Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

That the operation of the intellect precedes the exercise of the will by nature, or at least by order, is well known to all philosophers, for nothing is willed that has not first been known: and therefore, by a right and just method, we must treat of the divine intellect before the divine will: and in order that this may be done more plainly and accurately, we shall divide the present Disputation into three Articles. Of these, the First will explain the intellect itself insofar as it is operative. The Second will lay open the various operations and knowledges of that intellect, that is, it will explain the divine intellect as scientific. The Third, finally, will set forth the divine intellect itself as practical, that is, as made fruitful by the divine ideas.

The dispute among theologians is no slight one, whether an intellective faculty is to be admitted in God, distinct from His essence formally, or virtually, or at least by reason: those who defend it do not agree among themselves about its proper characteristics and object. Wherefore we have judged that the three following Questions should be proposed, in the First of which we shall resolve the existence, the quiddity, and the distinction from the divine Essence of the divine intellect itself; in the Second, the primary object of the same divine intellect; in the Third, indeed, we shall set forth its secondary object.

Note 1. The intellective potency in God can be taken in a threefold way: first, precisively, insofar as it signifies that to which it is not repugnant actually to understand, abstracting namely from the fact that God actually understands, in that way in which someone is said to be able to speak while he actually speaks; for he would not in fact speak unless he had the power and capacity of speaking: second, negatively, insofar as it denies actual intellection: just as when Peter is said to be able to be in act, that possibility denies the actual existence of Peter, who when he will be existing will no longer be possible; so likewise I can actually understand that which I do not actually understand: third, finally, actively and operatively, for the faculty vitally eliciting actual intellection. This potency, however, thus taken, is again said to be threefold, namely: 1. productive, which truly produces intellection, or the mental word, as a term really distinct from itself. 2. receptive, insofar as it receives the intellection, or the produced mental word. 3. operative, which truly and really does not produce actual intellection: but is, as it were, a fountain and root, whence the immediate intellection itself metaphysically emanates, just as the attributes immediately flow from the essence. It is precisely about this alone that the present Question is raised, namely whether such a faculty is to be admitted in God.

Note 2. This is the difference between intellect and intellection, that the former is the actus primus of understanding, namely the activity of the spiritual substance for knowing and perceiving the intelligible object: but the latter is the actus secundus, namely the very operation of the spiritual substance by which it in fact perceives the intelligible object. The former, however, is called first act, because it is the first reason why the spiritual substance is capable of perceiving the intelligible object: the latter is called second act, because it emanates from the very power and capacity of understanding, as effect from cause: whence the former is called not only act, but also potency, because it is ordered to a further act, which emanates from it and finally perfects it: but the latter is simpliciter named act, because it is, as it were, the form of the intellective power itself finally perfecting it in the order of understanding.

Note 3. For something to be said to understand and to know in actu primo, three things are customarily required. First indeed, that it have the power and activity, namely the potency for understanding. Second, that it have the intelligible object present, either through itself immediately, or through a vicarious species of itself. Third, finally, that it have the facility of perceiving such an object, whether through an activity innate to it, or through an acquired habit. Whether however these three are found in God, at least according to some proportion and likeness, the Authors do not agree among themselves; for some will that in God, besides the intelligible object, something also be necessarily prerequired which has the character of an intelligible species determining the intellect to the perception of the object. Some likewise will that a certain formality after the manner of a habit is also to be admitted, by which the divine intellect promptly and expeditiously perceives the intelligible object. Three things therefore are to be resolved in this Question. The first, whether there is some intellective power in God, formally distinct both from the essence and from actual intellection. The second, whether this power must be conceived as needing completion by an impressed species or habit, before actual intellection is conceived. The third, whether this divine intellective power has various and manifold acts, or rather one single act, simple and really undivided.

First conclusion. — An intellective power formally distinct from the divine Essence and from intellection is to be admitted in God.

This is the expressed opinion of the Doctor, as can be gathered from his various assertions which Smising recounts at length. Tract. 3. disp. 2. n. 13. First indeed, that the intellect, as it is a power and intellective potency, is formally distinguished from the divine Essence, the Doctor openly indicates in 1. dist. 18., where he says:

That the divine Persons and productions are formally distinct of themselves, and yet are distinguished principiatively, that is, by origin, from their principles, namely intellect and will, which are not only distinguished by reason, as was argued against the penultimate opinion, but the intellect formally is not the will ex natura rei: therefore likewise the Essence, on account of the parity of reason.

Moreover, in dist. 26., quaest. unica: Production does not belong to the Essence alone, as Essence, as to that which produces; but also to the intellect and the will, as to a productive principle together with the Essence. By these words the Doctor openly acknowledges two things: first indeed, that the intellective power in God has the character of a principle, namely of a potency: second, that that potency is distinct from the essence. This is confirmed from the same dist. 8. q. 4., especially q. 2. Quodlibetica, in the 3rd response to the first opinion, where he teaches that the divine Essence is the principal, but not the total principle of ad intra production, but together with the intellect and the will constitutes one total principle.

If you ask, he says, of these two concurring in the formal principle, is not the one the formal principle and the other a concomitant? Therefore, from that other formal one, it would either be said to be formally the same principle or wholly another. I answer: the two which concur in the principle, namely perfect memory, essence and intellect, and in the perfect will, the will and the present lovable object, do not relate per accidens, nor as a remote principle and a proximate one: but this whole, the infinite intellect having the infinite intelligible object present to itself, is per se one (total) principle; so that the one without the other is not a principle of producing: and therefore it is the one total principle simpliciter productive, not distinguished into two productive principles per accidens accompanying each other. Likewise of the will and the object with respect to spiration, and in like manner of the terms with respect to the productions. If you ask why the Essence alone, as it is distinguished against the will and the intellect, cannot be the principle of communicating itself? I answer: a merely intellectual essence is not the principle of any production, except as it coincides with memory and will. —

That he moreover also judges the intellective power to be distinguished from actual divine intellection, he indicates openly enough in 1. dist. 2. q. 2., where he proves that intellect and will are really identified with the divine Essence, because intellection and volition are really identified with the divine Essence itself; yet since intellection and volition are posterior in the order of reason to intellect and will, To will, he says, is understood as it were posterior to the will; if therefore to will is the same as that nature, much more is the will. He adds the same about the intellect: The reason for understanding must be from itself necessary being, if actual understanding (that is, intellection) is necessary being; for the reason for understanding is, as it were, pre-understood before understanding itself. By these words the Doctor openly indicates that intellection and the power of understanding are distinct ex natura rei. The same is evident from his almost innumerable texts, especially in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. and dist. 13. q. unica, to the second principal argument, and dist. 35. q. unica, to the second, and Quodlibeto 1. art. 3., where he expressly affirms that intellect and will are potencies and first acts, not only productive with respect to the Persons proceeding in God, but also operative with respect to the essential act of understanding and willing, common to the three adorable Persons.

This same truth is proved by reason: first indeed, that the intellective potency is formally distinguished from the divine Essence has already been proved more than sufficiently, where we treated of the formal distinction of the divine attributes from the divine Essence. That this divine intellective power is likewise formally distinguished from actual intellection is also openly evident: both because many things are verified of the divine intellect which do not belong to actual intellection; for the intellect is the reason why there is intellection in God, which does not fit intellection itself; for the same thing is not the reason of itself; moreover, intellection denominates God as understanding; but the intellect only denominates him as intellective: therefore they are not the same; finally, the intellect is, together with the divine Essence, the principle of the procession of the Word, which does not belong to intellection: therefore intellect and intellection are distinguished. — Second, in order that the intellective potency in God be truly understood after the manner of a first act, it suffices that the power of understanding be conceived, without the divine Essence and the actual knowledge of God being conceived: but we can understand that power, without the essence itself and actual intellection being thought: therefore an intellective potency distinct from the essence and from actual intellection can truly be understood in God. The minor is evident: for in order that such an intellective power be conceived, it suffices that God be apprehended insofar as he is a spiritual substance endowed with the power of understanding and willing, not attending to his essential predicates, nor to his actual knowledge. — Third, the intellective potency is a perfection simpliciter simple, involving no imperfection in its concept: therefore it is to be asserted of God. The consequence is evident; for God, as has already been abundantly proved, formally comprehends absolutely all perfections simpliciter simple. The antecedent is proved: for it is better to have the power of understanding than not to have it, and all those imperfections which surround created intellection, for instance that it is an act really distinct from the intellective faculty and received in it after the manner of a quality, can easily be removed from the divine intellective power: and so nothing prevents this divine power of understanding from being judged a perfection simpliciter simple. — Finally, if anything would hinder an intellective potency being attributed to God, it would be chiefly because, since God is pure act, every potency is unseemly for him: and consequently the intellective potency also is repugnant to him: but this reason is worthless; since all the Adversaries confess that in God there is found the intellect after the manner of the productive potency of the divine Word, why therefore could an intellective potency also not be found? not indeed productive of intellection, but only operative of it, namely that perfection from which, as from a root, another perfection metaphysically emanates; in that way namely in which the divine attributes flow from the essence and are distinguished from it.

You will say 1: Saint Maximus the Martyr, part. 1. tit. 3., expressly affirms that every intellective potency and intellection must be removed from God:

God, he says, is neither properly called understanding, nor intellect, lest he be thought composite; for that which is understanding has, considered together with itself, the faculty of understanding: and that which is understood, in order that it be understood, has the same faculty: but neither can intellection be said of him, for intellection by its nature has as subject a substance capable of itself. Wherefore it remains that he be constituted above all these things. —

I answer. This is to be understood of the intellect after the manner of a receptive potency of accidental intellection really distinct from it, and likewise of intellection insofar as it is a quality accidentally affecting and perfecting the intellective potency by which it is produced and in which it is received: but not of the intellective potency and intellection only formally distinct from the divine Essence and really identified with it: whence he adds: Unless perhaps we say that he is that intellection; so that it may be intellection itself according to substance, and wholly intellection, and only intellection, and intellection above, intellection.

They object 2. Whatever excludes divine simplicity, purity and infinity should not be admitted in God: but if the first act of understanding properly so called is in God, even by reason, and if there is a potency of understanding properly taken and as it is distinguished from the second act, it excludes these three: therefore the first act of understanding properly so called is not in God, even by reason. They prove the minor: that which essentially includes reception and distinction excludes simplicity, purity and infinity: the first act of understanding properly so called essentially includes distinction and reception: therefore it excludes simplicity. They prove the minor: the first act of understanding, as it is distinguished from the second act, is constituted formally by the productive and receptive power of intellection: but the productive and receptive power of intellection formally includes distinction and reception, for where there is production there is real distinction: therefore the first act of understanding properly so called formally says reception and distinction. They prove the major: the first act of understanding is constituted by something which cannot be common to it with the second act of understanding: but nothing else belongs to the first act which does not belong to the second act, besides the productive and receptive power: therefore by these the first act of understanding is constituted. —

I deny the minor. and to all its proofs I say that the Adversaries, in assigning these things, stray far from the truth, and do not grasp our opinion; for we do not assert that the divine intellect is productive and receptive of intellection, but only that it is operative and, as it were, an original perfection, from which intellection, like a rivulet from a fountain and a ray from the Sun, flows out; in that way namely in which the divine attributes emanate from the essence; since therefore the attributes in no way harm the divine simplicity, purity and infinity, so neither does the formal distinction of the intellective potency from the essence and intellection harm anything.

They object 3. from Durandus: The divine Essence is no less the same with its intellection, than some quality is the same with created intellection: but a certain quality is formally the same with created intellection: therefore likewise divine intellection is formally the same with the essence; and so there is no intellective potency in God from which this intellection emanates. —

I deny the major. for it is false that a stricter identity cannot be found in a created concept than in an uncreated one: for greater and stricter is the identity between man and humanity, than between the divine Essence and the divine Paternity: therefore although some quality is formally the same with created intellection, it does not follow from this that divine intellection is formally the same with the divine essence.

They press from the same author: The divine Essence is formally living: therefore also formally understanding and willing; and consequently intellection and volition do not formally differ from the divine Essence. The first sequel is evident, because intellectual life does not consist in any other operation than in intellection and volition. The second is also evident: for if intellection is formally distinguished from the essence, this will not be formal intellection, and so neither will it be living formally by intellection; for what is formally living is not distinguished from its life. The antecedent is proved; for the divine Essence by reason of its infinity involves every perfection which is without imperfection, but life includes no imperfection: therefore the divine essence is formally living. —

I distinguish the antecedent. The divine Essence is formally living, if formal life is taken for the primary act of vital operation together with it, namely for the principle of life, I concede; if life is taken for the vital operation itself, which is intellection and volition, I deny: for thus the divine essence is said to be living not formally, but only identically, because namely the operations of life, which are intellection and volition, are not really distinguished from it, but are identified with it.

They insist again from the same author: if volition and intellection are not formally the same as the divine Essence, this will be in potentia to intellection and volition, and so will not be pure and ultimate act: not indeed pure act, because it would involve potentiality; nor even ultimate act, because it would say an order to a further act, namely to intellection and volition by which it would be determined and perfected: but the consequence is absurd: therefore so is the antecedent. —

I distinguish the major. the divine essence would not be pure act really, and insofar as act is opposed to potential existence, I deny: it would not be pure act formally, insofar as namely it would be ordered to some formality which would emanate from it and identically perfect it, I concede: likewise it would not be ultimate act, that is, it would say an order to some form really distinct from it, I deny: it would not be ultimate act, that is, some formality would be given flowing from that divine Essence, identically perfecting it, and which would be really the essence itself, I concede: and thus I deny the minor: for as we have already said of the divine attributes, there is no imperfection in the divine Essence in that it has attributes formally distinct from itself and perfective of itself.

They object 4. For this reason in creatures there is given a potency which is a principle of action distinct from the created essence, because this essence, by reason of its finite perfection and limited entity, cannot be the immediate principle of its operation: but the essence of God is infinite: therefore it itself is immediately the principle of operation. It is confirmed: just as in creatures the properties immediately flow from the essence, since actual divine intellection has a stricter unity with the divine Essence than created properties have with their essence, it follows that that actual divine intellection also immediately flows from the divine Essence, and so no intellective potency is given midway between intellection and the divine essence. —

I answer 1. This argument proves too much; for from it it would follow that the divine Essence itself could be called the immediate principle of the divine Persons, and so the Son and the Holy Spirit would proceed immediately from the divine Nature, not however through the mediation of intellect and will, which all the theologians openly deny against Durandus. —

I answer 2. The difference between operations and properties is this, that operations and acts are not immediate perfections of the essence, as properties are, but immediately perfect the potencies from which they arise, and through the mediation of the potencies affect and perfect the essence. For although they flow from the essence itself remotely, nevertheless, since intellection and volition are diverse operations, diverse potencies, or notions, must also be assigned from which they emanate and by which they are distinguished: for volition, v. g., proceeds from the essence in a different way than intellection; for volition emanates from the essence as it is appetitive, whereas intellection as it is intellective. Whence it comes about that two proximate, distinct, and immediate principles must necessarily be assigned, one of which is appetitive, the other intellective, namely intellect and will, which principles are formally distinguished from the divine Essence and from its operations.

