Prima Pars
54. Summa I, Q.14: The Order of the Question on God's Knowledge, and Article 1: Is There Knowledge in God?
Class of 2006-12-14
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/054-summa-i-q-14-the-order-of-the-question-on-gods-knowledge/

[0:01] Name of the Father and of the Son, and of, the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:26] Give a little reading here from the memoirs of General Lord Ismay. You know he was a big shot in the Second World War there. You know in the British government and so on, and a goal between Churchill and the other military men, right? But anyway, this one chapter is entitled "This is his memoirs, Mister Churchill's Machinery of War Direction," right?

[0:53] Because he had it, you know, he's kind of a bridge between the two, right? It was not always easy to translate the technical jargon in which Whitehall delighted into the English on which Mister Churchill insisted.

[1:12] She's got to translate the jargon to English, or to boil down several foolscap pages into one sheet of paper, to which I was so often restricted. Now he has two quotes here from Churchill. He demanded a very brief thing, and it's and these are in print. I mean, in quotations, clarity and cogency can be reconciled with the greater brevity. And Shakespeare says brevity is the soul of wit, huh?

[1:47] But Churchill says it very well. They're a master of the English language, clarity and cogency. Right, those two very good can be reconciled with the greater brevity. Was one of his favorite admonitions,

[2:03] which, if unheeded, was followed up by a more direct reproof. This is the second one in quotes. It is slothful not to compress your thoughts. You know, it's lazy, right? Not to compress your thoughts. I'm kind of reminded of John Locke, right? The English empiricist, who at the end of the essay "Human Understanding" there says, "You know, it's kind of wordy, but he's too lazy to go back over it yet."

[2:35] So it is slothful not to compress your thoughts. Of course, some days you want to give some support, to what he's put on that one page. I got round the difficulty by a technique which bordered on subterfuge. I used to compress the salient facts of the case into a short minute of the prescribed length, right? And attached thereto the fuller information on which the facts are based in the form of annexures A, B, C, etc., etc.

[3:06] To these there was no limit imposed by my chief, and I recall that I once needed all the letters of the alphabet as far as T.

[3:19] Some interesting things in here. Lord Ismay. Ismay. Yeah, General. Yeah, yeah, very interesting. That's his in World War Two. Yeah, well, yeah, he was starts with his

[3:34] even with the First World War, right? He's being down in in India, right? Oh. And he was transferred over to to Africa when the First World War took place, and he wanted to get up to the war, but he was kept down Africa because he had other things for him to do down there. And then when he got into the you know Imperial Defence Committee and so on, and he moved up and he was kind of the great coordinator and so on.

[3:57] But you get interesting things in here about his you know Munich and things of that sort. You kind of get what the the mental attitude at that time was when Chamberlain came back with the you know thing. They were so relieved, and the but he's he's kind of honest about the the the action of some of these things where.

[4:25] There was a Bruce Ismay connected with the Titanic. Bruce Ismay. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it'd be. I don't think it's him, but maybe it's his family or. No. He describes though, and you know, he was sent down to India after the Second World War when they were going to get their independence. And of course, the first thing they decided was that they had to separate the Hindus and the Muslims.

[4:49] They couldn't unite the whole country, and they had to go back and explain that to Clement Atkinson, the man. And it was just terrible things going on. Yeah. And he describes, you know, one thing happened even to his his his daughter was with her fiance on the train, and when the train pulled to the train station, you know, the Hindus come out and pull all the Muslims off the train and kill them.

[5:14] And they they had a Muslim servant who was of course scared stiff, so they had hit him underneath the baggage and so on. And and the Hindus coming out, there's one more and more Muslim around here, you know, and they had their guns, their pistols out, and so. So you realize what a terrible thing it was. But some people think in Iraq we have to maybe you know partition the three groups of people and and like that.

[5:39] But the the thing about Munich is that he was so relieved when it took place that he came home and his wife had chewed him out, you know. If I can find the thing here.

[6:00] Let's find in the contents and index. Yeah, I want to now here, but and then the thing at Yalta, you know, the two, you know, you see what the attitude was. I assure that that's kind of science on our interior here, huh? And I'm going to do a little algebra next. Okay.

[6:28] You all know the famous theorem in Book Two, I mean Book One, rather, Proposition 32 of Euclid, that shows that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to what? Two right angles, huh? Okay. Now this is going to be shown through the famous what? Parallel theorems. That when a straight line falls upon parallel lines, one theorem is that it makes the alternate interior angles equal. The other is that it makes the outside angle equal to the interior opposite angle.

[7:03] So what Euclid does is actually two steps in the proof of this. He extends one of the sides of the triangle out here, and then at this point here, he draws a line parallel to that line over there. So then, by the alternate theorem, he knows right away that these two angles are what? Equal. And then by the outside angle, the interior opposite angle, he knows that this angle and this angle are equal.

