Prima Pars
96. Summa I, Q. 26, a. 2: Is God Blessed by His Understanding? Knowledge, Love and Pleasure
Class of 2007-06-26
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/096-summa-i-q-26-a-2-is-god-blessed-by-his-understanding-knowledge/

[0:00] The Son, the, Holy Spirit, the Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Amen. Help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Started reading again the Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia, right? And the first question, as I mentioned, there's ten questions, but the first question has about seven articles and almost the same thing as the ones in the De Potentia.

[0:41] But kind of interesting comparison here that Thomas makes. Now we would say that God is all powerful, and we also say that God is all knowing. Okay.

[0:56] And you know the point we're making that God's being all powerful doesn't mean he can make a square circle, right? He can make anything that is makeable. Well, Thomas is making kind of similar point about the knowable. You see, God is all knowing, right? Now, does that mean that God knows that two is half of five? Does he know that? Well, then he doesn't know everything, right?

[1:33] Yeah. Yeah. There is. Maybe someone could think, some creature could think that two is half of five, right? But no creature could know in the strict sense that two is half of five. He can't know that. It's not knowable. So if God doesn't know the unknowable, that's not a what? All-knowing. He's not all knowing. Yeah. But I mean, you have to say he's all knowing with respect to what everything is knowable, and two is half of five is not knowable.

[2:06] Maybe thinkable, but certainly not knowable. Yeah. It's kind of interesting comparison, right? God doesn't know modern philosophy, then is that you're saying? Yeah. The other

[2:26] article on who's the guy Rorty? I guess died recently. You know, kind of big shot in American philosophy, but for him there was no truth, huh? And the pursuit of wisdom of course, is ridiculous It's just a conversation. A conversation won't go on, that's what, they say.

[2:52] Okay, we're up to the second article here in the twenty-sixth question. Question on the divine blessedness. Good place to end the consideration of God, right here. Now. Now it seems that God is not said to be blessed by his what understanding,

[3:14] for blessedness or beatitude is the highest good. But good is said in God by His essence, because the good regards being, which is according to His essence or nature. According to Boethius in the book De Hebdomadibus, which Thomas has a commentary on by the way. Therefore, blessedness is said in God by His essence and not by His what understanding.

[3:54] However, blessedness has the definition and the notion of an end. That's the end of everything. But the end is the object of the will, just as the good. We've talked many times about those two. Maybe the definition, the first definition of the good is the good is what all want, and the definition of the end is that for the sake of which. As Aristotle points out, those two go together, right?

[4:25] Because if something is good, then people aim at it, right? And they aim mainly at the end, right? Because the means is aimed at for the sake of the end.

[4:40] So Aristotle, when he talks about the four kinds of causes—matter, form, mover, and end—he comes to talk about end there, and even in the physics, the natural hearing, he says the end is the same as the good, right? And in the second book of wisdom, if you recall, he's saying that if you do away with the end, you do away with the good. Which helps to explain why the modern philosophers don't talk about the good anymore.

[5:09] Really, talk about value or something, right? But you hear me talk about the good, if you don't talk about the end, and they've given up talking about the end for a number of reasons, and therefore they can't talk about the good anymore.

[5:26] Reminds me of a quote from the they're giving a quote from Rorty, this article about his death. He says, "There's no difference between saying it works because it's true, and it's true because it works." He's just a man looking

[5:52] before and after? But against this is what Gregory says in the thirty-second book of the morals. He is what glorious, right? Who, when he enjoys himself,

[6:17] has no need of any what praise coming in from outside, huh? But to be glorious signifies to be blessed, right? Since therefore we enjoy God by understanding, because the vision is the whole reward. It's a pretty strong statement, Augustine. It seems that blessedness is said in God by His what understanding, huh?

[6:51] So Thomas now is going to respond to the questioner. I answer, he says, it should be said that beatitude. This has been said before in the first question article. Signifies the perfect good of a understanding nature, intellectual nature,

[7:15] and hence it is that just as each thing desires its own perfection, so the intellectual understanding nature naturally desires to be blessed, huh? That's why once you see God as He is, you can't change, huh? In case you realize that this is blessedness, huh, to see God, and therefore, since you naturally desire to be blessed, no possibility for you to change. But that which is most perfect, huh, in each intellectual nature is its operation of understanding, huh?

