Summa I, Q.12, a.11–12: No Vision of God's Essence in This Life; Knowing God by Natural Reason

Orientation #

He begins directly: “We’ll start the 11th article, the 12th question.” He refers back to earlier treatment of the equivocation of “to see” (three meanings), the three ways God is in things (treatise on God’s infinity), the eight articles on God’s simplicity, and Boethius’s definitions of eternity and providence “that we saw in the treatise earlier.” He ends by turning to article 13 (“Lucky number”). The previous class finished aa. 8–10 and the next takes up a. 13 and the plan of q. 13 on the names of God.

The class, in order #

1. Article 11: the four objections and the sed contra (“It seems that someone in this life”) #

The point: four arguments that a man in this life can see God through his essence.

1. Jacob, Genesis 32: “I have seen God face to face”; face to face is seeing through the essence (1 Cor.: now through a mirror, in enigma; then face to face).
2. Numbers 12: God speaks to Moses “mouth to mouth and openly, not through enigmas and figures.” He flags: the first two are arguments from the authority of Scripture; the third and fourth use Augustine’s authority but also “try to argue by reason.”
3. That in which we know and judge other things is itself known to us; but we know all things in God (Augustine, Confessions XII: we both see what is true “in that which is above our minds, the unchangeable truth”; On True Religion: we judge all things by the divine truth; De Trinitate XII: reason judges bodily things by bodiless eternal reasons above our mind). Aside: some Franciscans took this line, that God is the first thing we know and other things through him.
4. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram XII: by intellectual vision we see what is in the soul through its essence, not through likenesses; God is in our soul through his essence; therefore he is seen by his essence. Sed contra: Exodus 33, “A man will not see me and live,” with the gloss (from Gregory the Great, per his note): in this mortal life we see God through likenesses, not through the nature of his essence.

2. The reply: “by one who is purely a man” (“the way of knowing follows the way”) #

The point: no homo purus sees God’s essence unless separated from this mortal life.

• Why “homo puro”? He asks whom this excludes: not Moses or Paul but Christ, who is both God and man.
• Argument: (1) the way of knowing follows the nature of the knower; (2) our soul, while we live, exists in bodily matter, so it naturally knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known through these; (3) the divine essence cannot be known through the natures of material things, since (shown above) knowledge through any created likeness is not a vision of God’s nature; conclusion: impossible for the soul of man living this life to see God’s essence.
• Reasons recalled for (3): a created likeness is limited, God unlimited; in a likeness, the likeness and its existence differ, but in God nature, substance and existence are the same (“I am who am”).
• Digression on premise (2), which he flags as “very important later on” for the names of God: we say “God is good” and “God is goodness itself”; “good” seems to say he has goodness (haver and had, composition, which is false); “goodness” seems not to say he is good. Neither name is adequate; the defect goes back to our natural way of knowing material things whose form is not what they are; hence our concrete and abstract words (healthy / health), a way of thinking we cannot transcend naturally.
• The sign Thomas adds: the more the soul is separated from bodily things, the more capable it is of separated intelligibles; so in dreams and in alienation from the senses we perceive divine revelations and prophecies; to be raised to the highest intelligible it would have to be wholly separated. Illustrations: the appropriateness of God choosing a dream for St Joseph; saints in ecstasy withdrawn from their senses and surroundings.

3. Reply 1: Jacob’s “face to face” (“figure or likeness in which God”) #

The point: Scripture says one sees God when sensible or imaginary figures represent something divine by likeness (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4).

• Jacob’s words refer not to the divine nature but to a figure representing God; this belongs to an eminence of the gift of prophecy (seeing the person of God speaking, by imaginary vision — “the grades of prophecy” treated later), a contemplation above the common state of men.
• He recalls the three meanings of “to see”: with the eye (I see you now), with the imagination (I see a square, my grandchildren), with the intellect. Jacob’s seeing is the imaginative representation, not understanding God as he is.
• Asides: Dionysius is a great authority for Thomas because they took him for the Areopagite converted by Paul, hence now “the pseudo”; Thomas did not comment on the Celestial Hierarchy (his teacher Albert did), but did on the Divine Names.

4. Reply 2: Moses and Paul (“elevated them all the way up to a vision”) #

The point: as God acts supernaturally in bodily things, so, apart from the common order, he raised the minds of some living in the flesh but not using its senses to a vision of his essence — Moses, teacher of the Jews, and Paul, teacher of the Gentiles (Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram XII and On Seeing God); fuller treatment under rapture.

• He notes this is an opinion of Augustine followed by Thomas; he does not know that the Church has ruled on it, but “those are the two greatest minds we have,” so it has great probability. The vision was transitive, passing, not permanent, granted for their eminence as masters.
• Paul on the third heaven, “whether in the body or not, he didn’t know”: one explanation is that he saw God temporarily with the clarity of the seraphim and cherubim; on returning, images and elevated thoughts remained of which he said it was not proper to speak.
• Aside: a saint (name forgotten) who went into hour-long ecstasy at the consecration while the peasants went back to the fields and returned to finish the mass.

