Prima Pars
45. Summa I, Q.12, a.11–12: No Vision of God's Essence in This Life; Knowing God by Natural Reason
Class of 2006-11-02
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/045-summa-i-q-12-a-11-12-no-vision-of-gods-essence-in-this-life/

[0:01] Mine's loose. That's covered. It's raining into the throat and it keeps it. infected. Yeah, we're working. Should I start over again. Yeah, there it is. Okay. We'll start the 11th article, the 12th question. To the eleventh, one proceeds thus: It seems that someone in this life is able to see God through His essence, huh? For Jacob says in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, I have seen God face to face."

[0:43] But to see face to face is to see through the essence, as is clear by what is said in the first epistle to the Corinthians. We see now through a mirror, and in darkness or enigma, then we see, however, face to face. Therefore, God in this life is able to be seen through His essence or His very nature. Moreover, in Numbers, chapter twelve, God says about Moses, "Um, that I speak mouth to mouth to him and openly, and not through enigmas, huh?

[1:24] Not through enigmas and figures. He saw God, but this again is to see God through His essence. Therefore, someone in the state of this life is able to see God through His very nature.

[1:41] So, the first two arguments are what arguments from text of Scripture, right? The authoritative Scripture. So, in the third one, it brings in the authority of Augustine, and also brings in a certain understanding of how we know. Moreover, that in which we know other things and by which we judge about other things is something known to us as such, known to itself. But all things, even now, we know in God.

[2:18] For Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Confessions, "If we both see that to be true that you say, and we both see that to be true that I say, where, I ask, do we see that? Not I in you, nor you in me, but both in that which is above our minds, the unchangeable truth. It's like you see in God, right? And that's whereby we agree that what you say is correct and what I say is correct.

[2:54] Um, also in the book on true religion, he says that we judge. About all things by the divine truth, and finally in the twelfth book of the Trinity, it belongs to reason to judge about these bodily things according to bodiless and eternal reasons, which unless they were above our mind, would not be able to be what unchangeable and so on. Therefore, also in this life we see what God.

[3:35] Is it some of the Franciscans cut off on that? You know, God is the first thing we know, and we know other things by knowing God and so on. And Augustine's words seem to indicate this.

[3:47] Finally, the fourth argument, moreover, according to Augustine in the twelfth book on Genesis to the letter, we see by a what understandable vision those things which are in the soul through its very essence. But an understandable vision is about understandable things, not through some likenesses, but through their very natures, as he himself says there. Therefore, since God is through his very nature in our soul, to his very nature he is seen by us.

[4:27] So the third and the fourth objections are a little more. Although they use the authority of Augustine, they try to argue that by reason to some extent, not just by authority, that we know God as he is.

[4:45] But against this is what is said in Exodus chapter thirty-three: A man will not see me and live. And the gloss there, and the gloss apparently in my note here says it comes from what Gregory the Great, huh?

[5:07] So long as we live here in this mortal life, we're able to see God to certain likenesses, but one is not able to see him through the very what

[5:20] nature of his essence. Okay, so now Thomas is going to reply. I answered that it should be said that by a pure man. Now, why does he put that qualification there? Of homine puro, God is not able to be seen through his essence. Why does he add that of homine puro? Who is he excluding from that? Would this be like from Moses or St. Paul? Man is both God and what and man, Christ, yeah."

[6:07] So he said, "I answer. It should be said that by one who is purely a man, right, God is not able to be seen through his essence unless he be what separated from this mortal life, huh?

[6:25] And then Thomas gives a reason for this. The reason for this is because as has been said above, the way of knowing follows the way of the nature of the thing knowing. But our soul, so long as we live in this life, has existence in bodily matter, right? Whence naturally it does not know things except those things that have a form in matter or which are able to be known what through these, huh?

[7:05] Because that's going to be very important later on when you talk about why we have these two kinds of names. We talk about God. We say God is good, and we say God is what goodness itself. And goodness seems to signify the form by which the good is good. And so we say God is good because he really is good. But in saying he's good, we seem to be saying that he has goodness, right?

[7:33] And therefore he'd be composed; He'd be the haver and the had, right? And so then we take this other way of speaking and say God is goodness itself to bring out his what simplicity, right? But why do we have those two names, neither one of which is what adequate to expressing God, right? Because goodness signifies that by which something is good, right? And so if we say God is goodness, we don't seem to be saying that God is good.

