Question Two. Whether God is the first thing naturally known by the wayfarer

Scotus, Sent. 1 d.3 q.2
Francis of Meyronne, Sent. 1 d.3 q.2
John Bacconitanus, Sent.1 d.3 q.1

1. The question next asked along with the first is whether God is the first thing naturally known by the wayfarer.

2. That he is, from Metaphysics 2: As things are to existence so are they to being known; but God is the first being; therefore he is the first known.

3. On the contrary: All natural knowledge arises from the senses, Metaphysics 1, Posterior Analytics 2; but God is furthest removed from the senses; therefore he is not naturally first known.

Response to Questions One and Two

To Question One

1. The first question is not asking about whether God exists, because this question was discussed above [d.2 qq.1-2]. Rather it is asking whether the intellect of the wayfarer can have some simple concept in which God is in some way known as to what he is.

2. To this question some say (Thomas, Summa Ia q.12 a.12) that God is known by the wayfarer only negatively. But this does not hold, because negations are known only through affirmations, Metaphysics 4, De Interpretatione 2. For the reason that something is removed from something is because something else, with which the thing removed was incompossible, is affirmatively attributed to it. So we remove composition from God because we attribute simplicity to him.

3. An alternative answer is that God is not known in himself by the wayfarer but in creatures, wherein he shines forth. But this too does not hold. For let purely a creature be known: and then God is not known, or God himself, who is in the creature, is known, and then he is known in himself through creatures.

4. Or in this way: God is known by discursive reason; if there is this discursive reasoning, then, either it is discursive to God, and so the conclusion is obtained; or it is discursive to the creature, and so the beginning and end of the reasoning is the same and consequently nothing is known - or God is at least thus known in the creature.

5. Another way is to say that God is known by creatures not per se but as it were per accidens, because he is not conceived in the proper idea of deity but in some attributal idea, which is a quasi accidental according to Damascene bk.1, where he says that attributes do not state the nature of God but something about the nature; and in knowing that God is wise and the like, creatures known him as it were per accidens, because through some quasi accidental idea.

6. On the contrary. When creatures know that God is wise, they know that wisdom is in him, in a quasi second mode of statement per se [sc. a statement when the subject enters into the definition of the predicate]; and so they know the underlying quiddity to which they adequately attribute in the second mode the quasi accidental perfection.

7. Accordingly I state five articles in solution of this first question [q.1]. First I say that the wayfarer can naturally have of God some quidditative concept in which God himself will be known in some way, albeit imperfectly. For the wayfarer can naturally know that God is wise; therefore he attributes wisdom to the divine nature; therefore he in some way knows the divine nature quidditatively.

8. I say second that the wayfarer cannot naturally have a concept of this divine essence as it is this essence, the reason for which is that the essence is in this way not a natural object of our intellect, only of the divine intellect; but of other intellects the essence is in this way the moving and beatific object.

9. I say third that the wayfarer can attain knowledge of many concepts proper to God, of which sort are all concepts in their supreme degree, as when he conceives God to be supremely wise, supremely good, and other things of this sort. However, the more perfect among these concepts is the concept of infinity, for infinity is not as it were an attribute but a degree intrinsic to the divine essence, just as intense whiteness is not something quasi accidentally added to whiteness but is an intrinsic degree of it, etc. Note that ‘supreme’ taken in relation to another states a respect but taken absolutely it states, for me, something purely simple; and in this way is the infinite made more explicit.

10. I say fourth that all the naturally possible knowledge that can be had by a wayfarer is because of the hopes creatures have and is as it were by way of argument; and it proceeds in this way: I possess the species of wisdom and the species of act and the species of a supreme stone; I then put these three species together and form one concept, which is supreme actual wisdom; and I then argue that such is the wisdom of God and so on as to other attributes; and this can be done by an argument a minori. For the imaginative faculty does this when it imagines a golden mountain, by putting together at the same time the species of gold and the species of mountain. Hereby is it plain that the natural knowledge that can be had of God is not knowledge of this essence under its proper idea of essence; etc.

11. I say fifth that, because the knowledge that can naturally be had of God comes through species of creatures, it must necessarily be the case that a concept common to God and creatures is univocal. And I mean by a univocal concept a concept that is single with as much oneness as suffices for the extremes of contradiction and for a middle term, without fallacy of equivocation, in a syllogism.

12. Now I prove this in three ways. First as follows: Knowledge is not natural unless it is naturally caused; knowledge is not naturally caused unless it is caused by what naturally moves the possible intellect; the possible intellect is not naturally moved save by an object that is translucent in a phantasm along with the agent intellect; but every such object is something sensible; therefore God cannot be naturally known save through species of sensible things; but a sensible species cannot lead to knowledge of God and of spiritual things save in the way stated; but a sensible species, as of a stone, causes knowledge of the stone and of all its higher genera, as body, substance, and being; and it causes the concept of being, which is got through the species of the stone, by attributing concepts to being, or by putting being together with other concepts, as was said in the fourth article [n.10]. For I say that God is like this, and so I have of God a concept of being; but this could not be done unless, as is plain, the concept of being were univocal to God and stone, for otherwise I could not attribute to God the concept of being that the species of stone causes in me; etc.

13. Secondly thus: The intellect, when conceiving created wisdom, conceives it as it states imperfection; and then, by removing the imperfection (namely limitation and the like) and preserving the formal idea of wisdom, the intellect attributes it to God; but this could not be done unless the concept of wisdom were univocal to created and uncreated wisdom; instead the whole of it would have to be taken away, and so nothing we received from creatures could we attribute to God.

