Summa I q.12 a.6–7: Why Some See God More Perfectly, and Why No Creature Comprehends God

Orientation #

He says Article Six “obviously presupposes Article Five”, the article on the light of glory (prev. lecture), and that the questions he raises between the articles were taken up because Article Seven concerns the knowledge God has of Himself that we lack. The previous class treated q. 12 aa. 4–5 and the next continues with aa. 8–10.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6 objections: “We shall see him as he is” (“one sees him what more perfectly”) #

The point: three objections against one blessed seeing God more perfectly than another.

1. 1 John 3:2, “we shall see him as he is”: he is in one way (opposed to negative theology, where we see him as he is not: incorporeal, not composed), so all see him in one way, none more perfectly.
2. Augustine, Eighty-three Questions: one cannot understand one thing more than another; all who see God by essence understand the divine essence, since God is seen by understanding, not the eyes.
3. Seeing more perfectly comes either from the object (received by a more perfect likeness, which fails here, since God is present by his very essence) or from the knowing power; then the naturally more sublime intellect would see more clearly, which does not fit, since men are promised in beatitude the equality of angels (“some of us would be higher than some of the angels”).

Aside on the day’s Mass reading from Job: the Latin has “in my flesh”; another translation “from my flesh” almost suggests seeing with the eye, though it could still be read orthodoxly.

Aside on understanding vs. imagining: in this life what we understand is in a way absent, so we form a thought as we form an image; seeing God “as he is” is more like sensation, immediate. When I see you I form no image; when you are gone my seeing must end in an image I bring to mind. Hence “the word to see is more appropriate than the word to understand”, though it is seeing in the sense of understanding.

Sed contra: eternal life is the vision of God (John 17:3); if all saw equally all would be equal, but Paul says “star differs from star in clarity” (1 Cor 15).

2. Body of Article 6: more light of glory, more charity (“who has more the light of glory”) #

The point: one sees more perfectly through a greater power of understanding, not a better likeness.

1. Not through a more perfect likeness in one than another, since the vision is not through a likeness (shown before); a likeness would be created and inadequate. Contrast: a vague notion of square vs. its definition; a vague notion of reason vs. “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — there the clearer knower has the better likeness, but this is not our case with God.
2. So through the intellect of one having greater virtue for seeing God; this faculty is not natural but from the light of glory, which constitutes the understanding in a godlikeness; so the one more partaking the light of glory sees more perfectly.
3. Who partakes more? The one with more charity, because more charity means more desire, and desire makes the desirer apt and prepared to receive the desired. So more charity, more perfect vision, more blessed.

His marriage analogy: scripture (above all the Song of Songs) and Shakespeare (“let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments”) liken beatitude to marriage; but this spiritual marriage is more intimate. Bodily marriage: the bodies remain outside each other, meeting at their surfaces; here God is within the understanding itself as the form which understands. As one would not unite with someone who did not love him, so the more the creature loves God the more God wants to unite that creature to himself.

3. Replies to Article 6 (“determines the way of the vision”) #

• Ad 1: sicuti, “as he is”, determines the mode of vision on the side of the thing seen (we see him to be just as he is, his very being which is his essence), not on the side of the seer; the sense: the way of seeing will be as perfect as the way of being in God is perfect. He calls 1 John and Paul’s “face to face” the two main scriptural texts on this, John’s “in some ways even more perfect”, Paul’s a bit metaphorical.
• Ad 2: “one does not understand one thing better than another” is true of the mode of the thing understood (whoever understands a thing other than it is does not truly understand it), not of the mode of understanding, where one understanding is more perfect than another. Mozart heard rightly by me, better by someone with better ears.
• Ad 3: diversity of seeing is not from the object (the same essence is presented to all) nor from different likenesses, but from a diverse ability of the understanding, not its natural but its glorious one; so some saints may see more than some angels though the angel’s natural ability is greater.

4. Interlude: never wanting to know God more in heaven (“that’s a paradox”) #

The point: no creature can understand God as much as he is understandable or love him as much as he is lovable; from this a paradox about heaven, with three resolutions.

