Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

God, from his essence and from the infinity of his understanding, necessarily knows every truth.

« The divine essence, as infinite truth and first intelligible, from which no truth can be independent, and as the exemplary idea both of all possibles and of all those that at some time really exist, objectively presents to the divine intellect whatever has the character of truth; and moreover, understanding itself, considered formally, is by its infinity the representation of every truth. God therefore, through his own essence and from the infinity of his understanding, is determined to the comprehension of every truth. •

1°. We can consider the divine essence in three ways: a) as absolute being and truth, on which all things depend and by whose analogical participation are all things that have the character of being and of truth. See above th. XXVIII. n. II. Now, while absolute Being and absolute truth are understood by a perfect comprehension, both intensively and extensively, by that very comprehension there are necessarily understood all things which, depending on him, either are in act or can be. Therefore God, comprehending his essence as absolute Being and first truth, from which all being and every participated truth depends, by the same act of understanding necessarily comprehends every truth.

b) The divine essence may be considered more expressly, insofar as it is the idea and exemplar, imitable externally through all the grades, reasons and relations of participated being and participated truth. Moreover, that infinite exemplar may be considered as it were in first act, so that its adumbrations outside it are only possible. In this way it is evident that comprehension of the exemplar is at the same time comprehension of all the possible adumbrations of it, or comprehension of the whole participated being in the metaphysical order and in the ideal state. This imitability of the divine essence in first act is as necessary as the essence itself. Wherefore this understanding of imitability, and of the whole being through which it is imitable, is necessary by that very fact, because the term of understanding is necessary. But if the divine exemplar is considered in second act, insofar as some imitation is actual and some existing ectype of that intelligible and intelligent exemplar or divine idea, this actual imitation is not necessary but contingent; yet on the hypothesis that it really exists, the divine understanding cannot comprehend the exemplar itself, from which the ectype depends by real, continuous and essential dependence, under every aspect of knowability, without at the same time comprehending all its actual expressions and imitations depending on it.

c) The divine essence is also infinite, insofar as it is the representation of truth, that is, wisdom and understanding formally representing truth. But it would not be an infinite representation, unless in it there shone forth and were represented every truth, both in the order of essences and of ideal possibles, and in the order of the actual existences of all participated being.

2°. Although this whole account of the divine knowledge is manifest from the principles handed down above concerning absolute perfection, simplicity, and truth, it can nevertheless be directly confirmed from the teaching of Scripture.

In the Scriptures it is declared above all as a proper perfection of divine wisdom that it knows and beholds all things from eternity, before they come to be in time. « The eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the sun, looking round about on all the ways of men, beholding the hearts and the hidden parts.»¹ For to the Lord God all things are known before they are created, and so also after they are made he regards all things « Ecclesi. XXIII. 28. 29. (graece 19. 20.). The intrinsic reason of this perfection is set forth in the sacred books in this way: that all things depend upon wisdom itself, or that she herself is the artificer, and therefore contains the reasons of all things, or that the efficacy of the divine gaze penetrates all things. « You have understood my thoughts from afar..... you have foreseen all my ways... Behold, O Lord, you have known the last things and the things of old: you have formed me² and laid your hand upon me » Psalm. CXXXVIII. 3. sqq. « What is richer than wisdom, which works all things? If, however, sense (φρονησις) works, who of those things that are is more the artificer than she? And if anyone desires the abundance of knowledge, she knows the things past, and estimates the things to come... she knows signs and wonders before they come to pass, and the outcomes of times and ages » Sap. VIII. 5-8. In almost the same way Ecclesiasticus joins the knowledge of all things with creating omnipotence. « The works of the Lord are all very good... The works of every flesh are before him, nor is anything hidden from his eyes: from age to age he looks, and nothing is wonderful in his sight. It is not to be said, What is this? or What is that? for all things shall be sought in their time »³ Ecclesi. XXXIX. 21-26. (graece 16-21.). Cf. Psalm. XXXII. 15; Is. XLI. 22-23; XLIV. 7. 8; XLV. 21; XLVI. 9. 10; Baruch III. 31. 32; Dan. XIII. 42. This same reason, why God knows all things, is contained in those places in which all things are said to depend on God under the aspect of wisdom, or on the Word, and all things to have been made and to consist through him. Wisdom is « a spotless mirror of God's majesty » (Greek: a mirror of the power and efficacy of God, or rather of the purest act, from which all things depend, ἐσοπτρον ἀκηλίδωτον τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνεργείας) Sap. VIII. 26; wisdom is « the beginning of the ways of the Lord, before he made anything, from the beginning » Prov. VIII. 22; through the Word which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, Io. I. 3. 4.

Therefore, as far as the omnipotence of God extends, so far extend his wisdom and knowledge. As in God omnipotence and wisdom are one simple Being: so in objects outside God, whatever depends on the divine Being and whatever is subject to omnipotence, that is, whatever in any order has the character of being, is necessarily subject to divine wisdom and knowledge. For « he who planted the ear, shall he not hear? or he who formed the eye, shall he not consider? » Psal. XCIII. 9. If, however, the most pure Being and the omnipotence of God are distinguished by reason from his wisdom, in this as in a most clean mirror shines forth the whole reason of being, or the universal truth, which depends on the power of the first and absolute Being.