[7:37] So the theorem has got two parts. It says the exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior opposite angles. And then from that, he goes on to conclude that the three angles are equal to what? Two right angles. Because obviously this angle and this angle make two right angles, and these two equal those two, so these are two right angles. Now, when I was going up, you know, you used to always hear another way of proving that, and but it's similar, and that is instead of drawing extending the side and drawing a line parallel there, you just draw one line parallel to one vertex.

[8:20] And then by the alternate one, you see right away that these two are equal, right? And likewise, the same reason, these two are equal. So these two are equal; those two, and the third one makes up the two right angles. Now, if you wanted to, it struck me. I was thinking about this the other day. You could now go on to prove from this that the exterior angle is equal to the two interior opposite angles.

[8:52] Because having proven that these three interior interior angles, you know these two are equal to the right angles, right? So subtract this one, and obviously the remaining one must be equal to these two. What's the big deal about this? No big deal. But notice in those two ways of proceeding, the order is just reversed. In the way Euclid does it, right? He proves that exterior angle is equal to two interior opposite angles first, and by means of that, he proves second that the three interior angles equal to what?

[9:30] Two right angles. On this alternative proof, I prove first that the interior angles equal two right angles, and from that, I prove that exterior angle is equal to the interior opposite angles. Does it really make any much difference? There's a little bit of little bit of variation there, right? So when I read this and I read the Summa contra Gentiles, you know the two Summas of Thomas, you see. Find that the order is not always exactly the same, huh?

[10:04] I gave a paper once on the order there of the attributes and the substance of God, right? And when we get into talking here about the operation of God, I'll point out a couple of differences. here about the order in which the two books are are written.

[10:21] So let's look at the proemium here at the beginning of question fourteen. He says, after the consideration of those things which belong to the divine substance, huh? Now we showed before that there are five things that belong to divine substance, right? It's simple, right? It's perfect. It's unlimited or infinite. It's unchangeable, and it's altogether what one, right? Okay. And he calls that the divine substance, huh?

[11:00] It remains that we should consider about those things which belong to his operation, what he does, huh? Okay. Now, as we will discover here, you don't know it already, his substance and his operation are the same thing.

[11:23] But why do we have two considerations that are the same thing? yeah. Because we know God through creatures, and in creatures the substance of a thing and what it does are not the same thing, right?

[11:47] And you all heard, you know, Descartes' famous cogito, right? Which actually goes back to Augustine, right? Augustine uses that argument in the *contra Academicos*, where the the ancient skeptics, right? And notice Descartes says, "I think, therefore I am," right? And that's really based upon something even more fundamental, and that is that you got to be before you can do anything. And you could add, not only must you be before you can do something, but you must be what you are before you can do anything.

[12:33] And different kinds of things, by reason of what they are, do different kinds of things. So the bird and the fish and the cat all do different things, huh? Because of what they are, right? So it's interesting, huh? That in creatures we distinguish between the being and the substance, right, of a thing, and what it does, right.

[13:02] As well, as seeing a connection and an order between the substance of the thing and what it does, and this axiom really, huh? I don't think I try to prove that you got to be before you can do something. It's kind of obvious, huh? What was right?

[13:23] Yeah. Um. So when we know God from creatures, we start with thoughts about the substance of these creatures and thoughts about what they do, right? And then we have this twofold consideration about God, but we learn that these two are really the same in God, though not the same in our knowledge, huh? And something we brought out here that's not brought out elsewhere.

[14:02] Now, having distinguished between the consideration we've made in the was it questions three through eleven before this interruption about the method and so on, um, now begin the consideration of the operation. What is the first distinction that he makes? Distinction of operations. Yeah, and this is a distinction which Aristotle made in the ninth book of wisdom, huh? And other places that beginning of the Ethics, yeah. And it's between the operation or the doing that remains in the doer, right?

[14:47] Like by seeing you, right? I mean, seeing remains within me, or my understanding the triangle, which activity remains within me, right? And even my my loving geometry or something, right? The love remains within me, right? I might do something for someone because I love them, but my loving remains within me, right? And then there's the other kind of doing that is sometimes called transitive because it what?

[15:19] Does some it's an outside thing, right? And so Thomas is going to what? First, to that distinction, huh? And because there's an operation which manet remains in the one doing, huh? And another one which proceeds to some what outside effect.

[15:47] First, we're going to treat of what the divine knowledge and the will, and he points out that these are the first kind of operation. For to understand. Is in the one understanding, and will is in the one what willing, and afterwards, right? We'll consider about the power of God,

[16:15] which is considered as the beginning of the divine operation proceeding to an outside or exterior effect. Yeah. Now, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas considers both of those, right? Both of those operations, but in the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, he considers the understanding and the willing of God, and it's not until the second book that he considers the second kind of operation. And at the beginning of the second book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, he recalls this distinction between the two operations, and he has a proper quote from scripture and so on that touches upon those two operations in God.