[8:04] And we want to say that God is good, right? But if we say that God is good, we seem to be saying that he has goodness, right? And therefore, there is some kind of composition in him between him and his goodness, and that's false, right? So every name has a certain defect, but the defect goes back to the way of knowing that is natural to us, whereby we know material things which have a form that is not what they are.

[8:33] And so we have all these what concrete and abstract words, right? We have health and healthy, right? And healthy signifies that which has health, right? And health signifies the form by which the healthy is healthy. We can't transcend that way of thinking in our natural knowledge, huh? But it's manifest, he says, huh, that through the natures of material things. That the divine nature, the divine essence, is not able to be known, for it has been shown above that the knowledge of God through any created likeness is not a vision of His very what nature.

[9:25] There are many reasons you gave for that before. Like one reason was that any created likeness is going to be limited, right? Why God is unlimited, huh? So through a created likeness, you cannot see through a created likeness that is limited. You cannot see something that is unlimited by its very nature, or in any created likeness, the likeness and its existence are not the same thing. But in God, His nature, His substance, and His existence are the same. thing.

[10:01] I am who am, as he says, right? So, no created likeness is adequate to seeing God as He is, huh? Whence it is impossible for the soul of man living according to this life to see the essence of God.

[10:23] And then Thomas after the reason he gives a sign, and a sign of this is that our soul, the more it is separated from bodily things, the more it becomes capable of what understandable things that are separated from matter, huh? Whence in dreams and in being alienated from the body, the senses of the body, we more perceive what divine revelations, huh? And prophecies or previsions of future things.

[11:04] That therefore the soul would be elevated to the what highest of all understandable things would have to be what entirely separated from the body. So in order to be elevated to the highest of things understandable, which is the divine nature, the divine essence, is not possible for it to be so long as it uses this what mortal life, huh? Yeah. So that shows the appropriateness of, for instance, the dream of Saint Joseph that that mode why God would have chosen You can see this with the saints, you know, when they go into kind of an ecstasy, they're not aware of their what surroundings, right?

[11:52] They're kind of withdrawn from their senses, right? Okay. But I think you're going to meet in in the reply to some objections here something very special about Moses and and Saint Paul, according to Augustine and Thomas, who agrees with Augustine as you care. Okay, now going back to the first objection, where Jacob says, "I saw God face to face," right?

[12:25] To the first, therefore, it should be said that according to Dionysius, huh? Of course, Dionysius is a great authority of Thomas, huh? Because Thomas, like a lot of the people in this time, thought the Dionysius was the what Dionysius converted by Saint Paul in the Areopagus, so he's called Dionysius the Areopagite. And then people think, well, no, he's not that guy, really. So he's the pseudo. Anyway.

[13:04] To the first, therefore, it should be said, according to Dionysius, in the fourth chapter of the celestial hierarchy. Thomas didn't comment on that book, but his teacher Albert the great did, huh? Thomas did on the divine names. According to Dionysius, in the fourth chapter of the celestial hierarchy, thus in scriptures, someone is said to see God in so far as there are forms certain what figures, right?

[13:34] Either sensible ones or in the imagination, representing according to some kind of likeness something divine, right? What, therefore, Jacob says, "I saw God face to face." She referred not to the very what divine nature itself, but to a figure or likeness in which God is in some way what represented, huh?

[14:05] And this pertains to a certain what eminence of the gift of prophecy that one sees the person of God speaking, although by an imaginary what vision, right? As will be clear below when we speak about the grades of prophecy, whence what Jacob says to designates

[14:33] or Jacob says is to designate a certain what eminence of an understandable contemplation that's above the common status of what most men, right? Again, when we talked about the equivocation of the word to see, right, and what the three meanings of it.

[14:55] Well, the basic one is seeing with your eye. Yeah. Then you have seeing with the imagination. Yeah. Seeing with the intellect. Yeah. So I can see you, right now, but I can see a square now, right? I can see my grandchildren now, right? That's the imagination, and then finding to understand.

[15:17] He's taking the words to see in by Jacob there in Genesis thirty-two as referring to seeing not in the sense of what seeing God as He is with the understanding, but seeing Him right in a sense of representation or an imaginative representation, huh?

[15:41] Okay. Now the second objection, speaking about Moses here, huh? Now this is an interesting position of Augustine and Thomas, and I don't know that the churches ever what. Said yes or no to what Augustine, but those are the two greatest minds we have in the church, so it has a great deal of probability.

