The Problem of Divine Exemplarity in St. Thomas

THE PROBLEM OF DIVINE EXEMPLARITY IN ST. THOMAS ST. THOMAS'S DISCUSSION of God's knowledge involves a sustained attempt to safeguard the high view of divine transcendence which is central to his philosophical -theological project as a whole. Human knowledge invariably implies a change in its subject, a transition from ignorance to understanding; one comes to know a thing when it acts upon him in certain ways. Therefore the kind of knowledge which is predicable of God cannot be the same as that which is predicable of creatures, inasmuch as God is immutable and in no respect passive with respect to anything external to Himself. Yet an insistence on the absolute perfection of God requires Thomas to predicate knowledge of God analogously, since knowledge is a perfection in creatures. The infinite intellect does not exclude but rather raises to an infinite degree the perfection which we know in finite beings as knowledge. For this reason Thomas is forced to confront the problem of God's knowledge of things other than Himself. Some of his predecessors had " solved" the problem simply by denying that God has such knowledge. Aristotle's God, for instance, is conscious only of Himself; such a God will not interrupt the contemplation of His own perfection and condescend to know that which is less perfect, i.e., less real; to do so would be demeaning to the dignity of the divine intellect.1 Similarly, Plotinus emphasized God's transcendence in such a radical way as to argue that God is not conscious but is rather beyond consciousness ("... though whether by that he meant to say that God is simply not conscious may be doubted," 2 1 Thomas Gornall, A Philosophy of God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), p. 79. 2 Ibid., p. 78. 183 184 JOHN L. FARTHING as Gornall observes.) But this route is not open to St. Thomas, for he senses that it is to deny God a perfection possessed by some creatures. The divine perfection must be more, not less, than the creaturely; indeed, Thomas holds such an exalted view of the transcendent perfection of God that he cannot long entertain any doctrine which has the effect of placing God in a position of inferiority vis-a-vis creatures in any respect whatever . As the cause of all that e:xists (including a.11 creaturely perfections), God possesses all perfections "in a more excellent manner" (eminenter). Therefore His knoweldge cannot be restricted to mere self-knowledge. From the eighth and eleventh articles of the Siimma Theologiae Ia, q. 14, it is clear that in St. Thomas's view" God's knowledge must be exactly coterminous with His creative activity and power." 3 Since God's act of understanding is identical with the divine substance (a. 4), by which all things are caused to be (a. 8), it follows that there is nothing which falls outside the scope of divine (hence causal) knowledge. Furthermore, God's knowledge of Himself would be less than perfect if it did not extend to the full range of His creative power (a. 5). Thus to affirm the infinite perfection of the divine being is to affirm the infinite perfection of divine knowledge. In order for God to be all that Thomas believes Him to be, He must know all things that are real (and therefore knowable) in every way in which they are real (and knowable). Otherwise some degree of imperfection will be introduced into the divine essence-which on Thomas's principles (given his definition of God as both pure act and absolute ontological perfection) is absurd. Thomas's God must be nothing less than the ultimate Knower. In knowing things perfectly, God knows them to the full extent of their reality .and knowability. One of the modes in which things exist and are knowable is as imperfect imitations of the divine essence. It is at this point that St. Thomas turns to a consideration of the divine ideas. In Thomas, as in scho3 R. J. Henle, Saint Thomas and Platonism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956)' p. 359. DIVINE EXEMPLARITY IN ST. THOMAS 185 la.sticism generally, the doctrine of divine ideas is examined in close...