ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the distinctively Thomistic understanding of this concept and its use by John Owen in the three works in which it is found: Display of Arminianism, The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance and Vindiciae Evangelicae. Owen's use of the idea of God as pure act not only has significance for divine simplicity, but also for divine causality. Ten years after Owen wrote Display of Arminianism, he wrote a response to John Goodwin's work Redemption Redeemed entitled The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance. Owen is a similar line of reasoning in order to argue that God is pure act, and thus quotes Thomas to make his point. Owen returns in Vindiciae Evangelicae to the discussion of God as the first cause of all that occurs, just as he did in Display of Arminianism. Alvarez deals with the concept of scientia media, or middle knowledge, and then he deals with how God's knowledge is the cause of all future events.
