Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

The divine essence is the object formal, all other truths are secondary object of God's knowledge.

« From the reason by which we have demonstrated that God's understanding relates to the divine essence, and through the essence to all other things, it follows of itself that the divine essence is, and is rightly called by theologians, the principal and formal object, while all other truths taken together are the secondary and material object of divine knowledge. »

Form and matter are properly said of composite substances, in which form is that which gives essential perfection of a certain order and species, and so constitutes a being distinct and different from other orders or species; matter, on the other hand, does not give a specific perfection distinguishing it from other orders, but is common to many, or rather to all orders of material substances. From this the denomination has been transferred to the object of knowledge, which is distinguished into material and formal. According to that analogy of matter and form, the formal object of knowledge is called that by which the proper perfection of knowledge, distinct and different from the knowledges of other orders, is constituted. But by the very fact that the object gives its proper perfection to knowledge, it determines it, and consequently it is known through itself and for its own sake (they call it the motive), and not on account of something else. The material object, on the contrary, underlies the science, which has its perfection not from the object but from elsewhere, and different from the knowledges of other orders; therefore it does not itself determine the science and the perfection of the science, although the science, having its perfection determined elsewhere, also has this object as its term. Therefore the material object is known not through itself and for its own sake as the motive of science, but through another and on account of another. From these very proper characters of the formal and material object it is easily clear that the formal object, in relation to the material objects subordinate to it, is at the same time the object of knowledge, principal, while the material objects are secondary.

Now indeed: a) the divine knowledge and understanding, from what has been said, is really the divine substance and essence itself. It therefore has its own perfection, different from any knowledge of another order, from nothing other than the divine substance itself, or from itself. For this is its own proper reason and perfection: that the infinite understanding act is really the divine substance itself and the infinite substantial truth itself, to which no perfection can accrue or be lost, however the objects of knowledge may stand, which are distinct from and different from that infinite truth. Hence b) if by reason we distinguish infinite truth and the infinite act of understanding, the infinite truth itself is not only knowable, but by its intrinsic reason it requires, and is (in our manner of speaking) the motive, that it be actually known through the infinite understanding itself (see p. 314.): and so we conceive infinite truth, or divine Being, with foundation in reality, as determining the divine intellect to comprehend it. Further, c) this substantial act of understanding, in the comprehension of the divine essence, is so determined that, in the essence as in absolute Being, in the infinite exemplar, in the actual representation of all truth, it comprehends at once whatever has the character of truth (th. XXXVII.). The divine essence, therefore, is the formal reason under which God comprehends any truth whatever; and an object distinct from God does not act upon the divine intellect, or induce in it any modification, which would plainly repugn to that substantial act. Therefore an object distinct from God neither perfects nor determines God's knowledge; but through the essence and in his essence, as through the formal object, God is determined to the knowledge of every truth, even of what is distinct from himself. The Scholastics meant this when they said: God does not understand things distinct from himself through proper species of things, but through his own essence as through an intelligible species (representation) of all things; and the same, after the other Fathers, St Anselm expressed more brightly in Monol. c. 32. « The word by which God speaks the creature is in no way similarly a word of the creature, for it is not its likeness (derived from it), but the principal essence; it follows therefore that he does not speak the creature by a word of the creature…. If therefore he says nothing by a word of the creature, whatever he says he says by his own Word.'» The same may be declared in another way. Just as the divine volition, which is of itself determined to love the absolute good that is the divine essence, can, without any change in itself, extend to loving in it and on account of it the participated goods; so the divine understanding, determined of itself to understand the absolute truth, extends, without increase of its perfection, to knowing every truth in the absolute truth itself. « He did not know created things otherwise than things to be created; for nothing accrued to his wisdom from them, but when they existed as they ought and when they ought, it remained as it was. Thus it is written in the book of Ecclesiasticus: before they are created, all things are known to him, so also after they have been consummated. Thus, he says, not otherwise, both before they are created and after they have been consummated, thus they are known to him » St Augustine, Trin. XV. c. 13. Cf. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 18; Civ. Dei X. c. 12. See the teaching of the PP. above in thesis XXXVII. Cf. what we have said on p. 307. sqq.

It is therefore most clear that the formal and principal object of the divine understanding, by which it has its own proper perfection, by which it is determined, through which and in which it knows every truth, is the divine essence itself; but that any truth whatever distinct from God is the secondary and material object of one and the same act of God, by which he understands himself, which does not give to that act its proper perfection, and which is known in another and through another, namely through the principal and formal object.

Corollary. From the declared mode of divine knowledge it is understood in what way faith and theology and mystical contemplation, and much more truly the beatific vision, imitate the divine knowledge itself, while all created things and all truth are considered in God, the supreme truth, as in their cause and their principle and end. Likewise it is understood how the divine understanding, both in respect of its principal object and in respect of its secondary object, is alone adequate theology in the most sublime sense of the name. See above p. 4. 5.