Why God Can't Have Any Intrinsic Contingent Properties

On Twitter user mlpianist asks why the first cause can’t give itself any intrinsic contingent properties. This was in response to Dr. Koons second argument given in our recent conversation here:

Grant that Rob’s argument gets us to a first cause that is purely actual: It is then by analyzing the nature of pure actuality (including what intrinsic contingent modifications would be) that rules out the possibility of the first cause giving itself any intrinsic properties — or intrinsic accidents, to use traditional scholastic jargon.

First, we must remember that whatever is purely actual is absolutely simple or non-composite. Hence, whatever is in God is God. From this follows immutability, such that any changes God brings about are necessarily going to be extrinsic effects rather than intrinsic accidents. Why? Because for pure actuality there is no further intrinsic perfection (higher degree of real being) to acquire, hence anything different from pure actuality would always be a “differentiated limiting down,” which is incompatible with the nature of pure actuality (it would either be not actual and/or not actual through itself = a caused reality = NOT God). In other words, there is just no metaphysical room for intrinsic contingent properties in God.

However, an item of contingent particularized knowledge (for example: God knowing Bob exists from t-whatever to t-whatever), is not incompatible with pure actuality, because that would be an extrinsic predication, or Cambridge property, which classical theists maintain is compatible with pure actuality. In other words, God knowing you just is God creating you (= you existing with a causal dependence on God), and that is also God loving you. None of which amounts to God acquiring any intrinsic accidents, because God’s action is basic and immediate, and the action of the agent is IN THE PATIENT. In which case the only difference “on the ontological scene” in God knowing or loving Bob is extrinsic to God. (For a detailed account of these extrinsic models, see Matthews Grant.)

The above considerations gives us a fairly radical extrinsic model of divine knowing, etc. But given God’s transcendence this is not surprising — or at least it is not entirely surprising. It is not because God is imperfect that God cannot cause any intrinsic contingent properties in Himself but because God is perfection itself.

PS - Another way to think about this is from the perspective of Norris Clarke, who maintains divine simplicity and pure actuality are compatible with “contingent modifications” in God’s field of intentional consciousness. See his essay A New Look at the Immutability of God.