Big Verb: The Event of God

How else to put it if we are to maintain a trinitarian metaphysic, or one that is true to scripture? For scripture

is full of ordinary "composite" statements about God that cannot, in any obvious way, be reduced to "to be God is to be'" (emphasis mine). 

Who says Being must be Big Noun instead of Big Verb? Why not both -- or both/and? Maybe we're a bit naive, but in the Bible, 

To be God is to be God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to be God is to be God of Exodus; to be God is to be Creator of heaven and earth...

Etc. That's a whole lotta doing, and one need hardly be a biblical literalist to see that any such actions cannot easily be reconciled with a simple, static, timeless, immutable, and unrelated God. Why assume all of these characteristics, especially after the revelation of the triune Godhead? 

Again, once we have received the revelation (O↘), we need to engage in a little (←) in order to tweak our metaphysic (↗O). And yet, it seems that Thomas allows certain prejudices against Big Verb to reduce it to Big Noun:

The question is whether Thomas's initial account of simplicity is compatible with the modifications he later makes under pressure of the Christian creed. Does he build trinitarian modifications into his understanding of simplicity [←], or does he initially assume a non- (or anti-) trinitarian account of simplicity [→]?    

In other words -- or symbols rather -- too much (→) and not enough (←)? Granted, there must be a mutual influence -- (↔) -- but some things are nonnegotiable, because Trinity means Trinity. Which, at a minimum, means what?

Well, we know from our (↗O) that God is the Unmoved Mover, which is to say that he is not moved by an other. But who says he can't be moved by, or in, himselves? This lifts us out of so many metaphysical nul-de-slacks that one scarcely knows where to begin. According to (O↘), i.e., revelation, 

the Son is "from another," and therefore his necessary existence as eternal Son is derived from and dependent on the Father's act of begetting. We speak rightly of the Son only with passive locutions: He is begotten of the Father; as Word, he is spoken. "Patiency" is a feature of triune being and existence. 

Note that such a view reconciles what is otherwise an insoluble mystery -- the mysteries of Big Noun and Big Verb. 

The trinitarian argument assumes a kind of "movement" in God that the argument from motion denies.

Not only does this this denial render God inexplicable, it also renders our existence inexplicable -- especially if we are the image and likeness. But with a little (←), we see that the

motions of created things point to the infinitely mobile triune God. Indeed, precisely the partial and intermittent acts and motions of creatures constitute their likeness to the Father who generates the Son and breathes forth the Spirit.

Looked at this way, God must be something like perfect change, while we are imperfect change. Which is why we are strongly advised to pray that Thy will be done. For his part, Thomas denies that 

the procession is a motion. Grant the point. Yet, if a trinitarian ontology is assumed, we may say: There is that in God of which the simultaneity of cause and effect is a resemblance.

Or as Galileo murmured in a different context, And yet it moves.

Besides, if God is absolute immobility, full stop, "how can he create a world in motion? If God lacks potency, where does the potency and patiency of creation come from?" At the very least, 

the fact of a mobile universe leads just as plausibly to an ineffably mobile first cause as to an ineffably immobile one. 

I say, why not take  (←) all the way to our (↗O) and alter it accordingly? Why hold on to immobility? Why give priority to the non-trinitarian paradigm? What's the prayoff? 

Natural reason [↗O] leads to an immobile, simple God, without internal "motions," reception, or relations. 

But "by disclosing the Trinity [O↘], revelation trumps reason." Or rather, reason transcends its own limits, a la Gödel, and discovers its source and goround. 

Now, "What would it look like to begin from an ontology fully baptized in the triune name?" -- which is to say, to fully (←) our (↗O)?

It would mean that God is the "ever-actual event";

And the eventfulness of God, his liveliness, is the foundation of "the possibility of all creaturely becoming." God does not become; but there is that in God of which becoming is an image. There is a source in God's own life for the created distinction between potency and actuality, between action and contemplation, between male and female....

At risk of belaboring the point,

The argument from motion points to a first mover, but a mover eternally in "motion," moved with inconceivable motion that infinitely exceeds the movements of creation, yet moved and moving.

This is not "what everybody understands by God" (↗O), rather, "what we Christians understand by God" (O↘). Suffice it to say, the eternal event of God implies that he is indeed Big Verb, but much more to follow. 

(All quotes taken from Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1, by Peter Leithart.)