God's Knowledge of Things That Are Not and of Bad Things; Knowing Our Own Ignorance (Summa I, q.14, aa.9–10)

Orientation #

He refers back to “that passage I was reading from Jude” (prev. lecture) and to earlier talk of the bad and of the simply/in-some-way distinction. He closes: “next time we’ll start with whether God knows singularia, singular things.” Verified sources place this class in ST I q.14 a.9 and a.10, with the long digression probably between a.10 and a.11. The previous class worked through q.14 aa.7-8; the next takes up a.11 on God’s knowledge of singulars.

The class, in order #

1. Article 9, objections and sed contra (“Whether God has knowledge of things that are not”) #

The point: three reasons why God’s knowledge should not reach non-beings, against Paul.

1. Knowledge is only of the true (can you know that two is half of five? you can think it, not know it); true and being are convertible; so God’s knowledge is not of non-beings.
2. Knowledge requires likeness between knower and known; what is not has no likeness to God, who is to be itself (“I am who am”).
3. God’s knowledge is a cause of what he knows; non-being has no cause; so he does not know non-beings. Sed contra: “the apostle” (an antonomasia for St Paul) in Romans: God “calls those things which are not as those things which are.”

2. Body of a.9: simply vs. in some way; vision vs. simple understanding (“nothing prevents those things which are not”) #

The point: what is not simply may be in some way, and God knows all that is in any way.

• The distinction simply vs. in some way corresponds to the second kind of mistake outside speech; it is the mistake Meno makes, and Socrates answering him makes the same mistake (one wonders whether Plato did that knowingly).
• Those things are simply which are in act; not those in potency. Boundary case: “Am I standing now?” No, simply; I am standing in ability, and you cannot say it without qualifying.
• What is not in act is in the ability (active or passive power, the two powers Aristotle first distinguishes in the ninth book of Wisdom) of God or of the creature, or in the power of thinking, imagining, or signifying. Whatever a creature can make, think, or say, and whatever God can make, God knows, even if it is not in act.
• Reason added: God would not know his own power, nor the creature’s, if he knew only what is in act; his power extends beyond what he has made, as ours does. Aside: Mozart, when overpaid, said he was being paid “for what I could do.”
• Among things not in act there is a diversity: some were, or will be; these God knows by the knowledge of vision, because his understanding, which is his being, is measured by eternity and comprehends the whole of time without succession; whatever is in any time is present to him.
• Boethius takes this up in Consolation V: how can God know past and future if his knowledge is eternal? The way of knowing need not be the way things are. Thomas’s circle: points on the circumference are before and after each other, but to the center, not a point on the circle, all are alike present. So past, present and future are present to God’s eternity. “Very hard for us to understand.”
• Hint from us: you know the past now, and groan or laugh again recalling it; we also anticipate the future; all is present to God. “Amazing.”
• Things in the power of God or the creature which neither are, nor were, nor will be: of these God has not knowledge of vision but simple understanding; “vision” is said because what we see has distinct being outside the seer.
• Aside: the old TV program “You Were There” reenacting events (the trial of Socrates); the joke that in the vision you will be present to the past — “you’ll be there.”

3. Replies of a.9 and a digression on being chosen (“according as they are in ability”) #

The point: each objection fails by taking being only as being in act.

• Ad 1: things not in act have truth insofar as they are in potency; it is true of them to be in potency. Being is said in many ways, in act and in ability.
• Ad 2: God is being itself; insofar as each thing is, it partakes of a likeness of God, as a thing is hot insofar as it partakes of heat. So things in potency have some likeness, however distant. Every agent makes what is like itself; God could not make matter unless it were, however remotely, like him.
• Ad 3: God’s knowledge causes things joined with the will; so not everything he knows is, was, or will be, but only what he wishes or permits. Other things are in his knowledge not as if they were, but as able to be.
• Digression: God chose you to be; even given your parents’ meeting, and given the huge number of sperm in the marriage act, your chance of being was very small; why were you chosen? Your being is “very much gratuitous.” Likewise (Jude) eternal life is through the mercy of Christ; even with belief, hope and charity it is not simply justice; “it’s going to be better than you thought.”
• Objection from the movies: how spend eternity just looking at God without restlessness? Origen said you’d have to go back into the body. No: you never comprehend God; he remains wonderful. Scripture speaks of us as a pillar that does not go out; the gift of agility shows control over the body, not that you need to go anywhere. He would still like to see Thomas in the flesh and hear his voice.
• Asides: Churchill’s voice not as good as his words; a late BBC recording of Chesterton he has never heard; FDR “sonorous”; a contemporary describing St Francis, a deacon, chanting the gospel with a sonorous voice.

