Summa I, Q.14: The Order of the Question on God's Knowledge, and Article 1: Is There Knowledge in God?

Orientation #

He refers back to “questions three through eleven” on the five things belonging to the divine substance, and to the “interruption about the method and so on” (prev. lecture); he says the fifth article’s difficulty about Aristotle “will come up in the objections” but “we won’t get there today.” Verified sources place the class in Summa Theologiae I q. 14 (prologue and a. 1), with side-readings matched to Summa Contra Gentiles II ch. 4 and IV ch. 15 and a handout page on reasoning and the four kinds of argument. The previous class finished q. 13 (names of God, “Qui est”, affirmative propositions) and the next takes up q. 14 a. 2, whether God understands Himself.

The class, in order #

1. Opening reading: Churchill and compression (“slothful not to compress your thoughts”) #

Aside before the class proper: he reads from the memoirs of General Lord Ismay, chapter “Mr. Churchill’s Machinery of War Direction”, on translating Whitehall jargon into English and compressing papers to one sheet.

• Two Churchill quotations: “clarity and cogency can be reconciled with the greater brevity” (he compares Shakespeare’s “brevity is the soul of wit”, but says Churchill puts it very well); and “it is slothful not to compress your thoughts” — he links this to Locke, who at the end of the Essay on Human Understanding admits it is wordy but is too lazy to go back over it.
• Ismay’s “subterfuge”: a one-page minute with annexures A, B, C … once as far as T.
• Student asks whether this is the Ismay of the Titanic (Bruce Ismay); he thinks not, perhaps family.
• Further asides: Ismay in India at partition (Hindus pulling Muslims off a train; a Muslim servant hidden under baggage); some now think Iraq must be partitioned; Ismay’s relief at Munich and his wife’s rebuke; Yalta.

2. Two orders of proof for Euclid I.32 (“the order is just reversed”) #

Point: the same truths can be reached in a different order, which prepares for comparing the two Summas.

• Euclid’s way: extend a side, draw a parallel at the vertex; by the alternate-angle theorem and the exterior-angle theorem prove first that the exterior angle equals the two interior opposite angles, then that the three interior angles equal two right angles.
• The way “you used to always hear”: draw one line parallel through a vertex; the two alternate pairs are equal, so the three angles equal two right angles; from this one can then prove the exterior-angle equality by subtraction.
• “What’s the big deal? No big deal” — but the order is reversed. Likewise in the two Summas “the order is not always exactly the same” (he once gave a paper on the order of the attributes and substance of God).

3. Prologue of q. 14: from substance to operation (“you got to be before you can do anything”) #

Point: after the five things belonging to the divine substance (simple, perfect, infinite, unchangeable, one), Thomas turns to what belongs to God’s operation.

• Why two considerations if God’s substance and operation are the same? Because we know God through creatures, and in creatures substance and what it does are not the same.
• Descartes’ cogito (which goes back to Augustine, Contra Academicos, against the ancient skeptics) rests on something more fundamental: you must be before you can do anything, and be what you are before you can do anything; different kinds of things do different things because of what they are (bird, fish, cat). He does not try to prove this axiom: “it’s kind of obvious.”
• So we start with thoughts about creatures’ substance and their doing, form a twofold consideration of God, and learn the two are the same in God though not in our knowledge. He notes this point “is not brought out elsewhere.”

4. The first distinction of operations; order of the two Summas (“operation which manet, remains in the one doing”) #

Distinction (Aristotle, ninth book of “wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX], and beginning of the Ethics): operation that remains in the doer (seeing, understanding the triangle, loving geometry — even if I act for someone I love, the loving remains in me) vs. transitive operation, which goes to an outside effect. Knowledge and will belong to the first kind (“to understand is in the one understanding, will in the one willing”); power, considered as the beginning of operation proceeding to an exterior effect, comes afterwards.

