Book I, Chapter 7

Chapter VII. He raises an objection against the sixth, and answers it.

Here perhaps some sophistical sower of words will object in this way: it is fitting for any multitude to have a unit added to it, at least in imagination; therefore also for the multitude of all things known by God. But if a unit is added, it follows that God does not know that whole second multitude distinctly, since He does not know one unit of it, namely the one newly added.

Again, let A be the multitude of all imaginable points known by God; let B be the multitude of all imaginable souls known by God; let C be the multitude of all imaginable Angels known by God; and let D be the multitude composed of B and C only. Then A is equal to B and to C taken separately, and therefore also less than D. It can therefore be increased in imagination to equality with D; and if that is posited, God does not know distinctly that whole multitude A so increased.

Again, let the world be posited as eternal in the past, according to the opinion of Aristotle, and let A be the multitude of all past days in the divine mind, in keeping with the prophetic saying, "I have considered the days of old, and I have had the eternal years in mind" 1; and let B be the multitude of all earlier years, eclipses or equinoxes. Then A is greater than B, as is evident: for as the days of one year stand to that year, so all the days gathered together stand to all the years gathered together. And the same must be thought of the multitude of eclipses and of equinoxes; otherwise A would also be equal to B, and so a part would be equal to the whole.

By the same reasoning, the multitude of all hours, and of any number of minutes, and indeed of instants, would be equal to the multitude of eclipses, equinoxes, common and great years, and even to the multitude of myriads of years of whatever kind. And so the multitude of all past instants would be simply equal to the multitude of the instants that begin or end equinoxes, eclipses, years small or great, or myriads of years: who would grant that? A is therefore greater than B. If you grant this, let there be distributed, in imagination or truly in the divine mind, to yesterday's day one unit of B, the nearest one (say, the nearest past eclipse); and to the day before yesterday, the eclipse nearest before that one; and so on, proceeding backwards continuously without end. When at last the whole distribution is complete, one unit of B will correspond equally to each unit of A, and conversely; and this is perfectly clear. Otherwise, at some past day this distribution of the units of B would stop; and since that day is distant from the present day by only finitely many days, B would have only finitely many units. The units of A and B therefore correspond to one another equally; so those whole multitudes also are equal.

Nay more, B is greater than A as much as you like, double, tenfold and so on. For let two, or ten, or as many units of B as you like be distributed to each unit of A in the manner of the earlier distribution, and so forth, as above. Therefore God does not know distinctly such whole multitudes, and so not any infinite multitude either.

Again, I can imagine, at least fictitiously, something which God does not understand, and so I do, and I understand it. Therefore I understand something which God does not understand; and so I do, and I understand it, though God does not understand it.

To the same end: when you hear something uttered which God does not understand, you understand something by what is uttered; therefore you understand what God does not understand; therefore God does not understand all intelligibles.

Again, if God understands all intelligibles, and cannot do them all, since He cannot do impossible things, He is more understanding than powerful; therefore He is not omnipotent, nor of infinite power: for everything less than another is finite. To the same end: if His power were less than His understanding, it could be increased, at least in imagination, to equality with His understanding, and so He could become more powerful than He now is.

Again, the multitude of all points really existing, or even of possible or imaginable ones, is simply infinite. Otherwise one more point could still be added to them, and so the first multitude, which is posited as of all points, would not be of all points; therefore that multitude fills and satisfies the whole capacity of the divine intellectivity. For it is not in any respect less than that capacity, since then it would be finite in some way, and not simply infinite.

Again, if God understands all things, He understands them either confusedly or distinctly. Not confusedly, because of the nearest chapter 2; nor distinctly, because then He would have in Himself things really distinct, as many as He distinctly knows. For some distinct things are necessarily required to make any distinction whatever, as seems clear from the demonstration of the thirty-sixth part of the first Corollary of this book.

Nor can anyone concede an infinite multitude, or a finite one, of cognitive habits or acts really diverse in God, because of the twenty-sixth part of the first Corollary of this book. Again, the Philosopher in Metaphysics 12, 51, shows by many reasons B1 that God does not understand anything other than Himself 3; and there Averroes shows that God's knowledge is not universal, because universal knowledge implies power with respect to singulars, and there is no power in His knowledge, as he supposes; nor is it particular, as he argues, because particulars are infinite and are not determined by knowledge. The proposition is therefore clear.

