The intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light. And sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed (e.g., visions and voices), so as to express divine things better than those do which we receive from sensible objects.
"It is because the contemporary alternatives seem so one-sided and are not more evidently solutions to the problems which Thomas faced, and partly solved, that we return to him and to the tradition of theology and philosophy in which his Summa Theologiae appears: theology as the science of the first principle and this as the total knowledge of reality in its unity." -- Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.159.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Q12 A13: Whether by grace a higher knowledge of God can be obtained than by natural reason?
Yes. We have a more perfect knowledge of God by grace than by natural reason because the knowledge which we have by natural reason contains images (percepts derived from sensible objects) and the natural intelligible light (enabling us to abstract from percepts intelligible conceptions); in both of these, human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace.
The intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light. And sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed (e.g., visions and voices), so as to express divine things better than those do which we receive from sensible objects.
The intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light. And sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed (e.g., visions and voices), so as to express divine things better than those do which we receive from sensible objects.