Summa I q.12 a.4–5: The Knower's Way of Being, Why Reason Is Immaterial, and the Light of Glory That Makes Us Godlike

Orientation #

The recording opens in the middle of the class, at the body of the article (“I answer. It should be said that it’s impossible that some created understanding, by its natural powers … see the essence of God”); later, when the text says “as has been shown,” he first says “the second article,” then corrects himself: “Article four … that’s what this text here refers to.” After a break “at 3:30” he says, “Let’s try to look at the fifth article if we can.” The previous class treated articles three and four of this question, the next treats articles six and seven.

The class, in order #

1. Knowledge takes place as the known is in the knower (“by water we know water”) #

The point: Thomas’s first premise, that knowledge happens according as the known is in the knower, goes back to Empedocles, corrected by Aristotle.

• Empedocles’ fragment: by water we know water, by air air, by fire fire, by love love, by hate hate; we know things by having them in us. He rightly saw God as immortal, and since hate pulls things apart, said there is no hate in God; but then God does not know hate, and we know something God doesn’t know, “the difficulty that Aristotle got into” [ed.: the objection Aristotle raises against him].
• Is it correct that the known is in the knower before it is known? Yes: he would not recognize the students on the street in Worcester, or his grandchildren, without their shape and colour in his memory.
• But how is it in the knower? Not materially, or the chair would know wood and a man with a stone in his head would know stone. Aristotle: Empedocles is right that the known must be in the knower, wrong about the way; it is there in an immaterial way.
• Shower example: the body adjusts to the water and it feels less warm, so people turn up the hot; the body takes on the heat as its own, like a brick, whereas to know we must receive the form of another as other.
• Degrees: outward senses less immaterial than imagination (he can still see you at home in imagination), imagination less immaterial than understanding what you are, a man.
• Thomas’s Latin: cognitio contingit … according as the cognitum is in the cognoscente.

2. Whatever is received is received according to the receiver (“according to the way of the knower”) #

The point: the known is in the knower according to the knower’s way, a more particular form of “whatever is received is received according to the receiver.”

• Teaching example: students see what you say differently according to their preparation. Freedom of course choice makes it impossible to know what to presuppose; at TAC everyone takes the same thing and one thing builds on another. Solid geometry without plane geometry: people admit this for math but not for other things.
• Aristotle approaches the definition of soul in On the Soul II with six divisions, three on the side of the soul and three on the side of the body; the first goes back to the Categories, the second (matter and form, genus of substance) to the first book of “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]. A reader without those is lost.
• Aside: Monsignor Dionne trying to teach that a sacrament is a sign to students with no philosophy ends up teaching philosophy rather than theology.

3. Your way of knowing cannot excel your way of being (“way of being of some thing known exceeds”) #

The point: if the way of being of the thing known exceeds the way of the nature of the knower, knowing that thing is above the knower’s nature.

• Since our soul is in a body, its way of being is in the body; hence its natural object is what can be sensed or imagined (his paraphrase of On the Soul III). What cannot be sensed or imagined it cannot know what it is, except by a roundabout way involving negation of what can be sensed or imagined.
• The angel, not in matter, naturally understands himself and to some extent other angels, since they are actually understandable; but his way of being is not that of the one who said “I am who am.”
• Thomas’s threefold division of ways of being:
  1. natures that have being only in this individual matter (this flesh, blood and bones): all bodily things;
  2. natures subsisting by themselves, not in matter, yet not their own being but having being: the bodyless substances, “separated” from matter, called angels (a theological name, “because they’re being sent”);
  3. only God: his own subsisting existence; what God is is to be.

4. Two knowing powers in the soul: sense knows only singulars (“the sense does not know except singulars”) #

The point: our soul, the form of some matter (recall On the Soul II: first act of a natural body composed of tools, organon = tool), has two knowing powers.

• The first is the act of a bodily organ (outward and inward senses) and knows things as in individual matter, hence only singulars: he never sees man in general or feels chair, only this chair.
• Because knowledge starts from the senses it starts with singulars. Order of knowing in the proemium to wisdom: sensing, memory, experience from many memories, then after much experience the understanding separates out what is common and grasps the universal. That is why induction comes before syllogism, and why the dialogues (Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus) start from examples; and why a child asked what a rectangle or circle is points to a clock or the thermostat.

5. The understanding is not the act of a bodily organ: a review of On the Soul III (“reason is open to knowing all bodily things”) #

The point: Thomas asserts that the understanding is not the act of a bodily organ; Aristotle proves it in On the Soul III, and he reviews the proofs.

