Whether God Knows Enunciable Things?
Objection 1: It seems that God does not know enunciable things. For to
know enunciable things belongs to our intellect as it composes and
divides. But in the divine intellect, there is no composition.
Therefore God does not know enunciable things.
Obj. 2: Further, every kind of knowledge is made through some
likeness. But in God there is no likeness of enunciable things, since
He is altogether simple. Therefore God does not know enunciable
things.
_On the contrary,_ It is written: "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men"
(Ps. 93:11). But enunciable things are contained in the thoughts of
men. Therefore God knows enunciable things.
_I answer that,_ Since it is in the power of our intellect to form
enunciations, and since God knows whatever is in His own power or in
that of creatures, as said above (A. 9), it follows of necessity
that God knows all enunciations that can be formed.
Now just as He knows material things immaterially, and composite
things simply, so likewise He knows enunciable things not after the
manner of enunciable things, as if in His intellect there were
composition or division of enunciations; for He knows each thing by
simple intelligence, by understanding the essence of each thing; as if
we by the very fact that we understand what man is, were to understand
all that can be predicated of man. This, however, does not happen in
our intellect, which discourses from one thing to another, forasmuch
as the intelligible species represents one thing in such a way as not
to represent another. Hence when we understand what man is, we do not
forthwith understand other things which belong to him, but we
understand them one by one, according to a certain succession. On this
account the things we understand as separated, we must reduce to one
by way of composition or division, by forming an enunciation. Now the
species of the divine intellect, which is God's essence, suffices to
represent all things. Hence by understanding His essence, God knows
the essences of all things, and also whatever can be accidental to
them.
Reply Obj. 1: This objection would avail if God knew enunciable
things after the manner of enunciable things.
Reply Obj. 2: Enunciatory composition signifies some existence of a
thing; and thus God by His existence, which is His essence, is the
similitude of all those things which are signified by enunciation.
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