3°. The doctrine of the Fathers explicitly declares the mode of God's knowledge from his essence as from the principle, exemplar, and representation of every being, and consequently of all truth. « It is not possible, says Pantaenus in the second century, that he who is above beings should receive knowledge of beings according to beings; but we say that beings know him as his own wills » Routh Reliq. sacr. T. I. p. 340.⁴. Most eloquently Dionysius, de div. nom. c. 7. §. 2., discusses this whole matter. « The divine mind comprehends all things by a certain eminent knowledge, by which, according to the cause of all things, it anticipates in itself the knowledge of all things (πάντων εἰδῆσιν προειλήφως)… and this, I think, Scripture signifies when it says: he who knows all things before they come to be (Dan. XIII. 42.). For the divine mind does not learn beings and know them from beings themselves; but from itself and in itself, according to the reason of cause, it has beforehand and comprehends before all things the knowledge and cognition and essence of all things (προεχει και προσυνειληφεν), not attending to each thing's species singly (divided), but knowing all things and containing them by one complex of cause….. Therefore divine wisdom, knowing itself, knows all things: in an immaterial way the material, in an undivided way the divided, and the many in a unified way, knowing and producing all things through the one (which is the divine essence)⁵. Therefore God does not have a separate knowledge of himself and another which comprehends all beings in common….. Thus God knows beings not through a knowledge of beings (derived from beings as cause), but through a knowledge of himself »⁶.

St Augustine treats at length of the eternal reasons, according to which God knows all things. « That which was made through him, let it be understood to be life in him, in which life he saw all things when he made them; and as he saw, so he made: not seeing beyond himself but in himself, he so enumerated all the things which he made… Note, then: he made; he did not know made things. Therefore before they came to be, they both were and were not: they were in God's knowledge, they were not in their own nature….. He no longer needs messengers for the knowledge of lesser things, as though through them he might become more knowing; but by that simple and wonderful mode he knows all things stably and unchangeably » Aug. Genes. ad litt. l. V. cc. 15. 18. 19.⁷. « With him, in whom is highest power, is highest and secret knowledge… With him all things are established in the Word of God by a certain knowledge of ineffable wisdom, and the Word himself (exemplarily) all things… And why are all things with him? Because even before all things were or were created, all things were known to him » Id. in Ps. 49. n. 18. Following in the footsteps of St Augustine, St Anselm, Monol. c. 10., after saying that nothing can be known unless some expression of it and some word is in the mind, and that this is the most noble of all utterances, concludes: « It can not undeservedly be seen that with the highest substance such an utterance of things has both been before they were, so that through it they might be made, and is when they have been made, so that through it they may be known. » St Anselm declares a little later, in c. 12., that this utterance or reason of all things is not some accident, as the ideas are in us, but the very essence and substance of God. « But since it is certain, as reason teaches, that whatever the highest substance has made… it has made by its inner utterance, whether single things by single words, or rather by saying all things at once in one word, what can seem more necessary than that this utterance of the highest essence is nothing other than the highest essence? » We can comprehend the whole in the words of St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 6. « Since the essence of God has in itself whatever perfection the essence of any other thing has… God in himself can know all things by a proper knowledge. For the proper nature of each thing consists in this, that it participates the divine perfection in some way. Nor would God perfectly know himself, unless he knew in what way his perfection is participable by others (this is the knowledge of essences). Nor would he perfectly know the nature of being itself, unless he knew all the modes of being » (all of which depend on him, whence is the knowledge of existents).

Not only if by reason we distinguish the essence and the understanding does the divine mind, through the essence as the infinite object, become determined to know every truth; but understanding also, considered formally in its intrinsic perfection, must be conceived as determined to the comprehension of every truth. This is the living quality of unshaken truth, as St Augustine calls the knowledge of God (ad Simplic. l. II. q. 2.). « When I have left behind only the living quality of certain and unshaken truth, which illumines all things by one eternal contemplation, or rather do not leave it behind (by mere abstraction from human knowledge; for human knowledge does not have this), but, as far as I can, have thought, God's knowledge is somehow insinuated to me. » It is the same light without darkness, of which St Bernard speaks, Consid. V. 5: « God, the lord of knowledges, who alone knows no ignorance, who is wholly light, and in whom there is no darkness at all, is wholly eye and is never at all deceived, because he is never shut in, who seeks no light outside himself, to whom one draws near that he may see, he who sees, he from whom he sees. »

Corollary. Whatever God knows besides himself is indeed some term of divine knowledge, or is subject to divine knowledge; yet by any real influx it does not in God produce knowledge and science, or, as is commonly said, it does not determine divine knowledge as a cause. « God does not know beings by a knowledge derived from beings, but by the knowledge of himself » Pantaen. Dionys. August. Therefore, although God would not know, e. g., the world as existing, unless for some difference of time it really existed, because for God the true is the term of knowledge: yet the existing world does not exercise any action or influx upon God; but only if it is objectively true that the world exists at some time, the divine substance, under the aspect of knowledge, is terminated at this truth as well as at every truth, because by its intrinsic perfection it is determined to the comprehension of every truth. If therefore some theologians sometimes say that an object has the role of determining God's knowledge to know it, they take determination in the sense in which we speak of the term of knowledge. But when we deny the determination of God's knowledge by an object distinct from God, we deny an action and influx of the object into God by way of cause or principle. But when we affirm that the knowledge of God is determined by the divine essence itself, we wish three things: a)negatively that it is not the cause of knowledge outside God; b) positively, that the reason of knowledge is the intrinsic perfection of God himself; c) with the distinction made, according to our manner of understanding, between the divine essence and understanding, that the essence is conceived by us as prior in reason and as the object determining divine knowledge, the analogy being taken from the relation which exists between our cognitions and their object.