Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth (De Veritate)

1. All cognition takes place through an assimilation of the knower to the known. Therefore, if an angelic intellect knows things in the Word, it should know them by means of likenesses existing within itself.

2. A spiritual thing is related to spiritual sight as a physical thing is related to physical sight. But a physical thing is known by physical sight only by means of an impression of the thing existing within it. The same is true, therefore, of spiritual sight.

3. The glory had in heaven does not destroy nature; instead, it perfects it. Now, the natural cognition of angels takes place through species. Therefore, their knowledge in glory, which consists in their vision in the Word, takes place through likenesses of things.

4. All knowledge takes place through some form. But the Word cannot be the form of the intellect, except perhaps the exemplary form, since He cannot be the intrinsic form of anything. Consequently, an angelic intellect must know the things that it knows in the Word through other forms.

5. It is clear from the second Epistle to the Corinthians (12:4) that Paul in rapture saw the essence of God and there saw "secret words which it is not granted to man to utter." Now, he did not forget those words when he no longer saw the Word through His essence. Hence, he must have known them by means of some likenesses, which remained in his intellect. For the same reason, therefore, it seems that angels know through likenesses the things they know in the Word.

6. But it was said that when the Word departed from Paul, some traces of his vision remained in Paul's soul, that is, some impressions or likenesses by which he could remember the things that he saw in the Word--just as impressions are left on the senses even after the objects that have been sensed are no longer present.--On the contrary, a thing leaves a greater impression on another when it is present than when it is absent. Therefore, if the Word when absent left an impression on Paul's intellect, He also left an impression when He was present.

To the Contrary:

1'. Whatever is in God is God Himself. Consequently, when an angel sees God's essence he does not see it by means of a likeness, nor does he see through a likeness the ideas of things as they exist in God.

2'. The natures of things are reflected in the Word like images in a mirror. Now, all the things reflected in a mirror are seen by means of their one likeness there. Hence, all the things known in the Word are seen through the form of the Word.

3'. An angelic intellect is like a painted tablet, for, as said in The Causes, "every intellect is filled with forms." Now, other pictures are not added to a tablet that is already painted; hence, it is proved in The Soul that the possible intellect can receive all things because it is "like a tablet on which nothing has been written." Consequently, an angel cannot have any likenesses of those things which he knows in the Word.

REPLY:

All cognition takes place through an assimilation of the knower to the known. Now, whenever one thing is made like a second thing in so far as the second thing is like a third, then the first thing is also like the third. For example, if a son is like his father in so far as the father is like the grandfather, then the son is like the grandfather. Now, one thing can be made like another in two ways: it can get this likeness immediately from the other, or it can get it by being assimilated to a third thing which is like the second. Cognition is had in two ways, also: we can know Socrates by seeing him either because our sense of sight is made like Socrates himself or because it is made like a picture of Socrates. In either case, the assimilation is sufficient for us to know Socrates.

I say, therefore, that, when a thing is known by means of the likeness of a second thing, that knowledge does not take place by means of some other likeness derived immediately from the thing known; and if the knower knows one and the same thing by means of its own likeness and also by means of its likeness to another thing, then these cognitions are different. This can be explained as follows.

Some knowing powers know only by receiving, not by forming something from what they have received. For example, the senses know merely those things whose species they receive and nothing more. Other powers, however, not only know what they receive, but can also form some other species from it. This is clearly the case of the imagination, which, having received the forms of gold and of mountain, forms a phantasm of a golden mountain. The same is true of the intellect, which, having comprehended the forms of genus and difference, forms the definition of a species. Consequently, when these powers know a thing through its likeness existing in another thing, it sometimes happens that a species other than that likeness is formed--a species which belongs immediately to the thing. For example, when I have seen a statue of Hercules, I can form another likeness which will belong immediately to Hercules; but this second act of knowing will be other than that by which I knew Hercules by his statue. If it were the same, then the same thing would happen in all other powers--which is manifestly absurd, because, when my external sense of sight sees Hercules in a statue, that knowledge does not take place through any other likeness than that of the statue.

Consequently, I say that the divine essence is itself a likeness of all things. Therefore, an angelic intellect can know things both through their likenesses and through the divine essence. But the act of knowledge by which it knows things through their likenesses is other than the act by which it knows things through the Word, even though those likenesses are caused by a conjunction of the angelic intellect to the Word either through operations of the angelic intellect (similar to those of the imagination) or, as seems more probable, through an outpouring from the Word.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. Since the divine essence is a likeness of the things known through the Word, the angelic intellect's union with the divine essence makes it sufficiently assimilated to these things to know them.

2. The Word can imprint something on an angelic intellect, but, as was said, the knowledge that would result from this impression would be other than that which is had through the Word.

3. Even though the glory had in heaven does not destroy nature, it elevates it to a level which it could not reach by itself, namely, that level where it can see things through God's very essence without any likeness acting as a medium in this vision.

4. The Word is not the intrinsic form of a thing in the sense that it is part of a thing's essence. It is, however, a form within the intellect, since it is intelligible of its very nature.

5. When Paul no longer saw God's essence, he remembered the things he had known in the Word by means of likenesses of things that still remained with him.

6. Those likenesses which remained even when the Word had departed were imprinted when Paul saw the Word through His essence. But, as is clear from what has been said above,* when Paul saw through the Word, the vision itself did not take place through these impressions.