Commentaria in Summam contra Gentiles, Liber III

Having shown that in this life we can in no way quidditatively understand separate substances, St. Thomas deduces further that much less can we see the essence of God in this life—we, namely, as pure wayfarers, so that we exclude Christ, who was at once comprehensor and wayfarer. Concerning this, however, he does two things: first, he proves the proposition; second, he removes certain objections ¹.

I. As to the first, he argues first by reason, thus. We cannot in this life understand separate substances, on account of the connaturality of our intellect to phantasms. Therefore, much less can we see the divine essence. — The consequence is proved. Because the divine essence transcends all separate substances; and consequently is more distant from phantasms than other separate substances.

Secondly, he argues from a sign. The more our mind is elevated to contemplating spiritual things, the more it is abstracted from sensible things. Therefore, to see the divine essence, which is the ultimate term of contemplation, it is necessary for the mind to be totally released from bodily senses, either by death or by rapture. — It is confirmed by the authority of Exodus 33.

II. It must be noted that from the proof taken from a sign, when it is said, namely, that for the mind to see the divine essence it must be totally abstracted from the senses by death or by rapture, St. Thomas gives to understand what he intends by this life, while he says that in this life we cannot see the divine essence. For by this life he does not understand the natural being of a living man, but he understands the exercise of the senses around sensible objects. And the sense is that a man using the senses cannot see the divine essence, but to see it he must be abstracted from the use of all senses: either through death, in which the natural being of man is also lost; or through rapture, in which, while the natural being of a man of higher nature remains, the mind is abstracted from that which belonged to it by nature, namely from understanding through phantasms.

2. It must be noted further, from the doctrine of St. Thomas, De Verit., q. 13 ², that for the vision of the divine essence there is not required, properly speaking, the abstraction of the soul from the body according to being. Indeed, not even its abstraction from the operations of the vegetative part: since the operation of the intellect is not mixed with operations of this kind; and attention is not required for them, such that through their acts attention would have to be diverted from the intellective operation. But abstraction from sensitive operations is required: because the intellect is mixed with sensible operations, and thus from sensible things its purity is in a certain way defiled; and also because attention must be present to both the operation of the sense and of the intellect, and thus attention to the one withdraws from the other. Therefore, St. Thomas did not say that the soul must be separated from the body, or abstracted from every other operation, in order to gaze upon the divine essence: but that it must be totally released from bodily senses, either through death or through some rapture.

It must be observed, however, that according to the common course and the common order of divine governance, one cannot see the divine essence unless the soul is separated from the body. By a miracle, however, as St. Thomas holds in the Prima Pars, q. 12, a. 11, ad 2; and De Verit., q. 10, a. 11; and In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 7, it can happen that someone existing in this life, abstracted from the senses, sees it. St. Thomas therefore touched upon the common manner when he said that the mind must be totally released from bodily senses through death; but he touched upon the particular and miraculous manner while adding or through rapture; giving to understand that it can indeed absolutely be brought about by divine power that someone in this life sees the essence of God; yet for the state of the way there is no power in the human soul, neither through natural principles nor through the infused habits of the way, through which it can gaze upon God's essence.

3. Why, however, the soul in such vision must be totally abstracted from the operations of the senses, St. Thomas assigns in the cited place ³, and Secunda Secundae, q. 175, a. 4, a twofold reason. One of which is that the soul, in which all cognitive powers are rooted, cannot simultaneously direct attention to the acts of several powers, unless those acts are ordered to one another as one act. Therefore, when it totally attends to the act of one power, it must be abstracted from the act of another power: as appears in one in whom the operation of sight is most strongly applied, for he does not perceive by hearing what is said. In the vision of the divine essence, however, the whole attention of the soul must be gathered together: since the divine essence is the most vehement intelligible object, which it cannot attain unless it tends toward it with all its endeavor. Therefore, it is necessary that an abstraction from bodily senses occur entirely.

The other is that, when the intellect is elevated above the common mode to see the supreme of immaterial things, namely the divine essence, it must also in that act be abstracted entirely from the use ⁴ of the sensitive powers.

III. As to the second point ⁵, St. Thomas brings forward two instances. The first is that in Sacred Scripture some are said to have seen God: as is clear, namely, concerning Jacob, Gen. 32 ⁶; and concerning Moses, Num. 12 ⁷; and concerning Isaiah, Isa. 6 ⁸.

He responds, however, and it is in accord with the thought of Dionysius, On the Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 4, that this must be understood either according to imaginary or corporeal vision, or through certain corporeal species formed either externally or internally, in which the presence of divine power was demonstrated; or else according as certain spiritual substances ⁹ perceived some intelligible cognition concerning God.