Finally, certain Scotists object that the Subtle Doctor directly opposes our opinion; for he himself in 1. dist. 26. q. unica n. 15. denies that intellect and will are divine attributes, but says that they are the very essence of God, and that God understands and wills essentially:

The divine Essence, he says, with everything that is as it were a quality set aside, has in itself, as it is an essence, those things which are the proper principles of the operation befitting God; of this kind are to understand and to will. I concede, therefore, that if we call attributes properly those alone which, as it were like qualities, perfect in esse secundo a thing presupposed in perfecto esse primo, namely as regards every perfection which befits it insofar as it is a substance, in this way intellect and will are not attributes; rather they are certain intrinsic perfections in the essence, as it is pre-understood to every quantity and quality. And a little later: since intellect is a certain life and will a certain life, they will not be properly attributes. And again: just as rationality is not an attribute of man, so neither is intellectuality of this essence. Finally: intellectuality, he says, expresses an intrinsic mode of this essence; but the attributes properly are wisdom and charity, and in another way the transcendentals, namely truth and goodness. —

Likewise in the Quodlibeta, quaest. 1. art. 1. § De Altero termino, he says:

Intellectuality is essentially the same as the divine Essence, understood in this way, that it is not only really the same as the Essence itself, and this with a simple identity, as perhaps any attribute whatsoever is held to be the same as the Essence itself; but it is the same to it in this way, that if the divine Essence itself were defined, intellectuality would not fall outside its definition, as wise and good would:

whence not a few Scotists infer with Lychetus in 1. dist. 8. q. 3. that intellect and will are not attributes, but either essential predicates or intrinsic modes of the divine Essence itself. —

I deny the major. For that is not the mind of the Doctor; rather the Doctor there speaks only of intellectuality, insofar as intellectuality is a mode of being contracting it to intellectual substance, which is the root and foundation not only of the intellective but also of the volitive potency. Nor does it matter that he says that intellectuality expresses an intrinsic mode of this essence, like infinity, which is not of the quiddity of the Deity, but its intrinsic mode: for I say that the Doctor there does not use intrinsic mode properly and strictly, insofar as it is something distinct from the quiddity; for in that same place he compares divine intellectuality with the rationality of man, which is known to be of the quiddity of man and its essential difference: but he takes intrinsic mode insofar as it is distinguished from the attributes and comprehends every objective notion by which it is involved in the adequate concept of the thing, in which indeed intellectuality agrees with infinity, although it is not properly an intrinsic mode as infinity is.

Second conclusion. — No formality is to be admitted in the divine intellect by which it would have the notion of an impressed species: yet a formality is admitted in it having the notion of a habit formally distinct from the essence: but indistinct from the intellect itself.

This Conclusion has three parts.

The first part is proved. An impressed species is required in the intellect for this reason, either because the object is absent, or because it is disproportionate, or because it is not sufficiently per se a motive of the intellect for forming intellection: but on neither head is such a species necessary to the divine intellect: since the divine essence is an object intimately present and sufficiently proportioned to the intellect itself: inasmuch as the divine Essence is infinitely intelligible and the intellect infinitely intellective, it also by itself sufficiently and immediately moves the intellect itself to the knowledge of itself: for to move the intellect is nothing other than for the object to be manifested to it and exhibited as something to be known; but it is certain that the divine Essence by itself immediately manifests itself thus to the divine intellect, and so it is equally certain that it immediately moves the divine intellect to its intuitive knowledge of itself. —

It is confirmed. The perfection and power of the divine Essence is not less than that of the angelic substance: but the angelic substance suffices per se, and needs no impressed species to determine and move the angelic intellect to the knowledge of itself: therefore much more will the divine Essence per se sufficiently be the motive of the divine intellect to the knowledge of itself: and hence any formality taking the place of an impressed species in the divine intellect itself would be futile.

The second part is the express opinion of the Doctor, who in several places affirms that there is to be admitted in God a habitual Knowledge and Wisdom, formally distinct from the actual and from the divine Essence of which it is an attribute, and this we will prove more fully in the following Article, by disclosing namely the essence and the characteristics of divine Knowledge.

The third part, moreover, is also conformable to the opinion of the Doctor, especially in 4. d. 16. q. 4, where he expressly affirms that the virtues of the divine will are not formally distinct from the will: because, he says, the will, from the very fact that it is infinite, suffices more for every rightness of act than any virtue, distinct in reality or in notion, superadded. As if he would say: where the principle of willing and of understanding is by its formal notion sufficient per se for every act of understanding and willing, no virtue formally distinct from them is required in them: but intellect and will in God are principles per se sufficient for the act of understanding and willing, since each is an infinite principle: therefore they require for this no habit formally distinct from themselves.

Third conclusion. — The act of the divine intellect is not multiple, but one and indivisible, both really and formally.

This is common among the theologians, and the holy Fathers defend it, especially Saint Augustine lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 14, where, after he taught that the Father and the Son know each other mutually and all things in themselves, he discloses with these words what sort that knowledge of theirs is:

The Father and the Son therefore know each other; but the one by begetting, the other by being born; and all things which are in their knowledge, in their Wisdom, in their Essence, each one of them sees at once, not piecemeal, or one by one, or as with an alternating concept, from here to there and from there to here, and again from there, or from there into one thing and another, so that it could not see some things unless it did not see others: but, as I said, it sees all things at once, of which there is none that it does not always see.

And in lib. 11. De Civitate Dei: Moreover, the Spirit of wisdom is called manifold in the holy Scriptures, because it has many things in itself; but what it has, this it is, and all those things it is one; for there are not many, but one Wisdom, etc.

Peter Damian also agrees, who affirms that God so embraces all times within the secrets of his foresight that nothing new at all accrues to him, nor does anything recede from him through the moments of their course: nor does he consider different things with different gazes; so that when he attends to past things he would be free from present or future ones: or again, when he considers present or future things, he would turn his eyes away from present ones: but with one only and simple gaze of his most present majesty he comprehends all things at once: nor this confusedly and without distinction, but he discerns all things and distinguishes each according to its own property.

Ammonius likewise acknowledged this truth in the Commentaries on the book of Aristotle de Interpretatione, where, when he had said that the Gods know all things, past, present, and future, but in the way that is befitting the Gods, that is, with one and determinate and immutable knowledge, he adds: for those things too which are divisible, it is necessary that they know indivisibly and without any interval: and those which are manifold, singularly: and those which are temporal, in an eternal mode, and in that mode in which they were made, as unmade.

The reason for this truth, moreover, is evident: first, because the act of the divine intellect, since it is infinite, is equivalent to absolutely all objects, even infinite ones, both intensively, as is the divine Essence, and extensively, if indeed possible creatures are infinite in number. Second, because since God is altogether invariable, he cannot have alternating acts and pass from one knowledge to another; finally, because no reason appears which could persuade the entitative multiplicity of divine knowledge: therefore it is not to be admitted.

Whatever can be objected against this Conclusion has partly been resolved from what was said on divine Immutability, and partly will be resolved from what will be said on the Invariability of divine knowledge: therefore let it be

It is certain by faith, and no less by natural reason, that God knows Himself; whence Christ, Matthew 11: No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son: and 1 Corinthians 2: The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. This truth did not escape the Gentile philosophers; for Alcinous, expressing in cap. 10 the opinion of the Platonists, says: since the first mind is the most excellent, it is necessary that the most excellent intelligible object be set before it; but it has nothing more excellent than itself: which always understands itself and its own notions.

Another manifest argument urges the same thing; for since God clearly and intuitively knows all things distinct from Himself, it follows that He beholds Himself in the highest degree: for He is not only intimately present to Himself, but is also an object supremely proportioned to Himself, as an infinite intelligible set before an intellect of infinite activity and vivacity: whence Synesius elegantly says: God is the eye of Himself, because He immediately beholds Himself and all His own things through Himself. Only this, therefore, remains here to be examined, how God knows Himself; which, that it may appear more evidently

Note 1. That just as in created cognition, so also in uncreated, a twofold object can be distinguished, namely the material and the formal: and this either primary or secondary: again either motive or terminative. The material object indeed is that which is known; the formal object, however, is that special notion of the object under which it is perceived, which specifies the cognition and distinguishes it from another cognition of the same object according to another formality knowable in it. That is called primary which is known precisely for its own sake: that, however, is called secondary which is perceived only by reason of the connection which it has with another. Finally, the motive object is the notion moving the intellect to this cognition of the object and of those things which are in it: the terminative object, however, is the very entity of the object toward which the cognition of the intellect tends. Here the discourse is about the primary material object of the divine intellect, both motive and terminative; the secondary, however, we shall assign in the following Question.

Note 2. That the opinions of theologians about the primary object of the divine intellect are various; for some affirm that all those things which are formally in God, whether essential or attributive, whether absolute or relative, obtain the notion of primary object. Some teach that the essence together with the attributes is the primary object of the divine intellect; but that the divine relations are to be placed among the secondary object. Others, finally, contend that the divine Essence, insofar as it prescinds from the attributes and is the fount and origin whence the divine perfections flow, alone claims for itself the appellation of primary object. It is indeed certain that the divine Essence is rightly affirmed to be the primary object of the divine intellect, not only by the primacy of dignity, because since it is the fount and origin of all divine perfections, it is also their principal head; but also by the primacy of the order of nature. For each thing is deemed to be intelligible insofar as it is, especially with respect to an infinitely perfect intellect, which necessarily knows all things in that order in which they claim for themselves the notion of being and intelligibility: by which reasoning God can be conceived by us mortals to know first His Essence, then the Attributes, then the divine Relations, finally possible creatures, and at last actual creatures, as the Doctor teaches in 1. dist. 35. num. 10, and q. 14 of the Quodlibet. Only therefore is the present question moved about the primary motive object of the divine intellect, both for the cognition of the Deity and for the perception of all those things which are contained in the Divinity itself.

Note 3. That this is the distinction among the cognitions by which some thing is said to be known in itself, or in another, or from another: that a thing is known in itself when it is to itself the primary and most sufficient notion both for the exact and perfect cognition of itself and of those things which are in it: it is said to be known in another when that is directly known in which the thing itself to be known is contained; thus, v. g., when the essence is directly known, the properties emanating from it are indirectly known; and when the cause is directly known, the effect of which it is pregnant is indirectly detected. Finally, something is deemed to be known from another when the cognition of the one begets the cognition of the other: thus the conclusion is known from the premises; for the premises, once known, cause the cognition and assent of the conclusion itself. With these things premised, two things are chiefly to be resolved in this Question: first indeed, what precisely has the notion of the primary object moving and determining the divine intellect: second, how God knows Himself, namely whether only in Himself, or from creatures, or also in creatures.

First conclusion. — The divine Essence is the primary motive object of the divine intellect, both for the cognition of itself and for the cognition of creatures.

This is the express opinion of the Doctor, as can be gathered from his various texts, especially q. 3. of the Prologue n. 13, where he expressly teaches that the divine Essence is the first object of all Theology, or of the knowledge of God:

Of all Theology in itself, he says, and of God, and of the Blessed, the first subject is the Essence as this: that is, precisely insofar as it is Essence, and insofar as it prescinds from all those things which are contained in it, either formally, or eminently, or virtually.

He repeats the same in 1. dist. 3. quaest. 3. n. 5: As was said above, he says, in the question about the object of Theology, the divine Essence is therefore the first object of the divine intellect, because it alone moves the divine intellect both to know itself and all other things knowable by that intellect. Finally, in quaest. 15 of the Quodlibet, at the end of the second article, he says: That a stone is seen in the divine Essence, as a secondary object in the first object moving the proper intellect, that is, the divine, to the intellection of the second.

The same truth is evident by reason: For that is the first motive object of the divine intellect, both for the cognition of the Deity itself and of all those things which are in the Deity, which is every intelligible being, and which contains in itself, either formally or virtually, the intelligibility of all beings: but such is the divine Essence, for it itself radically contains all the perfections of the Deity which emanate from it metaphysically; it also contains virtually the intelligibility of all creatures, which are certain participations of the divine Entity itself: therefore this essence, precisely insofar as it is essence, is the first motive object of the divine intellect. — Secondly: If some other thing could be assigned as the first motive object of the divine intellect, it would be most of all either the divine attributes, or omnipotence, insofar as it virtually contains all the creatures which it can produce, just as a cause precontains its effect: but neither can be said: not indeed the first, because since the attributes neither formally nor radically contain the divine Essence, they cannot even move the divine intellect to the cognition of the essence itself. Add that one attribute does not contain another either formally or radically; but only identically, and by reason of the divine Essence and infinity, in which they are really identified with one another, and so none of those attributes can have the notion of primary object with respect to the divine intellect. Nor the second either; for this divine omnipotence indeed virtually contains the creatures which it can produce, and so with respect to them it can have the notion of first moving object to their cognition: but it is otherwise with the divine Essence and its attributes, which, since they are contained in omnipotence itself neither virtually nor formally, therefore cannot be known through it: and so omnipotence cannot have the notion of primary object moving the divine intellect to the cognition of the divine Essence and of the attributes. — Finally: That must necessarily be established as the primary object moving the divine intellect which primarily has the notion of the intelligible: but the divine Essence itself primarily has the notion of the intelligible, since it is that which in God is first knowable and to which, last of all, all the other things which are conceived in God are referred, as to their head and fount: therefore, etc.

You will say. The knowledge of God is simpliciter infinite and absolute in all respects: therefore its primary object ought also to be simpliciter infinite and constituted of all its perfections: but such is not the divine Essence insofar as it prescinds from the attributes, for thus it does not include the perfection of the attributes: therefore the alone and naked essence, insofar as it is adorned with all its perfections, is not the primary object of the divine intellect. —

I distinguish the first consequence. The primary object ought to be simpliciter infinite, either formally and radically at once, I concede: formally alone, I deny. To the minor; the divine Essence, insofar as it prescinds from the attributes, is not simpliciter infinite, nor adorned with all its perfections, formally, I concede: radically, I deny: for thus it is the root and fount of all the attributes; and so it radically contains them. Whence, although the essence precisely is not wise, nor eternal, etc. formally; nevertheless it is such radically, as has now often been said, especially where we proved the formal distinction of the attributes from the divine Essence.

You will say 2. If the essence alone has the notion of primary object, but the attributes and relations of secondary object, it follows that divine knowledge can be terminated at the essence without being terminated at the attributes: but the consequence is false: therefore also the antecedent. The major is evident: for when some potency has two objects, of which one is primary, the other secondary, it can without any repugnance be terminated at the primary and not be terminated at the secondary, as the Doctor openly teaches in 1. dist. 11. n. 5. The minor also is certain: for if divine cognition were terminated at the essence and not at the attributes, it would not be intuitive but abstractive, nor would it be comprehensive but limited. —

I distinguish the major. If divine cognition were not necessarily comprehensive, I concede: otherwise, I deny: for although God cannot know His essence without likewise perceiving His attributes and the divine Persons and relations, and even all creatures, because clearly His knowledge is absolutely and necessarily comprehensive; nevertheless it does not follow from this that the essence has the notion of primary object, knowable of itself apart from the attributes and creatures, which have the notion of secondary object, and without which the divine Essence itself can be seen by the created intellect, as was proved in treating of the beatific vision.