• Argument 1: (i) a sense must lack its object to receive it: a sugary tongue could not taste, ears with Mozart built in could not hear other sounds, an eye with green fluid could not see all colours; (ii) reason is open to knowing all bodily things; (iii) therefore it must lack any bodily nature.
• Argument 2, from the universal: (i) many individuals of one kind (the chairs round the table, the hooks on the wall, the cookies stamped from rolled-out dough, my flesh and yours) are possible because matter subject to quantity individuates; (ii) what is received in a body is received as here or there, singular; (iii) chair, hook, man are received in reason as universal; (iv) so reason is not a body subject to quantity. Locke mixed up the image of a triangle with the idea, so it had to be isosceles, scalene and equilateral and none; you cannot see or imagine the universal, every imagined triangle is singular.
• Argument 3, from the continuous: the continuous is a quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary (line at a point). The definition of square (equilateral right-angled quadrilateral) is not continuous, yet the thing understood is continuous; so the non-continuous way comes from that by which we understand, not from the object: “I understand bodies in a bodiless way.” “Most people don’t know that.”
• Dependence on images: reason naturally turns to images (he imagines a triangle when thinking what it is), as his seeing depends on you being there, though the seeing is in him, not in you. A blow on the brain or alcohol interferes with thinking as your leaving the room or turning off the light interferes with seeing: on the side of the object, not of the power.

6. Conclusion of article four (“connatural to only the divine understanding”) #

The point: each nature’s connatural object matches its way of being; seeing God’s essence is connatural only to God.

• To us it is connatural to know natures that exist only in individual matter, but as abstracted from it by the understanding’s consideration, hence universally, above the senses.
• To the angel, natures not existing in matter, above the human understanding “according to the status of the present life.”
• To know ipsum esse subsistens is connatural to the divine understanding alone, above the natural ability of any created understanding, because no creature is its own existence but has partaken being. Therefore the created intellect sees God’s essence only insofar as God by grace joins himself to it as something understandable: “In your light we shall see light.”

7. Article five: does the created understanding need a created light? (“In your light we shall see light”) #

The point: the objections, the sed contra, and the body of a. 5.

• Obj. 1: what is lucid of itself needs no other light to be seen; God is understandable light (lux vera in Thomas’s communion prayer); so no created light. He flags: light here has a different sense.
• Obj. 2: seen through a medium is not seen in his essence; a created light is a medium.
• Obj. 3: nothing created is prevented from being natural to some creature; so that light could be natural to some creature, which would then need no added light; impossible.
• Sed contra: Psalm 35:10 (he confirms the numbering), “In your light we shall see light.” Two lights: the lux vera, God himself, in whom is no darkness, and another light in which we see him; not a light to make him visible.
• Body: (1) whatever is raised above its nature must be disposed by a disposition above its nature (as air, or paper, must be heated to receive the form of fire; as in ethics the emotions are habituated by repeated acts to follow reason, which is above them). (2) When a created understanding sees God, God’s essence becomes the understandable form by which it understands, a form far above its natural form; there must be some ratio between form and subject, so a supernatural disposition must be added. (3) Since natural power does not suffice (shown in a. 4), divine grace must add a power of understanding; this growth of intellectual power is called illumination, lumen or lux, as the understandable is called light. This is the light of Apocalypse 21, the clarity of God illuminating the society of the blessed; by it we are made deiformes, like God, per John 3:2, “when he appears we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
• On the categories: disposition is the first species of quality; the man in the street distinguishes what a dog is from its size, size from shape, the body from its health (a man is “indisposed”), so he already has substance, quantity, quality, disposition. Grace, if put in the categories, is quality, but an unusual one the philosopher would not know.
• “One of the most important texts in scripture”: to see God as he is, not only as he is not (not composed, not limited); since it is not natural to us, as it is to see the triangle, we must become like God, as God sees himself as he is.
• Warning on “light”: sensible light makes things actually visible, and Aristotle’s agent understanding makes the potentially understandable actual; this light does not do that, since God is pure act and purely understandable.

8. Replies to the three objections (“not a middle in which God is seen”) #

• Ad 1: the light does not make God’s essence understandable (it is so secundum se); it makes the understanding powerful enough, as a habit makes a power more able: the habit of geometry makes his mind more able to grasp the triangle, or to make a square equal to a given oblong. Bodily light likewise makes the medium actually transparent so it can be moved by colour (Aristotle’s account).
• Ad 2: the light is not a likeness in which God is seen (unlike his image of you at home, or his thought of what a man is), but a perfection strengthening the understanding: not a medium in which but under which God is seen, leaving the vision immediate, as geometry does not get in the way of seeing the triangle.
• Ad 3: a disposition to the form of fire can be natural only to what has the form of fire; so the light of glory could be natural only to a creature of the divine nature, impossible; through it the creature becomes deiformis, translated with the class as “Godlike.”

9. Grammar deceives: the object acts on us before we see or love it (“I see the chair”) #

The point (a student’s question takes him back to understanding and loving): unlike kicking, seeing and loving are results of the object’s being united to us.