• The two statements and their corollaries; he recalls the Adoro te devote, where Thomas’s whole mind fails in contemplating God.
• In this life we can always understand and love God more than we do. In heaven, seeing him as he is, will I ever understand or love him better than I do? No. “That’s a paradox”: whatever is worth understanding, seeing or hearing, you always want to know better (a famous painting shows more the longer you look; hearing Mozart on 102.5 in the car more thoroughly than at home, and realising he must listen more often). But if in heaven we always understood and loved more, it would be endless, “opposed to the idea of being the end”.
• Three answers:
  1. God has eternally destined each to a slot: this clarity, this degree of love (Mary above the apostles, the apostles above us); the saints, wholly conformed to God’s will, will for themselves exactly that degree and no more.
  2. “The really most interesting to me”: the beatific vision is measured by eternity, with no before and after, not by time; the difficulty is that we are “falsely imagining ourselves to be in time”, where getting better in the course of time makes sense. “It’s all at once.”
  3. St. Teresa’s cup: everyone is filled, but my cup is smaller than yours. His own example: less appetite than as a young man; restaurants give more than he wants, but a young man eats what he could not; each is satisfied by a different amount. If I loved God more than I do I would not be satisfied with my vision, but my vision corresponds to my capacity; Thomas Aquinas is not satisfied with what satisfies me.
• Student: this corresponds to eternity defined as “perfect possession”; perfect possession for one may be less than for another. He agrees: wholly satisfied.

5. Article 7 objections and sed contra (“whether those seeing God through his essence comprehend”) #

The point: God comprehends himself; the article asks whether the blessed do.

1. Paul: “I follow if in some way I might comprehend”, and he did not follow in vain, since “I run not as uncertain where I am going” (1 Cor 9); he invites others, “run that you may comprehend”. He flags the equivocation in “comprehend”. On the word: to apprehend is to grasp; to comprehend is to grasp all around, as a marble is entirely enclosed in the fist because it is small; but it may also mean simply to grasp.
2. Augustine, On Seeing God, to Paulina (uncertain in class whether the addressee is a woman; “we have to look it up”): that is comprehended which is seen as a whole so nothing is hidden. God being simple, if seen by essence the whole is seen; you cannot see one part and not another as you can see part of Euclid. So whoever sees him by essence comprehends him.
3. If it is said the whole is seen but not wholly: “wholly” signifies either the mode of the thing seen (he is seen as he is) or the mode of the seer (the whole power of the understanding sees God); either way he is seen wholly, so comprehended. (He adds: but one man’s cup is bigger than another’s.)

Sed contra: Jeremiah 32, “most strong, great, God of armies is his name, great in counsel and incomprehensible in thought”.

Asides: Thomas’s Sentences commentary quotes six or seven works of Augustine; “he digested and read all Augustine”; one article ends “someone can say this better; I would not envy him” — a great service to theology though not the Summa. Chartres: statues with the four evangelists resting on the four major prophets; Thomas correlates them in his commendation of scripture — Isaiah with Matthew (only those two have “Emmanuel”), John with Daniel (students suggest), Jeremiah left unassigned, “dealing with passion”.

6. Body of Article 7: infinitely knowable, finite light (“to know him as much as he’s knowable”) #

The point: to comprehend God is impossible for any created understanding, though to attain him by the mind in any way is great beatitude (Augustine).

1. That is comprehended which is perfectly known, i.e. known as much as it is knowable.
2. What is knowable by demonstration but held by opinion from a probable reason is not comprehended. His class example: are vertical angles between intersecting straight lines equal? “It looks equal” is no reason; measuring tells only of this pair; even infinitely many examples would not show it is always so (as every number could be “shown” odd by examples). Euclid: a + x = two right angles and b + x = two right angles, so a = b. The same thing is then known “more fully”. Thomas’s example: Euclid I.32, three angles equal to two right angles; known by demonstration it is comprehended, held on the word of geometers or the many it is not.
3. Each thing is knowable as it is a being in act (Aristotle, “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX], on act and ability: ability is knowable only through act). A building going up: the more it comes to be in act, the more you know what it will be.
4. God’s being is infinite (an earlier article), so he is infinitely knowable.
5. A created intellect knows the divine essence more or less perfectly as it is flooded with greater or lesser light of glory; the created light of glory cannot be infinite; so no created intellect knows God infinitely, so none comprehends him. Only God knows himself as much as he is knowable and loves himself as much as he is lovable.

Digression: the Doctor of Divine Love (Francis de Sales, after students’ guesses, named for his treatise on love): you should rejoice that Mary loves and understands God more adequately than you. It would be a pity if no one loved God as much as he is lovable, as one is sorry for a girl not asked to dance or a professor unappreciated; that would be so were there no God to understand and love himself, so we should rejoice and be thankful. A student the night before not loving Mozart as he does; wanting students to love Renaissance paintings as the teacher does; Thomas on the Psalms, David distressed that God’s laws are not kept; a teacher’s frustration that students do not understand Thomas as much as he is understandable.