[16:11] And so this is being applied now to the objection taken from numbers about Moses, right? To the second, it should be said that as God does something supernaturally and bodily things, right?

[16:30] So also supernaturally and apart from the common order of things, right? The minds of some living in this flesh, but not what using the senses of the flesh. He elevated them all the way up to a what vision of his very essence, as Augustine says in the twelfth book on Genesis to letter, and in the book on seeing God. One of these great books that Augustine has, as Augustine says about Moses, right, who was the magister, the teacher, right, of the Jews, right, and Paul, who was the magister, the teacher of the Gentiles, huh?

[17:26] And about this we would treat more fully when we talk about rapture, right? Okay, and what Thomas would say more explicitly there when he talks about this is in a transitive way, in a passing way. Both Moses and what Saint Paul saw God as He is, right? Not in the permanent way, but it's in any kind of passing way, and this is because of the eminence as being the master of the Jews and the master of the Gentiles.

[18:01] So Saint Paul talks about this. I know, man, right? He speaks in the third person about himself, but carried up to the third heaven, right? And of course, there is a lot of discussion of what they mean by the third heaven, right? But one interesting explanations of it is that refers to he saw God, although temporarily, with the clarity that the what the seraphim and the cherubim see God, right?

[18:27] The third heaven, right? But there are explanations of what the third heaven might mean too, okay? And then when he came back, and no longer saw God as He is, but there was left certain what

[18:40] images and certain thoughts in his head as a result of this vision, which were extremely elevated, and things about which he said was not proper for him to speak, huh? So you can say that Augustine and Thomas seems to be following Augustine in his opinion that this is true about Moses and what. And Saint Paul, right? But this is by a special, right? And Saint Paul says, you know, whether in the body or not, he didn't know, right?

[19:09] It's like almost his soul had been what, withdrawn from his body, not completely, but you know. But just something, you know, going in that direction with some of the saints, you know, where the body becomes kind of lifeless, you know, and they're not there. Who was that saint that used to? I think he's in the countryside. He'd say mass for the peasants, and when he got to the to the consecration, he'd go into ecstasy.

[19:39] Of course, he'd be ecstasy for about an hour. Well, he can't just, you know, they got to go out and do the work, so they go out and do some more work in the field and come back an hour later and then he'd come out the ecstasy and continue and and complete the mass. I forget who that was, but it was,

[19:57] Yeah, it's kind of interesting. To read about those things. Okay. Now the third objection is a little bit different, right? And it shows you kind of the the need that maybe Thomas has to explain sometimes the the meaning of what Augustine's words, right? And Augustine is sometimes an exuberance in the way he speaks, but people have kind of what misunderstood these things.

[20:33] It's interesting, you know, when Thomas comments sometimes on Aristotle's words, and when Aristotle was criticizing Plato, right? And you know, Thomas and some of the commentators before him say, in some cases, Aristotle is attacking what Plato meant here, right? Other times, he's attacking not what Plato meant, but what people take him to mean, because people are being let astray by, right? Well, in in a sense, Augustine, Saint Thomas usually doesn't disagree with Augustine, right?

[21:14] But sometimes he will say, "This is what Augustine really means." Okay. And you know, but there's also that passage I was mentioning, how in the Thomas's commentary in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics, Aristotle speaks as if the only thing God knows is Himself, right? And some people misunderstand the text as if God knows only Himself. Thomas, says, well, that's not what Aristotle means. And and Aristotle, you know, in in two or three places, you know, when he's criticizing Empedocles' position about God, and he criticizes it because Empedocles' position would make man know something that God doesn't know, that's just ridiculous to Aristotle, right?

[22:03] So, obviously Aristotle doesn't mean that God knows only Himself. What Aristotle is doing there is determining what it is that God knows chiefly and primarily, right? And he knows all other things as well as himself, but he knows all the things only by what knowing himself. He sees all the things in himself because they're all like him in some way, and he's their cause and so on.

[22:32] So, again, you know, a lot of times I think, given Thomas's understanding of the profundity of Plato or Aristotle or Augustine, you know, he will get, I think, the true meaning of these words, huh?

[22:52] Um. So, what does it mean to say we see all things in the light of the divine truth? What does that mean? What means that the truth in which we see and judge about all the things is nothing other than a partaking of the divine truth, huh? But it's not the divine truth in itself.

