Thomas now takes up a point curious perhaps to us, but of importance to him and Aristotle: does God know individuals (singularia), the particular as opposed to the universal? This point might seem disposed of in the argument by which Thomas maintained that God knew things in their special and distinct natures. But he now proves that God knows singularia by an argument which bears on his contention that man does not know singularia through the intelligence, but perceives them through sense; and as we shall see, that the angels have no direct knowledge of individuals, being immaterial substances.
“God knows individuals (cognoscit singularia). For all perfections found in creatures pre-exist in higher mode in God. To know (cognoscere) individuals pertains to our perfection. Whence it follows that God must know them. The Philosopher (Aristotle) holds it to be illogical that anything should be known to us, and not to God.... But the perfections which are divided in inferior beings, exist simply and as one in God. Hence, although through one faculty we know universals and what is immaterial, and through another, individuals and what is material; yet God simply, through His intelligence, knows both.... One must hold that since God is the cause of things through His knowledge, the knowledge of God extends itself as far as His causality extends. Wherefore, since God’s active virtue extends itself not only to forms, from which is received the ratio of the universal, but also to matter, it is necessary that God’s knowledge should extend itself to individuals, which are such through matter.”
And replying to a counter-argument Thomas continues:
“Our intelligence abstracts the intelligible species from the individuating principles. Therefore the intelligible species of our intelligence cannot be the likeness of the individual principles; and, for this reason, our intelligence does not know individuals. But the intelligible species of the divine intelligence, which is the essence of God, is not immaterial through abstraction, but through itself; and exists as the principle of all principles entering the composition of the thing, whether principles of species or of the individual. Therefore through His essence God knows both universals and individuals.”[596]
With these arguments still echoing, Thomas shows that God can know infinite things; also future contingencies; also whatever may be stated (enuntiabilia). His knowledge, which is His substance, does not change. It is speculative knowledge, in so far as relating to His own unchangeable nature, and to whatever He can do, but does not; it is practical knowledge so far as it relates to anything which He does.
Thomas concludes his direct discussion of God’s knowledge, by an application of the Platonic theory of ideas, in which he mainly follows Augustine.
“It is necessary to place ideas in the divine mind. Idea is the Greek for the Latin forma. Thus through ideas are understood the forms of things existing beyond the things themselves. By which we mean the prototype (exemplar) of that of which it is called the form; or the principle of its cognition, in so far as the forms of things knowable are said to be in the knower.”
There must be many ideas or (as Augustine phrases it) stable rationes of things. There is a ratio in the divine mind corresponding to whatever God does or knows.
“Ideas were set by Plato as the principles both of the cognition and the generation of things, and in both senses they are to be placed in the divine mind. So far as idea is the principle of the making of a thing, it may be called the prototype (exemplar), and pertains to practical knowledge (practicam cognitionem); but as the principle of cognition (principium cognoscitivum), it is properly called ratio, and may also pertain to speculative knowledge. In the signification of exemplar, it relates to everything created at any time by God: but when it means principium cognoscitivum, it relates to all things which are known by God, although never coming into existence.”[597]
Such are the divine modes of knowledge. Thomas proceeds to discuss other aspects of the divine nature, the life and power, will and love, which may be ascribed to God. He then passes on to a discussion of the Persons of the Trinity. This completed, he turns to the world of created substances; into which we will follow him so far as to observe the forms of knowledge and ways of knowing proper to angels and mankind. We shall hereafter have to speak of the divine and angelic love, and of man’s love of God; but here, as our field is intellectual, we will simply recall to mind that Thomas applies a like intellectual conception of beatitude to both God and His rational creatures: