Is it Possible that God is Pure Necessity?

It makes no sense to say that mind is prior to matter.

I realize you're just playing devil's advocate, and your assertion may or may not be correct. However, if mind is not prior to matter, then literally nothing makes sense, or can make sense, so it's again a case of ruling out the impossible and accepting whatever remains as the truth.

A truth, even though we can't understand it?

Perhaps because we can't understand it.

Credo ut intelligam?

Not exactly. One of our longstanding policies here at One Cosmos holds that the same principle accounts for why everything is intelligible and why nothing whatsoever is fully intelligible to us. We will never fully understand so much as a gnat, let alone ourselves, because these selves literally shade off into infinitude. 

Note that man is forever trying to contain infinitude within finitude -- or absolute within relative, subject within object, vertical within horizontal -- but it would be easier to drink the ocean or jump over the moon, since those at least involve a finite volume or distance.

Dávila captures the spirit of what we are endeavoring to say here:

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.

Or, to put it more... adequately, a theology might be adequate to man, whereas man can never in principle be adequate to the infinite and eternal. For again, if we can't exhaustively describe a finite gnat, how are we supposed to adequately model the infinite?

So, our best map is never the territory, and that's just the way it is:

Reality cannot be represented in a philosophical system.

And one reason why it cannot be represented is because the system will always exclude the systematizer -- just as the eye cannot see itself or the hand grasp itself. There is a permanent and ineradicable disjunction between finite and infinite.

Unless?

Yes, there is a conceivable way forward. This would be a tricky operation involving infinitude taking on and taking up finitude into itself. Supposing this were possible -- and there is no reason why it would be impossible -- this might be expressed colloquially as God becoming man that man might become God.

How could the Absolute become relative?

On the other hand, how could it not, in the sense that the first entailment of the Absolute is infinitude. Allow Schuon to explain:

In metaphysics, it is necessary to start from the idea that the Supreme Reality is absolute, and that being absolute it is infinite.....

And that is infinite which is not determined by any limiting factor and therefore does not end at any boundary; it is in the first place Potentiality or Possibility as such, and ipso facto the Possibility of things, hence Virtuality. Without All-Possibility, there would be neither Creator nor creation.... 

The Infinite is so to speak the intrinsic dimension of plenitude proper to the Absolute; to say Absolute is to say Infinite, the one being inconceivable without the other.

Now, this may or may not be true, but is it Christian, or can it be reconciled with Christian metaphysics? Yes, albeit with a bit of tweaking. For again bear in mind that the best theology in the world will never be adequate to God's infinitude. You can put together the catechism, the magisterium, and the writings of the doctors of the church and not make so much as a dent in the ocean of infinitude.  

Mixed metaphor: how could you ever dent the ocean?

That's the point, mate.

Probably the one sticking point for a Christian is the bit about potential and possibility being located in divinas, pardon my Latin. In the traditional view, God is precisely the being that -- who -- contains no potential because he is pure act. 

But in reality, it is incoherent to simultaneously affirm that God is pure act and that he creates, because what is creation but the actualization of potential? If God lacks all potency, this would make creation but an instance of act, in other words, in existence from all eternity. 

In fact, it would also be like saying the relative is the really absolute, which was, if I am not mistaken, Adam's blunder: he thought he could detach himself from infinitude and render the relative absolute, which goes back to the impossibility of representing reality in a (finite) philosophical system. 

With so much water under the bridge, it is difficult to say what was going on in Adam's mind, but presumably he thought he had come up with an adequate theology -- that his eyes were opened and he could be like God. Which is to say, the finite pretending to contain infinitude.

Word count?

800, give or take.

Not many words left, and we haven't yet made much of a dent in the ocean of infinitude. Let's shift seers to a book I read over the weekend called Sharing in the Divine Nature: A Personalist Metaphysics. In it, Ward echoes what we said above about potentiality in God:

I believe that having "fullness of being" entails the capacity for bringing new states into existence, and that entails the existence of potency.... 

On the one hand, "in creating this world, we are certainly distinguishing God from the world in a clear way." BUT "this definition in no way entails that God is beyond change, beyond any sort of time, and absolutely simple." Rather, precisely because God is "absolutely perfect," he 

essentially has many unactualized potentialities. This is not a lack in God's being, but an essential property of a living and creatively acting God.

In other words, creativity is a perfection which involves the actualization of novelty, and why not? Why not "a being that generates in itself the greatest number, the greatest variety, and the greatest degree, of beautiful states"?  The point is, 

If God is pure actuality, God can never do anything other than God does in a single eternal act, which is complete in itself without any creation.

Or, more to the point, without any possibility of creation. Moreover, supposing God creates this particular world instead of an infinitude of other possible worlds, "the being of God is contingent and potential in some respects." Conversely,

if God is exactly the same in all possible worlds, and if all of God's causal acts are necessary, then necessarily God will cause the same universe in every possible world.... The universe necessarily exists exactly as it does, and God necessarily creates it.

But God is free, and they say that God freely -- not necessarily -- creates. So, which is it, possibility and creativity, or necessity and sheer determinism? For "If God determined everything in one eternal act of will, then nothing in the universe would be truly contingent," nor would freedom be conceivable anywhere or in anyone. 

I'm just not buying it. Which I either have or haven't the freedom to buy.

The image is a visual representation of the philosophical concepts you've been discussing. 

The swirling, chaotic realm of matter at the bottom symbolizes the physical world. 

The upper realm of pure light and geometric shapes represents the realm of mind, ideas, and abstract principles. 

The vortex or bridge of light connecting the two realms represents the verticality you described, showing how mind is ontologically prior and gives rise to matter. 

The glowing spheres within the vortex symbolize the unactualized potentialities that exist within the divine mind, which are then brought into being through the act of creation.