[17:11] And how a complete knowledge of something requires one to what see both, right? Okay. Um, but it's kind of striking how how far they're separated, huh? In the first book and in the second book, and part of the reason is that in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas is much more explicitly right

[17:45] dividing theology into three consideration of God in himself, and then the consideration of God as the beginning of all things and the Alpha and the Omega, right? And then in the third book is being the what end of all things, huh? So in the first book, which is about God in himself, he considers only God's understanding and willing. In the second book, which is about God as the beginning of all things, the maker of all things, and so on, he considers the operations of creation and so on.

[18:29] And actually, in the third volume, right after he shows that God is the end of all things and develops that for a while, then he talks about the divine providence and so on, right? But in the Summa Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae, all these are going to be what thrown together here, right? Huh? So there is a little difference in the place where things are considered, huh?

[18:56] Okay. And I notice here, you know, it comes, it only shows up here so much, but you'll see later on when he gets through talking about these things, the divine operations and so on. He'll talk about the what, divine blessedness and so on, and the divine blessedness, the divine happiness is talked about in the first volume of the Summa Contra Gentiles? Happiness, right? And you can see that, right?

[19:32] Huh? And but here, these things are all come together in this consideration here, right? In some extent, you can say underlying the Summa theologiae is that distinction of the three ways of considering God, but it's not as clearly demarcated because he, in the second part of the Summa he goes in this great detail of what. Moral, moral theology, right? Which he doesn't do in such detail in the Summa Contra Gentiles but it's a quite difference there in the order of the of the two.

[20:15] Of course, a lot of times in in in Scripture you find this note: "The Lord is God; He made us as we are; His people, the flock, He tends." That threefold division underlies the whole theology, and it's more clearly and and precisely followed in the Summa Contra Gentiles than the Summa Theologiae.

[20:39] But partly because, as they say, the size and the huge huge expansion here of of moral theology in the second part. Okay, now he comes back to what the subdivision you might say of the first kind of operation, and he actually doesn't give the fundamental division here, although he's touched upon it, right? But it's going to be between the understanding and the what willing, right? And with the understanding of God, there will be a number of things connected.

[21:20] We'll see with it, and when he starts to take up the will, there'll be a number of things attached to that consideration of the willing of God. He doesn't make that division explicitly, but it's kind of implied here, right? But he he goes directly back to the first kind of operation, and without making explicit the distinction between understanding and willing, he he goes right to what the subdivision here of understanding, right?

[21:46] You follow that? To declare, as once again, I would say, okay. Now, notice what he divides it because to understand is a certain to live. Aristotle himself says in the third book of the soul. After the consideration of the divine knowledge, there will be a consideration of the divine what life, huh? And that's going to be before he takes up the will. That's question eighteen. as the Marietti edition tells you here,

[22:28] and then the consideration of the divine understanding. He goes on, and because knowledge is of what is true, we will also consider about truth and what Falsity. falsity, right? And that will be in sixteen and what seventeen. And sixteen is on truth, and seventeen on falsity, huh? You see, obviously, connection between that and and knowledge, right? Yeah.

[22:57] Is that true that scientia verorum est? Can't you know it's false? In a way, yes. In a way, no. I mean, I can know that man is a two-legged animal, right? I can know that because it's true. Can I know that man is a three-legged animal?

[23:27] You know that. Maybe I could think that. Maybe somebody could think it. I don't know who would even think this, but but could he know it? You only know what is true.

[23:42] You could say that I could know that man is a two-legged animal is false, but then I'm not strictly speaking knowing that man is a two-legged animal, am I? Can't know the false. You knowing that that state, you knowing that it's true that that statement is false. Yeah, so I can only know the true. Right. It's very subtle, huh? What he's saying there. Now, Thomas is going to have a consideration of falsehood, right?

[24:11] He's got to know some things about falsity, huh? Okay. Then the first part, huh? Further, because everything known is in the knower, right? We've talked about that before, huh? And it was what Empedocles who first talked about this. Although he kind of misunderstood exactly the way that the known is in the knower, huh? But the reasons of things, according as they are in God, knowing are called ideas, and this goes back to what Augustine was influenced by Plato, right?

[24:49] Because Plato first talked about the forms, right? In Greek, which is the word "ideas," huh? But it kind of gets lost in translation because the word "idea" doesn't mean the idea. It'd be better translated in English as the forms, okay? And as Thomas says in many places, Plato made a big impression upon Augustine, and he tries to use Augustine so far as he can where he's compatible with the faith.

[25:21] So he doesn't think Augustine of the ideas and the forms as outside of the divine mind, right? But in some way, in the divine mind, we have to see how that's possible. So he's trying to say something what Plato said, huh? Okay. Plato spoke, you know, of the demiurgos, huh? Ah, fashioning the universe after these forms, huh? But the forms are outside the universe and outside the demiurgos the maker.