Again, the Lord says to certain people, "Amen I say to you, I do not know you," Matthew 25; and earlier, in chapter 24 of the same: "But of that day and hour no one knows, B2 neither the Angels of heaven, nor the Son." And in Genesis 22: God tested Abraham, and after the trial said to Abraham, "Now I have known that you fear God": therefore He did not know this before, or else He spoke in vain. And Exodus 16: the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain bread from heaven for you, B3 and let the people gather it, that I may test him, whether he walks in my law or not." And Deuteronomy 13: "The Lord your God tests you, that He may know openly whether you love Him or not." And Jeremiah 11 has: "I did not know, because they devised counsels" 4. Again, the saints frequently rouse the Lord to know, saying: "Hear, see, understand, remember, Lord, this or that"; "Be mindful, consider, recall." This is very plain in Scripture, and it would not be so if He always knew all things actually and distinctly. And Scripture often recalls that God at times remembers some things, forgets others, and repents of others.

Again, in Tobit 12 Raphael said: C1 "I offered your prayer to the Lord." Again, Jerome says on that text of Habakkuk 1, "You will make man like the fishes of the sea, and like the creeping thing that has no ruler": it is absurd to lead the Majesty of God to this, that He should know at every moment how many gnats are born and how many die, how great the multitude of fleas and flies is, how many fish swim in the waters, and the like.

Again, it seems that God does not know all true future contingents; for this would be either necessarily or contingently. Not necessarily, because they are not necessarily true, and so not necessarily known; nor contingently, because then He could fail to know them. And since nothing not true is known by God, it is possible that every true contingent be not true; therefore it is possible, at least as a possibility, that no true contingent be known by God. For the Philosopher teaches in Prior Analytics 1, where he treats of the mixture of the contingent with the assertoric (in esse), that when the major is de inesse 5, not as of now or at this time but simply, and the minor is about the contingent to either side, a conclusion about the contingent follows, as a possibility. The same is proved thus: it is possible that every true contingent be not true; let this be posited as actual (in esse), and the proposition is obtained.

The way of arguing is clear from the Philosopher in the place cited before, who proves the aforesaid mixture by this: that from the opposite of the conclusion (which will be one about the necessary), with the minor posited as actual (in esse), there follows, in the mixture of the necessary with the actual shown before, a conclusion about the necessary, which entails the opposite of the original major.

It is fitting, however, to answer this fool who prattles sophistically against the divine wisdom, E1 according to the counsel of the Wise Man, in keeping with his own folly, lest he seem wise to himself 6. First, then, it can be said, not improbably, that this clever trick does not attack the divine knowledge. For if someone grants that there is some multitude of all things known by God, he will deny you the other thing which you assume, namely that another unit can be added to every multitude; and he will say that this is true only of a finite multitude, which necessarily lacks infinitely many units, and not of a simply infinite multitude, which contains all units.

Or perhaps it may also be said otherwise, and no less probably, that this little cleverness neither opposes nor resists the divine knowledge? For it argues equally that there is no multitude of all imaginables or knowables, just as it argues that God does not have knowledge of such a multitude.

For that God does not know such a multitude can be thought in two ways: either because such a multitude exists, and God does not know it (which no one suspects, unless perhaps an ignorant or light-minded person); or because no such multitude has any manner of being, and so is not intelligible or knowable in any manner, just as it is not knowable that a man is not a man, or is a donkey or a lion; and this seems to be said not unreasonably. For if there were some multitude of all imaginables or knowables simply, there would also be some multitude of all imaginable or knowable points, and of all such souls, and likewise of Angels, as the following argument touches on.

