Having arrived here, many still make one last error, understandable but fatal: they imagine the principle of pure actuality as an extremely powerful being, very great, very stable, very ancient—but still a being, somewhere in the inventory of reality.

This is precisely what realist metaphysics forbids.

If the first principle were one being among others, even the highest, it would still be determined, limited, composed, thus distinct from the act of being that it possesses. In other words: it would have being, but would not be being. It would still be in potency with respect to what it is.

Yet we have shown that the first principle cannot be in potency under any respect.

The only coherent conclusion is therefore the following:

The first principle is not a being that has being, it is the very act of subsistent being.

Here is where metaphysics crosses a decisive threshold.

Being and having being: the decisive distinction

Everything we encounter in experience has being. A stone is. A tree is. A man is.

But none of these beings is its being. Their existence is received, limited, conditioned. They could not be. They cease to be. Their being is not identical to what they are.

The first principle, for its part, receives nothing. It does not have being. It is being.

This is what the tradition calls—with formidable precision—ipsum esse subsistens: the act of being subsisting by itself.

This conclusion is not a theological refinement. It is imposed by simplicity and pure actuality.

Why this principle enters no genus

A being always belongs to a genus:

• this is a substance,
• that is a quantity,
• this is living,
• that is material.

But being itself is not a genus. It cannot be, on pain of becoming one concept among others, thus limited, thus relative.

The first principle:

• is not a substance in the ordinary sense,
• is not a thing,
• is not an element of the world,
• is not a part of the whole.

It is the very condition for there to be beings, genera, differences, properties.

This is why every attempt to "locate" God in the world is a category error. It is not that he would be hidden somewhere; it is that he is not of the same order.

Why univocal language fails

At this stage, a difficulty immediately appears: if the first principle is not a being like others, how can we speak of it without falling into anthropomorphism or absolute silence?

Two symmetrical errors threaten:

1. Univocity — Using the same concepts for God and creatures, in the same sense. → God becomes a super-object in the world.

2. Total equivocity — Saying that our words have strictly no meaning when applied to the first principle. → We say nothing at all.

Realist metaphysics refuses both.

The only possible way: the analogy of being

The classical solution—formulated with definitive rigor by Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle—is the following:

Our concepts apply to the first principle analogically.

This means:

• they apply neither identically (univocally),
• nor purely differently (equivocally),
• but according to a proportion grounded in reality.

When we say that a man is good, and that the first principle is good, we say neither exactly the same thing nor something totally unrelated.

Goodness exists really in creatures, but in a participated way. In the first principle, it exists by identity with being.

Down to earth: why analogy is unavoidable

Let us take a simple example.

A light bulb illuminates. The sun illuminates.

The illumination is not the same. But it is not unrelated.

The light bulb illuminates by participation. The sun illuminates by nature.

If I say that "the sun illuminates" and that "the light bulb illuminates," I am speaking neither of two unrelated things nor of two identical things.

It is exactly the same type of relation we have here, but at an ontological level.

Creatures are. The first principle is being itself.

What this definitively locks in

At this stage, several illusions fall:

• God is not a possible scientific object.
• God is not a competing hypothesis.
• God is not one cause among others.
• God is not a "supreme being" at the top of a pyramid.

He is the very condition for there to be something rather than nothing, and for this something to be intelligible, changing, structured.

Where metaphysics stops (and where something else begins)

Realist metaphysics has now done all its work. It has imposed nothing religious. It has borrowed nothing from revelation. It has simply followed being to the end.

It has shown that there necessarily exists:

• a pure act,
• simple,
• immutable,
• subsistent,
• source of all being.

What tradition calls God.

From here, one can still refuse:

• that he is personal,
• that he speaks,
• that he reveals himself,
• that he is morally demanding.

But one can no longer act as if he were not already there, silent but inescapable, at the very heart of what is.

What follows no longer belongs to pure metaphysics. It belongs to another order of questions.

And those questions leave no one unscathed.