Summa I q.12 a.1 replies and a.2: God infinite and knowable, ratio in two senses, the light of glory and seeing God without a created likeness

Orientation #

He picks up mid-article: “how does he reply to the argument from the authority of St. John Chrysostom and Dionysius” (a.1 obj. 1). He refers back to “the treatise where we showed that God is infinite” and to “the question on the simplicity of God,” and forward to “when we get into the fourteenth, fifteenth questions” (God understands himself through himself) and “as we go on, we’ll see that in seeing God as he is, you’ll see everything else.” The previous class introduced q.12 and a.1’s body; the next takes up a.3 and a.4.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to obj. 1: both authorities mean comprehension (“Thomas is looking before and after”) #

Point: Chrysostom and Dionysius deny not vision but comprehension, i.e. knowing God “as much as he is knowable,” which only God does.

• Thomas reads the context of each: Dionysius a little before says God is “universally incomprehensibilis”; Chrysostom a little after says he calls “vision” the most certain consideration and comprehension of the Father “such as the Son has of the Father.”
• He compares this to Boethius: look at what the author says before and after the quoted words.

2. Reply to obj. 2: two senses of “infinite” (“all knowledge is through some form”) #

Point: the infinite that is unknowable is the infinite of matter; God is infinite on the side of form.

1. The infinite “from the side of matter not perfected by form” is unknown secundum se, because all knowledge is through form — “another way of saying it’s through act.”
2. The infinite “on the side of form, not limited or contracted by matter” is in itself most known.
3. God is infinite in the second way (shown in the treatise on infinity); so he is most knowable in himself — “we’re not ready for knowing something that knowable.”

• Aside on Summa Contra Gentiles: Thomas treats the same five things but puts infinity last, having already excluded continuous quantity (simplicity) and discrete quantity (unity); so the quantitative infinity Aristotle usually means — you can never finish dividing a line or enumerating numbers — is excluded, and a fortiori the infinity of first matter, which Book I of Natural Hearing shows is not knowable by itself.
• Aside on words: Thomas uses proportio for ratio, as modern physicists do; in Euclid a ratio is 2:3, a proportion is a likeness of ratios (4:6 as 2:3). “I like to follow my master Euclid,” but Thomas “goes along with the way people are speaking.”

3. Reply to obj. 3: God “not existing” as above existing (“he is above everything existing”) #

Point: Dionysius’ way of speaking denies of God only what implies having existence.

• Analogy he gives: to say God’s goodness is “above the good,” because “good” means you have goodness and so are not your goodness; God is goodness itself. Likewise “existing” suggests having existence and so not being one’s existence; God is his very to-be (from the question on simplicity). So it does not follow that he is in no way knowable, only that he exceeds all our knowledge of creatures — which is not to be comprehended.
• Structure he draws: obj. 1 and 3 share the idea of not comprehended; obj. 2 and 4 share a word (“infinite,” “proportion”) used in two senses — “the fallacy of the equivocation.”

4. Reply to obj. 4: two senses of proportion (“as ability to act”) #

Point: creature and God have no ratio in the strict mathematical sense, but do in the broad sense.

• A vs. B: (A) ratio as a relation of one quantity to another — double, triple, equal are its species; the exact sense of mathematics. (B) more generally, any relation of one thing to another; so the creature has a ratio to God as effect to cause and as ability to act, and the created intellect has a proportion to knowing God (“we don’t have a good word in English”).
• Example: Natural Hearing I, end — first matter is knowable “by proportion”: first matter is to man and dog as clay is to sphere and cube. Not as exact as 4:6 :: 2:3, but a likeness of “the way one is to the other.”

5. Digression: words carried over by dropping part of their meaning (“equivocal by reason in that way”) #

Point: “proportion” belongs to a whole group of words that become equivocal by keeping a formal aspect and dropping the material one; “very important example.”

• Undergoing: first, being acted on contrary to and destructive of oneself (“under the weather”); then the senses undergo (still bodily — stare at light and the eye is affected, too much sound and you go deaf — but perfective); finally understanding as undergoing, “generalizing the idea.”
• Emotions to acts of will: fear — a terrorist comes in and my heart thumps; “as a philosopher I’m not afraid of making mistakes” is fear in the will, not purely equivocal. Love — of candy or a woman is emotion; love of wisdom or of the syllogism drops the bodily aspect.
• Hope: first an emotion by which a man “screws up the courage” to overcome difficulty for a good; theological hope drops the bodily part, keeps the arduous good.
• Perfect: “completely made”; made implies a potency actualized; for God drop “was in potency,” keep “act.”
• Road: his son Paul at the kitchen table, asked about “the basic road in human knowledge,” answered “cars and trucks on it” — stuck in the first meaning. Road to Boston has one part before another; keep before-and-after, drop the asphalt. Aristotle calls philosophy methodos, “over a road.” The material thing is more sensible and so named first.
• Love-and-friendship course: students say love is an emotion; himself as a child hearing the priest on “the love of God” and thinking of a warm, fuzzy, bodily thing; the love of God is an act of the will.
• Shakespeare’s argument by proportion (“What is a man if his chief good and mark of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more”): chief good of man : man :: chief good of beast : beast; alternate as in mathematics (6:4::3:2 gives 6:3::4:2) so man : beast :: chief good of man : chief good of beast; if the chief goods are equal, man is no more than a beast — known false. In numbers: “what is the three if it be half of four? a two, no more.” We go back to the more known, the definite ratio (ratio certa, sometimes determinata).
• Disputed questions (on truth, as he recalls it): Thomas there speaks as if the creature has no ratio to God, and prefers a likeness of ratios, because a like ratio holds between things very far apart (3:6, 5,000:10,000, 5 million:10 million all as 1:2). Metaphor works the same way: “the Lord is my shepherd,” “my rock.”
• Thomas’s objections use the first meaning of a word to make you stop and think (“hope is an emotion”) — “the first meaning of hope, but not the last.” Break.

6. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“We shall see him as he is”) #

Point: whether God’s essence is seen by the created intellect through some likeness.

• Obj. 1: 1 John 3:2 — when he appears we shall be like him and see him as he is; so through likeness. Obj. 2: Augustine, De Trinitate IX — when we know God some likeness of God comes to be in us. Obj. 3: De Anima — the understanding in act is the understandable in act, as sense in act is the sensible in act (Book II); the eye “in a way has become a shape” of the picture on the wall; both happen by being informed with a likeness. Aside: “image” means a little likeness; the first act of reason is sometimes called imaginatio per intellectum.
• Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate XV, on Paul’s “through a mirror, in an enigma”: “enigma” names the likenesses accommodated to understanding God; seeing God through his essence is divided against seeing in a mirror or enigma; so not through a likeness.

7. The body: two things required for vision (“the thing seen in some way is in the one seeing”) #

Point: a likeness is required on the side of the power, none on the side of the thing seen.

1. Vision, sensible or intellectual, needs the power of seeing (“ability,” Shakespeare’s word) and the union of the thing seen with the power: vision in act is only through the thing seen being in some way in the seer. This goes back to Empedocles (“by earth we know earth”); we agree the known must be in the knower — recognizing a friend requires his shape and colour somehow in me — but not materially, else the picture would know water and the chair wood. Student joke: David’s stone in Goliath didn’t help him know what a stone is — “driving home a point.”
2. In bodily things the thing seen is in the seer only by likeness: the stone’s likeness is in the eye, not its substance.
3. If one and the same thing were source of the seeing power and the thing seen, the seer would have from it both the power and the form by which it sees. God is author of the power of understanding and is seen by it; since the creature’s power is not God’s nature, it must be a partaken likeness of him who is the first understanding — the intellectual creature’s power is “a certain understandable light” derived from the first light (Thomas in the communion prayer: Deus lux vera), whether natural or added by grace or glory. So a likeness of God is required on the side of the power.
4. On the side of the thing seen, no created likeness suffices; three reasons: (i) Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1 — through likenesses of a lower order higher things cannot be known (bodily forms don’t give a bodiless nature; much less a created form the divine essence); (ii) God’s essence is his being, which belongs to no created form, in which thing and existence are distinct; (iii) the divine nature is infinite, uncircumscribed, containing eminently whatever can be understood, while every created form is determined to some notion (wisdom, virtue, being) — student: “God would have to create another God.” To say God is seen through a likeness is to say the divine nature is not seen — “erroneous.” “Three is enough” (in the disputed questions Thomas gives three and stops; SCG might give twelve).
5. Conclusion: required on the side of the power is the light of glory, strengthening the understanding — Psalm 35:10, “in your light we shall see light” (he notes Thomas’s commentary); but the divine essence itself must be joined to the mind as the understandable form, being alone adequate: its what-it-is and that-it-is are the same, it is not limited, not inferior to what it represents.

8. Student question: is the light of glory the image? (“No, no, no. That is disposing our mind”) #

Point: the light of glory is a likeness to the divine understanding, not a likeness of the divine substance.

• God understands himself through himself (qq. 14–15 ahead), so for us to see him as he is the divine substance must become the form by which we see; but that is not the natural form of our mind, so the mind must be raised by a supernatural disposition to receive it. The light is not to make the divine substance understandable — pure act is fully understandable — but to make it proportioned to our mind as subject.
• “That’s an amazing thing”: Paul’s “perfect gift from the Father of lights”; “the third light,” differing from the natural light and the light of faith, which make something understandable that was not; this one raises the power. Paul: “then I shall know even as I am known”; John: we must be like God because we shall see him as he sees himself — though he comprehends that form and we do not.
• Angels: their substance is more like God, so their natural knowledge of God is more perfect than ours, but still not “as he is,” for their substance falls short in the same three ways; they too had to be raised — Augustine’s morning knowledge vs. evening (natural) knowledge; those who said “no, thank you” lost out. Student: are demons smarter than bad men? By nature, yes; but without grace one lacks “a bunch of things.”
• Aside: the Our Father’s last petition may be “deliver us from the evil one” (Greek); the Anima Christi follows the Our Father’s order and ends “from the evil one”; Teresa of Avila on the devil tempting saints — “God doesn’t need to tempt us lesser ones.”