2. Concerning this second part of the response, it must be noted that St. Thomas touches upon the response of Gregory, which is set down in the Gloss, Gen. 32 ¹⁰. For Gregory interprets visions of this kind as concerning the spiritual vision by which the minds of the saints on the way, aided by divine light, contemplate God. By this vision there is had some more perfect cognition concerning God than through the natural light or through sensible things: since that supernatural light is a more express likeness of God than is the natural light of the intellect and than are sensible things. And because divine revelations, as St. Thomas says on Isaiah 6 ¹¹, and on Matthew 2 ¹², do not reach men except through the mediation of angels, it is therefore said here that sometimes such visions occur according as spiritual substances have perceived some intelligible truth concerning God, namely being divinely instructed, (supply) and have revealed it to men. And on this account such persons are said to have seen God, insofar as they received divine revelation from angels in the person of God.

Perhaps, however, the text is corrupt, and it ought to read thus: or even according as some spiritual men have perceived some intelligible cognition concerning God. And then the sense is clear. For some perceive divine things under corporeal figures demonstrating the presence of divine power; but others from an intrinsic illumination without corporeal figures.

Yet it must be observed that, although this is the common mode by which some are said to have seen God, St. Thomas nevertheless excepts Paul and Moses in De Verit., q. 10, a. 11, ad 1; and q. 13, a. 2; and Prima Pars, q. 12, a. 11, ad 2; and In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 7 ¹³; and this according to the mind of Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, bk. 12 ¹⁴, and in the Letter to Paulina on the Vision of God ¹⁵. For concerning these he concedes that they saw the divine essence in this life, but nevertheless through an all-encompassing abstraction from the senses.

IV. The second instance is ¹⁶ that Augustine, in De Trinitate IX and XII, in Confessions XII, in the book De Vera Religione, and in the book of the Soliloquies, seems to mean that we see God Himself, who is truth, and through Him know other things.

2. St. Thomas responds and says first that it is not to be believed that in those places Augustine intends that we can see the divine essence in this life: since he says the contrary in the Letter to Paulina on the Vision of God ¹⁷.

He says secondly—because Augustine maintains that we see unchangeable truth, or the eternal reasons, that is, the understood forms existing in the divine intellect, in this life, and judge of other things according to it—that since truth, namely subsisting truth, is in the soul, according also to Augustine in the book of the Soliloquies; and not only as God is found in all things by essence, nor as He is in all things through His likeness, because in this He is not preferred to other things ¹⁸, but in a spiritual manner, insofar as He is known: just as all things are called true in their own natures according as they have the likeness of that supreme nature which is truth itself; so that which is known by the soul is true insofar as a certain likeness of that divine truth which God knows exists in the soul. Which is indeed shown through the gloss upon that verse of the Psalm, Truths are decayed from among the children of men. And because there are certain truths in which all men agree, as are first principles both practical and speculative, according to which an image, as it were, of divine truth is universally found in the minds of men; insofar as whatever the mind knows with certitude, it gazes upon in these principles, and through them judges of all things, it is said to see all things in the divine truth, or in the eternal reasons, and to judge of all things according to them. Which sense Augustine himself also confirms in the Soliloquies.

From these things it is clear that from the words of Augustine cited above, it is not held that God is seen in this life according to His substance, but only as in a mirror: as is also said in 1 Cor. 13.

He says thirdly that, although this mirror which is the human mind represents the likeness of God more closely, that is, is a likeness nearer to God than lower things; nevertheless, the cognition of God which can be taken from it does not exceed the genus of cognition that is drawn from sensible things, since it also knows what it itself is through the nature of sensible things. Hence neither can God be known by this path in a higher way than as a cause is known through an effect.

3. Concerning this last statement, it must be considered that St. Thomas did not say that the cognition of God from the mind, in which He is known as in a certain mirror, is not higher than the cognition of God which we receive from sensible natures; but he said that it does not exceed this genus of cognition, as if, namely, it pertained to a certain higher genus of cognition. Because that cognition is indeed higher, for the reason that the more noble an effect is and the more closely it approaches the cause, the higher and more perfect is the cognition of the cause through that effect, and it is evident that the human mind is a more noble effect of God than any sensible effect; yet it is not a cognition of a higher genus. For since a twofold genus of cognition on the part of the thing known was touched upon above ¹⁹, namely the cognition of what it is and the cognition that it is; likewise a twofold genus on the part of the knower, namely cognition drawn from phantasms and cognition drawn from the participation of a higher light ²⁰: the cognition of God drawn from the human mind is just as much a cognition originating from phantasms as is the cognition of Him drawn immediately from sensible things; because the very cognition that the soul has of itself as to what it is arises from the cognition of sensible natures, as was shown above ²¹; and consequently the cognition of God from the very cognition of the mind originates from phantasms. — Similarly, such cognition is just as much a cognition of a cause through an inadequate effect, which is called cognition that it is, as is the cognition of God taken immediately from sensible things: because there is no effect that is adequate to the divine nature. — And thus it is clear that both of these cognitions pertain to the same genus, although one is higher and more perfect than the other within that genus.