Summa I, Q.14, Arts. 5–6: God Knows Other Things in Himself, and Knows Each One Distinctly

Orientation #

He opens with “the next question is: whether God knows other things besides Himself” and refers to “the two senses we talked about before: universal … the universal cause and the universal in predication” and to “the mistake there of Sartre” as discussed before (loci not stated). He stops “for four fifteen” after the third reply of a. 6. The previous class did aa. 3–4 of the same question; the next begins at a. 7.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5, the objections (“whether God knows other things besides Himself”) #

Point: three objections claim God knows nothing but Himself; he reads each with a preview of the solution.

• Obj. 1: things other than God are outside Him, and Augustine (Book of Eighty-Three Questions) says God looks upon nothing outside Himself. His preview: God will not know others by “looking out” on them or receiving something from them, nor by reasoning from one to another; Scripture speaks that way only metaphorically (“now I know you love me” — He knew already).
• Obj. 2: the thing understood is the perfection of the understander; so something other would be more noble than God. Preview: God knows others only in knowing Himself, so the perfection of His mind is Himself.
• Obj. 3: understanding takes its species from its object, as every act does. He accepts the general principle and shows how “we reason out” its use: one knowledge is better than another because it is of a better thing; so the best knowledge (wisdom) is of the best thing. Applied here: God would be specified by something other than Himself.
• He sums up: all three show God cannot understand anything other as what He chiefly understands; only in understanding Himself can He understand others.
• Sed contra, “against all this philosophical nonsense”: Hebrews 4:13, all things naked and open to His eyes.

2. Article 5, the body (“it is necessary that God know things other than himself”) #

Point: God must know others because He knows Himself perfectly as their cause.

1. God understands Himself perfectly, otherwise His being (which is His understanding) would not be perfect.
2. If something is perfectly known, its power is perfectly known.
3. A power cannot be perfectly known unless the things it extends to are known.
4. The divine power extends to other things, since He is the first efficient cause of all beings (shown earlier). Conclusion: God understands things other than Himself. His gloss: knowing Himself perfectly, He must know Himself as cause of all things, and He couldn’t know that without knowing them.

• “Even more evidently” if one adds that the being of the first cause is His understanding: effects pre-existing in the first cause are in His understanding, and in an understandable way, by the common principle that whatever is in another is in it according to the way of that in which it is.
• Aside: God knows you better than you know yourself — “so look out”; parents know the small child more than the child knows himself.

3. Known in itself vs. known in another (“in two ways something is known”) #

Distinction: known in itself — through a form proper and adequate to the thing (the eye sees a man through the form of the man); vs. known in another — through the form of what contains it (a part seen in the whole through the form of the whole; a man seen in a mirror through the form of the mirror). Application: God knows Himself in Himself (through His essence) and others not in themselves but in Him, because His substance contains a likeness of all things from Him, since every agent makes something like itself (“can’t give what I don’t have in some way”).

4. Article 5, the replies (“he does not see except by himself”) #

• Ad 1: Augustine means not that nothing outside is seen, but that He sees it only by Himself. He remarks this is unusual for us: “I don’t see much seeing myself, but I turn to other things to see them.”
• Ad 2: the understood perfects the understander not according to its substance but its form, which is in the understanding as its form and perfection; Aristotle, On the Soul III: “the stone is not in the soul but the form of the stone.” So the perfection of the divine understanding is the form which understands — the essence of God.
• Ad 3: understanding is specified not by what is understood in another but by what is chiefly understood, in which the others are understood; an operation is specified by the form that is its principle (heating by heat), and the understandable form that puts the intellect in act is the form of the chief object, which in God is His essence.
• His development: for me, understanding a body, a soul, an angel, God are different acts, each specified by its object and ranked by it; God knows chiefly what God is and in that knows soul, angel, body and the rest. If He knew them in themselves He would have imperfect acts of understanding besides the act of understanding Himself, a multiplicity of acts, accidents, “and they couldn’t be a substance, and so on.”
• Break.

