Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE MODE OF KNOWING GOD IN THE STATE OF PRESENT LIFE.

The constant teaching of the Fathers on our mediate and analogical knowledge of God.

« Just as the chief error of the Eunomians in the fourth and fifth centuries was that they boasted that they themselves perfectly comprehended God's essence and what God is; yet by that very fact they supposed that the divine nature was understood through ideas not derived from elsewhere, and analogical, but immediate and proper, as it is in itself: so the defenders of the Catholic dogma, throughout this whole controversy, not only denied that God is comprehended by us, but also constantly maintained, for the explanation of the dogma, that the divine essence is not seen by us with a mental intuition in itself, but is known from the perfections of creatures already known, and therefore through analogical notions, as to what it is; and that this must be affirmed not only of purely rational knowledge, but also of the knowledge which we have drawn from revelation. »

I. As to the manner of knowing God, the summit of the Eunomian heresy was that they asserted that they themselves perfectly comprehended God and the divine essence. The Fathers and ecclesiastical writers who contended with those very men bear unanimous witness: Basil and Gregory of Nyssa in their books against Eunomius; Gregory Naz. or. 27. n. 3; Epiphanius haeres. 76. T. I. p. 989. 990; Jerome in Matth. XI. 27. T. VII. p. 74; Chrysostom in his homilies on the incomprehensible, e.g. hom. II. n. 3; Theodoret, haeretic. fabul. l. V. c. 3; Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaur. T. V. p. 200. « The man dared to say, says Chrysostom, l. c., that he knows God as God knows himself. » « Let Eunomius blush, who claims for himself such knowledge of the Father and the Son as they have of each other. But if from this he argues, and comforts his madness, because it follows (in the text of Matthew) and to whom the Son wishes to reveal, it is one thing to know by equality of nature, another by revelation » St Jerome, l. c. In this doctrine there is asserted at the same time a knowledge proper to God as he is in himself, and an immediate intuition, opposed to analogical knowledge through ideas derived from elsewhere, which is and is called abstractive. For if God is comprehended, as far as he is knowable, then assuredly he is known by a knowledge proper to him as he is in himself, and by no knowledge other than immediate, because the divine nature presents itself to the human mind as intelligible in itself and through itself; conversely, when this immediate intuition is denied, it follows of its own accord that God is known only through ideas derived from elsewhere and analogically, and not as he is in himself, and still less can he be comprehended ¹. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Anomoeans, in defending their heresy, even claimed for themselves in express words an immediate intuition of God. Epiphanius, l. c., so reports of Aëtius: « He, with his followers, has devised that God is known by himself above all mortals not according to faith, but by nature according to vision.... just as someone knows what is seen by the eyes and handled by the hands... thus this distinguished man says: I know God just as I know myself; indeed I do not so much know myself as I know God »².

This accusation of the Fathers and the description of the Eunomian error might seem, and indeed has seemed to some learned men, incredible (cf. Vasquez disp. 37. c. 2. n. 6.). But the Fathers, who disputed long and much with those heretics and certainly knew the whole nature of the error, clearly and often testify that the heretics claimed for themselves an intuition of the divine essence so perfect that God himself knows himself, and so comprehensive; yet the heretics are not on that account to be judged as having claimed for themselves the beatific vision, or, on the part of the object, a comprehension of the infinite essence, which is the divine essence as we Catholics hold and believe it to be. For the heretics erred about the very object of knowledge, namely the divine essence, I mean. The ultimate root of the Eunomians' error was in this: that they thought God to be that universal and abstract being, which is first conceived by us, and under whose aspect we understand whatever we understand³. The negative simplicity of this abstract being, since it is not placed in an infinity of perfection but in abstraction from every determinate perfection, the single most simple notion of τοῦ εἶναι remaining, namely in opposition to non esse; indeed we comprehend this being adequately, and far more perfectly than ourselves, as they used to say. Hence also the heretics, as we shall see below, asserted that all the names said of God (that being most simple by abstraction), for example essence, unbegotten, wisdom, justice, etc., are wholly synonymous; and the Fathers objected against them⁴ that what presented itself to their mind and thought was not God but something far different.

II. From the very nature of the controversy as explained, it is easily understood that the Fathers could not refute the error of the heretics in its whole character without also teaching what is to be thought about the origin of the idea of God and about the immediate intuition of the divine nature. And indeed, while Catholic doctors refuted in many ways the principal error concerning the comprehension of God, from the Scriptures and from the analogy of faith, there is none of them who did not intend, in explaining the Catholic teaching, at the same time to uncover and utterly root out the root of the error, namely the doctrine of an immediate intuition of the divine essence and the opinion consequently following from it about the knowledge of God as he is in himself. In this controversy, which is wholly dogmatic, the Fathers may be considered first as Doctors of the Church, insofar as they both declare and cultivate the Catholic mind; and in this respect how great their authority is, with the added consent which can be shown to be unanimous, directly or indirectly, is established from the treatise on Tradition. Next, the proofs themselves can be considered, by which they demonstrate, from the analogy of faith and the natures of things, that the immediate intuition of the divine essence and knowledge of God as he is in himself must be denied, and that our ideas of God are drawn from the previously known perfections of creatures, and that therefore in this mortal life we can attain only to a mediate and analogical knowledge. Then indeed we shall understand from their teaching not only that it is so, but also why it is so; and at the same time it will appear how closely the teaching of the Scholastics, and especially of St Thomas, is connected with the declaration anticipated by the holy Fathers; from all of which both the constancy in teaching and the truth of the doctrine are wonderfully illustrated.

Accordingly, 1°, the Fathers examine the very concepts we have of God, and they teach as follows about them. All our concepts of God are of such a kind that they manifestly show their origin from creatures already known, and by that very fact do not present God as he is in himself. For either the concepts affirm some perfection, and this either in the concrete, as wise, just, etc., or in the abstract, as wisdom, justice, etc. Now all those former concepts, in the way in which we first form them in the mind, present a subject in which wisdom inheres as a form; the latter present a form which demands to be in a subject, from which it is abstracted by thought. But all these things are so only in created beings; God is not a subject under a perfecting form, nor is he an abstract form; but he is substantial wisdom, which is at the same time every other perfection in supreme simplicity. We attain this, that it is so, by reason and by faith; how it is, no proper concept presents to us. Or the concepts are negative, by which imperfection is denied of God. But God is not represented by these as he is in himself; rather there is presented the imperfection which is in the creature, and that is denied of God, because we understand that there is no imperfection in God; but we do not on that account have a proper concept of that perfection by which all imperfection is excluded. Although therefore we are taught by reason and faith that all perfections, and the very notion of being, are in God wholly otherwise and far more eminently than in creatures, our concepts nevertheless cannot represent anything but what is common to creatures and generic; for they do not present the divine perfections as they are in God, specifically, or rather individually and supereminently. Hence it readily appears that the concepts of the perfections which we affirm of God we first abstracted from creatures, since in the way in which we can conceive them distinctly they are not in God but in creatures. Hence it comes about that while we affirm perfections of God, we are at the same time obliged to deny that they are in God in this imperfect way; although we do not grasp the mode in which they are in him.

I say nothing here that is not expressed in so many words by the Fathers named at the beginning: let there be read, by way of example, Gregory Nazianzen, or. 28, al. 34, or 2nd theological oration. He first admonishes, at n. 6, that it is quite different to know that God is, and to know what he is: for, he says, a man is exceedingly foolish who does not understand from natural demonstrations from creatures that God is, and that God is not this (not so) as we can conceive or describe him in speech. Then, having proceeded to the inquiry into what God is, he shows at n. 7. 8. that he is incorporeal. « But however we say that he is incorporeal, that is not a presentation or comprehension of his essence, any more than that he is uncreated, without beginning, unchangeable and incorruptible, and whatever else is said of God, or about God » (καὶ ὅσα περὶ θεοῦ ἢ περὶ θεὸν εἶναι λέγεται); just as, to know the nature of anything, it is not enough to know that it is a body, or that it is created; « for it can be either a man, or an ox, or a horse. » The first cause, therefore, why we do not understand God as he is in himself is traced by Gregory from this: that our concepts of God are common, and do not represent the divine things according to their proper nature.