• Summa Contra Gentiles: understanding and will in Book I, the second kind of operation only in Book II, whose beginning recalls the distinction with a scripture quote and says complete knowledge requires seeing both (verified source: SCG II ch. 4). Reason for the separation: SCG explicitly divides theology into God in Himself (I), God as beginning of all things (II), God as end of all things, then providence (III); so divine blessedness is in Book I there. In the Prima Pars “all these are thrown together.” The threefold division underlies both (cf. the scripture note “The Lord is God; He made us…; His people, the flock, He tends”) but is followed more precisely in SCG, partly because of the huge expansion of moral theology in the Secunda Pars.

5. Subdivision of the first kind of operation (“because to understand is a certain to live”) #

Point: the basic division understanding/will is only implied; Thomas goes straight to the subdivision on the side of understanding.

• Because to understand is a certain living (Aristotle, third book on the soul), the divine life follows the divine knowledge (q. 18, per the Marietti edition), before the will.
• Because knowledge is of the true, truth and falsity follow (qq. 16, 17). Student: is it true that scientia is of the true — can’t you know the false? Answer: in a way yes, in a way no. I can know “man is a two-legged animal” because it is true; I can’t know “man is three-legged”, only think it; I can know that the statement is false, but then I am knowing that it is true that the statement is false. “You only know what is true.” “It’s very subtle.” Yet Thomas will have to know some things about falsity.
• Because the known is in the knower (Empedocles first said this, though misunderstanding how), the reasons of things as in God knowing are called ideas (q. 15). This language goes back to Augustine, influenced by Plato’s forms — Greek idea is better translated “forms”. Plato’s demiurge fashions the universe after forms outside both universe and maker; the forms according to which God makes things are in Him. Thomas respects Augustine enough to keep the language where compatible with the faith.

6. The sixteen articles of q. 14 and their order (“sixteen things to be asked here”) #

Point: in the Sentences these would be several questions; here they are stretched out, so we must find the order (he notes the question on prayer in the Secunda also has sixteen articles).

• a. 1 whether there is scientia in God; a. 2 whether He understands Himself (what He primarily understands); a. 3 whether He comprehends Himself, i.e. understands Himself as much as He is understandable — we, even in the beatific vision, do not, and never love Him as much as He is lovable (St. Francis de Sales climbing from us to the angels to one who knows God as much as He is knowable; only God appreciates God fully).
• a. 4 whether His understanding is His substance: raised only after both substance (qq. 3–11) and this first act are known, since in us they are two things. Student: are the first three about the existence of this knowledge and the fourth its nature? He agrees: as “whether God is” precedes “what God is”; the order is like the philosopher — whether he loves wisdom, what wisdom is, then how he must love it (for its own sake, as the end of his life).
• a. 5 whether He understands anything besides Himself. Some misread Aristotle at the end of the twelfth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics XII] as saying God knows only Himself; Aristotle speaks of what God knows chiefly, and only by knowing Himself does He know other things. Thomas shows in at least two places that Empedocles’ position implies we know something God doesn’t know, which is absurd. Others admit He knows other things but only in a general, vague way — an imperfection.
• aa. 6–8, general questions once He knows other things: whether He knows them properly (not vaguely); whether His knowledge is discursive — discourse (Shakespeare’s “large discourse, looking before and after”), coming to know what you don’t know through what you do, running “hither and thither”, as we drew conclusions about the triangle from the parallels; denied of God, “not the shadow of any change” (St. James); whether His knowledge is a cause of things.
• aa. 9–15 (perhaps 16), particulars with a special difficulty, each answered yes: things that are not (what I did yesterday, will do tomorrow); bad things (would they contaminate Him?); singulars — we know directly only the universal, “singular when sensed, universal when understood” (Boethius), God and the angels know singulars in a quite different way; an infinity of things; future contingents (whether I play baseball or listen to Don Giovanni or Bach tomorrow); enuntiabilia — the second act of reason is compositio et divisio, subject–predicate–copula, but God is altogether simple, so can He have statements in His mind? (student: “He said, ‘I am’”); whether His knowledge is variable (I know you are sitting; when you stand my knowledge changes); a. 16 speculative or practical. SCG has a separate chapter for each.

7. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“a habit is in between ability and act”) #

Point: scientia translates episteme, “reasoned-out knowledge”, e.g. geometry, which exists in me mostly in habitual form.

1. Science is a habit (Aristotle, twice: before learning geometry I am in ability; after, in act relative to the unlearned but still able to be actualized further when I actually demonstrate). A habit is between ability and act; God is pure act; so no science in God.
2. Science is knowledge of conclusions, caused by the premises; nothing is caused in God; so no science in God.
3. Every science is universal or particular; nothing in God is universal or particular; so no science in God. He grants they at least show there is no science in God like ours.

• Sed contra: “the Apostle” (Paul, by antonomasia — as Peter and Paul are “the apostles”, Aristotle “the Philosopher”, Homer “the Poet”), Romans 11: “O the height of the riches of the wisdom and science of God.” The argument from authority is weakest in philosophy, strongest in theology.

8. The body: immateriality is the root of knowing (“the soul is in some way all things”) #

Argument as read:

1. Knowers differ from non-knowers in that the non-knower has only its own form (a rock, the poor tree), while the knower is apt to have the form of another as well: my eye takes the shapes of the statue, clock, book, your head, glass, while retaining its own shape — a piece of wood cannot take all those shapes. Knowing is “receiving the form of another, as other, while retaining your own.” (Aside: some Greeks naively took the reflection in an eye for knowing — like seeing Juan Diego and Bishop Zumárraga in the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe.)
2. Hence the non-knower’s nature is more contracted; the knower’s has greater amplitude — the Philosopher, De Anima III, after treating all the knowing powers: “the soul is in some way all things”, sensible forms in the senses, natures (definitions) in the understanding.
3. The contraction (coarctatio) of form is through matter; the more immaterial a form, the more it approaches a certain infinity (as said above). Asides: Kierkegaard on marriage as contraction; a married friend, “like a form contracted to matter, down to the here and now”; a colleague who thought himself a political philosopher while his wife thought of him as a professor at Assumption College.
4. So immateriality is the reason a thing is knowing, and the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowing: De Anima II, plants don’t know because of materiality; sense knows because receptive of forms without matter (compare the bark with your flesh, which takes a pressed shape and springs back; the warmth of the shower or the cold of the ocean felt most at first, less as your body takes the temperature as its own — matter receives it as its own temperature; a stable body temperature helps us sense temperature; you recognize friends’ shapes without a chiselled piece of bone or “rows of statues” in your head); understanding is more knowing still because more separated from and unmixed with matter (De Anima III).
5. God is at the summit of immateriality; therefore at the summit of knowing. “The fundamental thing to see”: immateriality is the root of knowledge, God is at the summit of immateriality, hence of knowing; then remove all creaturely imperfection.

9. Reply to the first objection: drop the imperfect mode (“drop the genus and keep the difference”) #

Point: perfections proceeding from God to creatures are in God in a higher way, so a name taken from a creaturely perfection must lose whatever belongs to its imperfect creaturely mode; science in God is not a quality (accident, habit) but His substance and pure act.

• Thomas often says: transferring names to God, drop the genus (material) and keep the difference (formal, perfect). Example: demonstration is “a syllogism making us know the cause, and that of which it is the cause, and that it cannot be otherwise”; drop syllogizing and making-to-know, keep the rest, which belongs more perfectly to God, who needs no reasoning. This is one way a name becomes equivocal “by reason”.
• SCG on the names of emotions carried to acts of will (keep the formal aspect, drop the bodily change), some then all the way to God: love and joy yes (love can be for a good you have, joy for a good possessed); desire, hope no (for a good not had); sadness no (something bad would have happened to Him).