[8:09] By which, in some way, it what takes in all things, huh? You may recall there in the third book about the soul that Aristotle, after he's taken up the senses in Book Two and and the internal senses have been in the beginning of Book Three, and after he's taken up the understanding, then he makes the famous statement that the soul is in some way all things, because when I grasp the nature of the dog, I got the nature of the dog in me, right?

[8:41] When I grasp the nature of the cat, I got the cat in my head, right? When I grasp the nature of the circle, I got the circle in my head, right? And so through my sense and with my senses, right? When I hear the what music of Mozart, I got the music of Mozart in my ear, and I see the painting of Titian there, uh. Then I've got a painting in my eye, and so on.

[9:11] And so, since the senses are open to seeing all sensible things, and the understanding all things are understandable, in some way through my senses and my reason, I am all things.

[9:29] Hence, he says the beatitude of any understanding nature consists in its what? Understanding. In God, however, to be and to understand are not other secundum rem, right? Reality, huh? But only according to the what way of understanding these things, huh? We ought to attribute, therefore, to God beatitude, according to his understanding, just as to others who are blessed. Who, by being made like to the beatitude of Him, are called what blessed.

[10:28] So, you convinced of this or not? To the first, therefore, it should be said that by that reason it is proved that God is blessed by his very what essence or nature. Not, however, that blessedness belongs to Him according to the what definition of the essence, but more by reason of the what understanding. So, although these are the same thing in God, in God to be and to what to understand and to be blessed are all the same thing, right?

[11:13] Nevertheless, we understand Him to be blessed by understanding that He understands, and by understanding, you know, that He understands Himself. We don't understand Him to be blessed by His what substance, right? Even though He is, okay. That's kind of a subtle thing, right? But

[11:44] I was going through those the second question there, the de potentia there, talking about the God's ability to create and the ability to generate. Are they the same?

[12:03] I mean, as far as the the act which is said to be ability, they're different. In that sense, you can distinguish between them, right? But in reality, they're really one and the same thing, right?

[12:16] Well, then the question is, why doesn't the Son have the ability to generate? And Thomas says, well, the ability to generate, insofar as it's the same as what, or insofar as it's found in the Father, or the ability of God, insofar as found in the Father, is the ability to generate. That's kind of a subtle thing, but you have to think twice about what what you're saying there.

[12:53] So you can see from what Thomas is saying here why the beatitude of God is taken up. After you've taken up the understanding of God, right, the operation of God, what He does, and not attach it to His being what perfect and good, okay. Well,

[13:13] there's a good reason for that, right? That since whatever's in God is the divine essence, and the divine essence is goodness itself, therefore He must have His essence, right? His what perfection, right? Of beatitude.

[13:31] But yet, when you try to understand what it means to say God is blessed, you have to understand it by understanding the fact that God has this perfect understanding of Himself primarily, right? And understands other things by understanding Himself, but primarily because He understands Himself. There's nothing more worthwhile understanding. You always quote those words of Augustine, you know. He says,

[14:00] "Blessed is the man who understands God, even if he understands nothing else. Miserable the man who understands other things who doesn't understand God. Blessed also the man who understands God and other things, he says, but not for understanding other things, but for understanding God alone. huh? I often wonder, you know, if I get there, huh? All these people that you knew in life, or these people you never knew in life, but have read, you know, like Thomas Aquinas, you know, can I understand you write Thomas about that or something?

[14:36] But you know, I want to go meet St. Augustine, you know, and go and meet all these people that we saints that you read about and so on. Talk to St. Peter, you know, you know, and St. Paul and so on. But maybe I'll be preoccupied. Maybe preoccupied. God will be all in all. And

[15:00] there's going to be some, you know, some some contact between us and the other ones. Yeah. See you tomorrow. Get more important things to think about. But there's going to be some little thing, you know. One of my friends thinks you know that there's a certain defect in friendship in this life, right? Partly because of we're defective, but also partly because you know we're separated from each other and this sort of thing, you know.

[15:27] So then heaven's better get recompensed, you know, and have more perfect friendship, you know, even between human beings, right? But still, you know, can't be living a second

[15:42] solitary life there. But we're going to be so absorbed in God, you know, it's kind of hard to see. But we're going to come back and talk about, you know, did did did Brickley explain property? By the way, that time back, you know, well, he was off here, he's off there, he's off there, but you know, I can't imagine I really had a conversation like that. I mean, to be clear, our ignorance, you know, that we had in this life.