[23:20] To the third, therefore, should be said that we are said to see all things in God and to judge about all things according to Him, or by Him rather, in so far as by partaking of His light we know all things, right, and judge all things, huh?

[23:41] For the natural light of our reason is a partaking of the divine light, huh? Now, that is what's said in the beginning of John's Gospel, right? This was the light that enlightens every man that comes into this world, right? So we're said to see all things in the divine light because we see all things in the natural light of reason, which is nothing other than a what partaking of the what divine light, huh?

[24:12] Okay. Just as all sensible things we are said to see and judge in the sun, that is through the light of the sun. Hence Augustine makes this comparison in the Soliloquies. huh. The spectacles, the disciplines, we are not able to see except they be enlightened or illustrated by some sun to wit, what God, right?

[24:45] Just therefore, as for seeing something sensibly, it is not necessary that the very substance of the sun be seen, right? So to seeing something intelligibly is not necessary that there be seen what the essence of God, huh? Okay. This reminds me a little bit of the great fragments of Heraclitus, huh? And Heraclitus

[25:14] insists upon following what is common, huh? And so, like in one of the fragments, he says, "Those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all."

[25:30] And then he goes on to say, he makes a little comparison: as much as the city is strong in its law, and even more so, he says, than the law of the city, because they are fed by what the divine law, which is more than sufficient for all, right? See, now it's a beautiful comparison he makes there, huh? Um, if you take what's more known to us, and he compares it to.

[26:01] Is it possible for us to live in the city together? For us to have a common life in the city, without some kind of common law or rule?

[26:13] Even something as simple as the rule we have of driving the right side of the street, right? Well, I wouldn't want to go out on this road here on the way home today if everybody was following his own private law. Some people drove on the left, some on the right, some in the middle, and so on, right? You see. So life together in in the city or in any community, you'd say, right, is not possible without certain what?

[26:41] Something common, right? Okay. But as Heraclitus points out, sometimes the laws of one city may disagree with the laws of another city, right? And the laws of the city ought to be what? Fed by the divine law, right? So eventually, going back to something divine, there as common to all of us. And what he's calling divine there, though, is not revelation. Heraclitus doesn't have revelation, right? He's having he's talking about what we would call the what natural law, right?

[27:20] He's seeing the natural law as something divine. It's a little bit like you're having a poet there in in Antigone, huh? Where Antigone is protesting the written law of the city, right? Which is saying that her her brother cannot be buried, right? And she appeals to the what unwritten law, you see? And nobody quite knows where unwritten law comes from, but it's hinted at that there's something being divine, okay?

[27:50] So in a way, you're judging the written law, you're judging the law of the city by the unwritten law, the natural law, the divine law. In a sense, you see it in the divine. In the same way, in in philosophy, you have to go back to something what? Common, right? It's not possible for us to live the life of the mind together without something common. Now, there's two ways that we live the life of the mind together.

[28:20] One is as unequals, like the teacher and the student, right? And the other is more like an equal, like in conversation discussion. Now, as far as the teacher and the student is concerned, the teacher has to lead the student to know something the student doesn't know. But he has to lead him to know something he doesn't know to something he does know. Just like Euclid, you know, leads me to the new theorem to the other theorems I already know.

[28:54] And the teacher can't lead you to know what you don't know to what you do know. If he doesn't know it too, so it's impossible for the teacher and the student to have a life of the mind together without something that both the teacher and the student knows. Right now, there's something presumably the teacher knows the student doesn't know, but it's going to lead the student to that through things that the student already knows and the teacher himself of course knows.

[29:24] Now the same way in conversation, if we disagree, as people often do in conversation, and I say, "Well, you're mistaken there because you don't agree with me," and you return the cop of it and say, "You're mistaken, no, because you don't agree with me," we get nowhere, right? So we have to find something that the two of us have in common that we can use to decide whether I'm right or you're right, where we what disagree,

[29:59] and you know even. To some extent, this is followed in in science. Schrödinger, you know, the guy who affected wave mechanics and so on. Schrödinger says that the first indispensable thing we demand of an experiment is that it can be repeated with the same results. So, some scientist, you know, performs an experiment and announces to the world his result, and nobody else can repeat the experiment with the same results.

[30:28] He says we don't consider that as worthy of scientific consideration. So, an experiment has to be able to be common, right? And when several, you know, competent scientists have repeated the experiments with the same results, then they take that as a sign that is able to be common, right? But all this goes back to something that's common, right? But that's, in a sense, analogous to the natural law.