Yet these things are no less true of the knowledge of faith than of what is merely rational; for the Fathers manifestly speak of every mode of knowledge that we can reach in the present state. Indeed they expressly demonstrate that this same reason is why we do not understand God as he is in himself, even in the case of the knowledge of faith drawn from revelation. The Prophets and Apostles, says Gregory of Nyssa, against Eunomius XII, p. 319. 320, Tom. II, « by making God clear and known to men from the wonders which shine forth in his works, and by the names by which the variety of divine power is understood, lead them to knowledge of the divine nature, manifesting to men only the greatness of those things which are considered concerning God⁵, but as for the reason of the essence, since it could not be grasped, they left it unspoken, ineffable and unsearchable.... For if we have learned some names for the declaration of divine knowledge, all these have communion and analogy with names of this kind which designate a property of man..... All the words of the holy Scriptures devised for the glorification of God indicate something of those things which are made manifest concerning God, each containing its own proper meaning⁶, through which we are taught either that he is powerful, or incapable of defect, or not from any cause.... but the essence itself (as it is in itself), since it cannot be grasped by understanding and is ineffable in words, they left without curious inquiry. »

Moreover, although we may correct the commonness of the concept, if it is permissible so to speak, by adding a negation, the Fathers say that it indeed follows that the concept is true, yet not so as to present God according to his proper nature, as he is in himself. Immediately after the passages above, Nazianzen adds: « It is not enough to say what he is not, but whoever wishes to investigate the nature of him who is (τοῦ ὄντος), must also say what he is; for he who only states what a thing is not does the same as one who, asked how much is twice five, should answer that it is not one nor two... yet he would not say that it is ten, nor would he bring the mind of the questioner to what he seeks. »

Further, by examination of the individual affirmative concepts, the same Nazianzen demonstrates at n. 13 their origin from creatures and their imperfection. Setting aside metaphorical names, such as when God is called fire, light, etc., and considering the perfections themselves, which are expressed by proper appellations, charity, wisdom, justice, understanding, Word, all these, says Gregory, we conceive not as they are in God; but « understanding indeed as it is in someone, and whose movements and thoughts are either silent or uttered by voice; word, what kind of word, unless either resting in us or poured forth? wisdom, justice, charity, what else than laudable habits and dispositions which inform us and change us? If, however, withdrawing from all these, we wish to see the divine as it is in itself, as far as it can be done, gathering some partial representation from these shadows, what is this effort? It will be from these and not these, or how are all these together, and each of them perfectly, that one thing which is simple by nature and which cannot be represented? » Vide Basil. contra Eunom. l. I. n. 13. 14; ep. 234. 235; Nyssen. contra Eunom l. XII. p. 320-331.

The whole demonstration of the origin of our ideas, and of the mediate knowledge alone of divine things, and of the analogy of our concepts consequently drawn from it, which everywhere recurs among the Fathers in the Eunomian controversy, is easily seen to be the perfect exemplar to which the doctrine of St Thomas and of the theologians of the Schools is expressed. Let there be read, for example, St Thomas, De potentia q. 7. a. 5: « It is clear that no effect equals the power of the first agent, which is God.... Therefore no form of any divine effect is in God in the same way as it is in the effect; nevertheless it must be there in some higher manner; and hence it is that all the forms which are distinct and diverse from one another in various effects are united in him as in one common power... and the perfections of created things are likened to God according to his one and simple essence. Our intellect, however, since it receives knowledge from created things, is informed by likenesses (analogical ideas) of the perfections found in creatures, such as wisdom, virtue, goodness and the like. Hence, just as created things are in some way, though deficiently, likened to God, so also our intellect is informed by the species of these perfections..... Hence it must be that those things which the intellect, informed by the species of these perfections, thinks or states about God, truly exist in God, who corresponds to each of the aforesaid species as that to which all the like things are like. But if such an intelligible species of our intellect equalled the divine essence in its likeness, it would comprehend it... Yet the aforesaid species does not perfectly liken the divine essence, as has been said; and therefore although such names as the intellect attributes to God from such conceptions signify that which is the divine substance, nevertheless they do not perfectly signify it according as it is, but according as it is understood by us »⁷. In this sense the Fathers say that we know not the essence but the things which are about it, not the first and simple nature, which remains within the veil, but that which is posterior (compare Exod. XXXIII. 23.) and descends to us; this is the majesty and magnificence, insofar as it is manifested in creatures; of this kind indeed are its notions which come after it, as the images of the sun in water show the sun to weak eyes. Naz.l.c.n.3.

2° To uproot the fiction of knowledge of the divine nature as it is in itself, so long as we live in this mortal body, the Fathers take up the examination and set forth a full theory of human knowledge. Indeed they establish, both in general and in particular in their disputations against the Eunomians, concerning our mode of knowing, the same principles for the most part which St Thomas and the other Scholastics afterwards developed.

Therefore the Fathers teach a) that our mode of knowing in the present life begins from sensible things, concerning which their teaching has been sufficiently stated above, in thesis VII, n. 1°. From this they not only infer that the existence of God is known by us from previously known effects, a matter which we treated in the same place; but they also thence demonstrate that, just as the idea of God is not immediate and intuitive, so the essence of God as it is in itself cannot be known by us: because effects and all created things are plainly of another kind (equivocal effects), and do not equal the power of their cause. « We say that the majesty and wisdom and goodness and providence of God are known by us... but his operations are various, while his essence is simple; we say that God is known by us from his operations, but we do not promise access to the essence itself » Basil, ep. 234. « God is in himself what he is, but he is called by those who invoke him not what he is, for his nature is ineffable, which is he who is; yet he has names from those things which we are sure he works in relation to us.... but the essence is prior to the operations, and we understand the operations through those things which are subject to the senses... and the human mind, as far as it grasps through the operations, so far it speaks » Nyssen, contra Eunom. XII. p. 329-331. « God is none of those things that are (οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων; that is, nothing of those things of which being is the immediate object of our concept), not as if he were not, but because he is above all things that are; if therefore our knowledge is of beings, what is above knowledge is also above essence, and conversely what is above essence will also be above knowledge » Damasc. Fid. orth. l. I. c. 4.

St Thomas explains this ground, as the principal one, in many places; e.g. in Boët. Trin. lect. II. q. 2. art. 3: « Our intellect, in the state of the wayfarer, cannot be borne immediately to the divine essence and to other separate essences, because it is immediately extended to phantasms, to which it is related as sight is to colour, as is said in De anima 3; and so the intellect can immediately conceive the quiddity of a sensible thing, but not of any intellectual thing... But there are certain invisible things whose quiddity and nature are perfectly expressed by the quiddities of known sensible things, and of such intelligibles we can know what they are, but mediately.... Sensible natures, when understood, do not sufficiently express the divine essence, nor even certain separate essences, since they are not naturally of one genus⁸ when speaking; and the quiddity and all names of this kind are said almost equivocally of sensibles and of those substances.... and so by the way of likeness those substances are not sufficiently known from these. Nor again by the way of causality, because the things which are found to be effected by those substances in these lower things are not effects equal to their powers, so that one could arrive at knowing what it is (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of the cause. Hence concerning those immaterial substances, in the state of the wayfarer, we can in no way know what they are (by a proper concept, but only an analogical one), not only by the way of natural knowledge, but not even by the way of revelation, because the ray of divine revelation reaches us according to our mode, as Dionysius says⁹. For although we are raised through revelation to know something which otherwise would be unknown to us, yet not so that we should know in any other way than through sensibles... And so it remains that immaterial forms are not known to us by knowledge of what they are, but only by knowledge that they are, whether by natural reason from the effects of creatures or also from revelation, which is through likenesses taken from the senses. »

b) The Fathers, no less than the Scholastic theologians, declare this mode of our knowledge from the necessary and universal principle of all knowledge. Knowledge is not according to the mode of the known thing's being and perfection, but according to the mode of the knower, of whose vital act it is. Hence it comes about that those things which are inferior to us by nature we know in a nobler way than they are in themselves, material things intellectually; while those things which are superior to us by nature we know in a less perfect way than they are in themselves. Now we are a composite nature, not only because we consist of soul and body, but also because in the soul, considered in itself, there is potency and act, and therefore a perfection limited by imperfection; and knowledge itself is not a substance but an accident in the substance of the soul. Hence of all that we understand we form concepts according to the proportion and analogy of this our composite being; and therefore the infinite Being, which in supreme simplicity, without composition and without limitation, is every perfection absolutely, we cannot conceive by any notion as it is in itself.