[16:02] Our mistakes, you won't have any mistakes. Thomas is talking about why you can't, once you see God, why you can't want anything else for your happiness. He says the only way you could want something else for your happiness once you've seen God would be by mistake. And he always just two quotes. He always uses one is from the book of Proverbs, right? That those who do bad are erring, make a mistake.

[16:29] And he quotes Aristotle. It's the same thing in the third book on the ethics, right? The man who who who does bad is mistaken. Once you see God, your mind is so clear, you're no longer capable of being mistaken. If you're incapable of being mistaken, you can't make the mistake of thinking something else is your happiness once you've seen God. Thomas says, of course, you're you're completely satisfied once you see God.

[17:00] So how could you possibly want anything else? There's no no more room, right? In your heart, your heart is filled. How do we relate that to the bad angels like the Saint Michael or

[17:21] what's Saint Michael? Well, you know, going back to this thing here about the man naturally desiring beatitude, right? Thomas has interesting explanation of this, at least as far as we're concerned, and that is that although we naturally want to be happy, right,

[17:44] we don't at first see exactly in what happiness consists, right? Now, if we could see clearly and without any mistake in what happiness consists, then just as we naturally want to be happy, we naturally want to see God, right? Okay.

[18:09] And he quotes an interesting thing from Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle says, "Such as a man is, so does the end appear to him, right?

[18:28] So in the kind of tragedy of Don Giovanni, right, huh? When Don Giovanni has got his hand in the hand of the statue, right, huh? And he's getting the last opportunity to repent, right? But Don Giovanni cannot change, right? Because he's habituated to pursuing women as his end in life, right? And that habit is well very hard to remove, right? Um. If you attach to something as an end falsely because of some emotion, that emotion can pass pretty quickly, and then you maybe see things more clearly, right?

[19:11] But if you're attached to something as an end by habit, then it's not easy to not see that as the end. And of course, once the soul dies, or once the man dies, I should say, then you're no longer in this changeable state that you were in this life. And so, every disposition your soul is in when you die, where the tree falls, there it's a lie, it says in scripture, right?

[19:41] So you can't really see anything other than this as your end. That's why you can't change anymore. But in the case of the of the angels, they didn't have to go through time like we do, right? Because their mind is fully formed. in the moment of their creation, and so they make their choice, right? Whatever choice they make, it's like the habit, instant habit, we'd say, yeah. And therefore, they can't really change anymore, right?

[20:14] Yeah. But we're in that same state once we die, and then we're in this unchangeable state, and whatever way our will falls, there we are. That's why we really, really, the wisdom of the Church there is seen in the second part there at the Hail Mary, right? Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, okay, and at the hour of our death, right? You specify among all moments of life the hour of death, right?

[20:44] Because that's where your will is going to what? Fall in one way, either towards God or away from God, and wherever it falls, it's going to lie. And kind of the metaphor there, the tree, right? So as long as the tree is up in the air, you can, you know, when I was chopping down the tree in our backyard, nobody's afraid to go to the house or something, you know?

[21:03] Oh no, no, no, I'm doing, you know, this side's going to go this way, you know. But so long as the tree is still standing, it can fall, you know, towards the house or fall away from the house, right? Mm-hmm. But once it falls, it's going to lie there. Right. Lie falls. An interesting metaphor and scripture there. So. What do you see?

[21:26] Um. So you see, happiness has to do with the rational creature. What What's the comparison to, like, for instance, a dog? A dog can't be happy, but what is it? I don't know. just that it's satisfied? What's the comparison? Well, you could talk about the, you know, pleasure in the dog, right? Yeah. Okay. But you know, in Aristotle, in the tenth book of Nicomachean Ethics, he takes up pleasure, right, before he gives his final consideration of happiness.

[21:58] Okay. So you have to see how pleasure is related to happiness, right? Mm-hmm. Aristotle says, you know, that most men are mistaken, right, about what the end of life is. Yeah. But in seeking it in sense pleasure, let's say, right, there's some element of truth, right? Because whatever happiness is, it's going to be pleasant, right? Yeah. But they mistake the lower pleasures, right, for the higher ones.

[22:29] Thomas Aquinas says in one place, you know, that no man can live without pleasure, right? Mm-hmm. And therefore, if he doesn't acquire a taste for the higher pleasures, he's going to seek his pleasure in the lower things. Mm-hmm. And that's what most men do, right? Okay. And therefore, you know, for people like ourselves who have some understanding and so on, to fall into, you know, sensual sins, right?

