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.