[25:51] But the forms, whereby God or according to which God makes things, are not outside of Him but in Him, right? So that's going to be the fifteenth question, right, about the ideas. But Augustine goes into that kind of language, right? So Thomas has had enough respect for Augustine that he will talk about that, huh? Okay, now we come finally to the distinction of the what articles in the fourteenth question on the scientia, the knowledge of God, huh?

[26:30] And there's sixteen things to be asked here. Now he wouldn't do this in the in the sentences, huh? This would be probably several questions and so on. So here they're just kind of all stretched out, sixteen, yeah. I noticed that one out when I was studying prayer, you know, in the question on prayer in the second part of the Summa, it's got sixteen articles too. I think it's the same number here.

[27:05] But in in the other work, they're divided. To whom should you pray? For what should you pray? Who should pray? You know, how? You know, you'll subdivide them, huh? Yeah. So here we have to kind of figure out what the distinction and order these things are.

[27:25] And of course, the first question is whether there's knowledge in God, right, or scientia in God, science in God. And the second article is about what God primarily understands, huh? Whether God understands Himself.

[27:46] And the third article, whether He comprehends Himself, right? Whether God understands Himself as much as He's understandable. Because we saw before that even in beatific vision, we don't understand God as much as He's what understandable, right? Huh? And we never love God as much as He's what lovable, right? Huh? Like I mentioned before, how, St. Francis de Sales, right? You know, kind of goes up, you know, from the lowest of us knowing and praising God, you know, up to the angels and so on, right?

[28:22] And finally, you know, and that you become thankful to someone who knows God eventually as much as He's knowable, right? And who the more you know God, the more you you should love Him, right? Huh? But you realize that you never love Him as much as He's lovable, right? And

[28:45] you want someone to appreciate Him more than than you could appreciate Him, right? And nobody could appreciate God fully and love Him as much as He's lovable as God Himself, huh? Okay.

[28:57] So the same way of understanding here, right? Okay. So whether God. Comprehends himself, right? He knows himself as much as he's knowable, huh? Now, none of this, at this up to this point, is telling us that this understanding God has, right?

[29:24] And this understanding of Himself and this understanding of Himself as much as He's understandable, that this isn't something other than His substance, right? Okay. So, in the fourth article, that we find out whether His very act of understanding Himself and comprehending Himself is something other than or the same thing as His very what substance, huh? Okay.

[29:56] Now you see the order there between the the first three articles and the fourth. Article right, because we've considered already in questions what three through eleven right the substance of God,

[30:12] and now we've considered this first act of God, understanding himself right. And it's only until you know something about the substance of God and something about his understanding that you would ever even raise the question: Are these really two things in God, like they are in what? In us, yeah,

[30:41] yeah. The first thing, also like is it a consideration of the existence of this knowledge? Yeah, and then the fourth starts to be the nature. Yeah, what it is, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[31:01] So just like we ask, you know, whether God exists, then the second question before we ask them, what is God then? So here we first ask whether there is knowledge in God, right? Whether there is understanding in God, and then secondly, what it is that he understands, right? And then how he understands it, right? Okay, that's kind of a natural way of proceeding.

[31:26] You know, when I talk about what a philosopher is, well, he's a lover of wisdom, right? So what does he love? Well, he loves wisdom. Then we've got to talk about what wisdom is, right? But then I talk about how must he love wisdom, right? Well, he must love it for its own sake, more than anything else that he loves for its own sake, as the very end or purpose of his life, right?

[31:45] So obviously, you want to know whether God knows himself or not before you want to know whether he comprehends himself, right? So the order there is is altogether clear, right?

[32:03] Now the fifth article is whether God understands anything besides himself, right? Yeah. Some people misunderstand Aristotle when he's talking about the divine knowledge at the end of the twelfth book of Wisdom, and where he speaks of God as knowing himself, right? As if God doesn't know anything else besides himself, which is not Aristotle's position. And some people think, though, that Aristotle is saying he knows only himself, right?

[32:37] What Aristotle is talking about is what God knows, what chiefly or primarily, and it's only by knowing himself that he knows other things. He doesn't know anything else as his principal or chief object. I mean, Thomas has seen in Aristotle, in at least two places, you know, he shows that the position of Empedocles about knowing, right. Involves a consequence that we know something God doesn't know for us all.

[33:06] That's absurd. That we know something God doesn't know. So obviously he's not talking about you know everything God knows, but what he knows primarily there in the twelfth book. It's probably come up in the. I wouldn't be surprised it'll come up in the objections. huh? Okay, Don't get there if I that's why today, but okay.

[33:27] So there are some people who make a great mistake and think that God knows only Himself and knows nothing else. Okay. And that's the greatest mistake there about other things, but then there are those who admit that in a way he knows other things, but only in a very general way. He doesn't have a altogether what distinct and particular knowledge of them, right? He knows them as beings or something, right?

