This is just a dump of several long comments I posted over at William Albrecht’s channel on Youtube, following my recent, very edifying talk with him and Fr. Christiaan Kappes. Just wanted to save it, since I lost 45 minutes of the work day…
A General Remark to clarify something I said:
Glory to Jesus Christ! I should make clear that at one point I too quickly conceded something to Fr. Christiaan (without him asking me to do so, though) regarding the vision of the divine essence that Christ would have had as a wayfarer. I too quickly said: "as God". I tried to correct this but probably wasn't clear enough. We Thomists hold that Christ as a "wayfaring" man (prior to his ressurection and ascension) had the vision of God, though it was in the heights of his soul and only articulated through His human acts of knowledge as a wayfarer (though these acts were perfectly subordinated to his vision, itself a radiation of the divine knowledge he had as God, somewhat like how His utterly lofty grace as man was a kind of first radiation of his substantial holiness _as word_).
Although I think Maritain deserves a couple of nuances, the general bent of his outlook seem correct to me, for the sake of maintaining the true humanity of Christ as the "Wayfaring Word" (my expression): "We ask ourselves, or rather we ask theologians, if the cnoclusion to be drawn from this is not that the supreme evidence that Christ, in his Human soul, had concerning His own divinity by the beatific vision did not pass into the experience of Himself proper to the homo viator in the form only of an absolute certitude or knowledge which was sur-conscious or super-conscious (I mean retained at the supreme spiritual point of consciousness), and neither signifiable in concepts or communicable [directly qua beatific, for that is only "communicated" in the vision itself]. And that, in His human soul, it was by his infused and prophetic knowledge, employed as an instrument [here we have something like theandric acts of will, but applied to intellection] by His own Divine Nature and His own Divine Science that He knew with communicable and reflexively conscious knowledge that He was the Incarnate Word? May not the same things also be said of the knowledge He possessed concerning His redemptive mission?" (Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, 1998/2002, p. 468).
Maritain might push just a tiny bit too hard on Christ's "progress" in grace and knowledge, but the broad point seems quite interesting. Anyway, just wanted to be very clear concerning such matters!
Peace, Matthew
Second posting - regarding the knowledge we have of particulars in knowing God.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
I should have been a bit more on my toes. I knew, also, thought that we had two different angelologies. Technically, for the Thomist at least, the angels know all things in "ideas" that are participateive echoes of God's own creative ideas (as you note). Creative ideas, as belonging to the "practical order" are not the same as a speculative idea, so the model needs to change. Technically, the angel can have experiential knowledge within this practical idea (see the article by John Deely that I recommended). Here too, although Thomas acknowledged this, the Scotists pushing back made the Thomists more conceptually sharp.
One must also be careful against thinking of the exemplar as being a kind of mere model in the artist's mind, a kind of pre-copy like the Demiurge of Plato, a kind of exact pattern. A great artist actually has a whole latitude of creativity "built into" the experience that gives rise to the creative idea, which itself is worked out _in the product itself_. I think of the organist who is improvising based upon some piece of ecclesiastical music: there are so many options open to him, spontaneously (and often with great flair), all budding forth from his "art". (I would go further and speak of the "poetic" experience, but then that would require us to adopt an explicitly Maritainnian vocabulary here. Some listeners have been primed to dislike Maritain because of certain falsehoods or, at least, grave distortions that circulate regarding him.)
I should wonder, though, if depending upon each of our own unique participations in the light of glory (understood as the subjective capacitating of our minds for the vision of God) we will uniquely know refractions of these aspects of the "divine ideas" when we know God. (Thus, one saint who was an equestrian will sing the divine praise of this aspect of horses, whereas the old farmer with his faithful old mare will be able to tell the heavenly host of the grandeur of God who had allowed for the creation / evolution of such an animal that was able to provide for man in his needs, etc.)