You will say 3. That is the primary object of the divine intellect from whose cognition the divine Word proceeds: but the divine Word does not proceed only from the cognition of the divine Essence, but also from the cognition of the attributes; otherwise the divine Word would not proceed equally perfect as the Father is, nor would it be formally just, wise, etc.: therefore not only the essence, but also the attributes have the notion of primary object.

I deny the major. For the divine Word proceeds from the adequate cognition of the divine Essence, and so proceeds as much from the cognition of the primary object as of the secondary: whence just as the divine attributes are in the Father only in the second mode of saying per se, so also in the Word; for the divine Father primarily communicates to the Word His essence, but secondarily the attributes; for these are communicated in the same way in which they are: therefore, since the essence is prior to the attributes which emanate from it, it is also to be deemed communicated earlier with a priority of sign.

Second conclusion. — God knows Himself in Himself, not however in another, nor from another.

It is proved first. from the holy Fathers, especially from St. Dionysius, cap. 7. of De divinis Nominibus, where he says:

That the divine mind knows the things that are, not learning them from the things that are, but from itself and in itself; and that it has the cognition, knowledge, and essence of the cause of all things anticipated and comprehended beforehand: not that it considers each thing through a species, but that it knows all things in one grasp of the cause:

with which St. Augustine agrees, lib. 83. of the Questions q. 16, saying: that God beholds nothing outside Himself, but in Himself as in the cause of all things. These texts, however, do not deny that God also knows creatures in themselves, as will appear in the following Question, second Conclusion.

It is proved second. by reason: The most excellent mode of cognition is to be attributed to God: but it is more excellent to know oneself and other things in oneself; for thus the cognition is less dependent, and so more excellent: therefore this is to be attributed to God. Next, since the divine Essence is an infinite sea of being and contains absolutely all things either formally, or virtually, or eminently, consequently it presents all things to the divine intellect as knowable per se: therefore God sees Himself and all other things in Himself. Next, if God could be known in another and from another, His cognition would be dependent and discursive: dependent indeed, because that in which He would be known would have the notion of primary object, to the cognition of which God would be perceived as a secondary object; it would also be discursive, for to discourse is nothing other than to infer the cognition of one thing from the cognition of another: but both are absurd, and utterly unbecoming of God: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. God knows creatures comprehensively: therefore He likewise knows the respect and essential order which they are said to have to the Creator: but this respect cannot be known unless God is known, who is the term of this cognition and order: therefore God knows Himself in creatures. — I answer by denying the last consequence. for from this it only follows that God knows Himself together with creatures, not however that He knows Himself in creatures. Or I distinguish: whoever knows God as the term of the dependence which creatures have upon God knows God in creatures; if he knows that creature in God as in a primary and motive object, it is denied: if he knows that creature in itself as a secondary object, I concede: indeed I confess that when an Angel, v. g., knows a dependent creature, he also truly knows God in the creature; because he knows the creature as the primary object moving to the cognition of God. But it is otherwise with God, who knows the dependent creature as a secondary object, but Himself in Himself as in the means and in the primary object.

You will say 2. Although God knows the created effect in itself, nevertheless He also knows it in the productive cause of that effect: therefore by a like argument, although He knows the cause in itself, namely Himself as the Creator of all things; nevertheless He will also be able to know Himself as cause in the creatures and effects produced by Himself, and consequently He will be able to know Himself in other things distinct from Himself. — I distinguish the consequence. That He will be able to know Himself thus as in a primary and explicit moving object, I deny: as in a secondary and, as it were, implicit one, I concede: for since the creature has an intrinsic respect to God, it, once known, implicitly moves to the cognition of God.

In the preceding Question we said that the secondary object of the divine intellect is twofold: one indeed uncreated, the other created. In the first order are all the perfections of the divine Essence and all the relations of origin, which surround the divine essence. For although these have the notion of a terminating object, since divine cognition terminates at the very entity of the Deity, and so even terminates at all those things which are really identified with the Deity itself; they do not, however, have the notion of an object primarily moving; for, as has been proved, this notion befits the divine Essence alone as essence. In the latter order, however, are all creatures, whether according to their ideal being, or their entitative and real being. Of these alone will there be speech here, namely whether God beholds distinctly and individually any creatures whatsoever, even the mean and the very smallest, and that either in Himself, or in them; but first

Note 1. There was no light controversy among the ancients as to whether God beholds all creatures; for not only did wicked men, so that they might more readily indulge their unbridled desires, deny to God all knowledge of worldly things, saying with Job c. 22. He walks about the hinges of heaven and does not consider our affairs: and likewise the Psalmist 71.: How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? but even the more clear-sighted philosophers fell into this most serious error, asserting that the knowledge of mean and tiny creatures is unworthy of God. This in the first place Aristotle himself taught, 12. Metaph. text 51., as the Subtle Doctor understood him: and Averroes, affirming in his Commentary on the cited place of Aristotle that the divine intellect would be debased if it knew these lowest things: indeed, which is greatly to be wondered at, some even of the holy Fathers seem to have slipped into that opinion, whom we shall set forth as objections and explain below. Likewise it must be known that all those to whom it is settled that absolutely all creatures are known by God do not agree in the same opinion about the mode in which God perceives them; for some think that God does not know possible Creatures in Himself, but in the creatures themselves, an opinion which some Thomists falsely attribute to the Subtle Doctor. Some, with Aureolus, in 1. dist. 35. art. 1. q. 2., affirm that God knows creatures in Himself, but not in the creatures themselves; so that He perceives only their virtual and eminent being, not their formal and entitative being. Finally, the rest teach that creatures are known by God not only in Himself, but also in the creatures themselves. What, however, appears to us truer in this doubtful opinion of the Doctors will have to be resolved here.

Note 2. From the philosophers we learn that the object of the intellect and of the will is twofold, the motive and the terminative; among which, although the motive also terminates, the terminative nevertheless, which is purely such, does not move. For example, someone loves Doctrine; here Doctrine is the terminative object, since it terminates the act of the will; and at the same time it is the motive, for by the force of this act he is moved to pursue the doctrine and to employ the means to be used for attaining it. Hence there is no motive object which is not at the same time terminative. But when someone in a storm throws merchandise into the sea, the merchandise is indeed the terminative object of that act, not however the motive; rather it moves toward the contrary and renders that action in some way involuntary. But that which moves to the throwing of the merchandise is the goodness and love of life. Therefore the end is the motive object, the means for the most part the terminative.

Note 3. Creatures existing, or future and past, have a threefold being: namely eminent in the divine Essence, since, as it is the most excellent of all beings and their fount and origin, it also eminently contains all beings. Second, virtual, which they have in their cause, namely in the divine omnipotence, which is productive of all things. Third, finally, entitative, which they have in themselves. It is asked, however, at present whether creatures are known by God not only according to their eminent and virtual being, which they have in God, but also through the entitative being which they have in themselves.

First conclusion. — God knows most distinctly absolutely all creatures, even the very smallest.

This is of faith.

Proof from various texts of Sacred Scripture. For first, Genesis cap. 1., at the very origin and establishment of things it is said: God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good, which gaze of God signifies an exact knowledge and approval of each thing. Likewise Job. cap. 28.: He has set a time, he says, for darkness, and He Himself considers the end of all things; the stone also of gloom and the shadow of death. And in the same place: He Himself beholds the ends of the world and looks upon all things that are under heaven. Likewise Psalm 49.: All the beasts of the forests are Mine, the cattle on the mountains and the oxen. I have known all the birds of heaven. Again Psalm 138: Lord, You have proved me and known me, You have known my sitting down and my rising up, You have understood my thoughts from afar, You have searched out my path and my line: behold, Lord, You have known all things, the newest and the oldest, etc. With these the Royal Psalmist extends divine intelligence not only to men and their bodies and members; but also to any movements whatsoever. With him Job 31. concords: Does not He Himself consider my ways and count all my steps? All of which Ecclesiasticus 23. declares most plainly, where, rebuking the impious man and the sinner, who thought that he could perpetrate a crime with impunity and without even God knowing:

He does not understand, he says, that the eye of Him sees all things, since the fear of a man of this sort casts from himself the fear of God, and the eyes of all who fear Him; and he did not know that the eyes of the Lord are much brighter than the sun, surveying all the ways of men and the depth of the abyss, and beholding the hearts of men in hidden parts. For all things were known to the Lord God before they were created, and so after their completion He looks upon all things.

Again cap. 39.: The works of all flesh are before Him; and nothing is hidden from His eyes; from age to age He looks upon them, and nothing is wonderful in His sight.

Second. In a wonderful way the holy Fathers press this argument, especially St. Cyril lib. 15. Thesauri. Likewise Cyril of Jerusalem, in the sixth Catechesis, explains the breadth of divine knowledge by the example of the drops of rain, all of which He knows: whence Irenaeus lib. 2. cap. 45. says: *All things that have been made, will be made, and are being made, I see to be so known, that He gives to each of them species, habit, order, number, quantity. Wherefore the proud and insolent thoughts (says St. Jerome on Psal. 137.) do not deceive God. He knows all things, and nothing is impenetrable to His knowledge. Indeed this truth did not escape the pagans; for, as St. Clement of Alexandria reports lib. 5. Stromatum, the Egyptians, fashioning ears and eyes of exquisite material, used to consecrate them to the gods, hanging them in the temples, so that by this they might signify that God sees and hears all things. Again, in the same author lib. 6., Thales of Miletus, to someone asking whether a man doing anything could be hidden from God: And how, he said, could he, who is not hidden even in thought? Whence St. Augustine cannot be brought to believe that Aristotle denied to God the knowledge even of minute things, because He is the Creator of all; for since actions are concerned with singular things, Aristotle himself says lib. 2. Ethicorum cap. 2., it ought to suffice, says St. Augustine lib. 5. de Genesi ad litteram cap. 13., that each one know, or unshakenly believe, that God made all these things; for I do not think him so senseless, as to judge that God made what He had not known.

It is objected 1. St. Jerome, who on those words of Habakkuk, Your eyes are pure, so that they do not see evil, seems to have taken away from God the knowledge of individual living things besides man:

Just as, he says, among men the providence of God runs even through individuals: in the other animals we can understand a general disposition and order, and the course of things; v. g. how the multitude of fishes is born and lives in the waters: how reptiles and quadrupeds arise on the earth and by what foods they are nourished. But it is absurd to bring down the majesty of God to this, that He should know at each single moment how many gnats are born, or how many die: what may be the multitude on earth of bugs and fleas and flies; how many fish swim in the water, and which of the smaller ought to fall as prey of the larger. Let us not be such foolish flatterers of God, that while we drag His power down to the depths, we are injurious to ourselves, saying that the providence over rational beings is the same as over irrational ones:

therefore St. Jerome thinks that the knowledge of God is not extended to all creatures individually. —

I deny the consequence. For St. Jerome by these words only affirms that the knowledge and care, namely that benevolent and paternal care alone, which God has of men and Angels, is not applied to brutes and inanimate things: or, as he himself speaks, the providence over rational, not over irrational beings: for although I frankly confess that these things could have been conceived and expressed better by Jerome; I do not, however, think that so great a man was ignorant of what Christ Himself taught us in the Gospel, namely that God has care of individual sparrows, Matth. 6. Indeed Jerome himself on that cap. 6. of Matth.: If small, he says, and vile animals do not fall without God as their author, and in all things there is providence, and those which in them are to perish do not perish without the will of God; you who are eternal ought not to fear that you live without the providence of God.

You will say 2. If God knew creatures individually, He would have to know infinite possible creatures: but He cannot know them distinctly and determinately. Then because whoever distinctly knows infinite things must also distinctly know that which is necessary for the infinite to be infinite: but God cannot know this: for once a hundred possible creatures are taken away, and again and again a hundred, there will always remain an infinite number of creatures to be distinctly known: Then because, if God actually knew infinite possible creatures, it would follow that an infinite created in act is given, because those infinite units would be at once actually distinct in the divine mind: but this implies a contradiction; otherwise the infinite syncategorematic would be an infinite categorematic: Then finally because, if God saw all the divisions of the continuum distinctly, v. gr., He would also see the continuum divided into all its parts, and consequently would see it reduced to indivisibles, because He would see that they are not further divisible: but this implies a contradiction, for the continuum is divisible to infinity: therefore God does not see absolutely all the divisions of the continuum, nor consequently does He see all creatures individually and distinctly. —

I answer. That God knows distinctly and determinately any possible creatures whatsoever, even infinite in number, as St. Augustine expressly proves lib. 12. De Civit. Dei, cap. 18.:

The infinity of number, he says, although there is no number of infinite numbers, is nevertheless not incomprehensible to Him whose intelligence has no number. Wherefore if whatever is comprehended by knowledge is bounded by the comprehension of the one who knows; surely also every infinity is in a certain ineffable way finite to God, because it is not incomprehensible to His knowledge.

Thus God not only knows the infinite, but also knows that which is necessary for the infinite to be infinite, because He knows the infinite units in number which make up the infinite in number. Nor does it follow from this that the syncategorematic infinite is categorematic; because although all its units are actually represented in the mind of God; nevertheless since they are known as they are, and have no other notion of infinite than the syncategorematic, truly that syncategorematic infinite persists. Likewise God sees the possible divisions of the continuum in the way in which they are possible, and therefore sees them always as divisible to infinity in that way; nor does He determinately see the last, because truly there is no last, beyond which another may not be assigned as possible.

You will say 3. Every knowledge depends on the object, both in fieri and in being conserved: but the Knowledge of God cannot depend on Creatures: therefore God does not know creatures. — I distinguish the major. It depends intrinsically on the motive and primary terminative object, I concede: on an object merely terminative, and secondary and less principal, which is in no way motive, I deny. To the minor I say that creatures have only the notion of a secondary terminative object, or less principal, with respect to divine Knowledge, which primarily and principally terminates at the divine essence itself as at the motive object, and primarily terminative.

You will press. Knowledge is also changed at the change of the secondary object, as the Doctor confirms at length: therefore if the Knowledge of God terminates at creatures even secondarily, it follows that at the change of creatures it itself is changed: but the Knowledge of God cannot be changed, just as neither can God Himself: therefore neither can it terminate at creatures even secondarily. — I distinguish the antecedent. It is changed extrinsically and only denominatively, I concede; intrinsically and formally, I deny: for divine knowledge is always intrinsically invariable in itself, even insofar as it terminates at creatures; then because it first tends into the divine Essence as into the motive and primarily terminative object: then because it also terminates at creatures, insofar as they are in God unchangeably and have objective and virtual being: whence although this divine Knowledge also terminates at the entitative being of creatures, which is variable and changeable, nevertheless since this termination is entirely extrinsic, the change of termination also will be entirely extrinsic.

You will say 4. Through the knowledge of a thing, the intellect intentionally becomes the thing known, as Aristotle says 3. de Anima: but God cannot intentionally become a creature: therefore neither can He know a creature. — I distinguish the major. He becomes the thing known primarily and immediately, I concede: He becomes the thing which is known only secondarily and mediately, I deny; for the intellect by understanding becomes all the things which it understands; because it does not perceive a thing except through an intelligible species, or an object bearing the role of the intelligible species, which is the image of the known thing informing and denominating the intellect itself: but since God does not know creatures through an impressed species received from them, but only sees them in His Essence, or in His Omnipotence, in which that creature shines forth; hence it is that He does not become that which He knows outside Himself.