[33:57] So, um, uh, in a way that that to some extent is a question of how he knows them, right? Huh? He knows them not just in what some general way or some vague way, because there would be some imperfection in God, right? Okay.

[34:22] Now the next one, whether the knowledge of God is discursive, we've talked about discourse before there in the definition of reason, when Shakespeare defines reason as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right? And the discourse that defines reason is the act of coming to know what you don't know through what you do know, right? So it's a kind of motion, huh? Discourse comes from the Latin word to run hither thither.

[34:56] So reason runs from one thing to another, right? It knows one thing and then through that it eventually comes to something else. Well, someone might think if God knows other things than knowing Himself, then isn't there a discourse in God? He knows Himself and then he draws some conclusions from that, so to speak, like like you know we know the thing about the the parallel lines, and we draw some conclusions later on about the triangle that we didn't see at first when he when he learned these things about the the triangle about the parallel lines, right?

[35:26] Well, of course he's going to deny that of God, right. There is not the shadow of any change in God as Saint James says in the Epistle. Um,

[35:38] so you can see how six and seven, though in different ways, follow upon whether he understands something besides Himself, right? How well does he understand it? Does he understand it by going himself to those things by kind of movement of his mind? No, no. In seeing himself, he sees other things.

[35:59] I suppose related to that too, then, is whether the knowledge of God is a cause of what. Of things, right? Okay. So those three questions six, seven, eight are kind of general questions that arise once we know that God in some way knows things other than Himself, right? Okay. Now the next group of questions nine through what fifteen, maybe it's those sixteen there too, but certainly nine through fifteen are particular things that seem to involve some difficulty, right?

[36:35] With the knowledge of God is of those things which are not, does He know what doesn't exist? Does He know what I was doing yesterday? Does He know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow? Okay, there might be some problem about it. I know. Some might think He can't know those things, right? Does He have a knowledge of bad things? Huh? Something

[37:00] might think, well, that's going to contaminate Him with it if He knows knows bad things, right? Does He have a knowledge of singulars? Well, of course, in the case of our understanding, we know directly only the universal thing is singular when sensed, as Boethius says, universal when understood, right? When I see this over here, it's an individual man with my senses. When I understand what that is, a man, I'm understanding something universal.

[37:32] So is the divine mind like that? Understands universal, but not the singular because it doesn't have a body, it doesn't have senses, right? Well, God and for that matter, the angels know singulars in a what quite different way than we do. But our reason can't know the singular directly, only indirectly by going back in a way to the senses. You can see how problems can arise about these things.

[37:59] Does God know an infinity of things? How could anybody know an infinity of things? Of course, the answer is going to be to all these yes, but there's a difficulty, a particular difficulty with each one of them. So Thomas takes them up. He does the same thing in the Summa Contra Gentiles There's going to be a separate chapter in each one of these things. Whether he has a knowledge of future contingent things, right?

[38:25] Does He know whether I'm going to play baseball tomorrow or not, right? Or listen to Don Giovanni tomorrow or not, right? Or listen to Bach or something, right? Okay.

[38:40] Whether it's of enuntiabilia, right? Well, in the second act of reason, Thomas, following Aristotle, calls that compositio indivisio, right? Because in the second act, you put two things together in a what affirmative statement, or you divide them in a negative statement, huh? So it's a kind of composition there, subject and predicate and copula, or noun and verb, right? Well, God, we've learned, is altogether simple, right? And as we'll learn earlier here, God's operation is His substance, so that's altogether simple too.

[39:19] Well, can He have statements in His mind, right? Any statements in God, right? See, but that seems to involve some kind of what composition, right?

[39:31] He said, "I am." Yeah, yeah. And whether the knowledge of God is variable, right? See, He put those together to be an M there in His in His mind. Or He put things together; there's some kind of composition in them. It's altogether what simple. Whether the knowledge of God is variable, huh?

[40:00] See, and like when the thing. Changes, for example, right? I know you're sitting, but you know you stand up in a few minutes. Then I'll know something else, right? My knowledge will change, right?

[40:12] And the last article, whether the knowledge which God has of things is speculative or what, practical, right? We'll find out when we get there. So let's look at the first article here.

[40:32] I mentioned before here that the word scientia is the Latin word used to translate episteme in Greek, and episteme names what we could perhaps call in English a reasoned-out knowledge, right? Okay. And so geometry would be an example of scientia, right? Okay. Now, when I'm, I haven't been the last few minutes you're thinking about geometry. in being a class, I was, right? But geometry exists in being a kind of what habitual form, right?

[41:10] Now, if you ask me to prove the Pythagorean theorem, I'll go to the board and I'll prove it to you. I want to say I'm pretty impressed with that way, But a few little theorems I do know. So, but most of the time my geometry is in me just in an habitual form. Well, does God have any habits? Say.