In this sense the Fathers are accustomed to teach that the measure of the knowledge of God is in us; « for divine things are revealed (as Dionysius says, De div. nom. c. 1. §. 1.) according to the analogy of each mind, and the divine goodness, which is immeasurable, as it were accommodating itself to our mode of knowing, encloses the immeasurable in some measure » (ἐν μετρῳ τὴν ἀμετρίαν, ὡς ἀχωρητον). The complete theory which we have set forth can be read in Gregory of Nyssa, cont. Eunom. l. I. p. 98. (ed. Gretzer), and in Cyril of Alexandria, in Thesauro Opp. T. V. P. I. p. 264. 267. From the unlimited perfection of God in supreme simplicity, and from the composition which is in us, they conclude: « Since we cannot go beyond the measure given to us, we see God, who is incomprehensible, as in a mirror and in an enigma; for the nature of man cannot say anything greater about God than what belongs to its own nature: therefore we use our own modes, and make our own indications of greater things » (τὰ καθ' ἑαυτοὺς μειζόνων ὑποδείγματα ποιούμενοι). Among the Scholastics, besides St Thomas, 1. q. 12. a. 4, the one worth reading is Suarez, Metaphysics disp. XXX, sect. XI, n. 13, where he has those things which demonstrate that knowledge of the divine essence as it is in itself, and consequently the immediate intuition of God, is superior not only to the intellect of man but to that of any creature, as long as it is permitted only the natural powers and those proportioned to its nature. Of these things the discussion will return further below, where we shall treat of the beatific vision.

The agreement of St Augustine with the doctrine of the other Fathers is demonstrated.

« The doctrine of the Fathers as declared is by no means contradicted by the opinion of St Augustine concerning our intellectual knowledge and concerning the manner in which we know God; for, first, Augustine taught that for the present state of life there is no other knowledge of God than mediate and analogical, from previously known perfections of the created order and from truths of the metaphysical order, which in themselves are wholly different from the substantial perfection and truth of God; second, he taught that God is the light of knowable things and the light of minds exemplarily and efficiently, not formally; whence, third, what he said, that every truth is known by us in the unchangeable truth and in the eternal reasons, is to be understood not of the means of knowledge but of the cause of intellectual light. »

According to the doctrine of the Fathers expounded in the preceding thesis, the older theologians also used to explain St Augustine, whom some more recent writers (since the waning of the seventeenth century) contend to have claimed for the human mind an immediate intuition of God as the norm and principle of all intellectual knowledge; and they do so with such confidence that they say they are amazed that this fact, which they hold evident in the history of philosophy and theology, has been called into question by anyone. But there is above all a threefold prejudice which compels us to doubt that alleged evidence. For a) we do not readily believe that Augustine dissented from the other Fathers who discussed this matter theologically. b) It is even more incredible that the Scholastics, if this opinion were so evident, did not see it in Augustine, whom they always held as guide and prince of Doctors, and whose teaching they all strove to derive faithfully into their own streams. c) The same learned men who speak of this evidence heap up citations from other Fathers to persuade the same opinion, in which, however, we have seen that they were most manifestly deceived. Let us therefore examine, as briefly as can be done, the very teaching of Augustine.

Augustine distinguishes a threefold knowledge or vision: the first he calls corporeal (i.e. the perception of present bodies through the bodily senses), the second spiritual (i.e. the representation of absent bodies through the imagination), and finally a third, intellectual, which is more excellent and proper to the mind. Of each of these kinds he sometimes speaks as they are natural knowledge, and sometimes, and indeed more frequently in the second and third kind, as they are supernatural knowledge or vision. Gen. ad. litt. l. XII. c. 6-31 ; de Trin. l. IX. c. 6; XII. c. 2. Cf. de Ordine l. II. c. 14. sq.; de Civ. Dei. l. VIII. c. 7. etc. We have no need now to say anything about the distinction and essential difference between sensible perception and the understanding of the mind; nor is there any controversy about what St Augustine insists on against the Greek materialists, that we judge sensibles not by sense but by reason, and that intelligibles, and God himself especially, are objects knowable only by the intellectual faculty. The whole inquiry concerning the sense of Augustine is concerned only with those three heads which we have indicated in the thesis.

I. The first question therefore is this: whether Augustine held that the divine Being, insofar as God is truth itself and goodness itself, is exhibited immediately, through itself and in itself, to our intellectual gaze? Or whether he agreed with the other Fathers, as the masters of the Schools always interpreted him, in the doctrine that the divine Being cannot, in our present state and by our natural faculty, be intuited immediately in itself and through itself; but that, the creatures and the perfections of creatures being immediately understood, human reason, by concluding from these (ἀναλόγως Sap. XIII. 5.), attains to the knowledge of God, and conceives the divine perfections, not through ideas derived from the divine essence seen itself, but by concluding from created and creatable perfections understood to the perfections of the Creator, which are eminent not only ontologically above all creatable perfections, but also, for the immediate vision, logically above our intellect?

Now, on this question, Augustine, like the other Fathers, constantly teaches that the intellectual soul is indeed destined in the present order to the vision of God, who is Being itself absolute, truth itself, goodness itself; but that this immediate vision is supernatural, to be attained as the reward of merits in eternal beatitude; and that there is no other mode, at least natural, of knowing God, except mediately, from previously known created things and created perfections. The most perfect knowledge, he says, is when, in the truth itself already known, through which all things are created and in which are the eternal reasons of all created things, all the other things that are known are known. This is the proper mode of the blessed Angels, and ours will be when we are made equal to the Angels. But now, in the present state, the human mind can attain to knowing those eternal reasons to some extent, but only from creatures already known, and (since what is at issue is knowledge of the eternal reasons, and so already of a more cultivated kind) only after a long time and not without great difficulty (cf. supra p.98.). There is therefore certainly an immediate knowledge of the supreme truth, which is God, through which and in which the other things which have a participated truth are known; but Augustine, like the others, knows of no other such immediate intuition of the mind besides the beatific vision. For us the mode of knowing that supreme truth, which contains all the eternal reasons of the whole metaphysical and physical order, of essences and existences, is none other than to labour toward it, as toward the exemplar, from other truths as shadows and expressions already known; although afterwards, from it known either naturally or most of all supernaturally, there lies open a return to a more perfect knowledge of the whole created and creatable order. This second, as it were, mode of recognition is indeed a certain image of the beatific vision, in which, through the essence of God seen, the created order is seen; and this again, known in itself, is referred wholly to the praise and glorification of God.

