Summa I, Q.14, Arts. 3–4: Does God Comprehend Himself, and Is His Understanding His Substance? (with 'simply' versus 'in some way')

Orientation #

He opens by saying they will “interrupt Article Three now”: we know God knows Himself (a. 1) and chiefly knows Himself (a. 2); now, does He comprehend Himself? Before a. 5 (whether He knows anything other than Himself, and particulars), he says a. 4 is the “different article” that must come first, especially for the Trinity. The previous class treated a. 2 (God understands Himself); the next treats aa. 5-6.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3 objections: comprehending as grasping (“that which comprehends itself is finite”) #

Point: the objections take “comprehend” as a grasping that surrounds, so only the finite could be comprehended.

1. Obj. 1 (Augustine, 83 Questions): what comprehends itself is finite; God is infinite (“the third attribute of the substance,” as we saw); so He does not comprehend Himself.
2. Obj. 2: if one says God is infinite to us but finite to Himself, then, since what a thing is before God is truer than what it is before us, God would more truly be limited than unlimited, against what was determined.
3. Sed contra (Augustine): everything that understands itself comprehends itself; God understands Himself.

• Two words for the first act of reason: intelligere, to understand what a thing is, and simple grasping; “comprehend” etymologically has the idea of grasping, hence the suggestion that a thing must be finite to be gotten around.

2. Body of a. 3: known as much as it is knowable (“comes to the end of the knowledge of it”) #

Point: something is comprehended strictly when known as perfectly as it is knowable; God is both maximally knowable and maximally a knower, so He comprehends Himself.

• Thomas’s favourite example: one who knows a conclusion by demonstration and one who accepts it on a probable reason (“Euclid says this”) both know the whole conclusion, but the second does not know it wholly, because he does not know why. Same point in the beatific vision: some see God more perfectly, but everyone sees the whole of God (He has no parts); if I see less perfectly it is not that you see a part I do not. Argument:

1. Something is knowable according to the way of its act (Metaphysics IX, “the ninth book of wisdom”): a building going up or a painting in progress becomes more knowable the more it is completed; ability is knowable only through the act it is for (you know I can talk through my talking, walk through my walking), while act is knowable of itself.
2. God is pure act (question on simplicity; and Metaphysics IX: what goes from ability to act does so through something already in act, so act is simply before ability, and the beginning of all things is act with no passive ability).
3. So God is completely knowable, “but not to us.”
4. Other side of the equation: God’s power in knowing is as great as His actuality in existing, since (a. 1) He is a knower through being act separated from all matter and passive potency.
5. Hence He knows Himself as much as He is knowable, i.e. comprehends Himself; as Aristotle says, knower in act and knowable in act are the same, and God is most of all act on both sides.

• Recap of the three articles: a. 1 that God knows; a. 2 that what He chiefly knows is Himself (“whether He knows anything else we don’t know yet”); a. 3 how well: perfectly.

3. Reply to obj. 1: expounded by negation (“God is said to be in Himself”) #

Point: “comprehend” taken strictly means one thing having and including another, so the comprehended is limited (“you can’t surround the infinite”); God is not comprehended by Himself in that sense, His intellect not being other than Himself.

• Such ways of speaking are expounded by negation, as “God is in Himself”: grammatically affirmative, understood as “not contained by anything.”
• Parallel: substance “exists in itself” vs. accident “exists in another.” Can something strictly be in itself? No; so it is an affirmative way of saying something negative. Thomas defines substance formally: res cui conveniat esse non in alio.
• Words said of God like infinite, unchangeable, immobile are grammatically negative; but “simple” is grammatically affirmative, and the question on simplicity shows only that God is not composed in any of the ways creatures are composed.
• So “comprehended by Himself” = nothing of Himself is hidden from Him; Augustine, book on seeing God (“he’s got so many books”): a whole is comprehended in seeing when nothing of it is hidden from the one seeing.

4. Reply to obj. 2: a likeness of proportion (“a certain likeness of proportion”) #

Point: “God is finite to Himself” means only that He does not exceed His own understanding, as a finite thing does not exceed a finite intellect; not that He understands Himself to be limited.

• As the limited is to a limited mind, so the unlimited is to an unlimited mind; but do not exaggerate the proportion: the unlimited stays unlimited.

5. Article 4 objections: is God’s understanding His substance? (“It seems that the understanding of God is not”) #

Point: this article is needed before a. 5 and for the Trinity: my definition of reason (or Shakespeare’s) is not reason itself, but the Word of God is God Himself; that depends on seeing that God’s act of understanding is His substance (and likewise the act of will). “Leave those difficulties till the treatise on the Trinity.”