[22:56] Mm-hmm. Is much more grievous than for the average man to do this, because we can more taste the higher things. And this, in a sense, the the I mentioned this thing about John Stuart Mill, right? He is kind of at the same position. Epicureans that pleasure is the end of life, and people object and say, "Well, this is a philosophy for for beasts, for animals."

[23:27] And John Stuart Mill tries to say, "No, you're the beast, right? If you think that man has no pleasures, that the beast doesn't have, right? " Now he's not fully answering the objection to his position, but he's making a point, right? But I've taken one step further and say there are three kinds of pleasures, right? There are the pleasures that we share with the beasts, although they may be more refined than us, like we have wine sauce or something, but still basically the pleasure of food, right?

[24:02] Then there's the pleasures that we share with the angels and God, and those are the pleasures of understanding, right? And we have those pleasures in a way inferior to the angels that we don't understand much or understand very well, right? But then in between those pleasures that we share with the angels, imperfectly, and then we share with the beasts on the other hand, better be than they have it.

[24:32] Then the pleasures that are what private to man, right? And these are the pleasures of the fine arts, right? So I could never get the cat to appreciate Mozart, although I tried to, you know. But if I went out to the kitchen, I was getting some sandwich meat out of the thing, and being as quiet as I could be, I turned around and the cat was waiting for a little handout of sandwich meat, huh?

[24:55] To share your pleasure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And finally, I got some. If I was going to, you know, do steak or something nice on the grill that night, you know, I'd say to Tabitha, you know, we're going to have steak tonight, and Tabitha seemed to seemed to understand. I don't think really, but there's something a lot going on, you know, as I would speak to a great friend of Stewart.

[25:18] So the pleasures of the fine arts are the kind of mix the what the senses with reason, right? So you can't appreciate the music of Mozart without ears, but the cat's got ears and can't appreciate. So you've got to have reason as well as emotion, right? And you can't appreciate, you know, the plays of Shakespeare without imagination, but you've got to have reason too. And the same way you can't appreciate the painting without some reason, so as Austerly said in that essay there towards an evaluation of music, says it's a mistake to think that the pleasures of the fine arts are the highest pleasures or not.

[25:57] But they're the pleasures that are most. Pleasingly proportionate to man, and so I can enjoy the music of Mozart for two or three hours. I can have Mozart opera. Well, I can't really enjoy eating anything for two or three hours. That you know, I am not turned on by the sense, you know, first of all, you can eat, you know, thinking more than I want to eat anyway.

[26:24] I mean, I just, but my body goes out, right? Yeah. Okay, like people on Thanksgiving day, you know, they go, oh, I am uncomfortable and they walk around.

[26:35] I mean, your body is limited, right? But vice versa, you know, with the higher pleasures of understanding, your your body gets in the way too because you get tired there trying to think about what Thomas is saying, things like that. And then once you start to fail, you know, to to not concentrate on what he's saying, then you then pleasure is gone, right? Then you kind of just words, words, words, as Hamlet says, right?

[26:59] So, but you see, the pleasures though the fine arts are the ones that we have to pass through in a way, normally speaking, right? To go from the pleasures we have with the beasts, right, to the pleasures that we have in common with the angels, right, and of course, the pleasure, the joy of seeing God as He is, right, is a, in a sense, sharing in God's pleasure, right.

[27:28] Ah. So that's maybe the ultimate thing, right? But Aristotle takes up pleasure and operation there. He doesn't say that the end of man is the pleasure of understanding, right? But he says that pleasure of understanding is a kind of perfection of understanding. In the way that beauty is a perfection of youth, he says, it's a beautiful comparison because beauty is not the definition of youth, but it tends to go with it, right?

[28:02] So you have understanding the best things to understand, then that's naturally accompanied with a delight in that, and it's what you you love or want most of all, right? When it's worthy, I speak the early giving up the love of wisdom, right? You know, I kind of see that you know most philosophers you run into, I mean, professional so-called philosophers, whatever they are, wisdom is no longer their goal, right?

[28:32] I know what their goal is, but the conversation. Yeah. Okay, so we saw we apply to the first objection, right? Which was saying that beatitude is the highest good, right? Incidentally, Boethius, there in the Consolation of Philosophy, he argues that beatitude is summum bonum. Summum bonum is God. Therefore, blessedness is God, right? And therefore, if we have any blessedness at all, it's only in so far as we what partake of God in God's life in some way.