Let the words of Augustine himself be read. « There is a great difference between the knowledge of a thing in the Word of God and its knowledge in its own nature (of the thing itself), so that the former rightly pertains to the day, the latter to the evening. For in comparison with the light of that Word which is beheld in the Word of God, every knowledge by which we know any creature in itself can not undeservedly be called night.... Wherefore the holy Angels, with whom we shall be made equal after the resurrection... undoubtedly first knew in the Word of God itself the whole creature in which they themselves were principally created, in which are the eternal reasons of all things, even of those made in time... and then in the creature itself, which they so know as looking down from below and referring it to the praise of him in whose unchangeable truth they principally see the reasons according to which it was made. » If, however, Augustine goes on, the angels see all these things at the same time, « yet not without order, by which the connection of preceding and following causes appears. For knowledge cannot come about unless the things to be known go before, which are likewise prior in the Word through which all things were made, than in all the things that were made. The human mind (this is the inference of the twofold way of knowing God from the aforementioned connection of order between Creator and creature) first experiences through the senses of the body those things which were made, and grasps their notice according to the measure of human weakness; and then it asks for their causes, if in some way it can arrive at those which remain principally and unchangeably in the Word of God, and so beholds his invisible things through the things that were made, understood. How slowly and with what difficulty it does this, and with how great a delay of time on account of the corruptible body which weighs down the soul, even for one who is most ardently swept along by study, so that it may do this instantly and perseveringly: who does not know? But the angelic mind, cleaving to the Word of God with pure charity, after it was created in that order to precede the rest, first saw in the Word of God the things to be made before they were made... which likewise, when made, it also knew in them, with less knowledge indeed, which is called evening » de Gen. ad litt. l. IV. n. 40. 41. 49. See also the passage cited above, p. 110, from Serm. 141. Distinctly in the book de vera relig. n. 52-67, and l. VII. n. 23. Confess. describes the steps by which the human mind comes to understand, in some measure, the invisible things of God through the things that were made, « step by step from bodies to the soul that senses through the body, and from there to its inner power, to which the senses of the body announce external things, and as far as beasts can reach; and from there again to the reasoning power, to which belongs the judging of what is taken from the senses of the body. This power, finding itself in me to be changeable, raised itself to its own understanding (by which metaphysical and absolutely necessary truths are understood), and drew itself away from custom, withdrawing from the contradicting crowds of phantasms, so that it might find by what light it was sprinkled, when without any doubt it cried out that the unchangeable is to be preferred to the changeable, whence it knew the unchangeable itself, which unless it knew in some way, it would in no way set surely before the changeable. And it arrived at that which is in the instant of a trembling glance. Then indeed I beheld your invisible things, understood through the things that were made, but I could not fix my gaze. » The last step is in a way twofold in this contemplation of Augustine: he understands that he understands the unchangeable; he therefore seeks that from which this understanding of the human mind comes, and in which every unchangeable truth has its ultimate foundation. And so from this step he « arrived at that which is in the instant of a trembling glance, » namely to God, the supreme intelligence, whose created image is the understanding soul, and to the supreme substantial truth, in which are the reasons of every truth. Certainly the objective metaphysical truth which is abstract and universal, or that which is the object of the judging mind concerning the essences of things, is far different from substantial wisdom and truth, although the intellect is from it as from a creating cause and is made like it as to an exemplar, and in it every knowable truth has its foundation. When therefore Augustine says in the same place: « seeking whence I judged, when I so judged (this ought to be so, that not so), I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind, » he certainly did not think either that his own intellect judging thus, or the object itself of his metaphysical judgment, was God; but from the consideration of his own intellect and of metaphysical truth he ascended by the intellect to God as to cause and exemplar. The passage which many are accustomed to abuse should be understood in exactly the same way, Gen. ad litt. l. XII. n. 59, where the mind, caught up and withdrawn from the carnal senses, is presented to the vision more expressly, and is said « to see above itself also that by which, being helped, it sees whatever it sees even in understanding itself, » if the discourse there were about natural knowledge; but from the context it is evident that it is not about this, but about a vision such as God granted by extraordinary elevation to Moses, to whom he « spoke mouth to mouth, » and to the Apostle caught up into the third heaven. See there n. 54. 55. 56. 69.

Furthermore, that the object of metaphysical judgment, when the mind judges about the essences of things which are, or can be, outside God, is not God himself for Augustine but a step from which one ascends to God, the substantial truth, must without controversy be held as most certain, even if the holy Doctor did not say so expressly. Nevertheless he himself declares this principle expressly. Thus in Soliloq. l. I. c. seq. he shows that the contemplations of the disciplines (say metaphysics and mathematics) and God himself are understood by the same mind; yet God is by far different and altogether other, and so is what the mind gazes upon in these truths, although God himself is the first light, from which the light of the mind is derived, and from which is every objective truth that can be known. « I am led to agree that, as far as earth differs from heaven in its own kind, so far do those contemplations of the disciplines, true and certain, differ from the intelligible majesty of God.... Each most certain of the disciplines is of such a kind as those things which are illuminated by the sun, so that they can be seen, as the earth is seen; but God is he himself who illuminates¹.... God is indeed intelligible, and those contemplations of the disciplines are also intelligible, yet they differ very much » ib. n. 11. 12. 15. The same distinction is in l. II. de lib. arbitr.: « As true and unchangeable are the rules of numbers, whose reason and truth you said are present to all, unchangeably and in common, so true and unchangeable are the rules of wisdom... Therefore in no way will you deny that there is an unchangeable truth containing all these things, which are unchangeably true (as cause and exemplar)... as a light that is secret and public in marvelous ways » ib. n. 29. 33. Hence from the contemplations of the disciplines, from the unchangeable truths understood, the ascent of the mind to understanding the substantial truth which contains the reasons of all of them is plain. « If anyone should reduce all the things which are spread widely and variously through so many disciplines to one simple, true and certain thing, he would not rashly then seek those divine things which are not only to be believed, but also to be contemplated, understood and retained » de Ord. l. II. c. 16. See also the admirable teaching in l. XV. de Trin. n. 16.

II. A second question, connected with the former, presents itself: in what sense is to be understood what Augustine approves in Platonic philosophy²: « that the one same God, by whom all things were made, is the light of minds for learning all things » (Civ. Dei VIII. c. 7.).

First it must be explained what the very metaphor of light means. God is called light in himself (in opposition to darkness), and the highest good, the highest perfection, in almost the same sense in which he is called pure act: « God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all » 1. Io. I. 5. Most of all, however, in the order of knowledge, which (its name being taken from the senses) is a certain vision, he is called light in himself as infinite intelligible essence, in which are the supreme reasons of all true things, and as infinite intellect comprehending his own essence, inasmuch as he is identified with it, and on whom all created understanding depends. « Because for God it is the same to be and to understand, and he is the cause of understanding for all, therefore he is said to be light » S. Thom. contr. gent. l. III. c. 53. In himself God is shining light; hence it can be deduced in what sense he is illuminating light, « the light of things to be known » Civ. Dei VIII. 9. Insofar as the divine essence is imitable outwardly, it is the reason of all things, both possible and existing, or of the whole being outside God, in which it extends widely; whence the same essence, as the supreme true intelligible, is the reason and foundation of every intelligible truth: and so it illuminates the very objects of our knowledge, which signifies nothing other than this very thing that we say, that God is the supreme reason of all knowable things: « each most certain of the disciplines is of such a kind as those things which are illuminated by the sun, so that they can be seen; but God is he himself who illuminates » Aug. l. c. superius. But God is not (even in the opinion of Augustine) a light for us in the present state, perhaps in that sense that, having seen God intellectually in him as supreme truth, we see the remaining true things, the reasons of which the divine essence itself certainly contains in itself. This mode of knowing is without doubt most perfect, essential to God himself, who is the substantial truth itself, and is communicated supernaturally by participation, according to manifold degrees, in the beatific vision. To us, at least naturally, and also according to the ordinary charisms of supernatural elevation, only a certain imitation of this kind is possible: that, having come to know God from creatures and above all through faith, we descend from that knowledge to a more perfect recognition of creatures and of truths in the physical, logical and ethical order, all of which have their supreme reason in God: thus also the philosophers, « having known God, found where was the cause of the constituted universe, and the light of perceiving truth, and the fountain of drinking happiness » Civ. Dei VIII. 10. All that we have said in n. I demonstrates that these things are according to the opinion of Augustine.

