Question One. Whether God is Naturally Knowable by the Intellect of the Wayfarer

1. About the third distinction I ask first about the knowability of God. And I ask first whether God is naturally knowable by the intellect of the wayfarer.a

a.a [Interpolated text] “For the Apostle says” [Lombard, Sent. I d.3 ch.1 nn.35]. About the first part of this distinction, in which the Master deals with the knowability of God, five questions are asked: the first is whether God is naturally knowable by the intellect of the wayfarer [nn.1, 10, 24]; second whether God is the first thing known by us for this state of life [nn.6, 69]; third, whether God is the first natural object, that is, adequate object, with respect to the intellect of the wayfarer [n.108]; fourth, whether anything transcendent other than a being of equal commonness with God could be set down as the first object of our intellect [n.167]; fifth, whether any certain and pure truth can be naturally known by our intellect without special illumination of uncreated light [n.202]. About the first.

I argue that he is not:

The Philosopher On the Soul 3.7.431a14-15 says, “Phantasms are to the intellect as sensibles are to the senses;” but the senses only sense sensible things;   therefore the intellect understands only that of which it can, through the senses, apprehend a phantasm. But God is not a phantasm, nor is he anything of which there can be a phantasm; therefore etc     .

2. Again, Metaphysics 2.1.993b9-11, “As the eye of an owl to the light of the sun is our intellect to the things that are most manifest in nature;”a but there is an impossibility there; so also here.

a.a [Interpolated text]: which are the first principles or the separate substances, according to the Commentator [Averroes, Metaphysics II, com.1]

3. Again Physics 1.4.187b7-8, “The infinite, insofar as it is infinite, is unknown;” and Metaphysics 2.2.994b22-23, “It is not possible to know infinites,” therefore not an infinite thing either, for there seems to be the same disproportion of a finite intellect to the infinite as to infinite things, because the excess is equal, or not less.

4. Again, Gregory On Ezekiel II hom.2 n.14, “However much our mind has advanced in the contemplation of God, it reaches, not to what he is, but to what is below him.”

5. On the contrary:

Metaphysics 6.2.1026a21-23, “Metaphysics is theology about God and about divine things principally;”     therefore etc     . And in the act of metaphysics, namely in the actual consideration of separate substances, does the Philosopher locate human happiness, Ethics 10.7.1177a12-17.