Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

God knows all truths not only in the divine essence but also in themselves.

« Although God does not know the secondary objects of his knowledge in themselves, as in a cause determining and perfecting knowledge, he nevertheless knows them not only as they are eminently in the divine essence, but also as they are or can be formally in themselves. »

This saying, God knows things in themselves, is ambiguous in meaning. For if the particle in themselves is joined with the verb knows, so that it is understood that the perfection of knowledge depends on objects as on a determining cause, and thus things diverse from the essence of God are called the formal object of knowledge; it follows from the preceding thesis that in this sense things are not known by God in themselves but in the essence of God. « Something is known in two ways, in one way in itself, in another way in another. Something is known in itself when it is known through its proper species adequate to the knowable thing itself; as the eye sees a man through the species of man: but in another, that is seen which is seen through the species of the containing; as when a part is seen in a whole through the species of the whole… Thus, therefore, it must be said that God sees himself in himself, because he sees himself through his essence, but other things not in themselves but in himself, insofar as his essence contains the likeness of others from himself » St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 5. But if the particle in themselves is connected with the noun, so that things in themselves, not merely the exemplar and archetype of things in the divine essence, are understood to be an object, although only material, and known through the adequate knowledge of the divine essence; in this sense single things are known by God in themselves. For « if someone knowing knows the known according to the being which it has in the knower, nevertheless he knows it according to the being which it has outside the knower: as the intellect knows a stone according to the intelligible being which it has in the intellect, insofar as it knows itself to understand (reflexively); but nevertheless it knows the being of the stone in its own nature… Thus, therefore, it must be said that God not only knows things to be in himself, but through what he contains in himself of things he knows them in their own nature, and so much the more perfectly as each thing is more perfect in him » St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 6. ad 1; q. 20. a. 2. ad 2; q. 57. a. 3; de verit. q. 2. a. 4. ad 6.

Indeed, a) if God knew the being of things only as they are eminently in God, he would not know created or possible being itself, but only his own essence. For the eminent Being in God is not created or possible being, but is the divine essence itself, in which, as in the formal object, he knows all things; this he not only knows: «nor would he have those things which were not yet made, except as he himself is unmade» Aug. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 16. Hence in many places Augustine repeats that when all things are said to be in God, this is to be understood of the exemplar and living ideas, and of living knowledge, in which he does not hold the natures of things existing from eternity in himself, but nevertheless holds the things themselves in his knowledge. «If he knew them before he made them; certainly before they were made, they were known to him in the same way as they live eternally and unchangeably and are life, and they were made in the same way as each creature is in its kind» Aug. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 15. «Before they were made, they both were and were not: they were in the knowledge of God, they were not in their own nature» ib. c. 18. Indeed b) unless God perfectly knew the being of things as they are in themselves or can be, neither could he be considered to comprehend his own essence as the cause and exemplar of all. For the perfect comprehension of a cause includes the knowledge of its effects, whether possible or actually existing, as they are in themselves. Therefore, because God comprehends his essence under the reason of absolute Being, of infinite exemplar, and of infinite representation of every participated being and of every participated truth (th. XXXVII.), he comprehends this very participated being as it is in itself or can be.

It might seem to someone that, precisely because things, as they are in themselves, are constituted as the object of God's knowledge, this knowledge depends in some measure on the known things. The answer to this difficulty or question cannot be hard, provided we keep in mind what we have said about the divine simplicity. Surely God's knowledge is not an accident or modification of substance, but is the divine substance itself. This substantial understanding is in itself infinitely perfect, and therefore from its essence it is the understanding of every truth; hence it does not receive perfection in itself as our understanding does, through assimilation to the known object; but the divine essence itself, and the divine idea, is the exemplar to which it is assimilated and from which every truth has its perfection. Hence too it is that the divine substantial understanding is in no way changed in itself, if a contingent truth as its subject stands one way or another. «God's knowledge is most universal, because by one likeness, which is his essence, it knows all things» S. Th. 2. dist. 3. q. 3. a. 2. When divine knowledge is named, e.g., of the existing world, or knowledge of a human act, e.g., of Peter's denial, two things are named: namely God's knowledge in itself and the connotation of a non-necessary term. But because the term is something non-necessary, the connotation of this term rather than another (for example, of the existing world rather than of the merely possible, of Peter's denial rather than his confession) is not absolutely necessary, but only on the hypothesis that the contingent truth stands in this way rather than in another. Therefore, that God's knowledge is referred to this rather than to its opposite, depending on the term, does not arise from imperfection but from the perfection of knowledge, because every truth lies under that knowledge, which is always perfect in itself in the same way, as it really stands. «Knowledge of vision adds nothing within the genus of knowledge to the divine knowledge, but only the existence of creatures, which are said to be seen» S. Th. de veritat. q. 3. a. 3. ad 8. To the question therefore proposed, a distinction must be made: God's knowledge in itself and in its perfection depends on a term distinct from itself: I deny; the connotation of the term, whether this term rather than another underlies the knowledge, depends on the term and on the manner in which it stands: I subdistinguish: it depends on the term on account of an imperfection of knowledge: I deny; on account of the perfection of knowledge, which necessarily understands all truth as it is: I concede.

Corollary 1. From the fact that God knows all things from eternity, as they are or can be in themselves at any difference of time, it is not said that to possibles or to things not yet existing belongs some diminished being, of which some have spoken; but it is asserted that God understands the whole reason of being, as it would be in itself if it were produced, or as it actually is at the time when it exists. God therefore knows from eternity actual being, which creatures can have or at some time actually have; yet he does not know that they have that being actually from eternity; rather he knows that no being distinct from himself is actual from eternity. Supra th. XXXII.

Corollary 2. It follows from what has been said how God's knowledge is, and how it is not, intuitive; whence it is further evident that the argument which Diego Alvarez (de Auxiliis l. II. c. 8.), with others, wished to prove, that the existence of all things according to their real being is in eternity from eternity — namely, that otherwise God could not see things from eternity by intuitive knowledge — is of no value. For intuitive knowledge requires, on the side of the manner of knowing: a) that it be immediate knowledge and not derived; b) that it be apprehension of the object as it is in itself, and not through the analogy of another; hence c) only accidentally is it required that the object of knowledge be formal, i.e., that it itself determine the knowledge and give it its specific perfection. Accidentally, I say, this is required for our intuitive knowledge, because we can know only the formal object in itself, as it is in itself; but if the vision of the divine essence, as the formal object, at the same time comprehends in the divine essence other things as they are in themselves, this will be the intuition of things so much the more perfect. These conditions, to which Marsilius of Inghen went before for the more recent authors (in 1. d. 38. a. 1. concl. 7.), are not unjustly held to be sufficient, as a rule, for knowledge to be called intuitive. In this sense, therefore, all knowledge of God is intuition. But the older authors for the most part demanded d) on the side of the object its real existence for some difference of time, in which sense Suarez (de Attributis div. 1. III. c. 4. n. 2.) calls knowledge of existing things intuitive, but the knowledge of possibles, even in God, abstractive, « because it abstracts from the actual existence of its object. »