4. Article 10, objections and sed contra (“whether God knows bad things”) #

The point: four reasons God should not know bad things, against Proverbs.

1. Aristotle, De Anima III: the understanding which is not in potency does not know lack (our mind knows lack by sometimes knowing and sometimes not); bad is a lack of good (Augustine); God’s understanding is always in act; so God does not know the bad. He notes: the first meaning of bad is the lack of something you are able to have and should have, when you should have it.
2. Every knowledge is either a cause of the known or caused by it (Thomas sometimes adds a third case, the angels: their knowledge of natural things neither causes nor is caused by them; God is the cause of both, hence Augustine on Genesis: what is made in the material world is also made in the angels’ thoughts — a parallel, pre-established harmony); God’s knowledge neither causes nor is caused by the bad. Aside: “That’d be nice, if he didn’t know my sins” — wishful thinking.
3. Everything known is known through its likeness or its opposite; God knows through his essence; the essence is no likeness of the bad and nothing bad is opposed to it (Aristotle pointed this out; Augustine, City of God XII: to the divine essence nothing is contrary).
4. What is known not through itself but through another is imperfectly known; the bad is not known by God through itself (it would then be in God, for the known is in the knower); if through another, the good, it is imperfectly known — impossible. A student’s attempt to rephrase the fourth is set aside as a different objection. Sed contra: Proverbs 15, hell and perdition are before God.

5. Body of a.10: darkness known through light (“whoever perfectly knows something”) #

1. Whoever perfectly knows a thing knows all that can happen to it.
2. Some good things can be corrupted by bad things.
3. So God would not perfectly know good things unless he knew bad things. Further: a thing is knowable insofar as it is; the being of the bad is to be a privation of the good; so by the very fact that God knows good things he knows bad things, as darkness is known through light. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7: God through himself gets a vision of darkness, seeing the darkness only from the light.

6. Reply to the first objection: privation not existing in the knower (“does not know privation in this way”) #

The point: Aristotle means the understanding not in potency does not know privation through a privation existing in it.

• This agrees with what was said above: the point and every indivisible is known through privation (lack of division), which happens because simple and indivisible forms are in our understanding only in potency; were they in act there, they would not be known through privation; so simple things are known by the separated substances, angels and God. God knows the bad not through a lack in himself but through its opposite, the good.
• Reminder: matter, form and privation are manifested by the ability to know, knowledge, and ignorance, and the relation of the three; “maybe we’ll go back to that today.”
• Aside: as a student he sat in both sections of Casuri’s course and audited it again the next year until told to stop; “it takes a long time to get these things.”

7. Replies 2 and 3 and why nothing bad is opposed to God (“no ability to be actualized”) #

The point: God knows the bad as opposed to the good of creatures, not to his own goodness.