[30:54] You go back to something that is naturally known by men, right? Like the whole is more than the part, and so on. And that's really something partaking of the divine.

[31:09] So, but as I say, Heraclitus, in a way, is seeing that, right? When he says that the law of the city is fed by the what? The divine law, which is more than sufficient. A divine law says you shouldn't. take innocent life. Let us say, right? Okay. Well, that's really feeding the law that you drive on the right side of the street. Not that it's necessary to drive the right side rather than the left side, but you ought to decide on one or the other and do this right.

[31:38] And that's why there's laws about shooting your gun off on the city and so on. They invent a car. They invent an airplane. There is all kinds of laws about these, right? But they're all being fed by the one law to preserve innocent life.

[31:55] But the natural law, or the natural understanding that underlies the whole philosophy and so on, is a partaking of the divine. Okay. Now, the fourth objection was taken from the fact of God being in the soul and therefore being known by understanding, understandable vision.

[32:28] Well, you've got to realize that to be, is said in many ways right said, in many ways, right? So, the fourth, it should be said, that the intellectual vision of those things which are in the soul through its essence are things that are understandable in the understanding. Thus, God is in the soul of the blessed, right? But He's not in our soul in that way. But He's in those three ways we talked about in the earlier treatment of the infinity of God, right?

[33:03] So, God is. In our soul is supporting it in existence, right? Conserving in existence, and so on, moving us to do things, and so on. But he's not in it as what the understandable in the what mind, huh? Okay, God is not joined to our mind yet as that by which we know him. Okay, we know him darkly, right, through in a mirror. Okay, So you're all convinced now we're not going to see God as He is in this in this life, huh?

[33:47] Okay. Now, in the next article, Thomas is going to. There's a real break here now, right? Because these first 11 articles are all taken up with seeing God as He is face to face, right? And how this is possible, and how it takes place, and when it takes place, and so on, right? And now, in Article 12, he goes to something else. Whether there is by natural reason a certain knowledge of God, right?

[34:26] Okay. And as you may perhaps know, it's very clear in the first Vatican consul, it's now an article of faith that God can be known by natural reason. The existence of God, things of this sort, huh? Thomas taking up this question formally.

[34:48] So he says to the twelfth one: proceeds thus. It seems that by natural reason, God is not able to be known in this life,

[35:00] for the great Boethius says in the book on the Consolation of Philosophy that reason cannot grasp a what simple form. But God is most of all a simple what form, as has been shown above, right? We had a whole question on the simplicity of God, right? Remember the eight articles.

[35:27] God is is act, is form. Therefore, natural reason cannot arrive at a at his knowledge, huh? So that's from the authority of Boethius, huh? And sometimes I'm inclined to say Boethius is the greatest mind around between Augustine and what Thomas, right? And and Boethius learns from Augustine, right? But Thomas learns from Boethius as well as from what Augustine.

[36:04] Of course, that book, the Consolation of Philosophy, was a treasure house of the Middle Ages, and that's where the definition of eternity comes from that we saw in the treatise earlier, and that's where the definition of divine providence comes from, things of this sort. Of course, he had the famous thing there about Boethius. You know, people argue. You know, if God is exists, why is there evil in the world, right?

[36:32] And and Boethius says you should argue in the reverse way. If there is evil in the world, there must be a God, because there wouldn't be evil in the world unless there was a transgression from the goodness of the world, and the goodness of the world wouldn't be there without God. So he says you're reaching the wrong way. It's kind of beautiful though, huh? You know, in the fourth and fifth books of The Consolation of Philosophy, he develops a thing about eternity and so on.

[37:00] But the first three books are dealing more with what human happiness is, and you want to talk about true happiness and false happiness, huh? And Boethius says, well, you have to talk about false happiness before true happiness because it's more known to us, and so he goes through false happiness, so it is, and then he goes through true happiness, huh? And he kind of beautiful, beautiful work, And of course it became, you know, it kind of alternates with a kind of a poem and then a text and so on, and

[37:37] a lot of people were attracted this, you know, and and Chaucer, for example, in English, you know, he wrote a he made a translation of it, right? Even Queen Elizabeth the first did get a translation of Boethius, right? You know, in the sketchbook there, Washington Irving, you know, speaks with great respect of the Consolation of Philosophy, so it had a, but he has many other works, There was a work on the Trinity and so on.