10. Replies to the second and third objections (“in God are simply and in a united way”) #

Reply 2: what is divided and multiplied in creatures is in God simply and unitedly (he notes simple and one, the first and last of the five attributes, are put together — as in SCG on the Trinity: God’s understanding is simple, one and perfect, so no two Words or two loves in God; verified source: SCG IV ch. 15). Man has diverse knowledges according to diverse objects: understanding (“natural understanding”) of beginnings, science of conclusions, wisdom of the highest cause, counsel or prudence of things doable, also art — most of Aristotle’s virtues of reason. God knows all by one and simple knowledge, which can be named by all these names, removing from each what is of imperfection and keeping what is of perfection; Job 12: “before Him is wisdom and fortitude; He has counsel and understanding” (He needn’t investigate). Reply 3: the known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower — the general principle that what is received is received according to the mode of the receiver (teaching a class: one takes it perfectly, in another it hardly enters, “like falling on the stone”). Since the divine essence is higher than any creaturely mode, divine science is neither universal nor particular, nor in habit or potency, nor disposed in any such mode. He closes: “Why don’t you take a little break here?”

His words #

• “book of wisdom” (ninth, twelfth): his name for the Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics IX, XII]
• “third/second book about the soul”: [ed.: De Anima III, II]
• operation that “remains in the doer” (manet) vs. transitive operation going to an outside effect
• scientia / episteme: “reasoned-out knowledge”, knowledge of conclusions
• “ability”: [ed.: potency]; habit is “in between ability and act”
• discourse: running “hither and thither”, knowing what you don’t know through what you do know
• compositio et divisio: second act of reason; enuntiabilia: statements
• antonomasia: “the Apostle”, “the Philosopher”, “the Poet”
• knowing: receiving the form of another, as other, while retaining your own
• coarctatio: the confining/narrowing of form by matter
• “natural understanding”: his name for the understanding of beginnings [ed.: intellectus principiorum]
• predication: “being said of”
• “drop the genus, keep the difference”: his rule for transferring names to God; name “equivocal by reason”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, prologue (with the list of sixteen articles)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, chapter on Churchill’s machinery of war direction
• handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 6 (verified source; content in class: the definitions of syllogism and demonstration)

Mentioned

• Euclid, Elements I, prop. 32 (and the parallel theorems)
• Summa Contra Gentiles I–III (division of theology); beginning of Book II on the two operations (verified: II ch. 4); on names of emotions carried to God; on the Trinity, one Word and one love (verified: IV ch. 15)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (two operations), XII (what God knows); Nicomachean Ethics, beginning; De Anima II and III
• Augustine, Contra Academicos; Descartes’ cogito; Locke, Essay on Human Understanding (end)
• Plato on the forms and the demiurge; Empedocles on knowing
• Romans 11; Job 12; Epistle of St. James (“not the shadow of change”)
• Boethius (“singular when sensed, universal when understood”); Shakespeare on reason as “large discourse”; St. Francis de Sales; Kierkegaard; Summa II on prayer (sixteen articles)

His questions #

• Why have two considerations, of God’s substance and of His operation, if in God they are the same? Because we know God through creatures, in which substance and doing are distinct.
• Can’t you know the false? (student) Only that it is true that a statement is false; strictly you know only the true.
• Why does the question whether God’s understanding is His substance come only at article 4? Only after knowing something of His substance and of His understanding could one ask whether they are two, as in us.
• Does Aristotle say God knows only Himself? No; he speaks of what God knows primarily, and by knowing Himself He knows other things.
• Can there be statements in God’s mind if He is altogether simple? Raised as a. 14’s difficulty; answer to come (“yes, but with a difficulty”).
• Does God have any habits? No; a habit is between ability and act, and God is pure act.
• What distinguishes knowers from non-knowers? The knower can have the form of another besides its own; the non-knower has only its own.
• Why don’t plants know, and why is understanding more knowing than sense? Materiality; understanding is more separated from matter.
• Which emotion-names can be carried all the way to God? Love and joy; not desire, hope or sadness.