Metaphysics: Act & Potency Distinction

This is the second video in my metaphysics series and in it, we will be looking at the Act/Potency distinction. I will cover what this means, why it's important, and some technicalities of it. I hope you guys enjoy this video and let me know of any topics you want me to cover next. Also, feel free to send a comment down below to engage with everyone. I just ask that you comment in a respectful manner to everyone.

References/Further Readings

A Defense of Classical Theology (Part 5): Change and the Act-Potency Distinction

Introduction to Metaphysics Part II: Act, Potency, and God

The Last Superstition - Edward Feser

THE 24 THOMISTIC THESES

Act & Potency T-Shirt - SES

[jmdomaniii]

I think you should continue making these metaphysics videos. More people need to understand this and classical theist may be too technical for them to jump into.
Maybe make one on the soul?

[UnratedAwesomeness]

Hey! I have a question. Why would denying potency lead to something coming from nothing, rather than say creation ex nihilo and annihilation?

*Background*
I realize that this would be the Heraclitian position, where nothing really persists in being, which is open to retorsion and is contrary to common sense, but I'm really trying to understand Parmenides' position, which I see is understood by Aristotle and Aquinas as being the result of not acknowledging potential being. I also understand that (1) no thing can come to be without a cause and that (2) something cannot come from nothing in the sense that nothingness is somehow the material from which a thing is made.

I've found this passage from Garrigou-Lagrange which addresses why only God can create ex nihilo but I don't really understand it, and I'm not sure it would answer my question about why Parmenides Aristotle and Aquinas see change in this way.

"_Simple possibility is prerequired and suffices for creation ex nihilo. But it does not suffice as prerequisite for motion, change, mutation. Mutation presupposes a real subject, determinable, transformable, mutable, whereas creation is the production of the entire created being, without any presupposed real potency. Now, since active potency, active power, must be greater in proportion to its passive correlative, it follows that when passive potency is reduced to zero, the active potency must be infinite. In other words, the most universal of effects, the being of all things, cannot be produced except by the most universal of all causes, that is, by the Supreme Being._"

Please help! Thank you!