1. Obj. 1: to understand is an operation; an operation signifies something going forth from the operator; so it is not the substance. “Nice objection.”
2. Obj. 2 (from our own knowing): to understand that one understands is not to understand something great but something secondary and accessory. As Thomas says, understanding God or what the soul is pertains to the perfection of my mind; understanding that I understand it does not (“no big deal”). If God is His own understanding, understanding God would be like understanding what understanding is, so nothing great. He notes Aristotle’s phrase, translated “funny in English”: God is a thought thinking itself.
3. Obj. 3: every understanding is of something; if God is not other than His understanding, He understands Himself to understand, and Himself to understand that, “and so on forever.” In me these are all different acts (triangle; that I understand the triangle; …). Aristotle, Physics III, gives this regress as one reason we speak of the infinite existing; likewise “Socrates is Socrates” is a statement, and that whole statement is itself, multiplying forever.
4. Sed contra (Augustine, De Trinitate VII): in God to be and to be wise are the same; to be wise is to understand; God’s to be is His substance (treatise on simplicity: I am who am); so His to understand is His substance.

6. Body of a. 4: from pure act, and the “how” (“as ability is to act, which is altogether impossible”) #

Point: God’s understanding must be His substance, argued again from pure act (Metaphysics XII, second half, where Aristotle takes up God and shows God and His act of understanding are the same).

1. To understand is the perfection and act of the one understanding.
2. If God’s understanding were other than His substance, something other than the substance would be its act and perfection, and the substance would be to it as ability to act.
3. But God is in no way in potency; He is pure act. So they are the same.

• Aside: “For you to be is for you to understand” would be interesting for us; Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am,” “if I stop thinking now I’ll be lost.”
• Why he always emphasised Metaphysics IX when teaching metaphysics: the book on act and ability is the most important for coming to know the first cause; pure act does the work in all these articles. How it is so:
• Understanding is not an action going forth to something extrinsic (kicking, shoving, heating) but one remaining in the doer as its act and perfection, like loving and even sensing (Aristotle’s distinction).
• Proportion: as to be is the perfection of the existing thing and follows upon form, so to understand follows upon the understandable form (species, the form seen, the shape). Wood becomes a chair through its form; in our knowing I must receive the shape or colour of the chair or of you as my own form before I know it, so the sensible form is to sensing as the form in matter is to the being of the material thing.
• In God there is no distinction between form (substance, nature) and to be; and His essence is the understandable form by which He understands; so His to understand is His to be, which is His substance. Abstractly: if E is to B as X is to Y, and A is X, then B is Y; and the two are the same.
• Aside: Weisheipl’s article on Albert the Great (flurry of interest in the 1980s around the centenary); Hegel’s “scholarship” on Albert reduces to questionable anecdotes (Albert’s talking robot that Thomas struck as diabolical), like the ancient tales of Aristotle as a fancy dresser, or the woman who put a bit in Aristotle’s mouth and rode him before Alexander (“if she can do this to me, old and wise…”); Albert was more famous than Thomas in his time.

7. Reply to obj. 1 and the order of learning (“not treated in the order in which you can learn them”) #

Point: to understand is not an operation going forth from the doer but remaining in him; an operation proceeding outward could not result in a person who is God, but one remaining within can (left to the Trinity treatise).

• Hence the order of the Summa: substance of God, then operations of God, then Trinity; the Sentences jump almost at once into the Trinity. This is what Thomas means in the prologue: things non traduntur secundum ordinem disciplinae. He always tried to get colleagues to admit an order of learning in philosophy.
• Goethe’s image: the wise man parting truth from error like a swimmer, and they close behind him.
• His St. Mary’s College student who came daily with objections he had heard before: “I was trying to catch you, but I never caught you”; the same mistakes come back.
• DeKoninck teaching Physics I would stop and show Bergson or Russell making the same mistake as the ancients.
• Summa Contra Gentiles has a whole chapter that God (I am who am) is not the being said of all things, the very mistake Hegel’s system begins with, without even mentioning that anyone thought otherwise. Santayana: “Today we no longer bother to refute our predecessors; we just wave them goodbye”; the modern as a la mode, fashion, a contempt not born of familiarity.

8. Replies to obj. 2-3: simply vs. in a qualified way (“the definition of definition”) #

Point: understanding that one understands is nothing great when the understanding is not subsisting (my Pythagorean theorem); the divine understanding is subsisting and substantial, so it is of itself and not of another, and there is no regress.