5. Article 6, the objections (“by a proper knowledge”) #

Point: now “how well He knows them” — proper (particular, distinct) knowledge, or only general and confused?

• Obj. 1: God knows others as they are in Him, i.e. as in a first universal cause; that is to know in universal, not in particular. He notes this confuses the two senses of universal talked about before (universal cause vs. universal in predication) and expects Thomas to make the distinction in his own way.
• Obj. 2: the creature’s essence is as distant from God’s as God’s from the creature’s (“you’re as far away from me as I am from you”); one cannot know God through the creature’s nature, so not the creature through God’s. “That’s nice, democratic argument.”
• Obj. 3: proper knowledge is through a thing’s own definition; the same cannot be the proper reason of many diverse things; so God’s knowledge is common, not proper.
• Sed contra: proper knowledge is to know things as distinct from each other; Hebrews: the word reaches the division of spirit and soul (higher and lower powers), the sinews and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart, “which we can’t even do ourselves”; no creature invisible to Him.

6. Article 6, the body: the error and its refutation (“some have erred”) #

• The error (Marietti edition refers to Averroes [ed.: transcript “verism”]): God knows others only in general, as beings — as a fire knowing itself as source of heat would know all hot things as hot; “sounds like He’s a metaphysician.”
• Refutation: to know in general and not in particular is imperfect knowledge; our understanding, going from potency to act, reaches confused universal knowledge before proper knowledge (Physics I, first reading); so general-only knowledge would make God’s understanding, hence His being, imperfect. Therefore He knows things not only as they agree in being but as distinguished from one another.
• The examples (center knowing itself would know all lines from it; light knowing itself, all colours) are similar as to universal causality but fall short: the one principle causes only what the many agree in, not what distinguishes them (colour diversity comes from the disposition of the transparent, line diversity from position), so such diversity is known in its principle only in general.
• Not so in God: whatever perfection is in any creature pre-exists in Him more excellently — not only what creatures agree in (being) but what distinguishes them (living, understanding), since every specifying form is a perfection. So God’s essence is to natures not as general to particular (unit to numbers, center to lines) but as perfect act to imperfect acts: man to animal, six (a perfect number) to the imperfect numbers under it. Through the perfect act the imperfect can be known distinctly: who knows man knows animal; who knows six knows three by proper knowledge (six knowing itself fully would know what partakes of it imperfectly, like three).
• Each thing’s proper nature consists in partaking the divine perfection in some way; God would not know Himself perfectly unless He knew every way He can be partaken of, nor being perfectly without all the ways of being.

7. Digression: the circle as limit of polygons (“a little bit like an angel”) #

Point: it is hard for us, who need a different thought for each thing, to see one thought knowing many distinctly; the mathematical limit (as “the economist” used to point out) is our mind’s feeble attempt to be a little like an angel and remotely like God. Circle and polygon are two thoughts; inscribe a square, bisect the arcs, double the sides — the circle becomes the limit of polygons, so circle and polygon are “the same thought”, yet the distinction is seen at once because the limit is never reached: the polygon is never a circle. A student’s remark about the circle as perfect figure: “maybe related,” but not the point here.

8. Ad 1: “as it is in the knower” in two senses (“this adverb sick”) #

The adverb sic can bear on the side of the thing known (then the claim is false: the eye knows the stone not by the being it has in the eye but, through the form of the stone in the eye, as it is outside; the intellect knows the stone’s understandable being insofar as it knows itself to understand, but knows the stone’s being in its own nature) or on the side of the knower (then true: the more perfectly the known is in the knower, the more perfect the knowledge). So God knows things both in Himself and in their own nature, and more perfectly the more perfectly each is in Him — more perfectly in God than in themselves, yet still as they are. He notes with surprise that Thomas does not use the two senses of universal here; the objection is taken as about things being in God in a different way.