5. Reply 3: seeing all things in the divine light (“a partaking of the divine light”) #

The point: we see and judge all things “in God” because our natural light of reason is a partaking of the divine light, not the divine truth in itself.

• Preface on interpreting authorities: Augustine sometimes speaks with “exuberance” and is misunderstood; Thomas will say “this is what Augustine really means,” as commentators say Aristotle sometimes attacks not what Plato meant but what people took him to mean. Example: Metaphysics XII, Aristotle speaks as if God knows only himself; Thomas says that is not the meaning — Aristotle rejected Empedocles’ view because it made man know something God does not; Aristotle is determining what God knows chiefly, and he knows all other things by knowing himself, since they are like him and he is their cause.
• The reply: John 1, the light that enlightens every man; the comparison Augustine makes in the Soliloquies — the disciplines are seen only when illumined by a sun, i.e. God; as we see sensible things in the sun without seeing the sun’s substance, so we understand without seeing God’s essence.
• Heraclitus digression (fragments on following what is common): “those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all,” as a city is strong in its law, and more, for laws are fed by the divine law which is more than sufficient. Common life needs a common rule — driving on the right; he would not want to drive home if everyone followed a private law. Laws of cities differ, so they must be fed by a divine law, which for Heraclitus (no revelation) is what we call the natural law; likewise Antigone appeals against the written law to the unwritten law hinted to be divine. Divine law (“do not take innocent life”) feeds laws about driving, guns, cars, airplanes, though it is not necessary to drive right rather than left.
• Applied to philosophy: the life of the mind together needs something common. Two ways: unequals (teacher leads the student from what both know to what the student does not, as Euclid leads to a new theorem through known ones; impossible if the teacher does not know both) and equals (conversation: “you’re mistaken because you don’t agree with me” returned in kind gets nowhere; need a common measure). Even science: Schrödinger’s first demand of an experiment is that it be repeatable with the same results, i.e. common. All goes back to what is naturally known (the whole is more than the part), which is a partaking of the divine.

6. Reply 4: how God is “in” the soul (“to be in is said in many ways”) #

The point: intellectual vision is of what is in the soul as the intelligible is in the understanding; God is thus in the soul of the blessed, but in ours only in the three ways treated under God’s infinity (sustaining in existence, conserving, moving), not as that by which we know him. We know him darkly, in a mirror. “So you’re all convinced now we’re not going to see God as He is in this life.”

7. Article 12: the break, and the objections (“There’s a real break here now”) #

The point: the first eleven articles concern seeing God face to face; a. 12 asks whether natural reason gives some knowledge of God — which, he notes, Vatican I made an article of faith.

1. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy: reason cannot grasp a simple form; God is most of all a simple form (the eight articles on simplicity: God is act, is form).
2. The soul understands nothing naturally without an image; reason’s proper object is the sensible or imaginable; there can be no image of a bodiless God. “It’s a good objection.”
3. Natural knowledge is common to good and bad, as nature is; but knowledge of God belongs only to the good (Augustine, De Trinitate I: the mind’s sharpness is not fixed in so excellent a light unless cleansed by the justice of faith) — “there is some truth to that.”

• Sed contra: Romans 1:19–20, what is known of God is manifest to them (the philosophers); Vatican I’s official text is v. 20. It is anathema to say God cannot be known through creatures; it does not mean it is easy.
• Boethius digression: perhaps the greatest mind between Augustine and Thomas, learning from Augustine, taught Thomas; the Consolation was a treasure house of the Middle Ages, source of the definitions of eternity and providence used earlier; his reversal of the argument from evil — if there is evil there must be a God, since evil is a transgression from goodness which requires God; books I–III on false then true happiness (false first, as more known to us), IV–V on eternity; alternating poem and prose; translated by Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I, praised by Washington Irving in the Sketchbook; also On the Trinity, with Thomas’s important commentary; he aimed to give all Aristotle to the Latin world but reached only the logical works, in very accurate translations. Student: does Dionysius fit that grouping? — “a little different; Boethius is more a philosopher.”

8. The reply: knowledge begins in the senses (“led by the hand through sensible things”) #

The point: natural reason reaches as far as sensible things can lead it by the hand; from them it cannot see the divine nature, but it can know that God is and what belongs to him as first cause.

1. Natural knowledge begins in sense (Aristotle, proemium to the Metaphysics: sense, memory, experience, then understanding).
2. Sensible creatures are effects not equal to the power of their cause; so from them neither God’s whole power nor his nature is known.
3. But as effects depending on that cause they lead us to know whether he is, what belongs to him necessarily as first cause excelling all caused things: his relation to creatures (cause of all), the difference of creatures from him (he is none of the things he causes), and that these are removed from him not by defect but by excellence.