Let A, then, be the multitude of all imaginable or knowable points, B that of all such Souls, and C that of all such Angels; and let D be the whole multitude composed of B and C only, as was posited above. Each of these three multitudes, as it seems, is equal to each other one: for no reason can be given why this one should exceed that one rather than the reverse. Moreover, if one of them, say B, is less than another, say C, it can be increased in imagination to equality with that one. So B did not contain all imaginable souls from the beginning; and C could be diminished to equality with B and yet contain all imaginable Angels. For nothing would have been taken from it; because if something, how much? Who will reasonably say how much? And this concludes to a contradiction. These three multitudes, A, B, C, are therefore each equal to each, and to D; hence D is double each singly 7, as the premises show, near the last part of the first Corollary of this book.

It seems, then, that A can be possibly increased in imagination to equality with D. For why can a lesser number not be increased, at least in imagination, to equality with a greater, just as conversely? Indeed I imagine that A is made equal to D: for I imagine that each unit of D has one point of its own. Why, I ask, could the multitude of such non-rational units, the points, not be, or be imagined, equal to the multitude of rational units, the souls and Angels? What prevents it? What resists it? Indeed I imagine that every soul and Angel has in itself ten, a hundred, or as many species or likenesses of things known as you like. These, then, are more than those; and why can I not imagine as many points? Indeed I imagine every species to be a point, or to possess a point of its own.

I imagine, moreover, single souls and Angels converted into new points, while the earlier points remain. Is not then the whole multitude of imaginable points increased? I also imagine any point and any soul converted into an Angel, while the earlier Angels remain; is not then the whole multitude of imaginable Angels imaginably increased?

In addition, let E be the multitude of all imaginable luminous points, F the multitude of all imaginable dark points, and G the multitude gathered from both. Either E is equal to A or less. Not equal, because it is a part of A, as also a part of G, and because then it would be equal to G its whole; nor less, because by the same reasoning it would be less than B and C severally, which can be demolished by what was said earlier. I imagine, furthermore, that every point becomes luminous; E is then made equal to the multitude A.

The same can likewise be argued of souls and Angels, supposing that there is a multitude of all imaginable wise or good souls, and another multitude of all imaginable foolish or bad souls, and the same for Angels, and so on, as above.

Furthermore, a similar paralogism 8 could be made about whole men in body and soul, and about their hands, fingers, teeth and hair; nay, even about the points of their bodies. For once the hypothesis is given, it evidently follows that any multitude of all of these imaginables, say of men or human bodies, would be equal to any similar multitude, say of hands, fingers, teeth, hairs, and indeed of points.

From these considerations, then, it seems, it can appear, not improbably, that there is no multitude of all imaginables or knowables, in the species of points, souls, or the like; and so none of all things universally; just as there is no multitude of all imaginable finite things, nor any multitude of all things that are not all, although many things are not all; nor any multitude of all the few (the fewer than three), even among the three Divine Persons 9; nor any multitude of all compossibles out of the number of four designated possible contradictories.

Yet no one ought to doubt that every multitude of things knowable in any way whatever, and the multitude of any knowables whatever, is most distinctly known by God, as the nearest chapter of this book teaches 10. And if you still do not cease to snarl, "Then God does not know how many points He knows"; on the contrary, He knows. For He knows that He knows two; and if by "how many" you understand "however many, at the very most or the greatest number, so that no more", there is perhaps someone who will concede that He does not know it, not because God is ignorant of some multitude of points or of some points, but because there is no multitude of all the points which He knows, as the earlier arguments were urging.

For in a similar way you must concede that God does not know how many finite points He knows; that He does not know how many sides or angles He knows to be contained in a rectilinear figure, equilateral and equiangular; that He does not know how many feet He knows can be in the circumference or the diameter of a circle; that He does not know into how many equal parts He knows a continuum to be simultaneously divided in act. Indeed, perhaps, what seems more astonishing to some, that God does not know that finite points can be as many as the finite points He knows can be; that God does not know that a finite rectilinear figure can have as many equal sides and equal angles as He knows a finite rectilinear figure can have; that God does not know that a circle can be as large as He knows a circle can be; that God does not know that a continuum can be divided into as many parts as He knows it can be divided; that God does not know what is the common measure that measures both the side and the diameter of a square, although He knows well about quadrangles; that He does not know which are all the things that are not all; which are all things fewer than three; which are all the divine persons fewer than three divine persons, although He knows well that all the many things fewer than three are two. And all this is not because of any defect of knowledge or cognition in God, but because those things are not knowable, like falsehoods and impossibilities, and therefore cannot be comprehended by knowledge.