[41:30] Where he says science is a habit, huh? And it's only the science that we know, right? Which does not belong to God. Why? Because a habit is in between what ability in act. And. Aristotle gives an example, right? He says, there's two kinds of ability here. One is before I've learned geometry, right?

[41:55] Now, after I've learned geometry, I'm in a way an act, my mind, right? But if I'm not actually thinking about the things, I still have a certain ability that can be actualized what further, right? Okay. So my geometry is more an act when I was demonstrating those things at the board than it is right now when it's only what. Yeah, I don't have to go back and learn these things again.

[42:23] At least the ones I remember. You see. So a habit is in between ability and act, right? It's act with respect to the man who hasn't learned the science yet, right? But the kid will learn it, right? But it still is a kind of ability to be actually thinking about these things, huh? So it's in between ability and act, but we learned before that God is pure act, right?

[42:50] So there's no habits in God, huh? So if science is a habit, there's no science in God. That's total. Moreover, science is a knowledge of conclusions.

[43:09] It's a knowledge caused by another, right? So I sometimes translate that word episteme is a reasoned-out knowledge, right? What you reason out is a conclusion from the premises. Huh? You reason out that the interior angles of the triangle could be right angles. So it's a knowledge of conclusions, and that's caused by the premises. And so the premises of the syllogism are in a sense the cause of conclusion.

[43:37] But there's nothing caused in God. Huh? He's the first cause. Therefore, there's no science in God. Huh? Right. These arguments are good. At least they're showing that that there's no science in God, like the science we have. Yeah.

[43:57] Moreover, every science is either universal or what particular. But in God, there is nothing universal and what particular, as is clear from the things before. Therefore, in God, there is no what science. Huh?

[44:18] Now, against all this is what the apostle says. Now, who's the apostle? Saint Paul. Yeah. What's the figure of speech there? Antonomasia. Antonomasia. Yeah. Yeah. Peter and Paul are called what apostles by Antonomasia.

[44:37] It's a little bit like when when John Paul II with Saint Andrew Frieder, Peter and Paul are the princes of the apostles, right? Okay. I guess you find this somewhat in scripture, you know, in the in the canonical epistles and so on, that Peter and Paul identify themselves as an apostle more so than the other ones do. But that's by what Antonomasia. This is Aristotle's called the philosopher by antonomasia, or Homer, Homer, the poet, huh?

[45:06] But against this is what the apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 11. Oh, the altitude, the heightness, huh? The height, huh? Of the riches of the wisdom and the science of God, huh? Okay. So as Thomas said, the argument for authority is the strongest in theology, the weakest in philosophy, but the strongest in theology. Okay.

[45:35] So now he's going to reply to this. I answer: It should be said that in God most perfectly is there what science or knowledge, huh?

[45:47] Now he's going to show that. Well, to the evidence of this, huh? It should be considered that knowing things, right? Those who know are distinguished from those that don't know. In this or by this, because those not knowing anything,

[46:13] they have nothing but their own what form. So a rock has only the form or the nature of a stone, right? A rock. And the tree, the poor tree out there, has only the nature of a tree, right? But the one knowing is naturally apt to have the form even of another thing, right?

[46:41] So we can say, in my eye, as I look around this room, it has the shape of the Blessed Virgin statue over there. It's got the shape of the clock. It's got the shape of your head. It's got the shape of the glass. Got the shape of the book. It's got all these different shapes, right?

[46:56] You take a piece of wood and give the same piece of wood the shape of the Blessed Virgin statue, the shape of the clock, the shape of the cup, the shape of the chair. You know? No, a piece of wood it's just a none-knower. and all it has is its own shape, right? While my eye, which is one of my sense powers, is able to receive all these other shapes, huh?

[47:22] Okay. It's the difference between knowing and non-knower. Yeah. So sometimes they speak of knowing as receiving the form of another, as other, right? While retaining your own. So when I look at the statue over there, does my eye take on the shape of the statue? But it retains its own shape, right? But it receives the shape of the statue.

[47:53] Okay. Look at the book. The shape of the book is in my eye, right? Does my eye take on the shape of a book? You see that? Some of the Greeks kind of naive, you know, and they would. Reminded the lady of Guadalupe, huh? You know, you see, you look in somebody's eye, and you see what yourself, right? Yeah. So, like, you know, your shape is in the thing, huh?

[48:19] But that's not really knowing the way the form is in there. But I guess when they look closely up at the shape, they see what? Yeah. Juan Diego and and Bishop Zumárraga too, huh? Isn't that the the thing?

[48:38] But the knower is naturally apt to have the form even of another thing, right? For the species or the form of the known is in the what knower, right? Whence, it is manifest that the nature of a thing that doesn't know is more contracted, right?

