The Responsiveness of Pure Actuality: Unmediated Agency,Linguistic Potentiality and the Divine Accommodation of Speech Acts

This article builds upon the trinitarian theology of Thomas Weinandy, applying his elaboration of Aquinas' notion of God's pure actuality to the matter of linguistic agency. In particular, the seemingly contradictory claim will be made that God is more responsive to us (properly understood) precisely because he cannot perform the act of response. Rather, God reveals the pure act that is himself through what the article terms notional responses. These are the epistemological accommodations of his pure actuality to finite human persons in the form of speech acts as humans change in their relation to God. In understanding God's communicative agency as such, divine transcendence will be shown to establish divine immanence rather than to stand at odds with it.