My Death in Life

It is summertime.  What that means for a Moody Bible Institute- Spokane student staying in Spokane is sure to mean hanging with friends in the many parks, hanging out in random coffee shops, and (hopefully) working.  This is all true for me but I also have the privilege to be doing some work for my future Teacher's Assistant position for a Philosophy class at Moody this fall.  So if you were to run into me at one of the many coffee shops around town, I'm probably reading Nash's Life's Ultimate Questions and busily typing test and quiz questions.  Even though this sounds impressive, I want to make sure that you guys know... I'm a little behind.  But with some long days in coffee shops I should be on track in no time.

But today, when reading Nash's book, I came across something that I thought was really exciting and profound.  In Chapter 4 (I know, I know) Nash is discussing some of Aristotle's fundamental concepts.  In this is how Aristotle defined change; "the passage from potentiality to actuality (103)."  Allow me to break this down for you guys a little bit so that it can hit you as hard as this hit me.  Potentiality involves the matter of a substance or, in other words, it involves the material that makes up whatever the existing subject is.  Nash gives the example of a tree that is potentially a desk or a house.  Now actuality is determined by the form of a substance or the essential property makes a thing that particular thing.  This is a little bit harder to grasp but the idea is that a chair has the form of a chair.  The form of a chair is something that fulfills Aristotle's "final cause" (purpose) of a chair which is to be something that allows one to sit on it and stay up.

Hopefully you have stayed with me.  So the chair has the potentiality of being other things because of what is made up of but it is actually a chair primarily because the purpose that it was built to serve.  The profound thing is that Aristotle then said that actuality preceded potentiality, that things are built with purpose within themselves.  The example that Nash gives is that of a human embryo.  The embryo has the potentiality to become an adult, but that actuality- of it being a human being- has already preceded it becoming an adult.

Think about the real-life applications of this way of thinking!  If society were to accept actuality preceding potentiality there would be no way of thinking as the embryo as not a human being until it is born.  I may think this is profound because it aligns with my pro-life dealings, but it makes so much sense, especially in the case of the embryo.  It is also just profound to think that things are built with a purpose, which is something that people debate.

I just thought that I would share that with you guys today!  I'm just trying to show how Jerusalem and Athens can get along.  Sorry for not posting in a long time, but a lot of my thoughts and writing are going to the Soma blog, the publication a friend started over at MBI-Spokane.  I hope to do more informal work over here so that you guys can get a taste of what's going on over here in Spokane!  Please feel free to leave comments and to share this post with others.