But certainly Augustine regarded not only, nor principally, this illumination of the things to be known, but above all the illumination of the knower: « God is the light of minds. » It is asked in what sense this is to be understood. The light of the mind is spoken of in many ways: the natural power itself of understanding is an intellectual light; there is the light of the natural habit of the first principles, which the intellect understands first, and according to which it judges of other truths as evident in themselves; there is the light of the natural habit of science; there is the light of a supernatural cognitive habit, that is, ordered to supernatural knowledge of the true, as is the habit of faith, and also actual transient grace, by which the mind is raised to actual supernatural knowledge; and as the ultimate perfection, to which faith stands as a beginning, the light is that supernatural disposition of the soul by which it is raised and made apt for the immediate vision of God in himself, which is called the light of glory; the living act of understanding itself, whether natural or supernatural, can be called light. Now all these things are certainly not God, but are created light as a form or act inhering in the created mind itself. But God is the partly sole efficient cause and partly the first cause of this light, and so it is light derived from God; and the rational creature through this intellectual light itself (from the essential intellective faculty, which is presupposed as its foundation, through all the degrees up to the light of glory) is the image of the infinite intellect of God and of substantial wisdom. Namely, just as God according to infinite essence is the first cause and exemplar of all being, according to absolute life is the first cause and exemplar of all life, according to justice is the first cause and exemplar of all justice in creatures, etc.; so according as he is wisdom and absolute intellect, he is the first cause and exemplar of all intellect and of all knowledge in creatures. According to this twofold reason of dependence and imitation, one understands that as participated being, life, justice and the other participated perfections, so participated intellectual light is from God, who as light is absolute, as from the first efficient and exemplar cause. Therefore just as God is e.g. our justice, not as if he were the justice by which we are formally just and which each of us receives in himself as his own, nor the justice by which God himself is just; but in that God is the first cause and exemplar of our justice (Conc. Trid. sess. VI. cap. 7.), so according to the same reason of cause and exemplar God is the light of minds, both in the natural order and much more perfectly in the supernatural order. Augustine himself declares this matter, naming it, with regard to the supernatural and most perfect participation in the divine light, almost no less distinctly than was later done by the Scholastics. « Let the human mind remember its God, to whose image it was made, and let it understand and love him... and not by its own light but by the participation of that highest light it will be wise, and where he is eternal, there it will reign blessed. For that wisdom of man is so called, that it is also of God... but not in such a way is it of God, by which God is wise. For he is not wise by participation in himself, as the mind is wise by participation in God. But just as he is also called justice of God, not only that by which he himself is just, but which he gives to man when he justifies the wicked³, which the Apostle, commending it, says of certain people: "being ignorant of the justice of God, and wishing to establish their own justice, they have not submitted to the justice of God"; so also it can be said of certain people: "being ignorant of the wisdom of God and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted to the wisdom of God" » Aug. de Trin. l. XIV. n. 15.

So there is a participation of the divine light, which God is as absolute truth and wisdom: it is the assimilation of the rational creature to that uncreated light through a created light, that is, through the power of understanding, both natural and supernatural, up to the light of glory, by which « we shall be like him, since we shall see him as he is; » and God is an uncreated sun communicating this created light, not indeed by emanation but by efficiency, to the likeness of himself.

St Thomas declares this matter in many places. « It is necessary that above the human soul there be some intellect, on which its (the soul's) understanding depends... because whatever belongs to something by participation is first in something substantially; as if iron is ignited, there must be in things something which is fire according to its own substance and nature.... It is therefore necessary that there be something higher than the soul, which is intellect according to its whole nature, from which the intellectuality of the soul is derived, and on which its understanding depends... But it cannot be said that this higher intellect makes intelligible things actual in us immediately, without some power which our soul participates from it... For every agent, whatever action it performs, has formally in itself the power which is the principle of such an action. Whence it is necessary that the intellect be something formally inhering in man... We say that the light of the agent intellect (the power of the mind to abstract intelligible reasons from sensible things) is impressed immediately on us by God, according as we discern the true from the false, and the good from the evil; and of this it is said in Ps. IV. 6: "many say, who will show us good things? The light of your face, O Lord, is signed upon us, by which good things are shown to us." Thus what makes intelligible things actual in us, by way of participated light, is something of the soul and is multiplied according to the multitude of souls and men. But that which makes intelligible things by way of the illuminating sun is one separate thing, which is God⁴. But this one separate principle of our knowledge cannot be understood through the agent intellect of which the philosopher speaks, because God is not in the nature of the soul (he is not formally the power of the soul, but efficiently giving and conserving the power of the soul, and cooperating with it as first cause); but the agent intellect is named by Aristotle the light received in our soul from God... It is proper to God to illuminate men by impressing on them the natural light of the agent intellect, and above this light the light of grace and of glory » S. Th. de spiritual. creatur. a. 10; Summae 1. q. 12. a. 2; q. 79. a. 4; q. 84. a. 5; q. 88. a. 3. ad 1.

It is plain from these very things that what St Thomas sometimes says, that the divine ideas or the divine light are impressed on our souls, and which (using a locution taken from Ps. IV. 7) he calls the sealing of the divine light in us (1. q. 84. a. 5. cf. Aug. Trin. XIV. n. 21.), is nothing other than that same communication of intellectual light in the order of nature, grace and glory, to which on the part of the creature corresponds what is called participation. This impression and sealing of habitual light is, moreover, perpetual in us through divine conservation and cooperation in every actual understanding. St Thomas proves, in Boëth. de Trin. prooem. q. 1. a. 1., that we do not need for natural knowledge any other light superadded by God, because the mind is already illuminated divinely by the natural light, namely by the natural intellectual power; yet, he says, that very natural light perpetually depends on the operation of God, and so the natural illumination is derived continuously from God. « Augustine says (Genes. ad litt. l. VIII: n. 26.) that as the air is illumined by a present light, which if it be absent is immediately darkened; so the mind is illumined by God, and so God also always causes in the soul the natural light, not one thing after another but the same; for he is the cause not only of its becoming but also of its being. In this, then, God works continually in the mind, that he causes the natural light in it and directs it; and thus the mind proceeds to its operation not without the operation of the first cause » S. Th. ib. ad 6. Hence it also appears in what sense Augustine said that, through illumination, especially that which is supernatural, many truths result from one first truth, although they are diminished in created spirits. « The truths are diminished by the sons of men. There is one truth by which holy souls are illumined, but since there are many souls, many truths can be said to be in them; as from one face many images appear in mirrors » Aug. in Ps. VI. 2. Cf. S. Th. de spir. creat. a. 10. ad 8; 1. q. 16. a. 6; contr. gent. III. c. 47; de verit. q. 10. a. 11. ad 12; 4. dist. 49. q. 2. a. 7. ad 9; Quodl. 10. a. 7.

III. From all that we have said so far, there is also deduced the answer to the last question proposed: in what sense the teaching of St Augustine is to be understood, that we see every true thing which we see « in that unchangeable truth which is above our minds » Confess. l. XII. c. 25; de vera relig. n. 55. 56. 57; de Trin. l. XIV. n. 21. etc. (Vid. S. Th. cont. Gent. III. 47.)

This can be taken in three ways. 1° In such a way that we immediately see that very truth which God is, and in it, as known beforehand, we see all the true things which we see apart from God. This mode and order of knowing has its place only in the beatific vision, and in this life only through the charism of extraordinary elevation; this is attested and ratified in the teaching of Augustine, as we have sufficiently shown. Let it be noted, however, what we have already warned, that Augustine frequently in his philosophy descends from the eternal reasons in the divine mind, either already known through faith or understood from the consideration of creatures, to a deeper understanding of creatures and of every truth which is derived from God. 2° That opinion can be understood in such a way that all truth which we understand to be thus and cannot be otherwise is derived from the unchangeable and substantial truth and has its foundation in it⁵, and so that the human mind, from the abstract ideas of truth, goodness, beauty, justice, etc., which it has pre-conceived from creatures as perfections involving in their notion no imperfection, can ascend immediately to absolute and substantial truth, goodness, etc., and to the grasping, in some measure, of its spiritual nature, in which alone created perfections have their cause and absolute exemplar⁶. 3° Finally it can be understood that we see all things in the first truth, in that the very power of seeing which is in our mind, namely the intellectual faculty itself, is as a certain imitation and derived image, and depends on that substantial truth as on an exemplar, efficient, conserving and concurrent cause; and thus the mind sees the true in the substantial truth itself, not indeed as in a known medium, but as through the principle and cause both of the knowability of things and of the light in the knower. That in the second and third sense the intellectual vision of every truth in the first truth, which is God, is taught by Augustine, has likewise already been demonstrated above.