As for what is argued next, it is perhaps resolved by this same point: for it does not detract from the divine knowledge, but rather disproves that there is such a multitude. For, Aristotle's opinion being posited, perhaps there is no multitude of all the days, years, eclipses or earlier equinoxes, in the divine mind or outside it; just as there is no multitude of all the finite ones of them, nor of all of them that are not all of them; yet God knows most distinctly every multitude of these past things, and all these past things. Perhaps by this reasoning, which leads to the impossible, Aristotle's opinion can be disproved and its opposite demonstrated? For according to his opinion, just as there is some whole infinite time, so there is also some whole infinite multitude of all days, months and the rest of this kind, as the Corollary of the first touches on 11.

Some, perhaps, will answer by admitting that A and B and all such multitudes are mutually equal; but that impudence must first be driven off. And when you go on to propose that you can imagine, at least fictitiously, something which God does not understand, and so proceed further: O you who understand less! Why do you not wish to understand that you can be struck back in the same way with your own sword;

for if you can in any way imagine something that God does not understand, why will you not be able likewise to imagine something that you yourself do not understand? Since you do not understand many things, and indeed more than you understand distinctly? And why do you not go on to deduce from this that you understand something that you do not understand? And when, going further, you bubble up folly from your foolish mouth, saying, "When you hear something uttered which God does not understand, you understand something by what is uttered": "I judge you out of your own mouth, by your own words" 12. When you hear, I say, something uttered which you do not understand, you understand something by what is uttered, and so on, as before. This folly I leave to be chewed over further by those for whom what is foolish of God ‖C1 is accepted as if wiser 13.

When it is argued that if God understands all things, He understands more than He can, the answer is that whatever God understands, He can understand. So it does not follow that God is more understanding than He is powerful. If, however, you speak of the power to produce outwardly, then He would be more understanding than powerful not properly but very improperly, since with respect to anything of which He is powerful, He is understanding, and not conversely; and so it does not further follow that He is not omnipotent. For He is called truly omnipotent because He can do everything possible, not because He can do everything imaginable or feignable, as Lombard proves in Sentences 1, distinction 42. There, however, he shows likewise, by the sayings of the saints, that God is called omnipotent because He can do whatever He wills; which can be suitably understood as follows: He is truly called omnipotent because He can do whatever He wills, that is, whatever can be willed by Him to be done, and this is everything possible, as has been said. Likewise He is said to be of infinite productive power outwardly, because His power is not limited to any possible thing, or any possible things, which He cannot do.

The other argument, concerning the multitude of all real possible or imaginable points, does not go through. For just as it argues that that multitude fills and satisfies the whole capacity of the divine intellect, so it could be argued that the same multitude would fill and satisfy the whole capacity of entity, or possibility of being, so that nothing else could exist. This same point is also resolved otherwise by what has been premised.

To the other point I say that God understands all things most distinctly, though not through any distinct things in him. He understands them only through his own most unitary and simplest clarity. From the multitude of his infinite power and strength, this clarity is equivalent to any multitude of likenesses, exemplars, ideas, habits, acts and accidents whatsoever; indeed it incomparably surpasses it, as the third part and the fourth of the first Corollary teach. This is what the most faithful and most eloquent Isaiah attests in chapter 40: "Lift up your eyes on high, and see who created these things; who brings out their host by number, and calls them all by name; by the multitude of his strength and might and power, not one was left," that is (according to the gloss) foreign to his number and cognition. The Philosophers' authorities alleged to the contrary are to be understood of beings of finite strength and power.

For such beings, as it seems, cannot know anything distinctly except through correspondingly distinct things, unless perhaps this comes about through that divine clarity, which by its infinite power supplies in them the place of such distinct things. As for the authority of the Philosopher, it must be said that he does not intend to prove that God does not understand anything other than himself. He proves these three things: that God does not understand in potency;14 that God is his own understanding; and that God does not understand anything other than himself in such a way that he is acted upon and is causally perfected by it, as the human intellect is. This will be evident to those who read that chapter, and do not neglect it, together with the expositions of Averroes, Thomas and other Doctors.

