Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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.