In this manner St Thomas interprets the opinion of Augustine. « Augustine, in 83 Questions (q. 46.), put in place of the ideas which Plato posited the reasons of all creatures existing in the divine mind, according to which all things are formed, and according to which also the human soul knows all things. When therefore it is asked whether the human soul knows all things in the eternal reasons, it must be said that something is known in something in two ways: in one way as in the object known, as someone sees in a mirror those things whose images appear in the mirror; and in this way the soul in the state of the present life cannot see all things in the eternal reasons, but in this way the blessed, who see God and all things in him, know all things in the eternal reasons. In another way something is said to be known in something as in the principle of knowledge; as if we say that in the sun are seen those things which are seen by the sun: and thus it is necessary to say that the human soul knows all things in the eternal reasons, through whose participation we know all things. For the intellectual light which is in us is nothing other than a certain participated likeness of the uncreated light, in which the eternal reasons are contained... That Augustine did not understand it so, that all things are known in the eternal reasons or in the unchangeable truth, as if the eternal reasons themselves were seen, is evident from this, that he says in 83 Questions (l. c.) that the rational soul, not every soul and whatever soul, but the one which is holy and pure, is asserted to be fit for that vision, namely of the eternal reasons, as are the souls of the blessed » S. Th. 1. q. 84. a. 5; contra gent. III. c. 47; de spir. creat. a. 10. ad 8; in Boëth. de Trin. prooem. q. 1. a. 3; de verit. q. 10. a. 11. ad 12. etc.

On our knowledge of what God is, according to the threefold mode of affirmation, negation and eminence.

« Although, in the most true sense drawn from the teaching of Scripture, the holy Fathers and theologians are wont to teach that God is known to exist by reason and by faith, yet what God is is not known; nevertheless from the same sources we are taught a threefold way of knowing to some extent what God is, namely through notions that are affirmative, through notions that are negative, and through those that are called according to eminence. This threefold manner of knowing follows from the very fact that we understand God not by immediate intuition but through ideas formed from the prior knowledge of creatures; and so it is that affirmation, negation and the notion of eminence do not stand apart one from another, but one is implicit in another, and from all of them one knowledge of God is completed. »

I. Frequently the Fathers distinguish between knowing that God is and knowing what He is. The former, they say, is most certainly known both by reason and by faith; the latter is taught neither by human science nor even by faith, but when the essence of God is asked about, namely what it is, it is « inapprehensible and incomprehensible » (ἄληπτον καὶ ἀπερίληπτον)¹. So speak Nazianz. or. 28.al. 34. n. 6; Basil. cont. Eunom. l. I. n. 14; ep. 234; Nyss. cont. Eunom. l. XI. p. 320; Chrysost. de incomprehensib. hom. V. n. 5. and others. « This alone is demanded of us, says Chrysostom, l. c., that we know that God is, and not that we investigate His essence. Hear what the Apostle says: one who draws near to God must believe that he is; and again, a prophet, reproaching someone with impiety, does not blame him for not knowing what God is, but for not knowing that He is. » But these things cannot be understood in an absolute sense; for if we were wholly ignorant of what God is, we would certainly not know whether He is; and the ancient Fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc. would have had to concede to the error of the Gnostics about a supreme God wholly unknown, and refute it. Hence the Fathers, in disputations against the Eunomians, constantly join knowledge of the existence of God with knowledge of the perfection and attributes of God, insofar as these become known through God's operations and manifestations by reason and by faith, or (as they are wont to say) knowledge of those things which pertain to his essence (τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν)²; but they exclude knowledge of the essence as it is in itself, which was asserted by the Eunomians and which the Fathers are accustomed to call the science of what God is.

Hence the quidditative knowledge of God, as the Scholastics call it, can be understood in two ways: first, the proper knowledge of the essence of God as it is in itself, where proper is opposed to analogical; second, the proper knowledge of what God is, where proper is opposed to common, while we understand certain perfections which truly belong to the one God alone, and so form an idea of God by which we clearly distinguish him from all others that are or can be conceived. In this second sense, who would doubt that God is conceived by us through quidditative knowledge?³

« Human understanding, says Gregory of Nyssa, contra Eunom. XII. p. 327. 328, is not so keen as to see clearly the invisible, nor yet so cut off from every approach that it cannot form any shadowed concept (εἰκασίαν) of what is sought; but partly indeed it has concluded, by the touch of reasoning, what it is that is sought⁴, partly through this very thing which cannot be perceived it has expressed some knowledge.... setting it down as a clear knowledge that it is above all knowledge.... and from the denial of those things which are not in Him, and from the affirmation of those things which are piously understood of Him, that He is is apprehended » (ὅτι ἐστι; I should prefer to read in this context ὅ, τι ἐστι, what it is).

This distinction of the Fathers and theologians between the twofold knowledge of God and of divine things, what they are, is nothing other than the most faithful expression of the doctrine recorded in the Scriptures. « We see now through a mirror (mediately) in an enigma » (knowledge obscure and confused precisely because it is through another medium, and not a vision of the object in itself); therefore « now I know in part (which could not happen if God were known as he is in himself, since he is one most simple perfection, in which there are no parts or perfections distinct in themselves), but then I shall know face to face, even as I am known » (immediately, and therefore not in part, but as he is in himself; for what is in part will be done away) 1. Cor. XIII. 12. The present knowledge belongs to those who are wandering from the Lord (ἐκδημοῦμεν ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, exiled from the paternal home), « through faith, not through sight » (οὐ διὰ εἴδους, not through vision) 2. Cor. V. 6. 7. What Paul calls knowledge face to face, through sight, as I am known, not in part, St John, 1. Io. III. 2, declares to be the vision of God as he is, which is denied for the present life; « for it has not yet appeared what we shall be, » although even now the faithful are taught about all things, and whoever does not sin will have seen and known him who abides in us (II. 3. 4. 27; III. 6.); but it is indeed not yet that knowledge which is awaited, « as he is, » but another, which Paul declares to be in part, through a mirror in an enigma, through faith. These things will be treated more distinctly in the following chapter.

II. Since we do not see God immediately in his own nature, but can understand him only by inferring (ἀναλογῶς Sap. XIII. στοχαστικῶς Athenag. Nyssen. συλλογιζόμενοι Nazianz. etc.) through creatures as through a previously known medium, it follows that God, even in his revelation, accommodates himself to this mode of conceiving that is connatural to us; and further it comes about that we can conceive him neither by reason nor by faith as he is in himself (see th. X.). This our mode of knowing mediately and through another, what God is, when the analysis is carried out, is resolved into knowledge through affirmations of perfections, whose idea we form from the works of God; through negations of imperfections, with which even the most perfect creatures, and our own objective ideas of perfections that are simply simple, are affected; and finally through concepts formed by joining affirmations and negations, which the Fathers are wont to call according to eminence or by excess (καθ' ὑπεροχήν). This analysis and deduction you may see admirably set out in St Thomas, in Boëth. Trin. prooem. q. 1. a. 2. After he has shown the reason why we do not attain what God is, but only that he is, namely that we know God only from effects « not equalling the power of the cause, » the Angelic Doctor declares the mode of knowledge. « Yet of those who know that he is, one knows more perfectly than another... as the relation of cause to effect is more grasped from the effect; which relation, in an effect not reaching equality with its cause, is considered according to three things: namely according to the procession of the effect from the cause, and according to the fact that the effect follows the likeness of its cause, and according to the fact that it falls short of its perfect following; and thus the human mind advances in three ways in the knowledge of God, although it does not attain to knowing what he is, but only that he is. And first, insofar as its production and efficacy are more perfectly known (as of exemplar and efficient cause, whence knowledge through affirmations); second, insofar as the cause of more noble effects is known, because while they bear his likeness in a higher way, they more commend his eminence (knowledge according to eminence); third, insofar as he is known as more and more remote from all those things which appear in effects (knowledge through negations). Whence Dionysius says that he is known from the cause of all things, and from excess, and from removal (negation). » Cf. 1. q. 12. a. 12.

The doctrine of the Fathers, by which they declare this threefold manner of knowing, may be read in Petav. 1. I. c. 5. n. 5. sqq., and more fully in Thomassinus l. IV. c. 7-12.

III. So that the mutual relation in which the aforementioned ways of knowing succeed one another may be understood, it is enough to notice the manner in which each of those notions is conceived by us.