As for that saying of the Gospel which follows, it must be known that God's knowledge is twofold: that of simple cognition or notice, and that of approbation and complacency, which beyond simple cognition or notice adds approbation, good pleasure and the complacency of the will. This distinction is evident from blessed Gregory, Moralia 25, last chapter, treating that text of Matthew 25: A1 "Amen I say to you, I do not know you." It cannot be understood otherwise than that he does not approve, or reprobates, those whom he thus does not know. For he will know by simple notice those to whom he will speak thus.

Hence also the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 8: "If anyone loves God, he is known by him." B1 Lombard also, Sentences 1, dist. 36, cites this distinction from Cassiodorus on the Psalter, and from Augustine likewise, and in his book to Helvidius, where he says: "If you refer it to knowledge, God is not ignorant of those to whom he will say, 'I do not know you'; but their reprobation is hinted at by this word." And in the Eighty-three Questions, question 60: "When God is said not to know, it is said because he does not approve, that is, he does not acknowledge it in his discipline and teaching." There he adds a third sense of the same saying: "'I do not know you' was said because he profitably makes ignorant [those who are ignorant] of what it is useless to know; and so God is said not to know, for 'to make ignorant.'" There he also explains the other authorities objected, in the same way: "As God is said to know even when he makes [someone] knowing, as it is written, 'The Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love him'; for it was not said thus because God does not know, but so that they themselves may know how far they have advanced in loving him, which is not fully known by men except through trials. So it is well taken that it was said that only the Father knows of that day, because he alone makes the Son know; and that it was said that the Son does not know, because he makes men ignorant, that is, he does not disclose to them what they would know to no purpose." And he proves this last manner of speaking of Scripture effectively in On the Trinity 1, 12, and at length in [On Genesis] 5, 20, and on the title of Psalm 6. And this same exposition is evident from the Glosses in the places cited above. C1 Hence on that text of Genesis 22, "God tested Abraham," C2 the Gloss says, "so that he might make known to him a perfection which he was not ignorant of"; and on the later text in the same chapter, "now I have known," etc., it says, "that is, I have made [you] know."

As for the other points that follow, it must be said that God's hearing, seeing and the like can be understood in three ways. They can be understood properly, as they imply the proper operations or passions of the senses; so understood they do not belong to God, for he is not an Animal and has no bodily senses. They can be understood by transference, and this in two ways. In the first way they imply divine cognition or affection; the Saints do not understand them so when they say "Lord, hear," "look," or something similar (for in these matters it always [thus] has itself uniformly). In the second way they imply the extrinsic work and effect of divine cognition or affection; and so the Saints understand them when they pray.

And because, according to the Philosopher, Topics 6,15 all who transfer a word transfer it according to some likeness, this likeness was the cause why such terms are transferred by men to God. When men see or hear, they grow angry and are appeased; they know and are inwardly affected, and so act outwardly. For this reason these causes also are often put figuratively for their effects: the hand for writing, as when we say of a good script, "this is a good hand"; and the tongue for speech, as when we say, "he spoke in the English tongue" or "the Latin," that is, in such a speech. This is the thirty-third Rhetorical figure of the adornment of words, as Tully shows at the end of the second book of his Rhetoric,16 and from it denomination also takes its name. In such expressions there is also the second mode of equivocation or amphiboly, because a word or phrase is taken by transference, when we are accustomed so to speak, as is clear from the Philosopher, Sophistical Refutations 1,15 where he makes certain, and clears up, the doubtful and obscure meanings of amphiboly. This manner of speaking in sacred Scripture is sometimes transferred not only to God but even to inanimate things. For the Lord says in Hosea 2: "I will hear the heavens, and they will hear the earth, and the earth will hear the grain, the wine and the oil, and these will hear Israel."

