Existential inertia seems powerful against the First Way of St. Aquinas

A proponent of the argument from change in proof of God’s existence might say that existential inertia only applies as properties of a substance. So, when the argument from change uses water as an example of a hierarchical series of changes, it does not fail to demonstrate an unactualized actualizer because existential inertia does not apply to the substance water but only to the properties of water. This argument from the proponent seems implausible for the following reasons:

  1. No justification is brought forth as to why existential inertia only applies as properties of a substance. One could arguably defend the position that existential inertia applies as a thing which is neither a property nor a substance and yet it is casually active on every single substance (as maybe a universal). If this position is true, existential inertia would apply even for hierarchical series of changes.

  2. Even if existential inertia were really just properties of a substance, the substance would still be affected by existential inertia. It is affected in the sense that properties are things which belong to substances. When the proponent of the argument from change is trying to rule back to the existence of one unactualized actualizer, they would need the substance to be wholly actualized by that one unactualized actualizer. If there is such a thing as a property of a substance being existential inertia, the existential inertia itself would not be actualized by the unactualized actualizer or at least it would not have been proven that it is actualized by such. In order for the existence of an omnipotent God to have been proven, there needs to be such a proof for even the law of existential inertia. If the law of existential inertia is not caused by God, God cannot be said to be omnipotent. In order for God to be omnipotent, he needs cause all which have some positive ontological status (I’ll even exclude privations, such as evils, here). But existential inertia has some positive ontological status. Therefore, God has to be the cause of the positive ontological status of existential inertia. Hence, God is not able to be proven sufficiently in the case of calling existential inertia a property of a substance to avoid the existential inertia objection.

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