Second conclusion. — God knows Creatures in Himself, as in a means previously known.

This is the express opinion of the Doctor, as is clear both from question 14. Quodlib. Art. 2., where he most fully and most clearly proves that the divine intellect is moved only by the divine Essence, both for the knowledge of itself and for the knowledge of other things. Likewise in 3. dist. 14. q. 2. n. 8., where, inquiring whether the soul of Christ sees in the Word all things which the Word sees, he responds: It can be said that this Conclusion could be posited in two ways; in one way, that the soul of Christ would have one vision with respect to the Word as first object, and of all the objects shining forth in the Word as secondary objects, to which secondary objects it would have distinct relations: therefore the Doctor thinks that Creatures shine forth in the divine Word, and consequently that the divine Word knows them in Himself. Likewise q. 3. of the Prologue he says: I say the same thing in another way, that divine Theology is about all knowable things, because the first object of Theology, which is God, makes all other things actually known in the divine intellect. Many other similar texts of the same Subtle Doctor could be brought forward, by which it is plainly clear that he did not assert that God sees creatures only in themselves, not however in Himself, as some Thomists wrongly affirm, especially Cajetan on the first part of St. Thomas q. 14. art. 6.

The conclusion is therefore proved. First indeed from the holy Fathers, especially from St. Dionysius, lib. De divinis Nominibus c. 7.:

For the divine Mind does not know the things that are, by learning them from the things that are: but from itself and in itself, according to the cause, it pre-has and pre-comprehends the knowledge, and the notion, and the essence of all things: not attending to individuals according to the species of each; but knowing and containing all things according to the single combination of the cause. Then he adds: Therefore the divine Wisdom, knowing itself, knows all material things without matter, and divisible things indivisibly, and many things singly, all things by the one itself, both knowing and producing. Then he concludes: Therefore by this reason God, knowing things, knows them not by the knowledge of things, but by the knowledge of Himself.

With him St. Augustine agrees, both lib. 6. De Trinitate, cap. 10., where he calls the Word of God a certain Art of the omnipotent and wise God, full of all living things: and he concludes: There God knows all things which He made through it: And lib. 5. de Genesi ad litteram, adducing that passage of Ioann. 1.

That which was made in Him was life, he says: In which life He saw all things when He made them, and as He saw, so He made, not seeing on account of Himself, but in Himself.

It is proved moreover by reason. God knows creatures in a nobler way than Angels and blessed Souls know them; but Angels and blessed Souls know creatures in the divine Essence in a more perfect way than in the creatures themselves: therefore much more does God likewise know them in Himself. The major is clear. The minor is proved from St. Augustine lib. 1. de Genesi ad litteram cap. 28. and 29., where he distinguishes a twofold knowledge of creatures in the mind of the Angels; one indeed in the Word, which he calls the morning one; the other in their own nature, which he names the evening one, because it is less clear and less perfect than the former: or as he himself says lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 7. The knowledge of a creature in itself is paler, than when it is known in the wisdom of God, as in the art through which it was made. — Second: that which is a sufficient means for the comprehensive knowledge of the cause can also be a means for the comprehension of the effects: but God in Himself is a means for the comprehension of omnipotence and essence: therefore He is also a means for the comprehension of all possible effects. — Third: divine knowledge must necessarily have a formal motive object by which it is specified: but it cannot have a formal object distinct from itself, otherwise it would depend on creatures, and need them for some perfection of itself, namely for its knowledge, etc.

You will say. God cannot know creatures in Himself, unless the divine Essence represents creatures in esse intelligibili: but it cannot represent them in that way. Proof: the divine Essence cannot represent creatures in esse intelligibili, unless it contains their intelligible being formally, or is similar to them in esse intelligibili: but neither can be said. Not indeed the first, otherwise created being would be formally in God, and so God could formally be called a creature, just as He is formally called just, wise, etc., which is repugnant. Not even the second, because the divine Essence cannot become similar to creatures in esse intelligibili; for intelligible being follows entitative being: therefore since the divine entity cannot be similar to created entity, neither will the divine intelligible being be able to be similar to created intelligible being. —

I deny the minor. For since the divine Essence contains eminently, or actually, absolutely every entity, because it is infinite entity, so likewise the divine Essence in the notion of the intelligible contains all the intelligibility of any thing whatsoever, both eminently and virtually: and so this divine intelligibility, since it is infinite, not only renders the divine Essence intelligible, but also any other being represented in it.

You will say 2. Between the means of knowing and the thing known there must be a necessary connection: but such is not between God and possible creatures: therefore God cannot be a means for knowing possible creatures. The major is clear: otherwise the means could not lead into a certain and infallible knowledge of the object; for a means which is probable, for that reason does not lead into certain and scientific knowledge of the conclusion, because it does not have a necessary connection with it. The minor is proved: first: if the divine Essence had a necessary connection with possible creatures, it would follow that, those possible creatures being destroyed, the divine Essence itself would also necessarily perish. Second, it would follow that it would be equally necessary that a creature be possible, as it is necessary that God exist; and so the possibility of creatures would be no less necessary than the existence of God, which seems repugnant to the principles of faith and to the light of reason. Third: finally it would follow that the divine Essence depends on possible creatures, and cannot subsist without them, for things which have a necessary connection with one another, one cannot exist without the other; all of which are absurd: therefore also that from which they follow. —

I answer, the major being conceded and the minor denied. and to its first proof I distinguish: with possible creatures destroyed, the divine omnipotence and essence would also be destroyed, a priori and by an intrinsic locus, I deny; a posteriori and by an extrinsic locus, I concede: for since the possibility of things is nothing real, except in omnipotence itself and the divine Essence, it follows that the reality of possible things cannot perish, unless in like manner the essence itself and omnipotence, which is the whole ground of the reality of possible things, is to be regarded as perishing; for a possible effect, since it has no other being outside the cause, cannot be destroyed except in the cause, and consequently unless the productive power of it is destroyed, which is the cause itself, and so unless the cause itself is destroyed. To the second proof, I deny the consequence of the major; for although among necessarily connected things one cannot fail, without the other failing; from this it does not, however, follow that one is not more necessary than another; since the necessity of the one rests on a firmer foundation. For although it is more necessary that a man be rational than risible, nevertheless, risibility failing, rationality in man would also fail: similarly, although principles are more necessary than conclusions; nevertheless, the truth of the conclusions failing, the truth of the principles would also fail. Finally, to the third proof, I deny the consequence; for although the divine essence and omnipotence cannot exist without possible creatures; from this it does not, however, follow that they depend on them; since the divine Father, v. g., cannot subsist without the Son: and yet He does not depend on Him: similarly among created things, the essence which is the root of the properties is so intrinsically connected with them, that it cannot subsist without them, and yet it does not depend on them: therefore a pari, although the divine omnipotence cannot subsist without possible creatures, nevertheless it does not follow from this that it depends on them.

Third conclusion. — It is not even improbable that God knows creatures in themselves, so that His divine cognition is borne toward creatures as toward a terminative object.

First proof. The infinite intellect, such as the divine intellect is, perceives things according to all their intelligible being: but creatures have not only an eminent and virtual being in the divine Essence, but also a formal being in themselves: therefore God sees creatures not only in himself, but also in those very things. —

It is confirmed. If God did not know creatures according to the formal being which they have in their own nature, but only according to the eminent and virtual being which they have in him, he would not know them according to every mode in which they are knowable; for the formal being of creatures is not in God, because creatures are not contained in God formally, since God is not formally a man or a lion: but it is absurd to say that God does not know creatures according to every mode in which they are knowable.

Then, God knows things in the more perfect way in which they can be known: but it seems more perfect for a thing to be known in itself than in some medium; for it is more perfect, v. g., to see a man in himself immediately than in a mirror in which he is represented: therefore God, in order to have altogether perfect knowledge, must know creatures not only in himself, but also in those very things.

Finally, God knows creatures in every mode in which they are knowable: but they are knowable not only in the divine Essence, but also in themselves; for the Blessed see them with morning knowledge in the Word, and with evening knowledge in those very things: therefore likewise it is not improbable that God knows creatures in himself and in those very things, so that his divine cognition is borne to those creatures as to an object, not indeed a motive one, but a terminative one.

The Thomists object 1: this conclusion openly fights against the holy Fathers praised in the previous Conclusion, but most of all against St. Dionysius; as will evidently appear from his own words, for he says: He does not apply himself to individual things according to vision, but he knows all things according to the containment of the cause. And below:

for the divine mind does not know the things that are by learning them from the things that are, but from itself and in itself it has, through the cause of all things, a cognition and knowledge anticipated and grasped beforehand; not that it considers individual things through a species, but that it knows and contains all things in one embrace of the cause.

And again: Therefore God knows the things that are, not by the knowledge of the things, but of himself. But if God, besides the knowledge of possible things in himself, knew those things immediately in themselves, he would apply himself to individual things according to vision, and he would know them not by knowing himself, and by a knowledge not of himself but proper to creatures: therefore, according to Dionysius, God does not know possible creatures immediately in themselves, but only in himself and mediately, that is, in the divine Essence first seen and known.

The minor, for its first part, is manifest; for the knower applying himself to the object according to vision is not receiving a species from it, because in this the knower does not apply himself to the object; but rather the object applies itself to the knower: therefore this is to be immediately engaged with the object; for it is not seen in what else it could consist: and consequently, if God knows possible creatures immediately in themselves, he applies himself to creatures according to vision.

The same minor, for its second part, is likewise established: for if God knew possible creatures mediately in himself, and immediately in those very things, then he would know them not only with the knowledge by which he knows himself, but also with another knowledge, which is denied by Dionysius: for his sense is exclusive; otherwise he would not have sufficiently explained the mode in which creatures are known by God.

Finally, for the third part it is urged: the knowledge of that object is said to be that to which it is immediately and primarily terminated: but the knowledge by which God would know possible creatures immediately in themselves would have them for its immediate and primary object: therefore, if such a cognition were given in God, he would know creatures not by the knowledge of himself, but by the knowledge of them.

I answer. by denying all these consequences: for in the aforesaid words St. Dionysius signifies only three things: first indeed, that God does not beg the knowledge which he has of creatures from their existence, but knows them before they exist; second, that God does not know creatures through species received from the creatures themselves, as we know them, but through his essence playing the role of the species concurring with the divine intellect for the knowledge of them; third, that God does not know himself with a knowledge distinct from that which he has of creatures, so that he would require a double act of cognition, one namely by which he perceives himself, another by which he perceives creatures, but that with one simple, indivisible and infinite act he knows himself and the things other than himself.

He indicates the first with these words, which he had premised before the words cited above:

Therefore the divine mind contains all things by a knowledge which is hidden from all, because through the cause of all things it has in itself an anticipated knowledge of all things, so that it knew the Angels and brought them forth into the light before they were made, and had all the things that are known from itself and from him, as I might say, from the beginning, and brought them forth into the light. And I think that the divine writings hand this down when they say, he who knows all things before they were made.

For not, etc. He indicates the second with these words cited in the objection, saying: Not that he considers individual things through a species, but that he knows and contains all things in one embrace of the cause. He then adds the third: Therefore God does not have a knowledge proper to himself, and another which commonly and generally comprehends all the things that are; for he, the cause of all things, knowing himself, will in no way whatsoever be ignorant of the things which have proceeded from him and of which he is the cause.

From these things it is clear that St. Dionysius intends only three things. First, that God has an anticipated knowledge of things before they exist, namely by beholding them in his Essence representative of all things, and in his omnipotence as in the cause of all things: second, that he does not know creatures one by one through individual species begged from them, but only either through the comprehension of his omnipotence, or through his infinite power of knowing: third, finally, that his cognition, by which he perceives himself and creatures, is not divided.

They object 2. St. Augustine, lib. 83. quaest., quaest. 47, saying: For God did not behold anything placed outside himself, lest he should constitute what he was constituting according to it; for to think this is sacrilegious: therefore God does not know things in those very things, but only in himself.

I deny the consequence. For St. Augustine only means there that God had no need of some exemplar outside himself, at which he would look, so as to fashion things after its likeness, as a painter, v. g., looks at the panel which he undertakes to paint: but God established all things according to the divine ideas which he had eternal in himself. Whence Augustine adds:

But if these reasons of all things to be created or created are contained in the divine mind; and nothing can be in the divine mind except what is eternal and immutable; and Plato calls these principal reasons of things ideas: not only are they ideas, but they themselves are true, because they are eternal, and remain such and immutable, by participation in which it comes about that whatever is, is in the way it is:

by which words it clearly stands that St. Augustine there speaks only of the divine ideas, which God beheld not outside, but within himself in the creation of the world, so as to produce all things after their likeness: and so this authority of St. Augustine does not oppose the aforesaid conclusion.

They object 3. If the divine intellect were really terminated at creatures as they are in themselves, several absurdities would follow: first, since knowledge depends on the object, divine cognition would also depend on creatures: second, since knowledge is proportioned to the object, and is more excellent or less perfect according to the greater or lesser dignity of the object, divine knowledge would be debased if it tended toward a created object: third, since the cognition of a created object is not beatifying, but only the cognition of God; if some cognition of God tended toward a creature, it would follow that some cognition in God is not beatific; all of which are most absurd: therefore they are not to be asserted.

I deny the antecedent. and to all its proofs I say that all those absurdities would indeed follow from this, if divine knowledge tended toward creatures not only as a terminative object, but also as a motive one; since, however, the divine intellect is moved to the knowledge of creatures only by the divine Essence, not by the creatures, all these absurdities do not follow from this; most of all because creatures have only the notion of an object secondarily terminating divine cognition.

You will insist. If divine knowledge is formally terminated at created being, it follows that it is not absolutely necessary, but mutable; for such is knowledge, as is its object: therefore, since creatures are not necessary but only contingent, such likewise will be the knowledge of God terminated at them.

I deny the antecedent. For these things would indeed be true if divine knowledge tended toward creatures not only as a terminative object, but also as a motive one; since, however, creatures known by God have only the notion of a terminating object, not of a moving one, hence it is that their cognition is not such as their entity is. Hence it follows that even if no creatures were possible and future, divine knowledge would no less be infinite and necessary, because it would no less be terminated at the infinite object primarily motive and terminative. It would indeed be true that in this hypothesis knowledge would not be terminated at some creatures: but this defect of termination would not come from the side of the knowledge, but from the side of the creatures; for knowledge of itself is the representation of all representable things without any change of itself: as, by way of simile, the sun is illuminative of all illuminable things, and if it does not illuminate some, that is not traced back to a defect of the sun, but of the things which are not exposed to the sun. It is certain, therefore, that divine knowledge depends intrinsically only on the divine Essence as the primary motive and terminative object; on creatures, however, only extrinsically, and as an object, not indeed motive, but only secondarily terminative.

They object 4. In God, as being infinitely perfect, a double mode of knowing creatures cannot be admitted, one of which is more perfect and the other less perfect: but the mode of knowing creatures in the divine Essence as in a cause is much more perfect and nobler than the mode of knowing them immediately in themselves: whence in the blessed Angels the morning cognition, by which they see creatures in the Word and in the divine Essence as in a cause, is much more perfect than the evening cognition, by which they know them outside the Word and immediately in themselves, according to that saying of St. Augustine which we cited above concerning the beatific vision: The cognition of a creature in itself is more discolored than when it is known in the wisdom of God, as in the art by which it was made: therefore, besides the mode of knowing possible creatures in the divine Essence as in a cause, there should not be admitted in God another mode by which he beholds them immediately in themselves and independently of his essence first known.