1°. When we conceive the perfection of God directly through an idea which is signified by an affirmative name, e.g. of wisdom, of justice, that notion does not indeed objectively signify limitation and defect, as other notions do, e.g. of the faculty of reasoning, of matter, and generally of power toward act; nevertheless we conceive those very perfections, simply simple, in a limited mode⁵; for we cannot conceive an idea of wisdom which displays distinctly and positively wisdom without limit, and much less one which at once displays in the one most simple Esse every perfection whatever that can be conceived by any other notions and named by any names. The reason for this was declared above, from the origin of our ideas and from the imperfection of our intellect, according to the doctrine of the holy Fathers. Hence it comes about that when we say the wisdom of God, we understand and signify that this perfection is in God not as we conceive it, but far more eminently. This mode of eminence, however, we can neither conceive nor signify otherwise than either by a negation of the mode in which we apprehend that perfection, or by conceiving confusedly a supereminent perfection, which we commonly signify by adding superlatives, saying that God is infinite wisdom, or, as the Fathers are wont to speak, is ὑπερσοφίαν, that is, wisdom most true but beyond that mode by which we can understand it. The same holds of all absolute concepts, even of the transcendentals of being, truth, goodness, etc. Whence it readily appears that the affirmative concepts concerning God and the divine perfections, when the question is of the knowledge of what God is, have as companions, nay rather implicitly in themselves, the negative notions and those which are said according to eminence.

2°. Negations do not serve to exclude perfection from God in the fullness of every perfection; they serve to deny a defect of absolute reality: and therefore they are negations of negations, or most effective affirmations, although the perfection so affirmed is conceived by us confusedly. This matter is clear in itself, so that it seems indeed a marvel that there could be found the most vain men who, with John Le Clerc, did not blush to laugh at this way of understanding God, commended with great praise and no less arguments by the holy Fathers. For we understand that not only is there no imperfection in God, but that there is so great a perfection that it cannot be conceived by us as it is in itself; this confused concept of divine being we cannot better declare than by denying that God is any of those things which we understand distinctly; not because anything is lacking to him, but because in him all things are more eminently. Whence in these negations there is presupposed as foundation the affirming notion, though confused, and the notion by eminence is included.

3°. Finally, in the notions which are designated by eminent names, or by excess (καθ' ὑπεροχήν), of the kind which the Greek Fathers use, superessence, supersapience etc. (ὑπερούσια, ὑπερσοφία), it appears from the very form of the names both that the perfection is affirmed in God and at the same time denied according to the mode in which we conceive it⁶. It is therefore most clear from the analysis itself that the three ways of knowing are not three adequately distinct reasons of knowing, but that in each of them all three are in some way joined, since always one direct reason includes the other two obliquely.

Hence from all this it is first understood in what sense the Fathers said that all perfections can be affirmed of God and all denied, not indeed under the same respect but under a different one; and therefore God is of every name and of no name. So speak Theophilus Ant. ad Autolyc. l. I. n. 3. 4; Gregor. Naz. hymn. ad Deum 29. p. 286; Nyssen. cont. Eunom. XII. p. 357; Dionysius de div. nom. c. 2. §. 4; c. 7. §. 3; Myst. theol. c. 1. §. 2; c. 5.⁷: Further, from what has been said it is understood how true it is, as the Fathers frequently teach, that our knowledge is the more perfect when we have known that God cannot be understood. Cf. Basil. ep. 234; Nazianz. or. 37. n. 7; Cyrill. Hier. catech. VI; Chrysost. in Ps. 138. n. 4; Dionys. myst. theol. c. 2; Damasc. fid. orth. l. I. c. 4; Aug. de ordine l. II. n. 44. etc. Clearly these things are not said as if complete ignorance were the more perfect knowledge, for what could be imagined more absurd? But the more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we also understand the reason why he cannot be comprehended by us in this life, nor understood as he is in himself; which reason is precisely the infinite perfection of God in comparison with our finite and imperfect mode of knowing. Therefore also in the inverse order, the more fully and deeply we understand this reason for our relative ignorance, the more truly and deeply we understand the perfection of God. In this sense the passage of Dionysius, myst. theol. c. 1. §. 3, seems to be explained, where one who is engaged in the highest contemplation is said to know, by knowing nothing, beyond the mind (τῷ μὴ γινώσκειν ὑπὲρ νοῦν γινώσκων); certainly St Thomas understood it so, in Boëth. Trin. prooem. q. 1. a. 2. ad 1: « according to this (from Dionysius, l. c.) we are said to know God at the end of our knowledge as unknown, because then the mind is most perfectly found in the knowledge of God, when it knows that his essence is above all that it can apprehend in the state of this way. » Cf. Lessium de perfect. divinis l. I. c. 3. 4. Finally this very thing is contained in Scripture, when God is proclaimed as he who « dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see » 1. Tim. VI. 16.

On the multiplicity of the notions by which we understand God.

From what has been said it follows: 1° that we need multiple notions in order to understand to some extent what God is; 2° although the object of all these notions is one, most simple in itself, nevertheless the notions do not all correspond to it in the same way; they are therefore different from one another, and the words by which their object is signified are not all synonyms; but from this 3° it does not follow that our knowledge is false; nor does it follow that the object of these notions is not in God but only in creatures: for knowledge is true although imperfect, and the object is in God and is God, although it is exhibited more perfectly than by a notion.

I. If we understood God by immediate intuition and as he is in himself, and still more if we comprehended God, we would penetrate his whole perfection by one concept, by that very fact that there is in the divine nature no real distinction, but one most simple Esse. But as things stand we understand God to some extent, as to what he is, from the perfections of creatures already known; and these are manifold, and each of them shadows forth the perfection of its exemplar and efficient cause according to some reason¹, yet neither each nor all together are an adequate expression and representation of him. Hence according to the manifold perfections whose idea we abstract from creatures, we distinguish in God manifold perfections in thought. For just as the divine essence is the exemplar of all perfections which can be in creatures or be conceived, so it corresponds to all the ideas of perfections not involving imperfection which our mind can conceive. Therefore just as created perfections are a certain objective imperfect imitation and shadowing of divine perfection according to different reasons, so also our single ideas, according to different and inadequate reasons, and therefore imperfectly, exhibit the one most simple and infinite perfection of God. Because we know in the mirror of creatures and in an enigma, therefore we know in part and as it were by parts (ἐκ μέρους), and we prophesy in part (even in supernatural knowledge). From this mode of knowing it is plain that that supreme thing, although to each notion of each perfection the same thing corresponds, is nevertheless exhibited more imperfectly and confusedly by the notion of one perfection than of many; and so, on account of our imperfect mode of understanding, notions must necessarily be multiplied by us, so that we may attain some more cultivated knowledge of the infinite perfection of God.

II. It is a frequent complaint of the Eunomians against St Basil and St Gregory of Nyssa that Catholics feign God to be composed of many things, because they teach that God is understood by us through different notions, and that therefore the names by which the divine perfections are designated according to these notions are by no means synonyms; whereas those heretics devised that all these names differ only in sound and not at all in signification; for « those things which are said according to notion (κατ' ἐπίνοιαν) have their being only in names and in pronunciation, and are dissolved together with the voices, » Eunomius said from his absurd Nominalism, as reported by Basil l. I. n. 5. p. 216. T. I.

The answer of the Fathers is that the divine essence is indeed most simple and without any distinction in itself, but that it is understood not as it is in itself but through ideas of many perfections, which, according to the mode in which we are, not in the mode in which God is, we conceive as inhering in the divine essence; not because we judge that there is such a composition in God, but because the divine simple perfection is both all those things which we can conceive in the mind, and far more eminent than these. (See th. X. and XII.)

The difficulty therefore lies in this: if our notions must correspond to their object, they do not seem able to be many and mutually diverse, in view of an object most simple, in which there is no diversity and no distinction. But if the notion is one, the names too, which are signs of notions, cannot in naming that most simple essence be of diverse signification, but must be wholly synonyms.