[29:15] Right? It's beautiful the way he argues there. It's kind of a Platonic way of arguing, you know, but it makes a lot of sense.

[29:26] The middle term there in the syllogism is sumum bonum. Look at the first sentence in objection one: beatitudo est summum bonum sumum bonum. And then you go back to what we saw before, maybe that sumum bonum is God. Therefore, beatitude is God. But in the body of the article and in the reply to the first objection, times saying, well, that's all true, right? But nevertheless, understanding what it means to say God is blessed involves understanding that God what understands himself, right?

[29:56] That God has the most perfect of operations that there can be, right? And that's important to see, right? That distinction. The second objection here: Beatitude has the notion of an end. The end is the object of the will because it's the same thing as a good, and it includes the object of that. Therefore, beatitude is said in God by the will and not by the understanding.

[30:32] To the second, it should be said that beatitude, since it is good, is the object of the will, of course. But the object is understood before the act of the what ability, huh?

[30:50] Whence, according to the way of understanding, before is the divine beatitude, then the act of the will resting in it, huh? And this other thing, right, than the act of the will, is not able to be except the act of the understanding. Whence, in the act of the understanding, is to be noted beatitude, huh? Now, something Thomas Aquinas points out, starting more from man there, but

[31:25] what's the first thing you understand? Is it your own understanding? You've got to understand something else, right? And then you can understand your understanding. So you have to understand what a cup is, or what a book is, or what a triangle is, or what a dog is before I can understand that I understand something, right?

[31:53] And sometimes I'm trying to bring that out, you know. I don't know if I've said this before, but I'd say my mother used to be the

[32:05] common source of information between me and my brothers, right? Because we felt obligated to write my mother from time to time, right? When we were away, not obligated to write each other. But everything would come in to my mother, and then she would what say, "Well, Dwayne said in his letter, or Richard said in his letter, or Marcus said in his letter," right? And so we get this information around, right?

[32:28] Now, notice what's going on there. She's writing a letter about what was in some other letter, okay? But can the first letter ever being ever written on the face of this earth? Could that be a letter about what's in a letter? No. The first letter has got to be about something that's not in a letter. And now there's something in a letter because someone's written a letter about something that's not in a letter.

[32:59] Now there's something in the letter. Now someone else can write about what's in, you know. I picked up the this piece of biography of Einstein, right? And they're talking about his letters, right? And I guess some of them have come to, you know, seen the light of day just last two years, right? Locked up here and there and so on. So people are writing about some of these letters, right?

[33:19] Okay. So you can write abouts in somebody's letter, but that can't be the first letter. And likewise, huh? Is the first thing you love, love?

[33:36] Or do you have to love something, and then you can love your love again? So I'm a philosopher, I think. That's a lover of wisdom, right? Huh? Okay. Now I actually love the fact that I love wisdom.

[33:56] Okay. Some things you shouldn't love, right? Some things you should love, but I think it's very good to love wisdom, right? But could I love wisdom? I love a wisdom before I love wisdom.

[34:21] So, what's the first thing you love? Is it the means or the end? Yeah. So the first thing you love is the end, and the first thing you love cannot be the act of the will itself, right? So the end cannot be love or joy, right? It's got to be something other than that, right? Of course, the only other thing, understanding creature, is the act of understanding itself, and you can see the perfection of that act because by it you in some way all things.

[34:57] Okay. It's almost like when you watch a movie, you always wait for the end of the movie. The movie will make you cry, or something.

[35:13] Now, of course, obviously the the love of God and love your neighbor is very important, right? Without the love of God and your neighbor, you're not going to see God as He is, right? Okay. But now it's an interesting thing about love.

[35:35] When you talk about the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, right? And these are very important for loving the end, right? At least we are disposed to that.

[35:52] But when you come to see God as He is, what happens to faith, hope, and charity? The charity remains and becomes even more perfect, right? But the faith and the hope disappear, right?

[36:19] Now it says in scripture. scripture, man doesn't know whether he's be worthy of love or hate, right? Because he can't be sure that he loves God as he should, right?

[36:33] But unless you love God as you should, you are not going to get to see God as He is. Now the saints, can't say for myself, but the saints we know, even in this life, they love God as they should, right?

[36:51] So they already had the love of God, didn't they? But had they reached their end yet? So if the end consisted in loving God, they would have reached the end already, right?

[37:11] Now when they come to see God as He is, their love of God is going to be even greater, right? But that's a difference in what A degree, right?