I distinguish the major. In God a double mode of knowing creatures cannot be admitted, such that each would have the notion of an object moving per se to that cognition, and which would be done through a distinct act, as the angelic and beatific cognition is, I concede: for this indeed denotes imperfection: that this double mode, diverse by reason of a diverse immediate termination, to various objects, namely to the essence and to the creatures, cannot be admitted, I deny: for so far is this diverse mode of knowing from denoting some imperfection; rather it connotes the supreme power and infinite activity of the divine intellect, by which it can be immediately terminated both at the divine Essence and at the creatures themselves with one and indivisible act.

They object 5. Creatures are known by the divine intellect in that mode in which they are represented through the species by which it understands: but they are not represented in themselves and by reason of themselves, but mediately and in another, namely in God as first represented: therefore they are not known immediately in themselves, but through God first known. The major is evident: for since from the intellect and the object an adequate principle of intellection is constituted through a species, the intellect can understand nothing unless it is represented through a species: therefore neither will it be able to understand immediately what is not contained immediately in the species. The minor, however, is proved: the species by which the divine intellect understands is the divine Essence alone: but this does not represent creatures immediately, but through God first represented; therefore the species by which the divine intellect understands does not represent creatures immediately, but only mediately.

I deny the major. For it is false, as we proved in the previous Question, that the divine Essence has the notion of an intelligible species both with respect to itself and with respect to creatures; for since the divine intellect is of infinite activity, and since the divine Essence is per se and immediately infinitely intelligible, and is per se and immediately proportioned to the divine intellect itself, the divine intellect itself needs no species, both to perceive the divine Essence and to be moved by it to the knowledge of the creatures which it presents to the divine intellect itself to be known, through its infinite power of representing.

They object finally from St. Thomas, 1. Contra Gentiles, cap. 48., with the first argument, where he reasons thus:

An intellectual operation has its species and nobility according to that which is understood per se first, since this is its object: if, therefore, God understood something other than himself as first understood, his intellectual operation would have its species and nobility from another rather than from himself: but this is impossible, since his operation is his essence; and this, being a being from itself, cannot take its species from another distinct from God: thus, therefore, it is impossible that what is first and per se understood be something other than himself.

From these words this argument can be deduced: if God knew creatures immediately in themselves and independently of the divine Essence first known, the formal and specifying object of the divine intellection would be created being, or being as such abstracting from the created and the uncreated: but this cannot be said; therefore neither can that. The sequel of the major is evident: for that is deemed to be the formal and primary object of some potency or operation which is primarily and immediately attained by it and independently of another first attained, as is evident in potentia visiva, whose formal and primary object is color, which it attains per se first; the secondary and material object, however, is the wall, or another subject affected with color; because that is not attained immediately and per se first, but only secondarily and through color.

They prove the minor: first indeed, cognition takes its species and its essential perfection from the primary object and is measured by it: but the understanding of God, since it is his nature, cannot take its species nor be measured by creatures: therefore created being cannot be the formal and primary object of the divine intellection. Second, the formal primary object of the divine intellection must be something most actual, just as the intellection itself is: but a creature is not the most actual being, but a potential one: therefore it cannot be the formal primary object of the divine intellection.

I distinguish the major. Created being is the specifying object of the divine intellection, if it moves the divine intellect per se first to the knowledge of itself, I concede: if it does not move it at all, but only terminates the divine intellection itself, I deny: it is certain, however, that creatures do not have the notion of a motive object, but only of a terminative one with respect to the divine intellection; for the divine intellect is indeed immediately terminated at creatures known in those very things, but it is moved to that cognition only by the divine Essence, which, since it contains the being of creatures eminently and virtually, and that in a more perfect way than the creatures themselves contain their formal being in themselves; and so has the power of representing creatures to the divine intellect in a more perfect way than they are represented in themselves; hence also the divine Essence alone has the power of moving the divine intellect itself to the knowledge of creatures; and thus creatures do not have the notion of a moving object, but only of a terminating one.

That, however, only the motive object is specifying of cognition, and not the terminative one, is openly evident; for cognition is diversified according to the diversity of the medium by which it is made; where, however, there is the same motive object, there likewise the same medium is deemed to be, and the same mode, and so also the same specification: therefore, since the divine intellect is moved by the divine Essence alone, the divine intellection also receives its formal specification from that same one alone.

It is certain, first. That God is endowed with infinite knowledge is abundantly clear from what has been said, both in the preceding article and in the third introductory theological question. It is established, moreover, that divine knowledge is not intrinsically multiple: for by one and unchangeable act of cognition God perceives all things. Hence the whole variety of divine knowledge must be referred back to the different terminations of the same knowledge with respect to the different states of creatures.

It is certain, second. A varied and especially fourfold division of divine knowledge has been assigned by the ancient theologians, the first of which is into speculative and practical. The former is so called because by it God only knows things, and does not produce them, by giving them true and real existence; such is the cognition which is concerned with things that are merely possible and that have never had any existence, nor ever will have:

The latter is that by which God not only knows, but also produces the things known; such is the knowledge of vision, which through the divine decree tends toward the real production of things. — The second division is into necessary and free knowledge: the first is that which precedes the decree and the free determination of the divine will, and which is not concerned with the contingent existence of things, but terminates at their unchangeable and necessary essence. The second, however, is called free for this reason, that it presupposes the free decree of God and is borne toward things either present, or past, or future, freely determined by God. — The third, and the most celebrated of all, is into the knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision: by the former God is said to know the essences and the possibility of things; by the latter, however, their existence, whether future, present, or past. This division, however, is not to be taken as though it were made into members opposed per se; since the knowledge of simple intelligence is also intuitive, and God perceives possible things as clearly and intuitively as present ones: but it is to be employed only in this way, that the same cognition is distributed into adequate and inadequate; so that the knowledge of vision comprises the whole and adequate vision of God, while the knowledge of simple intelligence signifies only the inadequate cognition of God, namely inasmuch as it terminates at purely possible things: to both of these knowledges some add a third, which they call middle. — Finally, the fourth division of divine knowledge is made into the knowledge of approbation and of disapprobation. The former is the knowledge of vision itself inasmuch as it is concerned with the good and as it presupposes the decree and approbation of the divine will: the latter, however, is the same knowledge of vision, inasmuch as it is borne toward evils and sins, by which God neither decrees them to be done, nor approves them when done; but only permits them, and so it does not presuppose a positive and absolute decree of God, but only a permissive one.

This division is drawn from Sacred Scripture, since with regard to the knowledge of approbation it is said in Genesis 1.: God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And in Psalmo 1.: The Lord knows the way of the just. With regard to the knowledge of disapprobation, however, is understood that of Habacuc 1.: Your eyes are pure, so that they may not see evil, and you cannot look upon iniquity. Likewise that of Lucae 13.: Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I know you not.

Since, however, all the aforesaid divisions especially converge and are resolved into the third, therefore, so that an exact knowledge of divine science may be had in a fitting order and as far as possible, we shall distribute the present article into three sections, of which the first will be on the knowledge of simple intelligence and of possible things; the second, on the knowledge of vision and of things absolutely future; the third, finally, on conditional knowledge and on things future only under a condition.

The knowledge by which God perceives possible things is therefore called the knowledge of simple intelligence, because God contemplates those things speculatively, without any order to their production and existence. With regard to this divine knowledge, two things above all present themselves for resolution: first, whether possible creatures are of themselves intelligible beforehand and have some being in themselves before they are understood by the divine intellect; second, in what manner and in what the divine intellect perceives those possible things.

Note 1. As to the resolution of the present Question, a threefold being of creatures can be distinguished: first, indeed, virtual and eminent being, which they have in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, which can represent and produce them. Second, known and objective being, which all things have in the divine Intellect knowing them from eternity. Third, finally, entitative being, which they have in themselves while they truly and really exist. Here there is no question of entitative being, nor yet of virtual and eminent being, which is not the proper and formal being of creatures, but is the very divine being itself, that is, the divine Essence itself, inasmuch as it is the first being and the principle of the other beings. Whence just as the being of heat in the sun is nothing other than the being of the sun itself, as able to produce heat, so likewise the virtual being of creatures in God is not distinct from the divine being, but is the divine power itself, by which God can produce creatures. Only the known being, therefore, which they have in the divine Intellect, is in question here. But it must be noted that this known being is taken in two ways: first, for the divine knowledge itself, by which God knows possible creatures; second, for that extrinsic denomination, as it were, resulting in creatures from this divine knowledge and by which creatures are denominated known, just as a wall is said to be seen from a vision. Here, however, we are not speaking of the former known being. For it is certain that it is truly real, because it is the divine knowledge itself, in which creatures are comprehended. Whence it comes about that they are said to live in the Word, according to that saying of John: What was made, in him was life, — Life, says Augustine, creative, because the knowledge of God is really creative life. Only the objective being taken in the second way, therefore, is in question here.

Note 2. A threefold possibility of things can be distinguished from the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. and elsewhere, namely logical, metaphysical and physical. The first is the non-repugnance of things to existing, or as he speaks in n. 10., the logical Possible is a mode of composition formed by the intellect, namely of that whose terms do not include a contradiction. The second possibility is called by the same Doctor in 2. dist. 12. q. 1. that objective being by which a thing can be perceived and can be the object of a knowing potency. The third, finally, is that being of creatures expressing a respect to the divine Omnipotence, by which they can be produced. The present question concerns only metaphysical possibility, and not the others.

Note 3. From the same Doctor in 1. dist. 13. quaest. unica, n. 5., in disclosing the possibility of things, three instants of nature can be distinguished, in the first of which the divine intellect produces creatures in intelligible and objective being, namely by conceiving them according to that being which they can really have if they are produced. In the second, a creature can be conceived as having possible being of itself: *Because, says the Doctor, of itself formally it is not repugnant to it to have being, and of itself formally it is repugnant to it to have necessary being from itself, and in these two things stands the whole notion of the possible. In the third, finally, the creature expresses a respect to the divine Omnipotence, by which it can be produced. In the first instant it has metaphysical possibility, in the second logical, and in the third physical: or as the Doctor speaks in the same place n. 6.: in the prior instant creatures have possible being principiatively from the divine intellect, in the second they have formal possible being from themselves, in the third they have complete possible being from the respect which they express to the divine Omnipotence.

But whether things are so in fact, the Doctors do not agree. For first, Henry Quodlib. 8. q. 1. and 9. attributes to creatures some real being of essence, eternal, by reason of which creatures are said to be intelligible and are known by the divine intellect: which opinion Waldensis reports and condemns in Wycliffe as a most wicked error, lib. 1. Fidei, cap. 8. — which error likewise Cajetan, prima parte quaest. 14. art. 5., and Bannes, q. 10. art. 3., wrongly ascribe to the Subtle Doctor.

Second, Suarez disp. 30. metaphysica sect. 17. distinguishes a twofold possibility of things, one negative, which is the non-repugnance of the thing to be produced; the other positive, which consists in a certain extrinsic denomination proceeding from the omnipotence of God, from which creatures are formally denominated possible. He says that creatures have the former by reason prior to being understood by God; the latter, however, while they are known. Third, our Aureolus in 1. dist. 30. art. 4. affirms that the possible being of creatures is nothing other than the virtual being, that is, the being of a cause able to produce them. Finally, Vasquez 1. parte, disp. 104. cap. 4. and 5., and likewise almost all the other recent authors, say that creatures are possible, at least incompletely, independently of the divine intellect. But that what is truer may appear, three things are to be resolved in the present Question: first, whether creatures have had any real possible being from eternity; second, from what precisely they have their first possible being distinct from the divine Essence — namely, whether from themselves, or from the divine intellect; third, what that possible being of creatures is formally.

First conclusion. — Possible things have absolutely no real, formal being from eternity. This is the express opinion of the Doctor in 1. dist. 36., which he proves against Henry with seven arguments, of which the principal one is drawn from the creation of things. Whatever is created is produced from nothing; but creatures are formed through creation: therefore they are produced from nothing; and so before their creation they were nothing, and therefore they had no real being. It is confirmed; because just as that which presupposes the matter out of which it is produced is not judged to be produced through creation, but through eduction or generation, so neither is that judged to be created from nothing whose some real being is presupposed.

Henry replies. Creation is indeed made from the nothing of existence, so that what is created was not previously existing, but not from the nothing of essence, so that what is created had true being beforehand.

On the contrary. thus I press with the Doctor: creation is a production from non-being to being simpliciter; but that which presupposes its real being is not produced to being simpliciter, but only to being secundum quid, namely to the being of existence: therefore what is created presupposes no real being, otherwise, says the Doctor, creation will be less a production simpliciter than Alteration is, where there is a production of at least something as to absolute being.

Add. that existence is only a mode of the thing: therefore if a thing is produced only according to existence, it is not produced according to being simpliciter.

Second: That real being, if creatures had any from eternity, would either be communicated by God, or not. Not the first, because God does not communicate being except through production, and production terminates at an existing thing, and so those possible creatures would have been existing from eternity, which is against the faith. Nor the second, because the whole being of the creature is participated and dependent from God.

Some moderns reply. that the whole being of creatures is indeed dependent and participated as to existence, but not as to essence.

Against. existence is only a mode of created things: therefore if created things depend on God only according to existence, they depend only according to some mode of themselves, and considered in themselves, they are absolutely independent of God. Next, if a creature depends on God only as to its existence: therefore it will be an essentially independent being, for its essence will depend on nothing. Finally, the essences of creatures would seem to be equally necessary as the divine Essence, which depends on nothing: but it is unbecoming for Christians to admit these and similar consequences: therefore also that from which they are inferred.

Third: If a creature before its production has real essential being, it follows that it cannot be annihilated, for just as, says the Doctor, the real being of the essence would be presupposed to creation, by like reason it would remain after annihilation. But that whose essence really remains after its corruption ought to be judged less annihilated than that whose matter remains; for that essence really subsisting is more the proper being of the thing than matter is, which before its corruption was a constitutive part of it.

Finally: the Doctor adds other arguments, arguing ad hominem against Henry. First, if creatures had real essential being from eternity, it would follow that something is necessary besides God; for since the essences of things are invariable and necessary, if they had true real being from eternity, there would also be something essentially necessary besides God. Second, since the divine intellect is a natural cause, and acts naturally, what it produces more immediately it also produces more perfectly, because it produces them according to all its activity and fecundity: therefore, since the divine intellect produces the ideal notions and the essences themselves in the notion of essence, but the ideal notions before the essences, because the essences are made only insofar as they are exemplified; therefore those ideas would have truer and more perfect being than the essences themselves, and so the essences would not be real. See the other arguments in the Doctor himself in the same place.

You will say 1. That has real being whose real truth is from eternity; but the real truth of the essences of creatures is from eternity, for this proposition, Man is a rational animal, is true from eternity: therefore likewise the essence of man signified by that proposition is real from eternity.

