s God is not stingy—he invites human persons to enter into that interpersonal relationship.50 This is decidedly different from the Aristotelian picture, and thus even though Aquinas makes use of Aristotle’s “Pure Act” language when describing God, we should not be surprised to learn that he had a different understanding of what it means for God to be Pure Act.51

In addition to the foregoing arguments, a helpful way to understand how God could be Pure Act and yet also receptive may come by appropriating Eleonore Stump’s distinction between “classical metaphysics” and “quantum metaphysics”52 On the Aristotelian model (as it is typically understood), all causal interactions involve an agent and a patient, and causal activity is always unidirectional, with the agent acting on the patient. But this “classical metaphysics” has serious limitations for someone like Aquinas who, when exploring the nature of reality, does not merely observe activity and passivity, but rather interpersonal interaction. God is Being itself for Aquinas, but Aquinas’s God is a Trinity—three Persons engaged in an eternal interpersonal relationship in which there is mutual knowledge and mutual love, and this view of reality cannot be adequately explained in terms of mere agency and patiency. In other words, the classical metaphysics of Aristotle won’t do.

This is where thinking of Aquinas’s metaphysics as a “quantum metaphysics” is helpful. In the twentieth century it became clear that certain aspects of the physical world could not be explained using the tools of classical physics. When observing “particles” such as electrons or photons, for example, scientists noticed that such entities sometimes behaved like particles, but at other times they behaved like waves, and classical physics did not have the resources to make sense of these observations. Quantum physics, by contrast, appears better suited to explain such “particle-waves.”53 In a similar manner, the reality that Aquinas observed was different from that of Aristotle, for he did not see beings that were only active or passive, with agents always acting on patients. Rather, he saw being as personal, and he observed interpersonal relationship—which involves activity and receptivity—at the very core of reality. To explain this, a “quantum metaphysics” that, among other things, includes interpersonal receptivity as constitutive of Pure Activity, is needed, and this is what we can derive from the system of Aquinas.

In light of this, I would suggest that if one is committed both to the doctrines of classical theism and also to the Christian belief that God engages human persons in interpersonal relationship, then she ought to embrace a Thomistic version of classical theism. For on Aquinas’s “quantum metaphysics,” these two apparently opposing commitments prove to be compatible.