C. To the First Question, speaking of Our Theology

168. To the first question about our theology [nn.124, 141] I say that when a habit exists in an intellect which gets evidence from the object, then the first object of that habit, as it belongs to the habit, does not only contain the habit virtually but, as known to the intellect, it contains the habit in such a way that the knowledge of the object in the intellect contains, as it is in the intellect, the evidence of the habit. Interpolation: “because the intellect knowing such an object can draw out every conclusion or concept of that habit.” ⁵¹But in a habit that does not get evidence from the object, but gets it caused in some other way, one must not grant that its first object has the two conditions just stated; nay rather one should not grant either condition, because it is just like a habit that would in this respect be about things contingent, which contingent things do not have the first object in either way. To such a habit, then, which does not get evidence from the object, there is given a first subject about some first known thing, that is, some most perfectly first thing, that is, in which the first truths of the habit immediately inhere. - Our theology is a habit which does not get evidence from the object; and also the theology that is in us about necessary theological matters, as it exists in us, does not more get evidence from the known object than the theology that is about contingent theological matters does;Interpolation: “to wit, the fact that God is three and One does not have evidence from the object known, because we do not know God under the idea of God, but from elsewhere; we believe it because we find it written. Therefore if you then find a written science of geometry, the object of geometry would not then contain the written properties as they are seen by my intellect, because it would not be known to me under the idea of first object; therefore a first object of such a sort should, with respect to such habit, be assigned as the intellect would assign first those truths to.” ⁵² therefore to our theology, as it is ours, one should only give a first known object that has first truths immediately known about it. That first object is infinite being, because this is the most perfect concept which we can have about what is in itself the first subject, which subject, however, has neither foresaid condition, because it does not virtually contain our habit in itself, and much less does it, as known to us, contain the habit itself. Yet because our theology about necessary things is about the same as what theology in itself is about, therefore to it is assigned an object that is first to the extent of containing the truths in itself, and this object is the same as the first subject of theology in itself; but because it is not evident to us, therefore it does not contain those truths as it is known to us, indeed rather it is not known to us.

When you argue, then, that “therefore it is not the first object of our habit” [n. 146], I reply: it is true that it is not a first object that gives evidence to us, but it is a first object that contains all the truths in itself, naturally fit or capable of sufficiently giving evidence, were it known.

These things are said to the question, or to the two questions, about the theology of necessary things [nn.124, 133, 141, 151-168].