I deny the major. For fictitious beings also have truth from eternity, and yet not true entity: whence the falsity of the minor is clear. For in like manner I could infer, Chimaera is a fictitious and impossible being, is true from eternity: therefore the chimaera is real from eternity — which inference is utterly null, and so from the truth of a thing it is not lawful to infer its reality. — Or I say with Saint Thomas 1. part. q. 10. a. 3. ad 3. that this proposition is true inasmuch as the signified thing was objectively in the divine mind, but not subjectively, that is, real in itself. To this the Doctor consents in the above-cited n. 11., saying:

When you say further: therefore it has no definition unless it is existing, I deny that consequence, because a definition is a distinct knowledge of the defined thing according to all its essential parts, and a distinct knowledge can be of something, although it itself is not a firm being; and it does not follow: a firm being is understood by definition: therefore a firm being exists.

— Or I say with the same Doctor in 1. dist. 3. quaest. 4. n. 18. that the necessary truths of things are and are seen in God in four ways: first, as in the proximate object, because the divine intellect gives intelligible being to creatures from eternity, in whose power they necessarily shine immutably. Second, as in that which contains the proximate object, because the divine intellect, like a book, contains those intelligibles, which can be called an eternal light secundum quid. Third, as in something by whose power it moves the object, because just as the divine intellect produces things other than itself in intelligible being, so it gives the notion of object by which it moves. Fourth, as in a remote known object, because the divine Essence is the first principle of things to be contemplated and the ultimate end of things to be done, and so the truth of things can stand from eternity, although the true things are not real in themselves.

You will insist. The knowledge by which God knows the essences of creatures is real from eternity: therefore the known object is real. The consequence is clear, both because correlates are simultaneous in nature: therefore God knowing creatures and creatures known are simultaneous in nature. And because knowledges are specified by their object.

I concede the antecedent, but I deny the consequence. both because the reality of the divine Knowledge is not derived from the secondary object, such as creatures are, but from the primary object, that is, from the divine Essence: and because, as the Doctor infers num. 6. from St. Augustine lib. 5. in Genes. 7., God does not know things made otherwise than as things to be made. He therefore foreknew the being of existence, just as the being of essence, and yet on account of that founded relation he does not concede that any being of existence was true being from eternity: therefore by like reason this is not to be conceded about the being of essence.

You will say 2. According to Aristotle and the other Philosophers, the essences of things are eternal, invariable, ungenerable and incorruptible: but they would not be such if they had nothing real from eternity, etc.

I distinguish the major. They are eternal according to entitative being, I deny; according to ideal, objective, virtual being, which they have in the divine intellect and in the divine omnipotence, I concede. And with the minor similarly distinguished, the consequence is to be denied. And so, that creatures are said to be eternal and ungenerable according to essence, but not according to existence, these things are not to be understood as if they were produced in time according to existence only; for it is certain that everything whatever that is in them is truly produced and generated, whether it be essence, or property, or existence. But these things are to be understood in this way: that the objective concept and the essential predicates of things abstract from existence and are altogether invariable, so that whether man exists or not, this proposition is always true, Man is a rational animal.

You will say 3. What is placed in the predicamental line is real, for reality is one of the conditions for the notion of a category: but creatures are placed in the predicamental line even before they exist and insofar as they are possible, indeed they must necessarily abstract from existence in order to be placed in the categories: therefore insofar as they are possible they are truly real.

I distinguish the major. It must be real, either objectively or entitatively, I concede; entitatively only, I deny. To the minor I say that possible creatures are not indeed real entitatively and formally in themselves, but only objectively, ideally, and in the divine intellect, which suffices for them to be able to be placed in the categories.

Second conclusion. — The first distinct being of creatures is from the divine intellect. So the Subtle Doctor in many places, but especially in 1. dist. 43. n. 5., where he speaks thus:

Through the potency itself, under the notion according to which it is omnipotence, it does not have an object that is first possible, but through the divine intellect producing it in the first instant in intelligible being, and the intellect is not formally the active potency by which God is formally called omnipotent, and then the thing produced by the divine intellect into such being, namely intelligible being, in the first instant of nature, has of itself possible being in the second instant of nature.

By which the Doctor plainly signifies that creatures have their first being from the intellect, namely known being. Second, that they have from themselves a non-repugnance to existing, which non-repugnance is accompanied by a relation of reason to the omnipotence able to produce them, and so this non-repugnance is accompanied, or followed, by their formal and complete possible being.

Proof first. by the authority of St. Augustine lib. 5. De Genesi ad litteram cap. 18., where he says:

These visible things before they were made did not exist; how then were they known to God, which did not exist? Again: how would he make those which were not known to him, for he made nothing in ignorance? Therefore he made them as known, he did not know them as made; accordingly, before they were made, they also were: they were in the knowledge of God, they were not in their own nature.

consequently, according to the mind of St. Augustine, possible creatures have no other being besides the objective being which they have in the essence, that is, in the intellect of God; for if they had any other being, it would especially be essential being: but St. Augustine excludes that by saying that things were not something in their own nature, and consequently neither in their own essence, because essence and nature are the same.

It is also proved by reason. Every being that creatures have, since it is neither in themselves nor from themselves, is produced either by the intellect or by the will of God; but the first being of creatures is not produced by the will: therefore by the intellect of God.

The minor is proved. The being that creatures have from the will and omnipotence of God from eternity is willed and future being: but before that willed and future being, creatures first have possible and intelligible being, for nothing is willed unless it is foreknown, and nothing future is decreed unless it is first possible: therefore the first possible being which creatures have is not from the will, but from the intellect of God.

Further, if creatures had some being before the divine intellection, they would have it most of all either from themselves or from God: but not from themselves, as has already been proved, otherwise they would not be creatures: therefore whatever being they had, they would have from God. But they cannot have any being from God before the divine intellection, because if they had it, they would have it either by emanation or by production. Not the former, for nothing emanates from God except what is divine and really undivided from the divine Essence, such as are the divine perfections and the relations of origin: but creatures are neither something divine nor really undivided from God. Nor the latter, for the first operation of the Godhead, both ad intra and ad extra, takes place through the intellect, as is evident: therefore the first being that creatures have is from the divine intellect.

Finally, the fecundity of the divine intellect is greater than the fecundity of the created intellect: but the created intellect bestows known being upon the things which it understands. For just as a seen stone has seen being through vision, so the same stone, known through knowledge, has known being; yet with this twofold defect: first, that that known being in the created intellect is not the primary being, but a secondary one, because the created intellect presupposes its effect, but does not truly produce it; second, that that known being is extrinsic to the things; since these defects cannot fall upon the divine intellect, inasmuch as it is most perfect, the consequence is that in producing creatures in known being, it produces them according to their primary and intrinsic being, and so the first being that creatures have must necessarily be from the divine intellect.

You will say 1. The possibility of creatures consists in their non-repugnance to existing: but they have that non-repugnance from themselves: therefore they also have possibility from themselves.

I distinguish the major. Complete possibility consists in that non-repugnance with an order to omnipotence, from which creatures are not repugnant to be produced, I concede; first and inchoate possibility, or the first concept of a possible thing, consists in that non-repugnance, I deny: for since the non-repugnance is the non-repugnance of some thing, it necessarily presupposes the concept of the thing, in which that non-repugnance is grounded: therefore, for creatures to be said to have non-repugnance to existing, they must first be supposed to have some being: but they cannot have that being from any other than the divine intellect, and consequently they have their first being only from the divine intellect.

You will say 2. Speculative knowledge does not produce its object, but presupposes it: but the knowledge by which God knows possible creatures is speculative: therefore He does not produce those possible creatures, but presupposes them.

I distinguish the major. Speculative knowledge does not produce its object in the real and entitative being which it has in itself, I concede; it does not produce it in the intelligible being which it has in the intellect, I deny; because, says the Doctor num. 6, Even if something does not exist, it can nevertheless be understood by us, whether its essence or its existence, and yet it is not posited on account of our intellection that it has true being of existence. Nor is there any difference in this regard, as it seems, between our intellect and the divine one, except that the divine intellect produces those intelligibles in intelligible being primarily, ours does not produce primarily.

They press again. Things are intelligible in the divine Essence before they are understood by the divine intellect: therefore they do not have only known being. — I distinguish the antecedent, with our de Bassoli, in 1. distinction 36, question 1, article 2: they are intelligible before, formally and distinctly, so that they shine forth in it as in a mirror, I deny the antecedent; they are intelligible before, virtually and indistinctly, as effects in their cause, I concede the antecedent. Moreover, for something to be called intelligible, formally speaking, it must actually be represented, either in itself or in a species, which is not how possible things are in the essence, before they are supposed to be understood.

You will insist. If creatures are produced in possible and diminished being by the knowledge of God, the consequence is that when God knows Himself, indeed also when He knows creatures already existing, He produces them in possible and diminished being: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I deny the major. For the divine intellect really to produce things in diminished and possible being, the known thing must presuppose no being at all, and so when God knows either Himself or creatures already existing, He must in no way produce Himself or the known creatures in known, possible, and diminished being.

Third conclusion. — That possible being, known formally in itself and considered insofar as it is conceived as something distinct from the Essence and Intellect of God, is not something real. This is the express opinion of the Doctor in 1. dist. 36, quaest. unica, in the reply to the second argument, where he says:

I say that this production in known being is in a being of another notion from every being simpliciter, and it is not a relation of reason only, but also of an absolute foundation, not indeed according to the being of essence or of existence, which is true being; but according to diminished being, which being is being secundum quid, even of an absolute being, which absolute being, however, according to that diminished being, is accompanied by a relation of reason.

In the same place, dist. 13, quaest. unica, he says:

a being of reason has being only in the intellect, because a being of reason is not caused by the object except insofar as it is known, and as such it has being only in the intellect, which is diminished being, from 6. Metaphys.; but nothing, insofar as it is diminished being, is the proper notion of true being.

And in dist. 36, n. 10, where, after he had said that that diminished being produced by the divine intellect has the notion of a being not respective but absolute, he says:

that absolute being, however, according to that diminished being, is accompanied by a relation of reason. An example of this: if Caesar had been annihilated and yet there were a statue of Caesar, Caesar would be represented through the statue. That represented being is of another notion from every being simpliciter, whether of essence or of existence, nor is it the diminished being of Caesar, as if something of Caesar had this being and something did not. Just as an Ethiopian is diminishedly white, because something of him is truly white and something is not; but the whole Caesar and his being from his cause is true being of existence and of essence, of which whole, according to its total being, there is that being secundum quid, and in it, according to that being secundum quid, there can be some relation to the statue.

By these words the Doctor signifies that just as the formal representation of Caesar imports nothing real either in the statue or in Caesar, so neither does that diminished representative being of creatures signify anything real, either in itself or in the creatures themselves.

Further, that is a pure being of reason which has being only objectively in the divine intellect in the way in which second intentions have being in the created intellect: but that diminished being has no other being than the objective being in the intellect of God: therefore it is formally in itself a being of reason.

Finally, if that objective being had some reality, it would have it most of all either according to essence or according to existence: but neither can be said. Not the first, because, as has already been proved, creatures have no real being in themselves from eternity; nor the second, because creatures, as possible and according to that known being, have no existence in themselves: therefore they are a pure being of reason.

You will say 1. Possible creatures, and creatures in known being, have something beyond a chimera, for existence is repugnant to the latter, but not to the former: but a chimera is a being of reason: therefore creatures, according to that possible and objective being, are not a being of reason.

The Doctor cited above denies the major, num. 14, saying:

the first and utterly irreducible reason why being is not repugnant to man is that he is formally a man, and this whether really in the thing or conceptibly in the intellect; and the first reason why being is repugnant to a chimera is the chimera insofar as it is a chimera. Therefore that negation of nothingness inheres in man in eternity and in the chimera in different ways, and yet the one is not on this account more nothing than the other.

To this reply he had prefixed the reason num. 13, saying that the negation of something inheres in another either on account of the mere defect of the cause producing it, or on account of the repugnance which it has to receiving it. In the former way whiteness is denied of a wall that is not white. In the latter way it is denied of an Angel, and in this case a wall that is not white is no less nothing of whiteness than an Angel. And the reason, he says, why this negation is not more than that one is that any negation denies the whole affirmation opposed to it, from whatever reason it is such. For it is just as true to say that a black wall is not white as that an Angel is not white. The same must be said by way of similitude of possible creatures and of the chimera, because real being is truly denied of both from eternity.

You will say 2. A being of reason is that which is fashioned by the intellect after the manner of a real being when it is not a real being: but a possible being cannot be so fashioned by the divine intellect: therefore it is not a being of reason. The major is evident from Logic. The minor is proved: for such a fiction, since it imports the highest imperfection, cannot be attributed to the divine intellect, which is most perfect in every way.

I distinguish the major. A purely fictitious being of reason is so fashioned by the created intellect, I concede; a being of reason arising through a certain resultant of some operation, I deny. To the minor I say that that possible or diminished being is not indeed fashioned by the divine intellect, nor fabricated by it through a true and real fictitious operation; but is conceived by us after the manner of a diminished being resulting from the infinite knowledge by which the divine intellect, comprehending the divine Essence and Omnipotence, and intuitively knowing their infinitely representative and productive power, first conceives creatures in possible being, that is, that they do not repugn, from which concept arises the denomination of known being, which is a being of reason, and which can result from the knowledge of a being that can at some time be true and real; and so the divine intellect makes a being of reason, not by fashioning, but by conceiving a true being.

You will say 3. If possible creatures are truly said to be produced from eternity according to diminished being by the divine intellect, and to be known by it from eternity, by the same reasoning the divine Essence, known also from eternity by the divine intellect itself, could be said to be produced by it according to diminished being: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I deny the sequel of the major. For a thing to be able to be produced in known being and to have the notion of diminished being, it must first have no real being, whether of essence or of existence, before it is known by the divine intellect: but the divine Essence, prior by nature to being known by the divine intellect, already has the being of existence in itself and formally, for existence is of the Essence of God; and so the divine Essence itself, however much it may be known by the divine intellect, cannot have the notion of diminished being.

You will say 4. From what has been said it is evident that the Doctor affirms that that known being and diminished being is the foundation of a relation of reason: therefore, in the mind of the Doctor, either that diminished being is not a being of reason, or the Doctor contradicts himself.

I answer. The Doctor for that reason calls that diminished being something absolute, because it is conceived after the manner of some form resulting from the knowledge of a true being and bestowing the denomination of known being; which resulting form, namely, is also conceived as founding a relation to that from which it results and to that which it denominates. This denominating form, however, and the relation to the denominated thing have nothing of reality in themselves, but are a pure being of reason, not indeed a fictitious one, but as it were one arising through resultant; for since a being of reason arises from the knowledge of a true being, and since every denomination of known being is a being of reason, it is clear that the divine intellect, in understanding possible things, forms a being of reason not by fiction, but by denomination and resultant, in the way, namely, in which the bodily eye, in seeing a wall, is said to produce a being of reason through resultant, because the being seen, which the intellect conceives to remain in the wall after the vision, is a pure being of reason.

