Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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.