• Gloss: we know God’s existence as cause from effect, and by a remote likeness; but (Lateran IV) no likeness of creature to God without a greater unlikeness, so the knowledge must be completed by negating the imperfection of the likeness and affirming his perfections in a higher way.

9. The three replies (“that it is, whether it is”) #

• Reply 1 (Boethius): reason does not reach a simple form so as to know what it is, but knows that it is.
• Reply 2 (no image): Thomas answers one way; he adds his own. (a) One can sense or imagine an effect of God and know God through it, not as what he is. (b) When thinking of God we imagine something we negate: I imagine a body, understand what a body is, and know God is not a body; I understand matter–form composition and know he is not so composed — “we know more what he is not than what he is.” (c) Knowledge of our own understanding and will is the gateway to angels and God: they understand as we do but better, so we negate the imperfection of the likeness (I must think before I understand, God need not; I cannot understand two things at once unless related, God understands all at once).
• Reply 3 (good and bad): distinguish knowledge through God’s essence, which is by grace and belongs only to the good (“by grace is eternal life,” St Paul), from knowledge by natural reason, common to good and bad. Augustine, Retractationes, corrects his Soliloquies prayer that God wishes to be known only by the clean: many unclean know many true things about God by natural reason.
• Illustrations: Mortimer Adler, who said he learned only from Aristotle and Thomas, converted only late, delayed (he supposes) by a disorder in his moral life, yet may have known more about God naturally than many Catholics or “the pious woman in the church”; himself — people think one who talks about God is holy, but he talks of God because God is more interesting than anything else, while enjoying other things too, “which are sinful.”
• Aside: every professor should be required to write a book of retractions.
• Close: a. 12 is to be distinguished against the previous eleven, all on vision face to face; break, then article 13.

His words #

• homo purus / “purely a man”: excludes Christ, who is God and man.
• “the way of knowing follows the way of the nature of the thing knowing”: the principle of the reply.
• good vs. goodness; healthy vs. health: concrete word signifies the haver, abstract the form by which; neither adequate to God.
• “to see”: three meanings — eye, imagination, understanding.
• “transitive way, passing way”: Moses’ and Paul’s vision, not permanent.
• rapture; grades of prophecy: later treatments he points to.
• partaking of the divine light: the natural light of reason.
• “what is common” (Heraclitus): the law of the city fed by the divine law = natural law.
• “led by the hand” through sensible things: the reach of natural reason.
• remote likeness; “greater unlikeness” (Lateran IV).
• “that it is” vs. “what it is”: what reason knows of a simple form.
• book of retractions: Augustine’s Retractationes.
• “Vatican consul” [ed.: council], Vatican I; “Lateran consul” [ed.: Fourth Lateran Council].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I q. 12 a. 11 (objections, sed contra, body, four replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I q. 12 a. 12 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Genesis 32; Numbers 12; Exodus 33 with Gregory’s gloss; 1 Corinthians (mirror / face to face); Romans 1:19–20 (as quoted within the articles)
• Augustine, Confessions XII; De Genesi ad litteram XII; De Trinitate I and XII; On True Religion; Soliloquies; Retractationes (as quoted within the articles)
• Heraclitus, fragment on what is common (quoted from memory)

Mentioned

• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4; Divine Names (Thomas’s commentary); Albert’s commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy
• Augustine, On Seeing God
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (books I–V); On the Trinity; Latin translations of Aristotle’s logic
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (God’s knowledge; Empedocles); Metaphysics proemium
• John 1 (the light that enlightens every man); 2 Corinthians, third heaven (locus inferred)
• Sophocles, Antigone; Euclid; Schrödinger on repeatable experiments; Chaucer’s and Elizabeth I’s Boethius; Washington Irving, Sketchbook; Vatican I; Lateran IV; Mortimer Adler

His questions #

• Why does Thomas say “by a pure man,” and whom does he exclude? Christ, who is both God and man.
• Why do we have two names, “God is good” and “God is goodness,” neither adequate? Because our natural knowing is of material things whose form is not what they are; hence concrete and abstract words.
• Why can no created likeness show God as he is? Any created likeness is limited, and its existence differs from it; God is unlimited and his nature is his existence.
• What does it mean to say we see all things in the light of the divine truth? The truth in which we judge is a partaking of the divine truth, the natural light of reason, not the divine truth itself.
• Is it possible to live together in the city, or live the life of the mind together, without something common? No; law fed by the divine/natural law, and in the mind something both parties know.
• How can we know God if we never think without an image and cannot imagine God? Through an imaginable effect, or by imagining something (a body, matter–form) and negating it of God.
• Can an unclean person know God by natural reason? Yes (Augustine’s retraction); possibly more than someone more pious.
• Does Dionysius fit the grouping with Boethius? A little different; Boethius is more a philosopher.