Monday, April 24, 2006

Q14 A7: Whether the knowledge of God is discursive?

No. In the divine knowledge there is no discursion because God sees all things in one act, which is Himself (therefore God sees all things together, and not successively) and because, all at once, God sees His effects in Himself as their cause (not needing to resolve the effects into their causes, i.e., from known to the unknown, from principles to conclusions).

As Augustine says (De Trin. xv), "God does not see all things in their particularity or separately, as if He saw alternately here and there; but He sees all things together at once."