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II. To the Arguments
A. To the Arguments for the Other Opinion
182. To the arguments [nn.163-164, 157-160] - For first to those that are for the other opinion. I reply to the authority of Rabbi Moses [n.163] and I say that God’s being one is handed down in the Law; for because the people were uneducated and prone to idolatry therefore they needed to be instructed by the Law about the unity of God, although it could by natural reason be demonstrated. For it is thus received by the Law that God exists (Exodus 3.14: “I am who am”, and the Apostle says in Hebrews 11.6: that “he who comes to God must believe that he is”), and yet it is not denied that God is demonstrable; therefore by parity of reasoning it should not be denied either that it could be demonstrated by reason that God is one, although it be ‘received’ from the Law. Also, it is useful for things which can be demonstrated to be handed down to the community also by way of authority - both because of the negligence of the community in inquiring into truth, and also because of the impotence of the intellect and the errors of those who make inquiry by demonstration, because they mix many false things in with their truths, as Augustine says in The City of God XVIII ch.41 n.2. And therefore, because the simple who follow such demonstrators could be in doubt as to what to assent to, so an authority is a safe and stable and common way about the things it can neither deceive nor be deceived about.
183. To the second reason about the singular [n.164] I say that it is one thing for singularity to be conceived either as an object or as part of an object, and another thing for singularity to be precisely the mode of conceiving or that under which the object is conceived. An example: when I say ‘universal’, the object conceived is a plurality, but the mode of conceiving, that is, the mode under which it is conceived, is singularity; thus in the case of logical intentions, when I say ‘singular’, what is conceived is singularity, but the mode under which it is conceived is universality, because what is conceived, in the way it is conceived, is indifferent to many things. Thus I say in the proposed case that the divine essence can be conceived as singular such that singularity is conceived either as the object or part of the object; yet it does not follow that the essence can be conceived as it is singular, such that singularity be the mode of the concept; for thus to know something as singular is to know it as this, as a white thing is seen as this, and in this way it was said before [n.164] that the divine essence is not known under the idea of singularity; and therefore there is in the argument a fallacy of figure of speech [Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 1.4.166b10-14], by changing thing to mode.
B. To the Principal Arguments
184. To the principal reasons [nn.157-160]. - I say that the Apostle [n.157] is speaking of idols, and so of ‘gods’ in name only; and he adds there: “but for us there is one God,” because “all the gods of the Gentiles are demons.”
185. I say to the second [n.158] that the consequence is not valid, because number is not a grammatical mode of signifying as are other grammatical modes that mean precisely a mode of conceiving a thing without any reality corresponding to such a mode of conceiving; hence they mean precisely some aspect in a thing by which the intellect can be moved to conceive such a thing.135 But number truly includes a subsumed thing; hence the inference follows ‘men are running, therefore several men are running’. But it is not like this in the case of the other co-signified things in a noun or a verb, because this inference does not follow ‘God exists, therefore God is masculine’136 [in Latin the word for ‘God’ is a masculine noun, ‘Deus’], because it suffices for masculinity that there is something in the thing from which the mode of conceiving might be taken, such as activity. I say therefore that only the term ‘Gods’ conceived in the plural mode includes a contradiction, because the mode of conceiving is repugnant to that which is conceived in that mode. - When therefore the consequence is proved that the same thing includes the singular and plural [n.158], I say that it includes the singular under a mode of conceiving fitting to the concept but it includes the plural in a mode impossible to that concept; and therefore the singular, insofar as it includes the concept and the mode of conceiving, includes an idea that is as it were in itself true, but the plural, insofar as it includes those two things, includes an idea that is as it were in itself false. And so it does not follow that the plural is true of the plural as the singular is of the singular, because about that whose idea is in itself false nothing is true [n.30].
186. Through this is plain the response to the other proof ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ [n.158] because Gods are not thinkable without contradiction, because the mode is repugnant to the thing conceived; and therefore the major is to be glossed as was said before in the preceding question [n.137]. Now for sense and truth it is required that the idea of the subject not include a contradiction, as was said in the second question of this distinction [n.30].
187. To the third [n.159] I say that the major proposition is not first but is reduced to this ‘every imperfect thing is reduced to a perfect thing’; and because every being by participation is imperfect, and only that being is perfect which is a being by essence, therefore does the proposition follow.137 But this major about ‘imperfect’ has to be distinguished in this way: a thing is imperfect according to a perfection simply when the perfection does not necessarily have an accompanying imperfection, because it does not include in itself a limitation, as ‘this good’, ‘this true’, ‘this being’; and an imperfect of this sort is reduced to a perfect of the same nature, namely ‘good’, ‘being’, and ‘true’, which indicate perfections simply. But a thing is imperfect according to a perfection non-simply when the perfection includes a limitation in its idea, and so it necessarily has an annexed imperfection, as ‘this man’, ‘this ass’; and imperfects of this sort are not reduced to a perfect by essence absolutely of the same idea as to their specific idea, because they still include imperfection, because they include a limitation, but they are reduced to a first perfect that contains them super-eminently and equivocally. What is imperfect then in the first way is reduced to a perfect simply according to a perfection of the same nature, because something can according to that nature be simply perfect. But what is imperfect in the second way is not reduced to something perfect according to a perfection of the same nature; for because that nature includes imperfection, therefore it cannot be a perfect thing simply, because of the limitation, but it is reduced to some simply perfect equivocal that eminently includes that perfection. And for this reason an imperfect good is reduced to a perfect good, but a stone, which is imperfect, is not reduced to a simply perfect stone, but to supreme being and to supreme good, which include that perfection virtually [n.69].
188. To the final one [160] the response is that many finite goods are better than fewer finite goods, but not many infinite goods.
189. But this does not seem to respond to the argument, because it seems that all things that would be better if they existed should be posited within beings, and most of all within the supreme being, which is a ‘necessary being’, because there whatever could exist is good and must necessarily be there; but many infinite goods, if they existed, would be better; therefore it seems that many infinite goods should be posited in the nature of the supreme good.
190. To this I reply that when it is said in the major ‘things which would be better if they existed should be posited there’, I say that by the ‘if’ either a possible positing is implied or a positing of incompossibles is. If in the first way I say that the major is true and the minor false, because the implication in the minor is not possible but is of incompossibles. But if the ‘if’ implies a positing of incompossibles then the minor is true and the major false; for things that would only be better from a positing of incompossibles would not be better, nor are they even good, just as that which only exists from the positing of incompossibles altogether does not exist, just as neither does the posited thing on which it depends.