• Ad 2: God’s knowledge is not a cause of the bad but of the good through which the bad is known.
• Ad 3: the bad is not opposed to the divine essence, incorruptible by anything bad, but to God’s effects, which he knows through his essence; knowing them he knows what is opposed to them. Examples: to my courage cowardice, to my knowledge ignorance; but is there a vice opposed to a virtue God could have? No. So he can only know the bad as lack of what a creature is able to have and should have.
• Argument that God can have no lack: the bad is the non-being of what you are able to have and should have; so it requires an ability distinct from what it is able to have; in God there is no ability to be actualized. Back to q.3 a.1, middle argument: the first being must be in act and in no way in potency, from Aristotle’s ninth book of Wisdom: in one thing going from ability to act the ability is before in time, but simply act is before ability, since what is in ability comes to act only through a being in act. God is the first being; so nothing in him is in ability; so no lack; so nothing bad opposed to him.
• Aristotle’s rule in the first book of Places on equivocation: if one has an opposite and the other has none, the word cannot mean the same. So “good” said of God and of us cannot mean the same; hence Christ says God alone is good, in the fullest sense, because he is goodness itself.
• Whatever God is said to have, he is; not so with me (I have some geometry, some health, but am not health itself). Student: isn’t “having” only our way of knowing? He: we negate any distinction between God and what he has; because of our way of knowing we speak of him as having knowledge and love, but John says God is love. I am a lover of wisdom, not the love of wisdom; not even Romeo is the love of Juliet.
• Digression on the goodness of knowing God: Aristotle at the beginning of the De Anima, all knowledge is good, but one is better than another by being more certain or about a better thing; in the Parts of Animals, simply the knowledge about a better thing is better. Knowledge of the triangle vs. knowledge of the soul: the first more certain, the second better simply. If God is infinitely better than all things together, knowledge of God is that much better than all knowledge together. Augustine, always quoted: miserable the man who knows all else but not God; blessed the man who knows God though nothing else; blessed the man who knows God and other things, but not more blessed for the other things. Seeing Thomas in the flesh will be “a drop in the ocean”; God will be all in all — hard to realize but one can reason out that he will be.

8. Matter vs. lack: Aristotle against Plato, and the modern confusions (“Plato kind confused what matter with non-being”) #

The point: our mind knows lack by sometimes being lacking, and lack must be distinguished from the ability.

1. Common to Plato and Aristotle: form is something godlike, good and desirable.
2. Matter desires form, since form perfects matter, is its good.
3. Lack, opposed to form, seems bad; if lack desired form it would desire its own destruction.
4. So matter and lack cannot be the same: one desires form and is perfected by it, the other is eliminated by it.

• Same argument by likeness: knowledge is godlike; the mind, capable of knowledge, is good and wants to know; ignorance, opposed to knowledge, is bad and is destroyed by knowledge; so mind and ignorance are not the same. The example works because our mind is often in that state.
• Hegel’s “power of the negative”: the negative has no power; Shakespeare, Richard II, “dull, barren, unfeeling ignorance” — barren because ignorance does not give rise to knowledge. In discourse ignorance of the conclusion precedes knowledge of it, but the premises produce it; the area of the room is known from length and width, not from ignorance of the area.
• Sartre identifies freedom with nothingness: since before choosing steak, chicken or fish I am undetermined, my indetermination, a non-being, is my freedom, and man’s superiority over all else is non-being — funny theologically, since it is the one thing man did not get from God. Answer as with matter: he confuses the lack of choice before choosing with the ability to choose; the ability is for the sake of choice and fulfilled by it, the lack is lost in it.
• Aristotle’s example: does the sick man want health? The sick want health, but sickness does not; the body wants health, since health perfects the body and eliminates sickness; so sickness is not the body. Likewise the ugly as such do not want beauty, but that to which ugliness happens; nor ignorance as such, but the mind — the distinction between “as such” and “by happening.”
• So: I lack knowledge of geometry sometimes; there is and can be no lack in God, since lack requires a mixture of ability and act; God is pure act. Student: does a lack “have” something? Strictly one does not have a lack, yet we speak of having blindness or ignorance, as being is said analogously.
• Recap of ad 2 and ad 3 as above; “hurting God” or “do not sadden the Holy Spirit” (Paul) is said metaphorically, as God is metaphorically said to be angry.

9. Reply to the fourth objection and knowing one’s ignorance (“to know something through another”) #

The point: knowing through another is imperfect only if the thing is knowable through itself.

