ARTICLE II

In the Second Article We Ask: DID MAN IN THE STATE OF INNOCENCE SEE GOD THROUGH CREATURES?

Difficulties:

It seems that he did not, for

1. To know God through creatures is to know a cause through an effect. But this is knowledge which involves comparison and investigation, and, since this is feeble and imperfect, it did not befit man in the state of innocence. Therefore, in the state of innocence Adam did not see God through creatures.

2. When the cause is removed, the effect is removed. But Isidore says that the cause why man sees God through creatures is that he turned from the Creator and toward creatures. This was not yet so at that time in the state of innocence. Therefore, at that time man did not see God through creatures.

3. According to Hugh of St. Victor, man in that state knew God, "contemplating Him as present." But He is seen in contemplation without the medium of creatures. Therefore, he did not see God through creatures.

4. Isidore says that the angels, created before the rest of creation, did not know God through creatures. But, according to Damascene, man in the state of innocence saw God as another angel. Therefore, he did not know God from creatures.

5. Darkness is not the reason for knowing light. But, compared to the Creator, every creature is darkness. Therefore, the Creator cannot be known through creatures.

6. Augustine says: "I say that perhaps He spoke with them [our first parents] in this way, although not with the same degree of participation in the divine wisdom as the angels possess, yet, with whatever greater limitations imposed by human nature, within the same general category of vision and conversation." From this it seems that we can conclude that man in the state of innocence knew God with the same mode of knowledge with which the angels know him. But angels do not know God through creatures, as is clear in Augustine and Dionysius. Therefore, man in the state of innocence did not see God through creatures.

7. The soul of man is more like God than is any sensible creature. Therefore, when the soul of man was in its purity, it did not seek knowledge of God through visible creation.

8. Less perfect knowledge is superfluous when more perfect is given. But, as Hugh of St. Victor says, man in the state of innocence knew God "as present in contemplation." Therefore, he did not know God through creatures.

To the Contrary:

Damascene says that Adam was established in a bodily paradise that there he might view his Creator through creatures.

REPLY:

For a clear understanding of this question we must bear in mind that, according to Boethius, nature begins with perfect things. This can be seen in divine works, for in any work of God the things which are first are perfect. Hence, since in the state of innocence God made Adam the source of the whole human race, not only to transmit human nature to posterity but also to pass on original justice to others, man in the state of innocence must be considered as having had a twofold perfection. One of these is natural and the other is given freely by God over and above what is due from natural principles.

According to natural perfection, however, man could fittingly know God only from creation. This is clear from the following. In any genus a passive power extends only to those things to which an active power extends. Therefore, the Commentator says that there is no passive power in nature for which there is not a corresponding active power.

In human nature, however, there is a double power for understanding: one passive, which is the possible intellect, and the other active, which is the agent intellect. Consequently, the possible intellect according to the natural process is in potency only to those forms which become actually intelligible through the agent intellect. But these are only the forms of sensible things which are abstracted from phantasms. For immaterial substances are intelligible of themselves and not because we make them intelligible. Therefore, our possible intellect cannot reach any intelligible objects except through those forms which it abstracts from phantasms. Thus it is that by our natural power we can know God and other immaterial substances only through sensible things.

But, in the state of innocence, man, by reason of the perfection of grace, received a knowledge of God by means of an internal inspiration due to the irradiation of divine wisdom. In this way he did not know God from visible creation but from a spiritual likeness imprinted on his mind.

Accordingly, there were thus in man two kinds of knowledge of God, one, by which he knew God as the angels do, through an internal inspiration; the other, by which he knew God as we do, through sensible creatures. However, this second knowledge of his differed from our knowledge as the investigation of one who has the habit of a science and proceeds from things he knows to a consideration of things which he had once known differs from the investigation of one who is learning and strives to proceed from what he knows to things which he does not know. However, we cannot have knowledge of God any other way except by coming to know Him from creatures. But Adam, who already knew God in a different way, that is, through an internal inspiration, also possessed a knowledge of Him from creatures.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. That process of reasoning by which we reach the unknown from the known includes imperfection, since through it what is sought is unknown. But the process of reasoning which man in the state of innocence made use of was not of that sort. However, there is nothing to prevent us from saying that something [im]perfect belonged to man in that state, not indeed [im]perfect in that which was due to his nature, but by comparison with a higher nature. For, when human nature was created, it did not have as much perfection as an angelic nature or the divine nature.

2. What Isidore says gives the reason why man had of necessity to get his knowledge of God, as an unknown, from creatures. Man in the state of innocence did not need this, as has been said.*

3. Besides the knowledge of contemplation, he had another knowledge of God by which he knew Him from creatures, as was said above.*

4. Through grace, Adam was like an angel in the knowledge of contemplation. But besides this he had another knowledge belonging to his nature, as has been said.*

5. Creatures are darkness in so far as they are from nothing, but, in so far as they are from God, they participate in some likeness of Him and thus lead to His likeness.

6. There, Augustine is talking of that knowledge which is had through divine inspiration. This is clear from the fact that he mentions there the speech of God, and is not altogether silent about the other mode of knowledge, when he adds: "Perhaps, also, God spoke to him with that manner of speaking which takes place through creatures," whether by images of bodies in ecstasy of spirit, or by some image presented to the senses of the body themselves.

7. Although the soul is more like God than any other creature is, it cannot reach a knowledge of His nature so that it can distinguish it from other things except through sensible creatures, from which our knowledge takes its origin.

8. Although Adam saw God through the light of contemplation, the knowledge by which he saw God by means of creatures was not superfluous, that is to say, it was not superfluous that he knew the same thing in several ways, and that he had not only gratuitous but also natural knowledge.