[38:02] Thomas has a beautiful commentary on that, very important, and the other works of Boethius, great, great, great mind. He was trying to make the whole Aristotel known to the Latin world, but he just got to I think the logical works translated into Latin, but the kind of classical translations, you know, very accurate, very accurate, very profound. Would Dionysus fit in the little grouping of people there? or is he

[38:35] a little yard? Well, it's a little different, you know. Boethius is more a philosopher in a sense, yeah. Now the second objection here. Moreover, the soul understands nothing by natural reason without an image. We never think without imagining,

[39:00] and you could say that the our reason's own object. Is that what it is? Is something you can sense or imagine? But God, since He is bodyless, there can't be any image of Him in us.

[39:19] Therefore, He cannot be known by us by natural reason or by natural knowledge. So we never think without imagining. You can't imagine God, therefore you can't think about God, right? It's a good objection, right?

[39:42] Moreover, the knowledge which is through natural reason is common to the good and the bad, just as nature is common to both the good and the bad, right? But the knowledge of God belongs only to the good, for Augustine says. in. The first book of the Trinity, that the sharpness of the human mind in so excellent a light is not fixed unless it be cleansed through the justice of what faith, right?

[40:13] So until you are sanctified, you might say, until you are purged of your sins and so on, you can't really know God, right? Well, there is some truth to that, I would say. So this objection is saying that that wouldn't be true if we could know God naturally, because then even the bad who have nature could know him. Therefore, God through natural reason is not able to be known.

[40:41] But against this is what is said in Romans, Epistle to the Romans, chapter one, verse nineteen and twenty. Actually, what is known of God is made manifest to them. Talking about the philosophers, huh? Now if you go back to Vatican 1, that's the text, the official text is from, excuse me, chapter one, verse twenty. You know, we talked about how God is known through creatures. huh? And as I mentioned before, that's now an article of faith, right?

[41:12] Or anathema. You think it cannot be known? It doesn't mean it's easy to know it through creatures, right? But I mean, it's anathema to say it cannot be known through creatures.

[41:29] Okay, Now, Thomas answers. I answer: It should be said that our natural knowledge has its beginning in the what sensism. That's what Aristotle. Talks about there in the proemium to the Metaphysics, right? What comes first in our knowledge is sensing, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, right? Then from that comes memory, right? From memory, experience, and after experience, you start to understand something.

[42:04] Whence, so far, our natural understanding is able to go or extend itself as it can be what led by the hand through what sensible things, huh? So you're saying oh, our knowledge begins with our senses, and the reason has to be led by the hand, Very kind of? Way of speaking, led by the hand through sensible things.

[42:38] Now, from sensible things, our intellect is not able to go so far as to what see the very divine nature, huh? Why? Because we're going to know God as a cause from his effects, right? And these effects are not equal to the what power of God, right?

[43:05] Because sensible creatures are effects, not equal to or not equaling the what power of the cause which is God, okay? Hence, from a knowledge of sensible things, the whole power of God is not able to be what known, right? And consequently, neither is his very what nature or substance.

[43:39] But because they are effects, depending upon this cause, nevertheless, from them we are able to be led that we might know about God, whether he is, whether he is right.

[44:00] And we might know about him we might know about him those things which are necessarily belong to him, according as he is the what first cause of all things, huh? Excelling all the things these caused, right?

[44:18] Once, we know about him his relation to what creatures that he is to wit, the cause of all things, right? And the difference of creatures from him that he himself is not any of those things which are caused by him, right? So you negate, you know, these those things of him, and further that these are not removed from him on account of his defect, right? But because he excels them, right?

[44:57] Okay. So you can know God from creatures as existence of the cause is known from its effect, some, And you can know him by kind of a what remote likeness, right? But like the fourth Lateran consul says, you can never see or know the likeness of the creature to God without a greater what unlikeness, right? So that the knowledge we have of God through the likeness of creatures to him has to be completed by negating the what imperfection of his likeness, huh?

[45:39] And and that he has his perfections in a what higher way, right? than that we understand, huh? Okay. Now, in reply to the first objection taken from Boethius that reason does not grasp a simple form, huh? He says, "To the first, it should be said that reason does not arrive at a simple form that it know about it what it is, right? But is able to know about it that it is what whether it is, yes.

[46:24] Now the second objection Thomas answers in one way here, but there's other things you could say too. You see, we never understand right without an image, right? So what we're understanding is something what imagined, right? Huh? Okay. Well, how can we know God? if You can't imagine God, right? But you can imagine or sense something that is an effect of God, and that's one way you could come to know God through the sensible or the imaginable, right?