Corollary I. — From these things gather, 1., how wrongly Cajetan and some Thomists charge the Subtle Doctor, affirming that he fell into the error of Wycliffe. For as Thomas of Walden reports, libr. 1. Fidei antiquae, cap. 1., Wycliffe was involved in this error, that he called the threefold being of creatures — namely, the intelligible being in the divine intellect, the virtual being in second causes, and the entitative being in its own genus — being simpliciter, so that the objective being which creatures have in the divine intellect is as real as the entitative being which they have in themselves while they exist; moreover he affirmed that that intelligible being is properly and formally in God. Hence he contended that God could absolutely and simpliciter be called a horse, an ass, etc.; indeed he also contended that creatures, formally existing in God by reason of this intelligible being, could truly be called God; how foreign both of these are to the opinion of the Subtle Doctor is abundantly clear from what has been said.

Corollary II. — Gather, 2., that creatures are not represented actually and formally in the divine Essence before they are understood; both because creatures as such are not contained in the divine Essence except as effects in a cause: but effects are not contained actually in the cause, but only eminently and virtually: therefore neither are they represented actually and distinctly; and because if creatures had represented and intelligible being in the divine Essence before they are understood, it would follow that they pertain to the memory of the Father, which is the intellect itself fecundated by the object, rather than to the intelligence, which is the intellect with actual intellection: but this conflicts with the mind of the Doctor, who in 2. dist. 1. qu. 1. affirms that creatures do not have being in the memory of the Father.

Add. that since according to D. Aug., lib. 15 De Trinitate, the divine Word is born from the whole memory of the Father, and consequently from everything which is actually contained and represented in the memory of the Father; if creatures shone forth in the memory of the Father itself, they would be the reasons for producing the divine Word, and by the force of its production it would be the likeness and image of creatures, which whether it is true we will disclose in the Treatise De Trinitate.

Three things are especially to be resolved in the present Question: First, whether God truly beholds intuitively, distinctly and clearly, the quiddities, properties and appendages of all possible things: Second, whether this knowledge pertains in no way to the knowledge of vision: Third, finally, whether He beholds those possible creatures intuitively in His essence, or in His omnipotence, or in His very divine knowledge itself; so that they may become known more clearly.

Note 1. In any possible being two things must be distinguished: one, which it signifies in recto; the other, which it signifies only in obliquo. The first is the being itself according to its whole entity, which it would have if it truly existed in act; for that is called a possible being which can exist, and it is true that an existing being, according to its whole entity, was first possible. The second, however, is that twofold possibility which that being imports: one intrinsic and logical, which is the non-repugnance of the thing to existing, that is, whose extremes involve no contradiction, so that they are united with one another to constitute some thing, as animal and rational to form man; the other extrinsic, which consists in the relation and order of reason which those possible things are conceived to bear to the divine omnipotence, by which they can be produced. The former possibility is as it were radical and remote, the source and origin of the latter; for this reason indeed the divine power can produce possible creatures, because they import no contradiction in their concept and existence.

Note 2. The difference of the knowledge of simple intelligence from the knowledge of vision does not consist precisely in this, that they know the same object abstractively and intuitively; for each cognition of God is intuitive and penetrating; nor is it required for intuitive knowledge that the thing be known inasmuch as it is existing; but only inasmuch as it is present, whether in itself, or in another as in a previously known medium, just as, v. g., some object is seen intuitively either in itself, or in a mirror in which, as present, it is represented. Nor again do the two kinds of knowledge differ in this, that the former is terminated at non-beings, the latter at beings, that is, one at possible things, the other at things actually existing; for both can be terminated at things actually existing, since the knowledge of simple intelligence perceives in things actually existing their possibility; for existing things still retain their logical possibility, since truly they have no repugnance to existing, although they do not have physical possibility and the order to the divine omnipotence by which they could be produced, being already de facto produced; and thus they have a relation to that omnipotence productive of them, not further as producible, but as produced. Therefore the whole variety of the two kinds of knowledge consists chiefly in this, that God perceives the same things by both these kinds of knowledge in a diverse manner and by a diverse notion.

Note 3. Philosophers commonly distinguish a twofold medium leading into the cognition of another thing: one as that by which, which is called the unknown medium, such as is the impressed species, which is not known as that which, but is only the reason for knowing the object that it represents; the other as that which, which is called the known medium, such as is a mirror, v. g., which must first be seen before the objects that it represents are seen in it. The doubt, however, is whether possible creatures are seen in the divine Omnipotence more distinctly and expressively than in the essence, or in the divine knowledge as in a known medium.

First conclusion. — God knows possible things most distinctly as regards their quiddities, properties and appendages. This is the common teaching, and it remains sufficiently proved in the last Question of the preceding Article: nonetheless it is strengthened again by this reason: God is a productive agent of things through intellect and will: but such an agent has knowledge of the things to be made and produced by itself: therefore God distinctly knows the things which He can produce, and which He has produced.

Proof of the major. To the most excellent cause must be attributed the most excellent mode of producing and causing: but God is the first and most excellent of all causes; and the most excellent mode of producing things is effected through intellect and will: therefore that manner of causing must be attributed to God.

Proof of the minor. An agent acting through intellect and will acts in the manner of an artisan: but the artisan first knows the thing before he produces it; for as Aristotle says in 7. Metaphysicorum lib. 5., The house ad extra comes from the house which is formed within the mind of the artisan.

Add. that an agent acting through the will necessarily presupposes knowledge of the object about which it operates; for nothing is willed unless it has first been known: therefore an agent acting through the will necessarily has foreknowledge of the thing which it effects; and so, since God acts most excellently through the will and does all things according to the counsel of His will, He must necessarily foreknow the things to be made by Himself.

It is confirmed. from the Apostle speaking to the Romans about God: He calls those things that are not as those that are: that is, according to the common opinion of the interpreters, God knows equally well the possible things and those which do not yet exist, as those which are in the nature of things. Which the Apostle himself again proves to the Hebrews 4.: There is no creature invisible in His sight, but all things are naked and open to His eyes; and consequently possible creatures are not hidden from Him, and He beholds them distinctly.

You will say. If God knows a possible being inasmuch as it is a possible being, He knows a non-being inasmuch as it is a non-being: but God cannot know a non-being: therefore neither can He know possible things. The major is evident from the preceding

Question, in which it was proved that possible creatures, considered formally and in themselves, are not something real, but a pure being of reason. The minor is proved: God cannot know except what is knowable: but a non-being is not knowable, for knowability is a property of being, which consequently cannot belong to a non-being.

I answer 1. That although possible creatures, considered formally and in themselves, have nothing real, nevertheless they are not pure nothing; for they are conceived as the exemplars of those things which are someday to come forth really, and therefore they have at least some exemplar intelligibility. Secondly, although those creatures, inasmuch as they are possible, are not per se formally intelligible; nevertheless they can be understood in the divine Essence, in which they shine forth as soon as they have been produced according to their diminished and objective being by the divine intellect: they can likewise be understood from the comprehension of the divine Omnipotence, to which, as to the cause productive of them in esse reali, they have a relation of reason, which suffices for them to be distinctly perceived by the divine intellect, as we will prove in the third following Conclusion.

Second conclusion. — Possible creatures are known by God only by the knowledge of simple intelligence. The conclusion is evident from the second Note: for in this the knowledge of simple intelligence differs from the knowledge of vision only in this, that the knowledge of simple intelligence is concerned with things inasmuch as they are possible and in their causes, and inasmuch as they import no repugnance in their formal concept to existing. But the knowledge of vision is borne toward present, or past, or future things, or as St. Thomas speaks in quaest. 2. De Veritate Art. 9. ad 2., The knowledge of vision is said to be in God after the likeness of bodily sight, which beholds intuitively the things placed outside itself. Whence by the knowledge of vision God is not said to know anything except what is present, or past, or future: but the knowledge of simple intelligence is also of those things which neither are, nor will be, nor have been. By which words St. Thomas openly confesses that the knowledge of simple intelligence is distinguished from the knowledge of vision, because the former is concerned with the possibility of things; the latter, however, with the existence of the same things.

Nor does it matter that God beholds possible things intuitively, and thus has them present in esse cognito et obiectivo. For this presence does not suffice for the notion of the knowledge of vision, which per se demands to be terminated at the real existence of things, whether present, or past, or future. Nevertheless it could not incongruously be said that the knowledge of simple intelligence is distinguished from the knowledge of vision precisely not by the variety of the object, but by the notion of the adequate and the inadequate; so that the knowledge of vision totally and adequately comprehends the whole breadth of divine knowledge, for this reason, that all divine knowledge per se properly is intuitive: but the knowledge of simple intelligence only signifies and imports the inadequate and partial notion of that divine knowledge, namely inasmuch as it is terminated at things as they are only possible.

Third conclusion. — Possible creatures are distinctly known in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, in which they shine forth as effects in the cause, able to produce and represent them. This is the common teaching; for in this possible creatures are known as in a known medium, in which they have their distinct intelligible being, and from which they can truly have their real being: but they have both, the first indeed in the divine Essence, which, since it has infinite power of representing any being whatsoever, immediately distinctly represents possible creatures in their known and objective being, and the second they have from the divine omnipotence, to which as to a cause they have a relation and order of reason, from which they have that they are completely and proximately producible. For although from themselves they have the non-repugnance to be produced, nevertheless they would not be proximately producible, nor consequently completely producible, if there were no cause which could produce them.

You will say. What is known in the Essence and Omnipotence is only perceived as in a general and universal cause: but what is so perceived is not known distinctly: therefore either possible creatures are not known in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, or they are not known distinctly. The minor is evident: for to know a thing in a universal cause is nothing other than to attain the thing in genus and in the universal: but so to perceive a thing is not to know it distinctly and inasmuch as it is such a being, adorned with such special properties: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the minor. To know a thing in a universal cause concurring only generally and in common to the production of things, just as the Sun, v. g., is said to be the universal cause of all generable and corruptible things, because it concurs to certain of their common principles — so not to know the thing distinctly, I concede: but to know the effect in a universal cause, not only in genus and universally, but also in species and in the individual, concurring to the production of any particular effects whatsoever, such as is the divine omnipotence with respect to all formable things — not thus to know the thing distinctly, I deny: for just as God through His Omnipotence distinctly concurs to the production of any things whatsoever, however particular, and since the divine omnipotence virtually and distinctly contains all particular things, the consequence is that the divine intellect, by comprehensively knowing the divine omnipotence, also comprehends all those things themselves to which it has relation and order.

You will say 2. If God knew creatures in His Omnipotence as in a previously known medium, it would follow that the knowledge of God would be posterior to the attribute of Omnipotence: the consequence is absurd: therefore God does not know possible creatures in His Omnipotence. The major is evident, for the formal object specifying and the previously known medium must be prior to the cognition: therefore if Omnipotence is the previously known medium and specifies the cognition, it will be prior to the cognition itself: but this is absurd; for omnipotence is an attribute posterior not only to the intellect, but also to the will. Next, the Knowledge of God directs omnipotence; therefore it is prior to omnipotence. Finally, God is not omniscient for this reason, that He is omnipotent; for if per impossibile He were not omnipotent, it would not therefore follow that He would not be omniscient.

I distinguish the major. That the knowledge of God would be posterior to the attribute of omnipotence, inasmuch as that knowledge is terminated at its primary object, namely at the divine essence, I deny; for considered in this way it is a divine attribute prior to omnipotence itself, even as operative in actu primo: that it would be posterior to omnipotence operative in actu primo, inasmuch as that knowledge is terminated at the secondary object producible by that omnipotence, I concede. And so the divine Omnipotence can be considered operative, either in actu primo, namely inasmuch as it is that divine power by which God can produce other things besides Himself, and thus it is prior to the intellect and will of God inasmuch as it is terminated at secondary objects and at creatures known and willed: secondly, inasmuch as that divine omnipotence is considered as it is operative and productive in act, and thus it is posterior to the intellect and knowledge; since the knowledge of God directs that omnipotence operating in actu secundo, but not that operative in actu primo; whence it follows that God de facto is omniscient with respect to creatures, because He is omnipotent, and that if He were not omnipotent He would not be omniscient in the way in which He now is.

You will insist. Omnipotence is not completed except by the knowledge by which it is directed: therefore also the Knowledge of God is prior to omnipotence as operative in actu primo, and thus omnipotence will not be able to be a known medium perfecting the divine cognition.

I distinguish the antecedent. Omnipotence is not completed adequately in the notion of the proximately operative except by the knowledge directing it, I concede; it is not completed in actu primo in the notion of operative potency absolutely taken, I deny; whence the divine knowledge is indeed prior to omnipotence as proximately operative in actu primo: but it is not prior to omnipotence itself absolutely taken.

You will say 3. If God knew secondary objects in His omnipotence as in a previously known medium, it would follow that He would not know sins, beings of reason, and impossibles; for these have no connection with the divine Omnipotence, since they cannot be produced by it: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I distinguish. That God could not know those things at least mediately and indirectly in Himself, inasmuch as He sees in Himself the secondary causes from which sins and beings of reason can be made, I deny: that He could not know them first immediately and directly in those things themselves, but only secondarily, I concede. And so God, by comprehending His omnipotence, also comprehensively and intuitively knows all that which is factible by it; He likewise knows whatever can be done, or not done, by the creatures themselves to be produced through His Omnipotence; and thus He does not see sins, beings of reason, and impossibles directly indeed and first, as He sees the creatures themselves; but only secondarily does His divine cognition terminate at them.

This present Section embraces huge and almost innumerable waves of difficulties, like a second Ocean full of sandbars and rocks; and it is all the more dreadful and dangerous in that, up to now, many too-curious investigators of this divine Science, having fallen into open heresy and foul error, have made a lamentable shipwreck of the faith; so that each of them could justly exclaim with the Royal Prophet: I have come into the depth of the sea, and the tempest hath drowned me. Hence St. Augustine, the summit and eagle of theologians, fixing his mind's gaze upon this inscrutable and uncertain knowledge of future things, is so weighed down by the weight and majesty of its rays that he bursts forth into these words lib. 11. Confessionum, c. 19.:

What manner is that by which Thou teachest things to come, to whom nothing is future, or rather dost Thou teach present things about the future? For what is not, cannot by any means be taught. That manner is too far from my sight. It hath prevailed beyond me; I shall not be able to reach it; but I shall be able through Thee, when Thou shalt have given the sweet light of my eyes;

and so, even if sacred Scripture and the doctrine of the holy Fathers shine upon us and irradiate us, we undertake to unlock as best we can this inscrutable divine knowledge.

Four things are resolved in the following Questions, in the First of which it will be resolved whether God certainly knows future contingents; in the Second, by what means, known beforehand, He knows them; in the Third, whether this certainty of divine knowledge does not impede the contingency of things and human freedom; in the Fourth, finally, whether things are future because God knows them; or on the contrary, whether God knows future things because they are future.

Note 1. Being is commonly wont to be distributed generally into necessary and contingent. That is called necessary which has so firm an existence from itself that non-being is repugnant to it, in the way in which God alone and all those things which surround the divine Essence are said to be necessary; for non-being is repugnant to them. But that is called contingent which can be or not be, and just as it was produced from nothing, so it can cease and pass away into nothing, in the way in which all creatures are said to be contingent. Moreover, the contingency of things can be considered either in order to the first cause or to the second. In the former way all creatures and all their effects are absolutely contingent; for just as God freely produces creatures, so He freely concurs in the production of their effects. In the latter way, since the order of natural causes is twofold — some of which are natural and necessary, namely those which, with all things required for acting being posited, necessarily produce their effects, so that unless they are hindered by the First Cause through the denial of His divine concurrence, they cannot be moved away from the production of their effects nor be retarded; others, however, are free, namely those which, with all circumstances desirable for action being posited, can freely determine themselves to acting or not acting — the effects of the former causes, namely of the natural ones, are said to be necessary, that is, by order to the second cause, by which they are necessarily produced, although they are contingent absolutely by order to the first cause, which can impede their production; but the effects of the latter causes, namely of the free ones, are altogether contingent by order to both causes, as much the First as the Second. And it is especially about these that the present Question is moved, namely whether God certainly and infallibly knows all contingent effects according to whatsoever circumstances of them.