• The bad is not knowable through itself, since it is of its definition to be lack of good; it can be neither defined nor known except through the good. The imperfection is in the thing, not in God. Similarly potency is known through act; privation (ignorance, blindness) only through its opposite — “there’s an order there.”
• “Do you know if you’re ignorant?” To know you are ignorant you must know what you are ignorant of, and then you are not ignorant. Test: do you know the number of pages in this book? No — it is 605; you did not know you were ignorant of 605, only in a general way of some number. Student: with Pythagoras’ theorem shown, I can see what I am ignorant of without knowing the way there. He: you don’t know God as he is, but you don’t really know what it is not to know him; the blessed, seeing God, know our ignorance much better than we do. Student: do the demons know our ignorance better than we, though not seeing God? Yes, but not as the blessed do: “they don’t know what they’re missing, but they know better what we’re missing.”
• The simply/in-some-way distinction again: Meno’s objection — how direct ourselves to what we don’t know? (like asking the gas-station man the way without knowing where you want to go) — is a logical objection against the possibility of logic, the art that directs us to what we don’t know; how aim at the deer without seeing it? Sophistical, from not distinguishing simply and in some respect: I can direct myself to 605 by counting; the class of thirty — I don’t know how many are here, but I know counting gets me there; I end at twenty-seven; I did not know I was trying to get to twenty-seven, yet in some way I knew it, since I knew I was after the number of students.
• The fallacy in miniature: knock at the door; do you know who is there? No; it is your mother; so you don’t know your mother. You know your mother, but not as the person knocking; so in some way you don’t know her. “Comes up again and again. It’s very important.”

His words #

• “ninth book of Wisdom”: Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX [ed.: Metaphysics], where active and passive power are first distinguished and act shown prior to ability.
• “ability” / “in ability”: being in potency [ed.: potency].
• “simply” vs. “in some way” / “in some respect”: without qualification vs. with qualification; the second kind of mistake outside speech.
• “knowledge of vision”: God’s knowledge of what is, was, or will be; so called because what we see has being outside the seer.
• “simple understanding”: God’s knowledge of what he or a creature could bring about but never is.
• “antonomasia”: “the apostle” for St Paul.
• “bad”: in its first meaning, lack of something one is able to have and should have, when one should have it [ed.: evil, malum].
• “lack”: privation.
• “about the soul”: De Anima.
• “first book of Places”: Topics I [ed.: Topics].
• “as such” vs. “by happening”: per se vs. per accidens.
• “the whole of existing time”: what God’s eternal understanding comprehends without succession.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 9 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 10 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 1, the middle argument (paraphrased).

Mentioned

• Romans (Paul): God calls what is not as what is; Proverbs 15; Jude (prev. lecture); John: God is love; Paul, “do not sadden the Holy Spirit.”
• Aristotle: Metaphysics IX; De Anima III and I; Parts of Animals; Topics I; the sick man wanting health.
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy V; Augustine, City of God XII, on Genesis and the angels, and “miserable the man who knows all other things”; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7; Origen on return to the body; Plato, Meno.
• Shakespeare, Richard II (“dull, barren, unfeeling ignorance”); Romeo and Juliet; Hegel on the negative; Sartre on freedom as nothingness; Mozart; the TV program “You Were There.”

His questions #

• Can you know that two is half of five? No; you can think it, but not know the false.
• Am I standing now? Not simply; only in ability; you cannot say it without qualifying.
• Why were you chosen to be, out of all who could have been? Your being chosen is very much gratuitous.
• How can God know the past and the future if his knowledge is eternal? All times are present to eternity as points on the circle are to the center; the way of knowing is not the way things are.
• Is there some vice opposed to a virtue God could have, or some ignorance? No; God is pure act, so nothing bad is opposed to him.
• Does the sick man want to be healthy — does sickness want health? The body wants health; sickness is eliminated by it, so sickness is not the body.
• Do you know if you’re ignorant? Do you know the number of pages in that book? Only in some way; you did not know you were ignorant of 605.
• Do the demons know our ignorance of God better than we do? Yes, but not as the blessed do.
• Do you know who’s at the door — so you don’t know your mother? You know her, but not as the one knocking; simply vs. in some way.