Monday, April 17, 2006

Q13 A12: Whether affirmative propositions can be formed about God?

Yes. True affirmative propositions can be formed about God because the plurality of predicate and subject in the proposition represents the plurality of idea (since in every true affirmative proposition the predicate and the subject signify in some way the same thing in reality, and different things in idea); thus by composition does the intellect represent the unity of the reality.

God, as considered in Himself, is altogether one and simple; yet our intellect knows Him by different conceptions, because it cannot see Him as He is in Himself.

Nevertheless, although it understands Him under different conceptions, it knows that one and the same simple object corresponds to its conceptions.

Our intellect cannot comprehend simple subsisting forms, as they really are in themselves; therefore it apprehends the simple form as a subject, and attributes something else to it.