[46:54] Not as what God is, but as an effect of God through which you could know God, right? And so anyways, Thomas answered the objection though, another way to say, yeah, when we think about God, we imagine not God, but we imagine something that we negate. So when I think about God, I might imagine a body, right? Now am I imagining God, no, God's not a body, right?

[47:22] So when I imagine a body and I understand what a body is, now how do I know God from this? Well, I don't know what he is. I know him negatively that he's not a body, right? Okay. Okay. Or I know that these sensible and even imaginative things are composed of matter and form, right? So I understand to some extent what it is to be composed of matter and form.

[47:51] Well, that's not what God is. He's not composed of matter and form. But we can what know that he's not composed of matter and form, right? Okay. So we know more what he is is what not what he is, right? Okay. But then we say that the knowledge of the soul, when it's especially the knowledge of our own understanding and will, is the gateway to knowing the angels and knowing God, right?

[48:19] So there's something like this that God and the angels, right, understand as well as us, right, but they understand in a much better way than we do. And so we have to kind of negate the imperfection, right? I have to think about something before I understand it. Does God have to think about something before he understands it? No, no. So I have to negate the imperfection of my way of what understanding, yeah.

[48:49] Or I can't understand two things at the same time unless I relate to them in some way, right? Then God can understand all things at once, right? So you know, if I know God by the likeness that creature has to God, I have to what negate the imperfection of that likeness, huh?

[49:19] Now the third objection, Thomas says, well, you have to distinguish between the knowledge of God that is purely natural and the knowledge of God that is what

[49:31] um gotten by faith and so on. It says the knowledge of God through His essence, since it is through grace, cannot belong except to the good. By grace is eternal life, as we say, huh? St. Paul says, but the knowledge of it, which is through natural reason, can belong both to the good and to the what bad. huh

[50:03] Whence Augustine says in his book of retractions, I always say every professor should be required to write a book of retractions, you know, you know, because it went through all his works, right? And so I didn't say this so well here, or you know, some days you know you would correct yourself, right?

[50:25] Once Augustine in the book of retractions, I do not approve of what I said in the what prayer, yeah, in this reference to the soliloquies, that God does not wish to be,

[50:42] truly be known except by the what the clean, right? I respond, he is able, right? Even many who are not clean to know many true things about God, right? To wit, to what natural reason, right?

[51:03] Who's that famous philosopher Mortimer Adler, you know? And he got to like Aristotle and Thomas very much, right? And he you know, I guess he didn't convert until the end of his life, right? I guess that's when he became a Catholic. But you know, it's kind of interesting to see these exchanges between Mortimer Adler sometimes and Catholic priests at the thing, you know, where Mortimer Adler would say, you know, really the only guys I learned from is Aristotle and Thomas, you know.

[51:38] Well, you can't mean that, you know. Well, here's a non-Catholic telling you know the Catholic that, huh? And but I guess what delayed Mortimer Adler's conversion, you know, was the fact he had some disorder in his moral life, huh? And it had to be cleared up before he could he could make the move, so to speak, you know. So, but no, he might understand more about God naturally than many so-called Catholics or people might, you know, or even the pious woman in the church, you know.

[52:13] But so you have to make that distinction, you know. I know myself sometimes, you know, if I talk about God or I have to understand God, people think, well, gee, you're holy because you do that. Well, I wish that were so, but that isn't so, right? Huh? You know. Now, as I might think about God and want to talk about God, not because I'm holy, but because He's very interesting to talk about, I'm much more interested to talk about anything else, right?

[52:40] So, you know, and I'd have a good time and have a good time thinking about Him, talking about Him, you know, but maybe have other things I have a good time too, which are sinful, right? And and so I'm not a holy man there talking about God, but this is the point. But Augustine, in a sense, correcting himself and saying, yeah, yeah, it's possible for an unclean person, right?

[53:02] A sinful person, by natural reason, maybe to know God more than someone who's more what pious, right? Okay. Okay, so this eleventh or twelfth rather article should be distinguished against the previous what eleven, which we're all dealing with this vision of God face to face, seeing Him as He is, huh?

[53:38] Okay. So we take a break now, or what? Okay. Yes, we can all turn to article thirteen, huh? Lucky number. My in-laws, you know, they bought their house.