• For us no act is of itself: understanding a triangle, understanding that I understand it, and so on. Logic is possible because reason comes back on itself; sign: there is a definition of definition, not only of triangle or circle.
• His “Peter Piper” question: is the definition of definition a definition of the definition of definition? Not simply: it defines definition in general (“speech signifying what a thing is”) and so covers the definition of triangle, square, tragedy, and itself in the same general way; like the definition of animal, which says in an imperfect way what man is, but not simply. “That’s very subtle.”
• The distinction: what is so simply vs. what is so not simply but in a qualified way. It runs through the whole of philosophy and theology and corresponds to the second of Aristotle’s mistakes outside speech in the Sophistical Refutations.
• SCG IV (his favourite book), on the Incarnation: is Christ a creature? A student says yes because of what the name signifies (“back to the drawing board”). “Christ” refers to the person, the Word, not a creature; the human nature is a creature; so simpliciter Christ is not a creature, in a qualified way (“Christ as man”) yes; “this man,” pointing to Christ, is a creature is false. Student: the name is taken from the anointed human nature; he grants the name is taken from the nature but still refers to the person.
• Same in being: if you leave this room, do you cease to be? Only “in this room”; did I come to be when I entered? Not simply. Seen by Aristotle and Thomas, overlooked by most.
• Same distinction in Thomas on the descent into hell: is the whole Christ in hell? Yes, because it refers to the person.

9. Meno’s puzzle and aiming at the unknown (“how can you aim at what you don’t know”) #

Point: the same distinction solves the Meno, which Meno overlooks: what is unknown simply can be known in some way.

• Meno’s objection to seeking what virtue is compares with Zeno’s against motion: if good, it removes the whole of natural philosophy (as a proof against free will removes the whole of ethics); if Meno’s is good it removes logic and logistike, arts directing you from what you know to what you don’t.
• Student: by using what you do know. Reply: even so you must bring together what you know with a view to what you don’t, which requires knowing it in some way.
• Area of the room: before multiplying length by width I do not know the area simply, but I know what I am trying to know. Counting the class: I did not know it was 26, yet knowing I wanted the number told me exactly the road (count). Gas station: “how do you get there?” “Where?” You must know where before how.
• Same solves Christ growing in knowledge: not from not knowing to knowing but from knowing one way to another; he may have had new sense knowledge and memory; the older Thomas attributes every kind of knowledge to Christ, from beatific vision to infused, arts, sciences, experience.
• Thomas’s proemium to logic: reason invents the arts by thinking about how to use hands and feet, but can also think about its own act; hence definition of definition, statements about statements. Is a statement about statements a statement about itself? Not simply, but in some way, being an example of speech signifying true or false. You appreciate the distinction most when you see the common mistake of overlooking it.

His words #

• intelligere: to understand what a thing is; distinguished from “simple grasping” [ed.: simplex apprehensio].
• comprehend: strictly, one thing having another and including it; properly, coming to the end of knowledge, known as perfectly as knowable.
• “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; “twelfth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics XII].
• ability / act [ed.: potency / act]; “passive ability.”
• pure act: God, in no way in potency.
• “expounded by negation”: affirmative-sounding words of God understood negatively.
• res cui conveniat esse non in alio: Thomas’s formal definition of substance.
• “likeness of proportion”: finite to finite mind as infinite to infinite mind.
• “natural hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• species: the understandable form, “the form you’ve seen, the shape of a thing.”
• non traduntur secundum ordinem disciplinae: not treated in the order of learning (Summa prologue).
• simpliciter vs. in a qualified way: what is so simply vs. not so simply.
• logike / logistike: arts directing you from known to unknown.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)

Mentioned

• Augustine, 83 Questions; On Seeing God (de videndo Deo); De Trinitate VII
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (act and ability), Metaphysics XII (God as thought thinking itself), Physics III (the infinite), Sophistical Refutations (second mistake outside speech)
• Thomas, ST I question on the simplicity of God; ST I q. 14 a. 1 (referred back to); Summa prologue; question on Christ’s descent into hell; proemium to the logic (inferred: commentary on Posterior Analytics)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles: chapter that God is not the being said of all things; SCG IV on whether Christ is a creature
• Peter Lombard, Sentences (order of treatment); Plato, Meno; Zeno; Descartes; Hegel; Weisheipl on Albert the Great; Goethe; Santayana; DeKoninck

His questions #

• Does God know Himself as much as He is knowable? Yes: He is completely knowable as pure act and knows as much as He is actual, so He comprehends Himself.
• Can something strictly be in itself? No; “in itself” says negatively “not in another.”
• Is “simple” grammatically affirmative or negative? Affirmative, but the question on simplicity shows only that God is not composed in any way.
• Is the definition of definition a definition of the definition of definition? Not simply; in a general, qualified way, as the definition of animal says what man is.
• Is Christ a creature? Simply no (the person is the Word); as man, in a qualified way, yes.
• If you leave this room, do you cease to be? Only in this room; not simply.
• Is the whole Christ in hell? Yes, because “Christ” refers to the person.
• How can you aim at what you don’t know? What is unknown simply is known in some way (the area of the room, the number 26).
• Is a statement about statements a statement about itself? Not simply, but in some way, as an example of speech signifying true or false.