After all that has been declared so far, a sophistical subtlety needs no long refutation. Moreover, this is the same difficulty which some Nominalists pressed, when they taught that the perfections of God are distinguished not by an objective concept and notion but only by name and by our manner of signifying the same thing in many ways; and which, from the opposite side, moved the disciples of Scotus to devise another, middle distinction between the real distinction and that which is according to reason, which they call formal, and which they think lies between the divine perfections as they are in God; indeed the very same difficulty drove Gilbert of Poitiers in the twelfth century into the other extreme error, wholly opposed to the Eunomian confusion; for he affirmed that, just as our notions are distinct from one another, so the divine perfections and attributes are really distinct from the essence, and the essence from the persons (see Petav. l. I. c. 8.).

So that it may appear how several notions, for example essence, wisdom, mercy, justice and so on, correspond to one and the same most simple object, and yet we do not conceive formally the same thing by one notion, for example wisdom, that we conceive by another, for example justice, it is enough to note what was said above: that the one most simple divine essence, by its intensively infinite perfection, is the supereminent exemplar of all these perfections which we first conceive from creatures, and that this same most simple divine essence supplies all of that in the most eminent mode which the several perfections, distinct and diverse among themselves, supply in creatures. But while the one supplies many, not otherwise than if it were itself manifold, there is in it a virtual distinction. Hence we form, by our imperfect manner of conceiving, notions of perfections distinct and diverse among themselves, to which, both singly and all together, there is presented the same divine Esse in itself, yet according to diverse reasons, of which the ground for distinguishing them in it is its own infinite perfection, and the necessity is the imperfection of our understanding. St Thomas declares this identity of the thing as it is in itself, and the diversity of the reasons according to which we conceive it by diverse notions. « All these many reasons have something corresponding to them in God himself, of which all these conceptions of the intellect are likenesses... Nothing prevents the one essence itself from corresponding to all the aforesaid conceptions, as though imperfectly represented by them.... The cause of the diversity or multiplicity of names (the same holds for concepts) is therefore on the side of our intellect, which cannot attain to seeing that essence as it is, but sees it through many deficient likenesses of it, reflected in creatures as in a mirror. Hence, if it were to see the essence itself, it would need neither several names nor several conceptions. And for this reason the Word of God, which is the perfect conception of it, is but one; for this reason it is said at Zach. XIV. 9: in that day the Lord will be one, and his name one, when his very essence shall be seen, and the knowledge of God shall not be gathered from creatures » S. Th. de potent. q. 7. a. 7.

It is the same reason for names as for notions; for names are imposed on things to be designated according as the things are understood, not according as they are in themselves. Therefore not all the names by which we call God and the divine perfections are synonyms; but as we distinguish in God many reasons by diverse notions, so we call the distinct reasons by diverse names. Thus the divine essence, wisdom and justice; paternity and essence, and generally all the attributes among themselves and with the essence, relations with the essence and with the absolute attributes (though not among themselves) are one in reality but distinct by formal reason²

This is a famous controversy among the Scholastics: whether in the one divine perfection every other perfection is included, not only identically and as it is in God (which is agreed among Catholics), but formally as it is conceived by us. Among others, Molina affirms this in 1. q. 28. a. 2. disp. 4; Suarez, Metaphys. disp. XXX. sect. 6; de Deo l. I. c. 11. sqq.; Card. de Aguirre, Theol. S. Anselmi T. I. disp. XXXI. Gillius, l. II. Tract. II. c. 8; Franc. de Lugo, disp. XVI; Petav. l. l. c. 9; and others oppose it with great vehemence. It seems to me that the former only contend about that thing which is the « verifying root » of our concept, e.g. of the wisdom of God, and that thing is not abstracted, even by our thought, from the thing presented to another concept, e.g. the justice of God, since the thing is one and the same. Without doubt, however, the same authors grant that by us, under the name of the wisdom of God, one gift is expressly conceived as if it were one, without conceiving the other gifts, all of which the same infinite thing suffices to perform most eminently. But according to these diverse gifts, as we explained a little earlier, we form diverse inadequate concepts of that one thing, whose object is materially the same (one and the same thing in God), formally, or as Suarez puts it, most formally, distinct, since the reason on account of which that thing is and is called wisdom is conceived by us as different from the reason on account of which it is and is called justice. Yet all these things cannot but be approved also by those later writers whom I have mentioned; I think therefore that this dispute concerns the thing itself, on one side with the Nominalists and on the other with some Scotists, but concerns the manner of speaking rather than the thing itself among the theologians cited at the beginning. Consult Vasquez disp. 117. 119.

III. Since it is already sufficiently clear from what has gone before that the ideas we form of God, although they are drawn not from an immediate intuition of the divine essence but from creatures, nevertheless represent God himself and the divine perfections, not indeed as the divine Esse is infinite in itself, but in a certain imperfect mode, while from the perfections of effects we conclude « ratiocinationum contactu concludimus, » what God is and what he is not; it remains that we demonstrate this our knowledge, however imperfect, to be nevertheless true.

This was the second calumny of the Eunomians, refuted by the Fathers in many ways: that if we neither comprehend God nor understand him as he is in himself, our knowledge would be false. The Fathers' refutation can be reduced to the following heads. They replied a) with Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaur. XXXI. p. 265, that it is one thing to have imperfect knowledge and another to be in utter ignorance or error; that our knowledge is imperfect and nonetheless true. For b) they said, with Basil, contr. Eunom. I. n. 14, and epp. cc., that besides the knowledge of God as he is in himself, there is another, manifold and most true knowledge, of his wisdom, creative power, and his other invisible attributes, which we know by understanding them from the creature of the world. Moreover c) this knowledge of the divine perfection is true because we do not judge that the perfections in God are according to the mode in which we conceive them; rather we understand that they cannot be conceived by us according to the proper reason by which they are in God. Chrysost. de incomprehens. hom. I. n. 3. Whence d) they inferred that the knowledge of the Eunomians was false, and of all those who would judge that the divine perfection is known by them as it is in itself, because they judged it to be in that imperfect mode in which it can be conceived by them; against this, the knowledge of the Catholics is true, because they understand that the things we conceive according to our measure are indeed in God, but far otherwise and above all comprehension; hence « the very knowledge of incomprehensibility is the most true knowledge of God, » Nyss. contr. Eunom. I. p. 98.

The sum of this whole doctrine is reduced to one principle. Truth and falsity are not in concepts and ideas in themselves, but in judgements, by which we affirm or deny a predicate of a subject. Now those perfections which we conceive by inadequate and analogical ideas truly belong to God, although they are in him in a more perfect mode than we conceive or are able to conceive. When therefore we affirm that these perfections are in God, while at the same time denying that they belong to him in the imperfect mode in which we conceive them, and understanding that they are in God far more eminently, although we do not distinctly grasp how they are in God, that is, that they are, yet we do not know by proper notions what they are, according to their infinite reason; assuredly our judgement corresponds to its object, although the ideas which we join in him do not exhibit the object as it is in itself. Therefore the knowledge is true but imperfect. Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 13. a. 12. ad 3; de Potent. q. 7. a.5.

Corollary 1. In logical order we conceive the perfections first as they are in creatures, and afterwards as they are in God: in creatures, as limited realities which correspond to our limited mode of conceiving by the negation of a further possible reality; in God, as reality with the negation of negation, that is reality without limit, they are above our mode of conceiving. In creatures, therefore, we can understand what they are; in God we conclude by reasoning and believe by faith that they are. On the contrary, in the ontological order the thing itself is primarily and principally in God, and in creatures by participation and analogically. Hence the names designating simple perfections, as far as the thing itself is concerned, signify more principally the perfections of God, and analogically the perfections of creatures; but if we consider the imposition of names, they are imposed by reason first on the perfections of creatures, rather than to designate the perfections of God. S. Th. 1. q. 13. a. 6.

Corollary 2. Truth cannot be expressed by the spoken word (προφορικῷ) any more than it can be conceived by the inward word (ἐνδιαθέτῳ); in the same sense, therefore, God is ineffable to us, in the sense in which he is above our intelligence. And so God alone is adequately expressible by himself, because he alone is comprehensible to himself. « For this reason the Word of God, which is the perfect conception of himself, is not other than one » S. Th. 1. q. 34. a. 1. ad 3. Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 13. a. 1; Vasquez disp. 57; Suarez 1. II. c. 31; Aguirre T. I. disp. 23. sect. 1.