Commentaria in Summam contra Gentiles, Liber I

Finally, Saint Thomas treats of complex divine terms ¹. I. And he lays down this conclusion: The enunciations which our intellect forms about God are not vain. It is proved: Where there is unity in the thing, even though there be plurality on the part of the intellect, there the intellect can truly compose and divide. But in God there is unity of all that is said of him on the part of the thing, while there is plurality on the part of our intellect. Therefore, etc. — The major is evident, because by the verbal copula a certain unity of predicate with subject is conveyed in propositions. — The minor, however, is proved: because, although our intellect arrives at knowledge of God through diverse conceptions, it nevertheless understands that one and the same thing corresponds to all of them. For the intellect does not attribute to things the mode by which it understands them, so as to say that, just as it is itself multiple in understanding, so the thing is multiple in itself; just as it does not attribute immateriality to a stone, although it understands the stone immaterially. It is also added that the intellect sometimes forms enunciations about God with some note of diversity, by interposing a preposition: as when it is said, Goodness is in God. II. Here two things must be noted. First, that the mode by which the intellect understands a thing is twofold: one holding from the side of the thing understood; the other holding from the side of the intellect. The mode holding from the side of the thing understood is that which the intellect apprehends in the thing. The mode holding from the side of the intellect, however, is that which accompanies the act of understanding as it proceeds from the intellect. The first belongs to the thing according as it is outside the intellect; the second, however, according as it is in the intellect. When, therefore, it is said that the intellect does not attribute to things the mode by which it understands them, this is understood of the mode holding from the side of the intellect, and not of the mode holding from the side of the thing understood. The second is that, when the intellect forms two kinds of proposition about God, one saying, This is this, for example, God is good, and another saying, This is in this, for example, Goodness is in God, unity and diversity are conveyed in both, but in different ways. For in the first, unity is conveyed explicitly, namely by the verbal copula; but diversity is conveyed only implicitly, insofar as there is a plurality of words, one of which is placed in the subject and the other in the predicate; yet nothing signifies that very diversity, since diverse names may quite well signify the same thing. In the second, however, both the unity of the thing and the diversity on the part of the intellect are conveyed explicitly, unity by the verbal copula, plurality by the preposition. For, since nothing is in itself, this preposition must convey some diversity of one thing from another, at least according to the intellect. On account of this Saint Thomas said that in these propositions a certain diversity is designated which belongs to the intellect, that is, which is on the part of the intellect; and a certain unity, which must be referred to the thing.