In fact, just to double check the text in Aquinas even, I do believe that such difference is completely justified, given the distance that separates our own blessed vision of God and His own comprehensive self-knowledge. As a Byzantine Catholic who has a great love of St. Gregory Palamas, I am very sensitive to this post-Cappadocian insistence on the transcendence of God even in our beatific vision of Him—schematized, especially by the time of St. Gregory, in terms of the distinction between His essence and his activities / energies. Though I have issues with the hard distinction between these two, the basic point about our various participation in the divine life is well attested. The Orthodox present at Florence kept asserting this point. An amusing text from Russell's book on Palamism bears witness to it.
This first is from Cardinal Giuliano Cesaini: But the Greeks, [Cesarini goes on to say] were holding that they do not see God himself, but certain lights [alas, the misunderstanding of the discussion of Tabor will often play out here, as we’ll see in weeks to follow], and in this there was great difficulty, indeed, such as nearly upset the whole business. At length, they yielded to argument and recognized that the souls of the blessed will see God, Three and One, as he is, but they wanted to have put into the cedula that some would see less and others more, and it was thought good that this should be included, since “in our Father’s house, there are many mansions.” (Cited in Russell, 25)
In the bull of union proposed to the Orthodox, this was somewhat incorporated (see the end): The souls of those who, after having received baptism have incurred no stain of sin whatever and those souls who, after having contracted the stain of sin, have been cleansed, either while in their bodies or after having been divested of them as stated above, are received immediately into heaven and see clearly God himself, one and three, as He is, though some more perfectly than others, according to the diversity of merits. (Denzinger, no. 1305)
The simplest place for this in Aquinas is ST I, q. 12, a. 7 where he distinguishes between our beatific knowledge of God and His own comprehensive self-knowledge.
Then, immediately after this question, he takes the next step: then, do we know all things therein? Here, he makes the point regarding the diversity of vision even as regards such particular things known in the vision of God. To this end, consider the corpus of a. 8. Obviously, it is marked by scholastic "clunkiness", but the point is ultimately correct I believe:
The created intellect, in seeing the divine essence, does not see in it all that God does or can do. For it is manifest that things are seen in God as they are in Him. But all other things are in God as effects are in the power of their cause. Therefore all things are seen in God as an effect is seen in its cause. Now it is clear that the more perfectly a cause is seen, the more of its effects can be seen in it. For whoever has a lofty understanding, as soon as one demonstrative principle is put before him can gather the knowledge of many conclusions; but this is beyond one of a weaker intellect, for he needs things to be explained to him separately. And so an intellect can know all the effects of a cause and the reasons for those effects in the cause itself, if it comprehends the cause wholly. Now no created intellect can comprehend God wholly, as shown above (Article 7). Therefore no created intellect in seeing God can know all that God does or can do, for this would be to comprehend His power; but of what God does or can do any intellect can know the more, the more perfectly it sees God.
