Italian Dominican friar and priest Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) attempted to integrate Aristotelian ideas, such as "entelechy" and "potency" or "potentiality", into a Christian (and Catholic) framework.

... the position of Western Medieval (or Catholic) Christianity, can be found for example in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, who relied on Aristotle's concept of entelechy, when he defined God as actus purus, pure act, actuality unmixed with potentiality. The existence of a truly distinct essence of God which is not actuality, is not generally accepted in Catholic theology. Wikipedia (as of 2022-09-23)

More: Aristotle

Here is a fragment of the poem Adoro te devote by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1284).

Aquinas worked, in part, on adapting some Christian beliefs to the writings of Aristotle. The poem uses Aristotle's idea of "potentiality" of what could possible and not "actuality" of what has happened.

• Potentiality: It could happen this way (possibility).
• Actuality: It did happen this way (established fact).

Some pastors (and others) take this "potentiality" and make it an "actuality" for which there appears to be no scriptural support. This could be for many reasons.

☐ not understanding the original statement nor the fallacy of the changed statement
☐ deliberate deception, often to support larger pattern of deception
☐ not understanding valid (and invalid) logical arguments
☐ other reasons



More: Deception by avoiding detection using concealment

The following is noted:

• Prayers, by definition, are requests and not statements of what one assumes or wants to be true.
• The statement appear to start as a counter-factual idea (which might be true counter-factually) and changes that idea to a statement of fact (with no Biblical basis).
• Using bad or invalid logic in a prayer does not make that logic true.

The first part of the prayer fragment is a request. The second part is a statement.

Discuss: Should the specific opinion of a theologian or otherwise respected Biblical authority be accepted when that specific opinion is not supported by some authoritative Biblical references?

More: Profitable and expedient counterfactual logic

More: The one drop of blood salvation fallacy

Astronomers study the stars. Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic philosopher who studied astronomy. A story about him was included in Aesop's Fables. Thomas Aquinas (late 1200's) writes the following.

When Thales was leaving his house to look at the stars he fell into a ditch; while he was bewailing the fact an old woman remarked to him: "You, O Thales, cannot see what is at your feet and you expect to see what is in the heavens?"

More: Matthew 11:1-6: Trapped by an offensive misinterpretation of Jesus