[37:28] There may even be some saints, for all I know, who love God more on this earth than I will love God in heaven, right? They're so much more perfect than I am, right? So if you already love God as He is in Himself, that can't be the end, can it?

[37:46] But by faith, you don't see God as He is. You see Him in a mirror darkly, as Paul says. That's kind of confirmation that the end isn't seeing God, right? But sometimes, you know, he quotes Augustine there.

[38:05] The vision is the whole reward, right? In the in the sed contra there, right? But sometimes Augustine will say, you know, that the the end is Gaudium de veritate, right? Sometimes he'll speak of the act of the will, right? Because it's connected with that.

[38:24] And as a philosopher, I might say, you know, well, I want to understand the Pythagorean theorem, right? And I might speak of my end as enjoying the Pythagorean theorem.

[38:42] I just happened to be on the thirtieth, I think it is, theorem of the sixth book of Euclid this morning. And this is the one where Euclid shows that in a right angle triangle, not only is the square on the side opposite the right angle equal to the two. But any figures that are equiangular, right, and in the same arrangement, it'll be equal to those two, right?

[39:10] It's kind of an amazing thing, right? It's going to be a triangle in there or a square. I mean, an oblong or a pentagon or a hexagon, right? You know. And but anyway, in his note on that, he says that Proclus, right, in his commentary on Euclid, says that it's Euclid himself discovered this extension, right? And so it's in the sixth book of Euclid. So the Pythagorean theorem is obviously goes back to Pythagoras, it seems.

[39:42] So so it's named, and that's the way he ends up the first book. But in the sixth book, he gets his own advance, and that's really really beautiful, beautiful discovery, you know. So

[39:57] um brother Mark used to I used to joke about, you know. It's so delightful to see this, you know. You shouldn't take two inches, just like two inches candy or something, you know. Yeah, but but really is is the

[40:14] is my goal here? Substantially, the the joy I have in understanding this, or is it the understanding of it? So it's substantially the understanding of it, right? And this joy is perfecting it in the same way that that beauty perfects youth, is as as as Aristotle says. It's kind of an added thing, right?

[40:38] Now sometimes Thomas will speak at the end as well as understanding and loving God, and that's perfectly good to say too, right? But do you want to see God as He is, so that you might love Him more than you do in this life?

[41:06] Well, I'm just saying that that that would be, I wouldn't say it would be a bad will, right? You say, you say, God, I know I should love you more than I do, right? I want to love you more worthily. How can I do that? Well, give me the vision, and I'll love you more as I do. But the point is,

[41:30] you don't want to see God as He is just to love Him more, right? You want to see Him as He is for its own sake, yeah. It's perfection of your mind.

[41:47] I used to go back. This is a little different point here, but it casts some light upon it. Um, which is better, knowledge or love? I used to say, in a general way, right, without getting into the more subtle parts of it. Speaking general, in human life, which is better, knowledge or love? Well, it's kind of interesting that all knowledge, as such, is good.

[42:18] Ah, it's even good to know how to make a bomb, right? As such, unless you got a bad will, Tragically they'd be bad, right? But all knowledge, as such, is good, huh? Even the knowledge of the bad is good, right? Is

[42:34] all love good? Because love of the good is good, and love of the bad is bad, right? But knowledge of the good is good, and knowledge of the bad is bad. right? Knowledge of the bad is good. It's good, yeah. And and in fact, as Plato and Aristotle point out first. There's the same knowledge of opposites, right? So if knowledge of the bad were bad, then all knowledge be bad.

[43:11] But as it is, all knowledge is good, right? So in that sense, knowledge is better than love, right? Or love depends upon knowledge for being good, and that's why you know it says in the Book of Proverbs, right? And in Aristotle, that the man who does bad is mistaken. Maybe more than that, but he's mistaken because he's thinking here and now that this is the thing to do, right?

[43:42] And it's not the thing to do, so he's mistaken. So if the knowledge were perfected, then the love would be perfected. The knowledge was never fully perfected until you see God as He is, right? And you can't make any more mistakes.

[44:09] Thomas gives a reason there. He says, "You see God as He is. You're going to love Him. You can't help but love Him. But when people love each other, they want to do each other's will. Therefore, you can't except do the will of God, and that's the measure of all good. So you're all set. I remember reading, you know, sometimes about a sailor's deathbed. You know, a few moments I will no longer sin.

[44:42] Now the third article: whether God is the beatitude.