Note 2. That is called future which, although it does not really have actual existence, nevertheless will have it at some time according to the determination of the divine will and the certain connection which it has with the causes from which it can be produced. Hence there is a threefold genus of future effects, according to the threefold disposition of causes. For first, there are some causes from which the effect necessarily follows, unless they are hindered in their operations by the First Cause, such as, v. g., the vicissitudes of days and nights; the eclipses of the Sun, the Moon and certain other stars, which, since they have a certain and determinate connection with their causes, can even be known demonstratively. Second, there are some causes from which effects follow for the most part, inasmuch as those causes are more determined to one thing than to another, and from these conjectural knowledge about future effects can be had. Third and finally, there are some causes which are altogether indifferent to either effect, such as all free causes are, from which the future effect can scarcely be known. When, therefore, we ask whether God certainly knows future contingents, the discourse is especially about effects of the third genus.

Note 3. According to the Doctor, quaest. 14. of the Quodlib., artic. 2., Litt. S., this order can be distinguished in the divine cognition of created things: that after the divine Essence moves the divine intellect to the cognition of itself and of all those things which are formally in God, first it moves that intellect to the simple cognition of created being, inasmuch as it abstracts from existence and has only the notion of an intelligible and possible being, which motion is necessary, not contingent. Second, the divine intellect as it were exhibits and offers those possible creatures to the divine will, as if demonstrating to it that such creatures can exist or not exist; and in this sign the divine will decrees the future existence and production of such creatures for such a time: with that decree posited, the divine Essence immediately exhibits to the divine intellect itself the determinate future existence of those creatures, and so the divine intellect certainly knows the futurition of contingent things: not that it is moved by the things themselves; for then it would be degraded, if it were moved by something other than the divine Essence; but in the way in which the divine Essence moves to the cognition of future contingents: with this difference, however, that to the cognition of the former it moves antecedently to the operation of the divine will, but to the cognition of future contingents it moves only consequently to the determination of the divine will itself, from which all the contingency of things proceeds.

These things being presupposed, there is a celebrated controversy among Theologians and pagan Philosophers whether God certainly knows future contingents; for Cicero denied the foreknowledge of future things in l. 2. De Divinatione; and he was incited to this opinion especially by the fact that, as St. Augustine says in lib. 2. De Civit. Dei, cap. 6.,

He judged that both could not be true; but if one is confirmed, the other is taken away; if we choose the foreknowledge of future things, the free choice of the will is taken away; if we choose the free choice of the will, the foreknowledge of future things is taken away. He himself, therefore, as a great and learned man, and consulting most expertly for human life, chose from these two the free choice of the will; and that it might be confirmed, he denied the foreknowledge of future things: and thus, while he wishes to make men free, he made them sacrilegious.

The Stoics fell into the same error, as the holy Augustine, cited above, reports. And among the heretics, John Wycliffe, art. 27., and Luther, art. 36., as well as other sectaries of our time: although some of them subject all things to fate not so much on account of divine foreknowledge as on account of the efficacy and immutability of the divine will: against all of whom stands.

Only conclusion. — God certainly and infallibly knows all future contingents. This is of faith and is proved by open texts of Sacred Scripture. Ps. 138.: You have understood my thoughts, and you have searched out my cord, and you have foreseen all my ways: Daniel. 13.: Eternal God, who are the knower of hidden things, who know all things before they are made: Eccles. 23.: The eyes of the Lord are much brighter than the Sun, surveying all the ways of men, that is, they survey them more clearly than the Sun, and, beholding the depth of the abyss and the hearts of men in their hidden parts; for to the Lord God all things are known before they are created; and cap. 39.: The works of all flesh are before him, and there is nothing hidden from his eyes, from eternity to eternity he looks, and nothing is wonderful in his sight. — It is confirmed likewise from those texts which proclaim God's frequent predictions about future things. Hence also the foreknowledge of future things is wont to be called Divination, because, as Origen says in lib. 5. contra Celsum, the prediction of future things is the mark and character of Divinity: and Tertullian in the Apologetico cap. 20.: The truth of divination is a suitable testimony of divinity: which the Lord himself confirms in Isa. 41., where, to demonstrate the emptiness of the pagan deities, he says: declare the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods: and cap. 44.: I am the first and I am the last, and apart from me there is no God; who is like me? Let him call and declare and set forth in order to me, from the time I appointed the ancient people, the things that are to come and the things that shall be; let him declare them to them; whence the holy Augustine, cited above: To confess that God exists and to deny that he has foreknowledge of future things is the most manifest madness. — All the Prophecies which the divine Scripture itself contains prove the same thing; for the prophetic light is a certain participation in divine foreknowledge: whence Tertullian, lib. 2. contra Marcionem cap. 5.: The foreknowledge of God has as many witnesses as he has made Prophets.

The same truth is proved by reason. God certainly knows whatever is knowable; for since he is infinite and unlimited in every genus of perfection, his divine cognition must especially be infinite and unlimited: but future contingents are truly knowable, because they are truly future; and whatever is true is equally knowable. The minor is proved: whatever truly exists at the time at which it is, was truly future with respect to the whole time antecedent to its existence; for the future is nothing other than that very thing which is called present for that time at which it in fact exists, and future with respect to the preceding time, and past with respect to the subsequent time: therefore, just as its being present is true, or just as it is true that it is present with respect to the time with which it coexists, so likewise it is true that it is future for the antecedent time and past for the subsequent time.

It is proved 2. Of two contradictory propositions about a future contingent, even a singular one, one is determinately true, the other is determinately false: therefore they are likewise determinately knowable by God. The consequence is clear, for God can know whatever is knowable: but everything true is knowable, and consequently can be known by God. The antecedent is proved: first, because one is determinately conformed to the object and the other is not conformed; for from the fact that the thing either is or is not, at the time at which it is signified to be or not to be, the proposition signifying this is conformed or not conformed to the object, and so is true or false. Second, if an indeterminate and uncertain truth hung between both propositions, and only the disjunction, Peter will sin or will not sin, were true, it would follow that each member of this disjunction taken separately is false: but this is evidently impossible. For if Peter will sin is false, then the other, which says Peter will not, will be true, because it is conformed to the object. Third, it implies a contradiction to give a middle between two contradictories, because it implies a contradiction to give a middle between being and non-being, that is, between being and not being: therefore it also implies a contradiction that one of the two contradictories, which affirms or denies that a thing is, should not be judged true or false, whether it affirms or denies for the present time, or for the future, or for the past; for it would be no less contradictory for a thing to be future or not to be future, past or not to be past, than to be present or not to be present: therefore, since the signified thing is at once future and not future, and it is not only indeterminately future or not future, but is truly distinctly future or distinctly not future: the consequence is that if it is not future, the proposition which denies that it is future is true distinctly and determinately; but if it is future, the proposition by which it is affirmed to be future is determinately true, and the other by which it is denied to be future is determinately false. Fourth, every proposition revealed by God is determinately true and not only indeterminately true or false: but God reveals one of the two contradictory propositions about a future contingent: therefore that one is determinately true, and consequently is determinately knowable by God.

It is proved 3. God certainly knows future contingents when they receive existence at their determinate time and are produced by him: for he operates ad extra as an artisan; but an artisan knows the thing before he makes it, and so God also knows the things which he must produce, otherwise he would act without providence and wisdom: therefore he knows them even long before they are produced. The consequence is clear, otherwise divine knowledge would be mutable and would take increase according to the existence of things, which is altogether unbecoming of God. — St. Augustine presses this argument wonderfully lib. to Aurelius contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas cap. 8., where, after he had said these words of John: all things were made through him, he concludes:

Therefore God knew all things which he made before he made them; for we cannot say that he made things unknown to him and learned them only after they were made: that he did not know what he would make, but knew what he made. For if we said this of some artisan, we would think most foolishly. He knew, therefore, that they were to be made; he did not know them as made, in order to make them, not because he had made them. Accordingly, although they were already known, because they would not be made except by one who knows, nevertheless they did not begin to be made, which were known to be made before they were made.

They object 1. The heretics and philosophers, especially Wycliffe. If a proposition about a future contingent is determinately true or false, it follows that it is not indifferent, nor consequently contingent: for that is contingent which can be or not be: therefore either one proposition is not determinately true, or there is no contingency in things.

I distinguish the antecedent. That it follows that it is not indifferent to truth or falsity, I concede: that it follows that it does not signify a thing indifferent and contingently existing, I deny: for although the proposition is true or false, nevertheless it connotes a thing contingently, although determinately, future: for these two are not repugnant, that an effect be contingent and at the same time determinately future. For it is called contingent on account of the indifference of the cause in actu primo; but it is called determinately future on account of the determination of the same cause in actu secundo, because, namely, that cause which can operate and not operate will in fact operate, and will freely determine itself to the production of the effect at the time signified by that proposition.

They object 2. Several texts of Sacred Scripture, in which God speaks doubtfully about future things, which is an indication that he did not certainly know them, as Matt. 11.: They will perhaps fear my Son: and Jer. 26.: Do not withdraw a word, if perhaps they will hear.

I answer 1. that by this particle "perhaps" there is not signified a doubtful cognition about future things: but first, to show the free choice of man, by which the divine word can be heard or not heard; for the ambiguous word (forsitan), says Jerome on cap. 26. of Jeremiah, cannot suit the Majesty of the Lord, but he speaks in our manner of feeling, so that man's free choice may be saved. 2. To designate the greatest malice of man, from which scarcely anything good can be expected or produced. For so St. Augustine, in tractate 37. in Ioannem, interprets these words, if you knew me, perhaps you would know my Father also; he, he says, because he knows all things, when he says perhaps does not doubt, but rebukes: it is a word of doubt when it is said by a man doubting for this reason, because he does not know; but when it is said by God, since nothing is hidden from God, by that doubt unbelief is reproved, the Divinity does not opine. 3. That Sacred Scripture may signify that the outcome of future things is uncertain to men; whence St. Augustine in Psal. 2., explaining those words: Lest perhaps he be angry, says: perhaps is not properly said on account of uncertainty; but by reason of those who are admonished, who are wont to think with doubt of God's future wrath.

They object 3. If there were in God a certain and infallible knowledge of future contingents, vain and idle would be providence and the solicitude of men as much about temporal as about spiritual things; for whether we are solicitous about them or not, they will infallibly come to pass, since divine foreknowledge cannot be deceived.

I deny the consequence. For when God foreknows and predefines some future effect, he at the same time foreknows and defines the causes and means by which it must come to pass, and so he indeed knows that it will infallibly come to pass, but through such causes and such means: whence, since human industry and solicitude is one of those means and causes by means of which things, spiritual as much as temporal, must be done and come to pass, it must necessarily be employed as much in spiritual as in temporal things: according to that of 2. Peter 1.: Strive to make your calling certain through good works.

They object 4. With Marcion, in Tertullian lib. 2. cap. 5.

If God is good, prescient of the future and powerful to avert evil, why did he permit man, and indeed his image and likeness, yes even his substance, through the census, namely, of the soul, to slip from obedience to the law into death, circumvented by the Devil? For if he is both good, who would not will such a thing to happen: and prescient, who would not impede that it would happen, and powerful, who could drive it away, in no way would that have happened which could not happen under these three conditions of the divine majesty. But if it has happened, it is settled on the contrary that God is to be believed neither good, nor prescient, nor powerful.

Tertullian himself answers in the same place cap. 6. and following, that God was indeed prescient of the future transgression of Adam, which, although he could have prohibited it, he ought not to have, lest, namely, he should injure man's liberty; It was fitting, he says, cap. 6., that God be known as good, and this certainly also as rational.

It was fitting that there be something worthy which would know God. What so worthy could be provided for than the image and likeness of God? And this was good without doubt and rational. It was fitting, therefore, that the image and likeness of God be established with free choice and its own power, in which this very thing, the image and likeness of God, would be accounted, namely, the freedom and power of choice..... For of what sort would it be that man, possessing the whole world, would not first reign in the possession of his own soul, lord of others, servant of himself..... Therefore the whole freedom of choice was conceded to him in both directions, so that he might constantly meet as lord of himself, both by voluntarily preserving the good and by voluntarily avoiding evil; since also, with man otherwise placed under the judgment of God, it was fitting that he render that judgment just from the merits of his choice, namely a free one. Moreover, neither the reward of good nor of evil would be rightly weighed out to him who had been found good or evil by necessity, not by will. For this reason too the law was established not confining but proving freedom, by voluntarily rendering obedience or voluntarily committing transgression; so in both outcomes the freedom of choice lay open.

To these things Tertullian concedes that God had to commit man to his own choice, so that he might thence be rewarded with the prize, if he were an observer of the divine Law, and be subjected to punishments, if he turned out a transgressor. For he could not coerce man without rescinding the freedom of choice conceded to him, which he had permitted by reason and goodness. Which certainly was unbecoming of him.

They object 5. If God knew future contingents, it would follow that foreknowledge of things is to be admitted in him: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The minor is proved from St. Augustine, lib. 2. of the quaestionum ad Simplicianum, q. 2.: What, he says, is foreknowledge except knowledge of future things? But what is future to God, who surpasses all times? For if he holds the things themselves in knowledge, they are not future to him, but present; and through this it can be called not foreknowledge, but knowledge.

I answer. That St. Augustine by these words does not deny to God the cognition of future things, but only wills that divine cognition, since it has all things in its view, should rather be called knowledge than foreknowledge. With him St. Gregory agrees, lib. 2. of the Moralium cap. 25., where he proposes and dissolves the same question thus:

He is said, he says, to foreknow who sees each thing before it comes, and foresees that which is future before it becomes present, etc. But how is God prescient, when nothing is foreknown except things which are future? And we know that to God nothing is future; before whose eyes there are no past things, present things do not pass away, future things do not come to be, since, indeed, everything that was and will be for us is present in his view, and everything that is present he can know rather than foreknow. But soon, because he sees the things that are future to us, and yet they are not always present to him, he is called prescient, although he in no way foresees as future what he sees as present.

— With whom Boethius also agrees, writing thus:

But to God there is always an eternal and present state. His knowledge also, having surpassed every motion of time, remains in the simplicity of its own foreknowledge: and, embracing the infinite spaces of the past and of the future, it considers all things as if they were now being done, in its simple cognition. Therefore, if you wish to weigh the foreknowledge by which he discerns all things, you will more rightly judge that it is not foreknowledge, as it were, of the future, but knowledge of a never-failing instant.

They object some other reasons by which they strive to prove that divine foreknowledge greatly harms the contingency of things and the liberty of men; but we will expressly propose and solve them in the third following Question: but first let there be