Hence Augustine on that text of Psalm 118 [119], "Remember your word to your servant," speaks thus: "Does forgetfulness, as in a man, fall upon God? Why then is he told, 'Remember'?" And he answers: "These things are not understood in God as they happen to men. For as God is said to repent when he changes things contrary to men's hope, his plan unchanged (for the plan of the Lord remains for ever), so he is said to forget when help or the promise seems to delay, or when he seems not to repay sinners what they deserve, or something of this kind; it is as if what is hoped for or feared had slipped from his memory and did not come about. These things are said in this idiom of human conduct, by which a human feeling is stirred, although God does these things with a fixed disposition, his memory not failing, nor his understanding being obscured, nor his will changed. When, therefore, he is told, 'Remember,' the desire of the one praying is shown, since he asks for what was promised; God is not admonished, as though it had slipped from his mind. 'Remember,' he says, 'your word to your servant,' that is, fulfill the promise to your servant." And in the Eighty-three Questions, question 52, he shows the same throughout, A1 and at the end, "On the repentance of God," he says: "To change something fixed and to transfer it to something else we are not accustomed to do except by repenting; although divine providence administers all things in most certain order, yet, to suit the humble human understanding, things which begin to be, and do not last as long as they were hoped to last, are said to be taken away as though through God's repentance." The Gloss also on Genesis 6, where the repentance of God over the making of men is treated, says: A2 "Repentance does not fall upon God, to whom there is as fixed a decision about all things as there is certain ‖A3 foreknowledge; but Scripture uses customary words, adapting itself to our smallness, so that from things known we may know things unknown." He appears, then, to repent when he changes his work, while his will and disposition remain unchanged.

"God repents" can also be explained otherwise, namely that he behaves in the manner of one who repents. The Gloss says this on that text of 1 Kings [1 Samuel] 15, "It repents me that I made Saul king," B1 that is, "I will act in the manner of one who repents, by destroying his kingdom." This exposition agrees with Augustine, Eighty-three Questions 52, cited above, B2 and Anselm, Why God Became Man 1, 9, also agrees with them, in expounding what is read in Luke 2, "Jesus advanced in wisdom," etc.: "Not because it was so, but because he behaved as if it were so." And this is what Lombard says, Sentences 3, dist. 13, last [chapter]. As for what is alleged about Raphael, that he offered Tobias' prayer to the Lord, it does not conclude that the Lord did not know it beforehand and learned it then from him. Rather, his offering the prayer before the Lord was nothing but consulting the divine will about that prayer: whether, how far, when and how it should be heard. Or perhaps Raphael's offering Tobias' prayer to the Lord was commending it to the Lord with his own prayers. Hence Augustine too, On Genesis according to the Letter 5, 19, speaks thus: "He surely does not need messengers on account of any knowledge of lower things, as though through them he becomes more knowing, but in that simple and wonderful manner he knows all things steadfastly and unchangeably. But he has messengers for our sake and for their own: for them, because to obey and attend God in that way, so that they consult him about lower things and comply with his precepts and commands, is a good for them in the order of their own nature and substance."

The authority of Jerome refutes itself, in his saying "through single moments." For God knows all things at once and always, not by turns of time; it is not as though the things known themselves begin to be or cease to be in the human way,17 since with him there is no change, nor shadow of alteration, as James 1 and the fifth chapter have shown. It is also answered by what he adds next: "Let us not be such foolish flatterers of God that, while we thrust his providence down even to the lowest things, we do injury to ourselves, saying that the care of irrational and rational beings is the same." Jerome, then, wishes to deny of God the knowledge by which he would provide for irrational creatures as for rational ones; for to the latter he has laid down laws, and everlasting rewards or punishments, but to the former by no means. And this is what the Apostle says, C1 1 Corinthians 9: "Is God concerned about oxen?"; that is, with the kind of care that directs them in their merits and crowns them in rewards, although according to the Wise Man, Wisdom 6 and 12, God has care of all things, D1 the care by which he reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly in his own ways.

These are the responses of Lombard, Sentences 1, dist. 39. That mixed argument, however, can easily be excluded; for as it argues against divine knowledge, so it can be argued against the very truth of the contingents themselves. For nothing not-true is true. It is possible, either way, for every true contingent to be not true; therefore it is possible as a possibility that no true contingent is true.18 Therefore it is possible that in such matters neither part of the contradiction is true, but both are alike false. Thus, then, the theologians are untangled from this logical, not theological, tangle, and the logicians are tangled in it.19