And a text regarding the “2 esse” question:
This was a great question, Nick. Truth be told, I should have been better prepared than I was. Just this past year, when yet again thinking about that famous text from the De unione verbi of Aquinas, I thought, "I do believe that Maritain was broadly right here in his interaction with Fr. Hermann Diepen in the 50s". (The fact that Fr. Jean-Hervé Nicolas goes generally in the same line is also encouraging.) Last night, since my wife was already asleep with the girls, I reread Appendix IV in Maritain's _Degrees of Knowledge_, where he deals with the topic of subsistence, half philosophically and half as applied to the question of the Incarnation. In his later edition of this appendix (responding to some articles by aforementioned Fr. Diepen), he concedes that the human nature of Christ would have a kind of "esse secondarium", a kind of derived existence, though that existence is only exercised by the subsistent subject that is the Word. (The Thomists in the same line as Maritain distinguish subsistence from esse / act of existence. One of the clearest presentations of this can be found in Phillips' manual series.) It is not clear whether or not the De Unione Verbi comes right before or right after the relevant text in ST III. However, the idea of distinguishing between the personal esse (the primary existence of the Word) and the derived secondary substantial esse (of the human nature) seems to meet some of the metaphysical challenges here (above all, the idea that Christ's human nature would be constitutively actuated directly by uncreated act). I recognize, however, that this is a major theological issue and am very being (charitably) corrected! Fr. Christiaan, for his part, probably is more comfortable with the duality of existence. I think he was surprised that I myself gave as much as I did. ;-)
More on two esse
Just quickly now following up before getting off to work on some things. Well said in the 2nd paragraph. If the De unione verbi is authentic (as it seems to be), one should take to heart the fact that he there distinguishes what I call (following Maritain and Nicolas) the "personal esse", though "the esse of the supposit" (or like) is totally fine (same point). The critical text in the De unione is as follows. Please excuse the very quick translation:
Et ideo sicut Christus est unum simpliciter propter unitatem suppositi, et duo secundum quid propter duas naturas, ita habet unum esse simpliciter propter unum esse aeternum aeterni suppositi. Est autem et aliud esse huius suppositi, non in quantum est aeternum, sed in quantum est temporaliter homo factum. Quod esse, etsi non sit esse accidentale - quia homo non praedicatur accidentaliter de filio Dei, ut supra habitum est - non tamen est esse principale sui suppositi, sed secundarium. Si autem in Christo essent duo supposita, tunc utrumque suppositum haberet proprium esse sibi principale. Et sic in Christo esset simpliciter duplex esse.
Thus, just as Christ is, simply speaking, one on account of the unity of supposit [i.e., the one hypostasis which is the Word, which provides the single subsistence of the Incarnate word], and two in a qualified sense, namely, on account of His two natures, so too he has, simply speaking, one esse on account of the one eternal esse of the eternal supposit [that is the Word]. However, there also is "another" esse of this supposit, not inasmuch as He is eternal but, rather, inasmuch has He became man in time. Now, this esse, even though it is not accidental (because "man" is not predicated of the Son of God as an accident, as we discussed earlier), is not,however, the principal esse of His supposit but, rather, is a secondary [or we might say "derived"] esse. However, if there were two supposits in Christ [which, of course, there are not because of the Hypostatic unity in persona / in supposito], then both supposits would have its own proper, principal esse, meaning that Christ would have two esses simply speaking. [But we aren't Nestorians, so he does not.]
But then there is also the striking response to the objection:
Ad primum ergo dicendum quod esse humanae naturae non est esse divinae. Nec tamen simpliciter dicendum est quod Christus sit duo secundum esse; quia non ex aequo respicit utrumque esse suppositum aeternum. Et similiter etiam dicendum est ad alia.
Thus, to the first, it must be said that the esse of Christ's human nature is not the divine esse; however, we likewise must not say, speaking in an utterly unqualified sense [simpliciter, non secundum quid], that Christ would have a second esse [simpliciter], for the two esses in question are not related in equal fashion to the eternal supposit [since the human esse is derived and "of the nature but not of the supposit"].
I have not yet read Michael Gorman's _Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union_, but I am surprised that, upon a text search, I do not see Maritain or Nicolas cited at all. However, he does cite the work of Marie-Hélène Deloffre, which is a good study of all this. (Still, I think that the speculative value of at least grappling with Maritain and Nicolas is enlightening. I'm not sure if it's part of the somewhat muted—but very real in my opinion, based on my days as a graduate student there—dislike and dismissal of Maritain by the philosophy faculty at Catholic University. (I say this out of great filial piety for the place, which I really love. However, although Dean Dougherty was a lover of Maritain, many of the folks there nowadays were highly biased against him. Never was quite sure, but there was a strong whiff of "Thomas's texts only, along with the contemporary literature" for some there. I'm a bit of a pugilist, by contrast, in defense of the old scholastic debates....
Ahhh, well... I really do need to get to work. Blessings!
Peace,
Matthew