• “I kick the chair”: subject, act, object; the kicking is between me and the chair and is my only contact with it. “I see the chair” looks the same grammatically. A student says the seeing unites you to the chair; his reply: what comes first? The chair acts on my eye, producing a likeness of itself (the visible form), and the result is that I see it. So grammar is deceptive.
• Loving likewise: Thomas says loving is an undergoing. “She made a big impression on you” (press upon): she, Mozart’s music, or food acts on the heart, and liking results. Loving is not between me and the object but the result of the impression.
• Every agent makes something like itself, inducing a form: forma sensibilis, forma intelligibilis. God’s understandable form is himself; hence Thomas concludes God knows himself, and knows other things not by their forms pressed on him but by understanding himself. In this life the understandable form by which I know God is not God; in the vision it must be God himself. That is not opposed to our nature but not natural; it requires a disposition making the understanding a suitable subject for the divine substance as its form: the light of glory. Philosophy knows God through act and ability and pure act, by analogy and negation, not as he is. “Light” is used in another meaning, but appropriately.
• Aside: Thomas’s prayers before and after communion, addressed to the Father of Lights (appropriated to the Father), ask to be brought to the ineffable convivium, banquet.

10. Angels, saints and the ladder soul-angel-God (“the angel knows God in knowing his own substance”) #

The point (student asks how this compares with angels): the vision is the same, by the light of glory; natural knowledge differs.

• The angel’s natural knowledge of God is much better than ours, since we know God from motion and sensible things, less like God than the angelic substance; the angel knows God in naturally knowing his own substance, an effect much more like God though infinitely distant. Some saints know God by spiritual effects in the soul, better than the philosopher.
• Knowledge of the soul is the window to immaterial things: Thomas in one place says he considers the body to consider the soul, the soul to consider the angels, the angels to consider God; so one might teach the Summa starting from the soul, then the angels, then God.
• Kasurik, his first teacher at the College of St. Thomas: at death you meet your guardian angel and think “this must be God”; each angel differs in kind, so one does not really count angels; the angel watching you decide is like you watching an ant. Miranda’s “brave new world” (her name from wonder): so we will react to angels. Kansas, visiting the grandchildren, surprisingly beautiful. Aristotle’s, Euclid’s and Einstein’s minds combined would not equal an angel.

His words #

• known in the knower: knowledge takes place according as the known (cognitum) is in the one knowing (cognoscente)
• immaterial way: receiving the form of another as other (vs. the brick receiving heat as its own)
• whatever is received is received according to the receiver
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• first act of a natural body composed of tools: definition of soul; organon = tool
• proemium to wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics I]
• ability [ed.: potency]; act and ability
• continuous: quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary
• ipsum esse subsistens: what God is is to be
• partaken being: creatures have existence; the having and the had differ
• disposition: first species of quality; what raises a subject to a form above it
• lumen / lux: illumination, the growth of intellectual power
• deiformes / deiformis: Godlike
• light of glory: disposition making the understanding a suitable subject for the divine substance as its understandable form
• secundum se: by itself
• forma sensibilis, forma intelligibilis: sensible / understandable form induced by the object
• impression: press upon; loving as an undergoing
• lux vera, Father of Lights, ineffable convivium (banquet): Thomas’s communion prayers

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 4, body (verified source infers this stretch lies between a. 3 and a. 5)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 5, whole article (verified source)
• Psalm 35:10 (sed contra)
• Apocalypse 21; John 3:2 [ed.: 1 John 3:2] (inferred), as quoted in the article

Mentioned

• Empedocles, fragment on like known by like
• Aristotle, On the Soul II (definition of soul, six divisions) and III (immateriality of understanding; its object what can be sensed or imagined)
• Aristotle, Categories; Physics I (“Natural Hearing”); proemium to wisdom (order of knowing)
• Plato, Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus
• Locke on the general idea of triangle
• Thomas’s prayers before and after communion
• Shakespeare, Miranda’s “brave new world” [ed.: The Tempest] (inferred)
• Thomas “in one place”: body, soul, angels, God order of consideration (no locus)

His questions #

• Was it correct that the known is in the knower before it is known? Yes, in some way; otherwise no recognition; but immaterially, not materially.
• How does Aristotle prove that the understanding is not a body? It lacks any bodily nature since open to all bodies; it receives the universal; it knows the continuous non-continuously.
• Is the definition of a square something continuous? No, yet the thing understood is; so the non-bodily way is on the side of the knower.
• What are the two lights in “In your light we shall see light”? God himself, and the created light in which we see him; not a light making him visible.
• Disposition is in what category? Quality, first species.
• Is this light making God, only potentially understandable, actually understandable? No; God is pure act; it strengthens the understanding.
• Where is the seeing in comparison to me and the chair, like the kicking? No; the chair first acts on the eye and the seeing results; grammar is deceptive.
• What is the understandable form by which I see God as he is? God himself, which requires the light of glory as disposition.
• How does this compare with how the angels know God? The vision is the same, by the light of glory; the angel’s natural knowledge is much better, from his own substance.