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Actus Purus is a term employed in scholastic philosophy to express the absolute perfection of God.
Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that He can be, infinitely real and infinitely perfect: `I am who I am`(Exodus 3:14). His attributes or His operations, are really identical with His essence, and His essence includes essentially His existence.
In created beings, the state of potentiality precedes that of actuality; before being realized, a perfection must be capable of realization. But, absolutely speaking, actuality precedes potentiality. For in order to change, a thing must be acted upon, or actualized; change and potentiality presuppose, therefore, a being which is in actu. This actuality, if mixed with potentiality, presupposes another actuality, and so on, until we reach the Actus Purus.
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This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
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