Читать книгу Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) онлайн

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For all other things but God are outside of God. But Augustine says

(Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi) that "God does not behold anything out

of Himself." Therefore He does not know things other than Himself.

Obj. 2: Further, the object understood is the perfection of the one who understands. If therefore God understands other things besides Himself, something else will be the perfection of God, and will be nobler than He; which is impossible.

Obj. 3: Further, the act of understanding is specified by the intelligible object, as is every other act from its own object. Hence the intellectual act is so much the nobler, the nobler the object understood. But God is His own intellectual act. If therefore God understands anything other than Himself, then God Himself is specified by something else than Himself; which cannot be. Therefore He does not understand things other than Himself.

On the contrary, It is written: "All things are naked and open to His eyes" (Heb. 4:13).

I answer that, God necessarily knows things other than Himself. For it is manifest that He perfectly understands Himself; otherwise His existence would not be perfect, since His existence is His act of understanding. Now if anything is perfectly known, it follows of necessity that its power is perfectly known. But the power of anything can be perfectly known only by knowing to what its power extends. Since therefore the divine power extends to other things by the very fact that it is the first effective cause of all things, as is clear from the aforesaid (Q. 2, A. 3), God must necessarily know things other than Himself. And this appears still more plainly if we add that the very existence of the first effective cause—viz. God—is His own act of understanding. Hence whatever effects pre-exist in God, as in the first cause, must be in His act of understanding, and all things must be in Him according to an intelligible mode: for everything which is in another, is in it according to the mode of that in which it is.