7. Replies to Article 7 (“comprehension is said two ways”) #

• Ad 1: comprehension strictly means something included in the comprehender; so God is in no way comprehended, by intellect or anything else, since the infinite cannot be fenced in (“Don’t fence me in”) by something limited. Largely, comprehension is opposed to pursuing: one who attains and holds on to a thing comprehends it; so God is comprehended by the blessed, per Canticles 3:4, “I will hold on to him and not let him go”; thus Paul. Thomas’s note: comprehension is one of the three gifts of the soul [ed.: dowries], answering to hope as vision to faith and enjoyment to charity. With us not everything seen is held (seen at a distance or not in our power: the movie actress you see but do not own), nor everything held enjoyed (no delight, or not the last end that fills desire). The blessed see God, hold him present, always able to see him, and enjoy him as last end. This is why “see” and “face to face” fit: presence, not the image with distance between us. Thomas elsewhere: “they will blush who place the end of man in bodily things.”
• Ad 2: God is incomprehensible not because something of him is unseen (he is altogether simple: the whole or nothing) but because he is not seen as perfectly as he is seeable; as a demonstrable statement known by probable reason lacks nothing (subject, predicate, composition all seen) yet is not known as it is knowable. Augustine’s “limits seen around” is the stricter sense: one reaches the end in the way of knowing.
• Ad 3: totality names the mode of the object; not that the object’s mode escapes knowledge, but that the mode of the object is not the mode of the knower. One who sees God by essence sees that he exists infinitely and is infinitely knowable, but does not thereby know him infinitely; as one can know with probability that a statement is demonstrable without knowing it demonstrably. Looking at later books of Euclid: “that’s probably demonstrable”, but I do not know the demonstration.

Break.

His words #

• “seeing” God: preferred over “understanding” because of presence, as in sensation, against the image formed of what is absent.
• “large discourse, looking before and after”: his definition of reason (from Shakespeare).
• “light of glory”: the created light constituting the understanding in a godlikeness; measure of how perfectly one sees.
• “charity”: loving God more; brings more desire, hence aptness to receive.
• “sicuti”, “as he is”: determines the mode on the side of the thing seen.
• “the end all, the be all”: beatitude as end, against endless increase.
• “comprehend”: to know a thing as much as it is knowable; strictly, to be included or fenced in; largely, to hold on to as opposed to pursuing.
• “apprehend”: to grasp; comprehend, to grasp all around.
• “ability”: [ed.: potency], knowable only through act.
• “ninth book of wisdom”: [ed.: Metaphysics IX].
• “gifts of the soul”: [ed.: dowries], comprehension, vision, enjoyment.
• “totalitas”, “wholly”: names the mode of the object, not of the knower.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 6 (whole article, read and translated)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 7 (whole article, read and translated)
• 1 John 3:2; John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 15; 1 Corinthians 9; Jeremiah 32; Song of Songs 3:4 (as quoted in the articles)

Mentioned

• Augustine, Eighty-three Questions; Augustine, On Seeing God, to Paulina
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (“ninth book of wisdom”) (inferred)
• Euclid, Elements I.32; vertical angles proposition (inferred: I.15)
• Job (the day’s Mass reading, “in my flesh”)
• Shakespeare, sonnet on the marriage of two minds; “large discourse, looking before and after”
• Thomas, Adoro te devote; commentary on the Sentences; commendation of Scripture (prophets and evangelists); commentary on the Psalms
• St. Teresa, the cups; Francis de Sales, treatise on love

His questions #

• Of those seeing the essence of God, does one see him more perfectly than another? Yes, by a greater light of glory, given to the one with more charity.
• Why can it not be by a more perfect likeness? The vision is not through any likeness; a created likeness could not represent God as he is.
• Who has more of the light of glory? Who has more charity, since desire prepares one to receive the desired.
• In heaven, will I ever understand or love God more than I do when I first see him? No; three reasons: conformity to God’s chosen degree, eternity without before and after, satisfaction according to one’s capacity.
• Do I hear Mozart other than it is? No; but another with better ears hears it better: mode of understanding, not of the thing.
• When straight lines intersect, are the vertical angles equal, and how do you know? Not by looks, measuring or examples, but by Euclid’s demonstration through two right angles.
• Can any created understanding comprehend God? No; God is infinitely knowable and the created light of glory cannot be infinite.
• Would it be a pity if no one loved God as much as he is lovable? Yes; so rejoice that God himself does.
• Is God incomprehensible because something of him is unseen? No; he is simple; but he is not seen as perfectly as he is seeable.