God as Knower

​Summa Theologiae I, Q14 Of God’s Knowledge
Article 1: Whether there is knowledge in God
 
Thomas relies heavily on the fact of God’s immateriality to prove that He is intelligent, i.e., a being with knowledge and understanding. In effect, he argues that any immaterial substance must be intelligent, because it is matter that it is the sole obstacle to intelligence. Remove matter, and you remove that obstacle.
 
One might criticize St. Thomas on the ground that he is confusing a necessary with a sufficient condition. Suppose that we grant that no material substance can be intelligent, because material substances can have only one substantial form, and they cannot have contrary accidents, while an intelligent being must be able to contain substantial forms other than its own, and must be capable of understanding (and, therefore, of containing) contrary accidents. But, from the premise No material thing is intelligent, it does not follow that Every immaterial thing is intelligent. An immaterial thing has one of the necessary conditions of intelligence (immateriality), but does it follow that it has a sufficient condition?
 
Thomas could argue that we do not know of any immaterial substances except for intelligent ones (angels, and the separated human soul). Perhaps we can’t even conceive of any such things. Nonetheless, it might be that such things are possible, even actual, lying beyond the bounds of our own understanding.
 
Of course, in God’s case, we know more than just that He is immaterial. We also know that He has the power to cause the existence of every possible kind of creature. Perhaps Thomas could argue that an immaterial substance can have an active power (like the power to cause things’ existence) only through the capacity for understanding and will. The forms of all possible creatures must pre-exist somehow in God, by virtue of the principle of proportionality. They cannot exist in God “naturally,” in the sense that God could actualize each of the forms in His own person, since many of the forms are mutually incompatible. Nothing can be black and white, or a blue whale and a daffodil. So, they must exist in God in some kind of “intentional” (non-natural way). And we could plausibly define understanding as simply being a thing that contains forms intentionally.
 
But what about unintelligent, material substances that have active powers? Take, for example, the sun’s power of heating the surface of the earth. As we saw in the Fifth Way, Thomas argues that such active powers cannot exist in unintelligent bodies except instrumentally, by virtue of existing primarily in some intelligent maker or user of the unintelligent thing. So, perhaps we could define understanding in this way:
 

• Substance x understands form F if and only if F exists in x intentionally and intrinsically (not by virtue of x’s being an instrument of some other substance).

 
And we could define ‘intentional’ existence of a form in a substance thus:
 

• Form F exists intentionally in substance x if and only F exists in x in some mode M such that it does not follow with metaphysical necessity that:  if some form G exists in some substance y in mode M, then G can be predicated truthfully of y.

 
Given these definitions, we can prove that God understands every form that could possibly exist naturally in any substance. Note that this argument relies heavily on God’s unity, as well as on His status as the necessary first cause of everything else. This helps to explain why Thomas postpones the discussion of God’s intelligence to this late point.
 
It’s also worth noting that Thomas does not appeal here to the Fifth Way at all. That suggests to me that he thought that this argument was stronger or more rigorous than the proof in the Fifth Way.
 
Summa Contra Gentiles I, Chapter 44 That God is Intelligent
 
In the SCG, Thomas offers six supplementary arguments. First, in paragraph 2, he appeals to the Aristotelian argument for God as Prime Mover. This argument seems to assume that the first Mobile thing is a self-mover, like the intelligent celestial spheres of Aristotle’s cosmology.
 
He offers an alternative version of this argument in paragraph 3, one that doesn’t rely on this outdated assumption. The Prime Mover must be responsible for all possible changes. This requires that the First Mover moves things through (per) some universal form, a form in a universal mode. This seems very similar to the interpretation I gave of the argument in the Summa Theologiae, an argument from a universal set of active powers to an understanding that is universal in scope.
 
In paragraph 4, Thomas argues that an intelligent being can never be the mere instrument of an unintelligent one. All intelligent creatures are mere instruments of God, so God must be intelligent. The first premise doesn’t seem obviously true to me. Couldn’t the sun heat the air around me by heating me? In response, Thomas could point out that it is my body, and not my soul, that is being instrumentalized in that case. The principle of proportionality might require that if God is the per se cause of changes in intellects, then He must be intellectual Himself.
 
Paragraph 5 is the appeal to God’s immateriality that I discussed above.
 
In paragraph 6, Thomas appeals to God’s containing all perfections. Assuming that intelligence is a perfection and not reducible to a set of merely physical and chemical powers, then God must be intelligent.
 
Paragraph 7 brings forward a version of the Fifth Way. At this stage he considers the argument worth mentioning, but he doesn’t put it forward as the first, much less the only, argument for God’s intelligence.
 
Paragraph 8 involves another appeal to God’s perfection. Thomas argues that when forms exist naturally in particular things, then they are imperfect. Thomas might have even more plausibly said that such forms are ‘finite’, since they are limited, either by matter or (in the case of angels) by some finite essence that distinguishes them from other agents. A form can exist in a perfect (and infinite) being only by existing in its intellect, as an object of understanding. All forms must exist in God, since otherwise He would be incapable of being the first cause of their natural instantiation. So, God must have the forms in His understanding.