Natura naturans
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Natura naturans is a Latin term coined during the Middle Ages, mainly used by Baruch Spinoza meaning "Nature naturing", or more loosely, "nature doing what nature does". The Latin natura which means "nature", is turned into a participle by adding the suffix "ans". The term describes an active, alive, and changing God that at the same time does not lose its reality. Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined it as "Nature in the active sense". To Spinoza, Nature and God were one in the same, as humans were living modifications to both. (See:Spinoza's God and Nature). In contrast, Spinoza uses the term natura naturata (nature natured) to indicate a passive God in which things have already been created, and modifications are secondary to the unchangeable identity of things.