14. Thirdly thus: The concept that the philosophers had of God, or of the first principle, which concept was being, was a created concept; but such a concept did not give certainty as to whether being was created or uncreated; therefore the concept of being was neutral as to both such concepts; and consequently it was univocal to them.

To the Arguments

15. To the arguments. To the first [q.1 n.2] the answer is plain from what was said in the fourth and fifth articles [nn.10, 11 supra].

16. To the second [q.1 n.3] I say that, according to the Commentator [Averroes, Metaphysics 2 com.1], there is no impossibility but a difficulty, the reason for which is that nature would have uselessly made separate substances if they could not be understood by any intellect. But this does not hold, because being understood by us is not the goal of separate substances. Hence, if they are not understood by us, they would not for this reason have been made uselessly;     etc .

17. Further, that they cannot be understood by us does not entail that they cannot be understood by themselves.

18. One must therefore      say that the eye of an owl only has intuitive vision, as is plain, and I then say that, just as it is impossible for the eye of an owl to see the sun, so it is impossible for God to be intuitively seen by the wayfarer naturally.

19. It can also be said in another way that the eye of an owl does see the sun at twilight, and just as its eye then sees the sun imperfectly so do we understood separate substances imperfectly.

20. To the third [n.4] I say that Aristotle is speaking there of an infinite in possibility, and such a thing, as far as it is infinite, is unknown; but God is an infinite in act;     therefore etc     .

21. To Gregory [n.5] I say that however much the mind of the wayfarer may advance in contemplation of God, yet it will not be able to reach distinct knowledge, but it can well reach some natural knowledge of God - not however of his essence as it is this essence, but to a knowledge of God, or of his essence, under the idea of being. This sort of knowledge is called inferior, however, because it is not a perfect and distinct knowledge as of the essence as it is this essence; wherefore etc.

To Question Two

22. Now in answer to the second question I say that there is a triple order to intelligible things: the first order is that of origin or generation; the next is the order of perfection; the third is the order of adequacy or of causality in the precise sense.

23. Of the first two priorities the Philosopher speaks in Metaphysics 9.15; of the third he speaks in Posterior Analytics 1.11, about the definition of the universal, because it states precision and adequacy first.

24. To being with, then, we must look at habitual cognition. As concerns this I say that concepts are twofold: one is simply simple, namely that which is not resoluble into other prior concepts, of which sort is the concept of being and its ultimate differences; the other is a simple concept but not simply simple, namely that which is resoluble into other prior concepts, of which sort is the concept of a thing defined (which is resoluble into the concepts of the parts of the definition), and so of other like terms.

25. Secondly I say that the second concept here [n.24] is knowledge, one being actual knowledge and another habitual knowledge; etc.

26. Third I say that actual knowledge is double: one is distinct, whereby a whole thing is actually known and actually in its totality; the other is confused, whereby a thing is not known actually in its totality because not all the things that are knowable about it are actually known. An example: it would be a contradiction to understand man actually without understanding all the things that are included in him essentially; yet it is not necessary for all these things to be understood actually, but only habitually. Accordingly, when all of them were understood actually, the thing would then be said to be known distinctly, because the whole of it would be known actually and totally; but when the things included in it are understood not actually but habitually, then the thing is said to be known confusedly.

27. Fourth I say that to know confusedly and distinctly are one thing and that to know a confused thing and a distinct thing are another; for in the former the confusion and distinctness are on the part of the knowledge and in the latter on the part of the thing, as is plain.

28. On the basis of these premises I say that when speaking of actual knowledge, which is here at issue, the first naturally known thing, naturally confused with confused knowledge, is the most specific species; but the first thing naturally known with distinct knowledge is being. But there is clarification of this as follows:

29. The first thing by which the possible intellect is naturally moved is the representative object in a phantasm together with the agent intellect, and, according to the common opinion, it does not immediately and directly represent the particular but the universal, namely the specific nature; therefore the specific nature is naturally first known; and because many things are included in it, of which included things the first is being, which is supreme, therefore, if the nature is to be distinctly known, there is need to start from being, and from the fact that being has a concept simply simple so that it includes nothing else. Therefore being can be only known distinctly, and thus it is plain that the first distinctly known thing is being, and the first confusedly known thing is the most specific species. But because the more universal things are the more confused things,     therefore is it said in Physics 1 that the more confused things are known first by us. But this ‘known first’ must be understood of distinct knowledge, because we are now beginning from it, as was said [just above]; and what in such knowledge is more distinct is what is last known, as is plain; etc     .

30. One must note here, however, that, as Scotus seems to think, no particular is, in our present state, known in its proper idea either by the intellect or by the senses. The reason is that, if the particular could be known in its proper idea, it could be distinguished from everything that is not it, and yet it cannot be. For suppose that there is here a single whiteness and it is present as an object to your senses, and suppose that God by his own power were to annihilate it and immediately replace it with a whiteness that was not numerically the same but very similar to it, you will think it is the same and yet it will not be the same; but if you knew the first whiteness in its own proper and singular nature, you would immediately notice that it was not the same. This would also be clear of many other cases that, whether by the senses or in any other way, you cannot distinguish between, and yet they are really distinct. The particular and singular, therefore, are, in our present state, not known by the intellect or the senses in their proper idea of singularity, but they are known by aggregation of many accidents, namely size, shape, color, and many such things.

To the Arguments

31. To the first argument for the opposite [q.2 n.2] I say that the proposition is in all cases true only in respect of the divine intellect, which knows things according to the degrees of their entity; and so what is first and most being is first and most known by it. But because our knowledge begins from the senses,     therefore are sensible things first known to us, yet they do not have existence first. So it is true that the first being is of itself the first knowable, but it is the first known only to the most perfect intellect, which also knows things in all their degrees, etc     .