9. Digression: the fallacy of the accident (“deceives even the wise”) #

• Berkeley: everything I know is known by me, and only as in me; therefore I know nothing outside myself. Refutation: “known by Berquist” is not in the definition of triangle (three-sided plane figure), else no two people know the same thing and I could not learn from Euclid; “known by me” is necessarily but accidentally true of what I know. Aristotle: the fallacy of the accident deceives even the wise, “especially … when it’s necessarily there.”
• Hegel universalises the mistake (“portentous power of the negative”): you can only be taught what you are ignorant of, so is ignorance your ability to learn? No — you come to know through what you know already: before multiplying length by width I necessarily lack the area, but I learn it through the length and width, not through my ignorance. Richard II, Norfolk: “dull, barren, unfeeling ignorance” — barren because it gets nothing through itself.
• Sartre: freedom as non-being — if my will were determined to steak before choosing I would not be free, so the lack of determination is freedom; he identifies the ability to choose with the lack of choice, like confusing ability to know with ignorance, because the lack is necessarily found there before.
• Lonergan: knowledge like a hungry empty stomach — same pattern (“opposites attract”).

10. Ad 2 and Ad 3 (“as an imperfect act to a universally perfect one”) #

• Ad 2: creature’s essence is to God’s as imperfect act to universally perfect act, so the creature does not lead sufficiently to knowledge of the divine essence, but the reverse: the creature’s nature is in God more excellently, whereas God’s nature is in the creature only by imperfect partaking.
• Ad 3: the same cannot be the proper reason of diverse things by way of equality, but the divine essence exceeds all creatures and so is the proper reason of each according as it can be partaken of or imitated in diverse ways, more or less perfectly; God would not know Himself perfectly without knowing every way He can be imitated, while the creature knowing itself cannot know God. Class stops at 4:15.

His words #

• “looking out upon” other things; receiving from them; reasoning from one to another — the three ways God does not know others.
• “what is chiefly (principally) understood” — that which specifies understanding; others known in it.
• “in itself” / “in another” — through a proper adequate form vs. through the form of the container.
• “proper / private / particular / precise knowledge” [ed.: propria cognitio] vs. “general / common / confused”.
• “universal cause” vs. “universal in predication” — the two senses of universal.
• “perfect act to imperfect acts” — man to animal, six to three; opposed to “general to particular”.
• “sic” (“this adverb sick”) — taken on the side of the known or of the knower.
• “fallacy of the accident” — mistaking what is necessarily but accidentally present for the cause.
• “understandable” [ed.: intelligible] being.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 5 (whole article, translated)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 6 (whole article, translated)
• Hebrews 4:13 (a. 5 sed contra); Hebrews on the division of soul and spirit (a. 6 sed contra, locus not stated)

Mentioned

• Augustine, Book of Eighty-Three Questions (God sees nothing outside Himself)
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (the stone is not in the soul but its form)
• Aristotle, Physics I, first reading (confused knowledge first)
• Marietti edition note attributing the error to Averroes (inferred from “verism”)
• Aristotle on the fallacy of the accident deceiving the wise (locus not stated)
• Shakespeare, Richard II, Norfolk on barren ignorance
• Berkeley, Hegel, Sartre, Bernard Lonergan, Euclid (no loci)

His questions #

• Does God know other things by turning to them or receiving from them? No: only in knowing Himself; Scripture’s “now I know” is metaphorical.
• How do we reason that the best knowledge is of the best thing? Because one knowledge is better than another as its object is better.
• How can God know things other than Himself in knowing Himself? He knows Himself perfectly as cause; effects pre-exist in Him in an understandable way.
• Is God’s essence to creatures as unit to numbers or center to lines? No: as perfect act to imperfect acts, man to animal, six to three.
• Is it true that the knower knows the known as it is in the knower? False on the side of the known, true on the side of the knower.
• Do I put “known by me” in the definition of triangle? No; it is accidental, though necessarily true.
• Is your ignorance your ability to learn? No: you learn through what you already know; ignorance is barren.
• Is Sartre’s non-being in the will really my freedom? No: he confuses ability to choose with lack of choice.