9. Reply to obj. 1: the likeness is by partaking the light of glory (“gratia consummata, consummated grace”) #

Point: the light of glory is not like the light that makes colours visible nor the agent intellect that makes phantasms (understandable only in ability) actually understandable, nor like faith’s light; it is light in a different sense, contributing to understanding by disposing reason to receive God as form.

• Grace gives the soul a new spiritual being; as the powers flow from the soul’s nature, so from grace the virtues (first the theological) flow into reason and will; glory is the consummation of grace — our Lord’s fountain “going up into eternal life.” That completion removes faith and hope (you have the end) while charity remains, more perfect.

10. Replies to obj. 2 and 3; the mind’s many forms (“the soul is a place of forms”) #

• Ad 2: Augustine speaks of the knowledge we have in via, on the road; via renders Greek hodos; “I am the way” is “I am the road” — more sensible in the original; “way” is a bit more abstract.
• Ad 3: the divine essence is being itself; other understandable forms, not their own being, are united to the intellect according to the being by which they inform it; the divine essence is united to the created intellect to make it understood in act through itself. Aside: Charles De Koninck’s dislike of “essence” (in French, gasoline); prefer “nature,” “substance.” Only a supernaturally disposed mind can receive as its form what is proper to another.
• Our weakness: one form for triangle, another for dog, another for courage — Aristotle, the soul is “a place of forms” (against Plato’s separate universals); so we barely understand anything at once and go from one thing to another, even in geometry: Euclid II.14 (finding the square equal to a given rectangle) proved through II.5 (his favourite — square on the half exceeds the rectangle of the unequal parts by the square between the points of section; “a little tragedy”) and the Pythagorean theorem, paulatim, bit by bit. Seeing God as he is you will see everything you naturally want to know — all Euclid at once, the whole natural world.
• Closing aside: Palestrina’s Mass on Sundays; Thomas says there will be vocal praise in heaven.

His words #

• comprehension — knowing God as much as he is knowable; only God does.
• incomprehensibilis — Dionysius’ word, read from before the quoted text.
• infinite (two senses) — from matter, unknown secundum se; from form, most known.
• proportion — Thomas’s word for ratio; in Euclid a proportion is a likeness of ratios [ed.: proportionality].
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• ability [ed.: potency]; ability to act — the creature’s relation to God.
• equivocal by reason — a word carried over by dropping part of its meaning (undergoing, fear, love, hope, perfect, road).
• methodos — “over a road”; philosophy as following a road.
• ratio certa / determinata — a definite ratio, the more known starting point.
• imaginatio per intellectum — a name for the first act of reason.
• enigma — the likenesses accommodated to understanding God (Augustine).
• understandable light — the intellectual creature’s power, derived from the first light; Deus lux vera.
• light of glory — a supernatural disposition raising the mind to receive the divine substance as form; the “third light”; gratia consummata.
• morning / evening knowledge — angels’ knowledge by glory vs. by nature (Augustine).
• in via / hodos — on the road; “I am the way.”
• essence — De Koninck’s suspicion of the word; prefer nature, substance.
• place of forms — the soul, in De Anima.
• paulatim — bit by bit, how we understand.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 1, replies to obj. 1–4
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 2, whole
• 1 John 3:2 (in obj. 1)
• Augustine, De Trinitate IX and XV (as cited in the article)
• Aristotle, De Anima II and III (sense/intellect in act, as cited)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1 (as cited)
• Psalm 35:10

Mentioned

• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (order of the five attributes; infinity last)
• Aristotle, Physics I (first matter unknowable in itself; knowable by proportion)
• Thomas, disputed questions on truth (creature has no ratio to God) — as he recalls it
• Thomas, commentary on Psalm 35
• Shakespeare (Hamlet’s “what is a man…”) — quoted, no locus given
• Euclid, Elements II.5, II.14, Pythagorean theorem
• Empedocles, “by earth we know earth”
• Anima Christi; the Our Father; Teresa of Avila
• Thomas on vocal praise in heaven (no locus)

His questions #

• Do we agree with Empedocles that we know something because the thing known is in us? Yes, in general — but not in a material way, or the picture would know water.
• If you carry “road” over to a road in our knowledge, what do you keep? The before and after; you drop the asphalt.
• Is “fear” or “love” purely equivocal between the emotion and the act of will? No; the formal aspect is kept, the bodily transformation dropped.
• What do objections 1 and 3, and 2 and 4, have in common? 1 and 3 bring in comprehension; 2 and 4 use “infinite” and “proportion” in two senses.
• Is the light of glory the likeness by which we see God? No; it disposes the mind to receive the divine substance itself as form.
• Why doesn’t the light of glory make God understandable, like the other two lights? God is pure act, already fully understandable; the light raises our power instead.
• Do angels see God as he is by their natural knowledge? No; their substance falls short in the same three ways and must also be raised.
• Are demons smarter than bad men? By nature yes, but without grace a man lacks much more.