Spiritual Cognition in Thomas Aquinas

The Thomist 67 (2003): 505-38 SPIRITUAL COGNITION IN THOMAS AQUINAS PHILIP L. REYNOLDS Emory University Atlanta, Georgia THOMAS AQUINAS is famous for maintaining that all human knowledge in this life, even of God, begins in the senses.1 Clearly, such a statement oversimplifies his position . Rapture, prophecy, faith, and self-knowledge surpass or stretch the maxim in various ways. Yet they are not outright exceptions to it. Thomas maintains also that in this life, one knows realities external to the self by means of their likenesses in one's self, such as sensible and intelligible species. But the beatific vision is unmediated, for no likeness in the intellect would be adequate to make known the essence of God. In this article, I shall try to ascertain what Thomas thought about spiritual cognition. In spiritual cognition, one would "see" a superior, immaterial being (the Deity or an angel) by means of an intelligible form that the object itself has impressed directly on one's intellect; and the function of that form would be the same in relation to the knower and to the known as that of intelligible or sensible species in one's direct cognition of created forms. Just as the eye sees the redness of a red apple by means of a sensible species of redness in the eye, so also would the intellect see God by means of an intelligible species that God has impressed on the intellect. 1 I presented an early version of this article at a session on supernatural cognition sponsored by the Midwest Seminar on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the 38'h International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2003. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for certain suggestions and criticisms. 505 506 SPIRITUAL COGNITION IN THOMAS AQIBNAS Did Thomas believe that spiritual cognition was possible at all in this life? If one knew God in this way, what would one know? I raise these questions for two reasons. First, Thomas himself posits a purely spiritual way of seeing God, mediated only by infused species, in two early works.2 But he posits it there only hypothetically, to be excluded as a possible way of knowing the divine essence. Moreover, in one of these texts, he rules out such cognition as a possible way of contemplating God at all in via.3 Second, Thomas attributes spiritual cognition of some sort to Adam before the Fall and even to contemplatives after it.4 In prelapsarian cognition, God makes God's self known to the mind by means of an interior, spiritual influence, and that influence functions as a mental species by which one knows God. Just as one sees a stone by means of a sensible species of the stone in one's eye, Thomas argues, so Adam knew God by means of an interior, spiritual influence. My purpose in this article is threefold: to consider the hypothetical mediated vision of God; to consider Thomas's account of prelapsarian cognition; and to inquire whether the two modes of cognition are fundamentally the same or different. These are rather arcane topics by modern standards, but inquiry into them highlights some salient features of Thomas's cognitive theory. I shall first outline Thomas's account of cognitive mediation, which is crucial for what follows. 2 IV Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. l; De Trin., q. 1, a. 2. Editions cited in the notes include the following: Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, ed. P. Mandonnet (books I and II) and M. F. Moos (books III and IV, incomplete), 4 vols. (Paris, 1929-56). For the remainder of the Scriptum (after Book IV, d. 22), I have used the Parma edition of the Opera Omnia (1852-73), repr. New York (1948-50), vol. 7. Compendium Theologiae, in Opuscula, Leonine edition, vol. 42. Quaestiones de Quolibet, Leonine edition, vol. 25. Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate, Leonine edition, vol. 22. Summa contra Gentiles, Marietti edition, 3 vols. (1961). Summa Theologiae, Ottawa edition, 5 vols. (1941-45). Super Boetium De Trinitate, Leonine edition, vol. 50. SuperEpistolas PauliApostoli lectura, Marietti edition, ed. R. Cai, 2 vols. (1953). Super Evangelium s. Ioannis lectura, Marietti edition, ed. R. Cai, (1952). References to...