[49:02] More what limited, right? By the nature of things that know have a greater what amplitude and extension, right? And a kind of which the philosopher says in the third book about the soul, and this is after he's considered what this all the sense powers, right? And considered the understanding, right? So he's considered all the what knowing powers, right? And then he stops and reflects upon what can be said about the soul on the basis of what we've seen there, right?

[49:40] And account of which the philosopher, and that's again by antonomasia, that same figure of speech in the third book about the soul, that the soul is in some way all things, huh? Because all sensible forms are received in the senses, and the natures of things are received in the what. Understanding, yeah. When you have the definition of a thing, that's the way that you have very explicitly the nature of another thing.

[50:12] Okay. Now, the coarctatio, the confining, so to speak, and the narrowing of the form is through what matter. Whence we have said above that forms, according as they are more immaterial, according to this, they more exceed to a certain what infinity, right?

[50:41] That's why what Kierkegaard says, you know, not being married gives you kind of infinity, right? But getting married is like being contracted, you know. So I says to my, to one of my philosophical friends who knows this teaching, you know, what's it like to get married? He says, well, it's like a form to be contracted to matter, to be very, very limited,

[51:03] and and down to the here and now, huh? I remember one of my colleagues there, you know, was very much into political philosophy, right, and studied with the Straussians and so on. And he thought himself as a what political philosopher, right? So he was. He was interested in those universal questions of, political things. Why he said, my wife thinks of me as a professor at Assumption college, huh?

[51:32] See, you know, very contracted to, you know, here and now, this place, right, huh? So, whence we said above that forms, according as they are more immaterial, according to this, they exceed more to a certain what infinity. Whence it is clear that immateriality is something is the reason that it is what knowing, and according to the way of being immaterial is the way of what knowing, Whence in the second book about the soul, Aristotle says, huh?

[52:16] It is said that plants do not know on account of their what materiality, right? We just compare the bark of the tree, you know, with with your what flesh, right, which is still kind of material thing, huh? But I know something with your flesh, the your skin, you know, you press a certain shape into it, and then comes back and and has don't shape, right? Keeps its shape, huh?

[52:41] And that's part of the reason too why even in the most material kind of knowing, in sense by touch, um, uh, you get say into the shower or something like that, right? You feel the warmth of the water more when you first get in than after you've been there for a while, and you might turn the heat up a little bit if you've been there that long, right?

[53:02] Yeah, when I you know go into the ocean or something like that, takes a little while to get adjusted to. it. I think I'm going to have a hard time. if I don't, I can't you know rush out there, into, the water, you know, but then your body gradually adjusts it, right? But as you receive the coolness of the water as the temperature of your own body, you don't sense it as much, right?

[53:22] As you receive it in a more material way, in other words, in the way matter receives, matter receives the coolness of something as its own temperature, right? So it's very important in the sense that man has to some extent a stable temperature, right, by nature, because that makes him able to know the temperature of things better, right? But as they say, you don't sense the coolness of the water, the ocean, after you've been in the water for a while, as much as you did when you first went in.

[53:54] Once, in the second book about the soul, Aristotle says it is said that plants do not know an account of their materiality, but the sense it knows because it's receptive of the forms of things without their what matter, right? And so you receive, let's say, the shape and the colors of your friends, right? And that's how you recognize them and you see them, right? But if you cut open your your head, we find a little piece of bone chiselled out and the shape of everybody you know, a little piece of flesh, right?

[54:30] See, you've got the shape, shapes of your friends and other things you recognize in the room, recognize the book, and so on, not in a material way, right? As if there's a piece of flesh or bone or something that has been chiselled out and the shape of these things. I've got rows of statues up here for everybody that I I know and recall.

[55:03] And the understanding is even more knowing, huh, than the senses, because it is more separated from matter and it's not mixed with it, as Aristotle shows in the third book about the soul. We've talked about that before. Whence, since God is in the summit of immateriality, right? It follows that He is in the summit of what knowledge, knowing.

[55:34] That's the way Thomas shows it here. Now, the first objection to there being scientia in God is that the scientia we have is a habit, right? And habit is in between act and ability, and how can it be in God, who's pure act?

[55:52] Saw it back in the question of simplicity of God. To the first therefore, it should be said. Because the perfections that proceed from God into creatures are in a higher way in God, as has been said above, right? Is necessary that whenever some name is taken from some perfection of the creature, right, to be attributed to God, that one takes away from it, from its meaning, all that which pertains to the imperfect way which belongs in the creature.

[56:36] Once knowledge is not a quality in God, right, an accident, in other words, or a habit, but his very substance and its what pure act. Now sometimes you know what we do, and you find Thomas often saying this: when you transfer these names to God, you drop the genus and keep the what difference, right? Because the genus is taken what's material in the thing, right, and the difference of what is formal and therefore perfect, right?

[57:14] So you keep the idea of the difference and drop the what the genus, okay? But you drop whatever pertains to imperfection. So in Aristotle, for example, defines demonstration, who's the syllogism that produces science. I only say demonstrations here that produce the science of geometry in my mind, you know. He says a demonstration is a syllogism, making us know the cause and that of which it is the cause and it cannot be otherwise.

[57:43] We drop all the idea of syllogizing and making someone to know so they didn't know already, right? And keep just what's of perfection, knowing the cause and that of which it is the cause and it cannot be otherwise, and that belongs much more perfectly to God than to us, right? But it doesn't have to syllogize; he doesn't have to reason from one thing to another to know the cause and that of which it is the cause and that it cannot be otherwise.

[58:09] You see, so you drop out part of the what meaning, right, and keep the what whatever perfection and whatever form in there. Okay, so that's one way in which a name becomes what equivocal by reason. It's kind of beautiful in the in the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, when Thomas is talking about how the names of emotions are carried over to the to the acts of the will, and when you do so, you keep the formal aspect of the emotion, but you drop the idea of what of the body and the bodily change, right?

[58:53] And then these names that are carried over to the acts of the will, some of them can be carried all the way over to God. If they don't imply any imperfection, either as far as the will is concerned, so you can carry over love and joy to God, but not desire, because desire is for a good you don't have. But love can be for a good that you have, and even more so for a good that you have than when you don't have.

[59:21] And joy is when you possess the good, right? So, properly speaking, in God there can be joy and love, but not desire or wanting. And there can't be hope because that again implies you don't have the good that you're hoping to get, huh? And there can't be sadness in God because then there's something bad happened to him, right? And so on. So it's kind of interesting there to see the way those names are carried over, but originally from the emotions to the acts of will by dropping out part of their meaning, right?

[59:59] Eventually, some of them that don't. pertain don't have any imperfection. Their meaning can be carried all the way over to God, right? Once you've talked about that material aspect.

[1:00:12] Now the second one, science senses of conclusions is a knowledge caused by another. So Aristotle speaks of the premises of syllogism as being the efficient cause of the conclusion.

[1:00:27] So in the definition there of syllogism, we say it's what speech in which some statements laid down, another follows necessarily because of those laid down, right? So the idea of cause and effect, the premises are causes of the effect, the conclusion. Well, this won't be found in God. To the second, it should be said that those things which are divided and multiplied in creatures in God are simply and what?

[1:01:02] Yeah. And also he put simple and united together there, right? Even though in the treatise there, there what? First and the last of the five attributes, huh? Like included. Now speaking about the Trinity, doing the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, and he says, well, the God God's understanding is simple and one and perfect. They put simple and one right together there, say. and then his act of the will is simple and one.

[1:01:35] Therefore, there can't be two words in God or two loves in God, and so on. See. So those things which are divided and multiplied, multiplied in creatures in God are simply in a united way. as has been said above. Man, however, according to the diverse things he knows, has diverse knowledges. For according as he knows the beginnings, he said to have what understanding, or I sometimes call natural understanding.

[1:02:09] Science, according as he knows conclusions, right? Wisdom, according as he knows the what highest or the first cause. Counsel or prudence, foresight, according as he knows things doable, right? And these are most of the virtues of reason that Aristotle talks about. Also of art. But all of these things, God by una and simplici, one and a simple knowledge, knows, as will be clear below, right? Whence the simple knowledge of God is able to be named by all these names, right?

[1:02:49] But such that from each of them, according as it is going to be said of God, it comes into the divine predication. Predication means what being said of. One secludes or takes away, right? Whatever is of imperfection. And retains whatever is of what perfection, right? And according to this, it is said in the book of Job, chapter twelve. Before him is wisdom and fortitude, right? He has counsel and what understanding, right?

[1:03:24] Okay. Knows what to do. It doesn't have to, you know, investigate. Yeah, yeah. Imperfection, guys. Take it away. Yeah. No, last one is about the universal and the particular.

[1:03:50] To third, it should be said that science is according to the way of the knower. For the known is in the one knowing, according to the way of the knower. That comes down to a general principle that what is in something is in according to the way of the receiver. Which I was like to recall us, you know, teaching, you know, a whole class of people, you know, three people, you know, and what is received, received according to the mode of the receiver, right?

[1:04:19] So, so one person, you know, if you see very perfectly, you know, they don't seem to understand what you say, and some people it's hardly in there, right? It's like falling on the the stone. But

[1:04:35] and therefore, since the way of the divine substance or essence is higher than the way of the creature in which the creatures are, and the divine science does not have the way of the created science, that it be universal or particular, right? Or in habit or in potency, right? Or disposed according to any such what mode? huh? Okay. Going back to the body of the article, you know the fundamental thing to see there is that immateriality is the root of knowledge, and then God is in the summit of immateriality, and therefore He must be in the summit of knowing, right?

[1:05:24] But then you remove all the imperfection of what the creatures, what knowledge, from God. Why don't you take a little break here? We'll take a little break?