On Intentionality and Divine Knowing
Quaeritur
Utrum intentionalitas divina sit ipse actus quo Deus seipsum cognoscit et in hoc seipso cognoscendo omnia cognoscit; cum cognitio Dei non sit receptio specierum ab extra sed expressio sui ab intra, ita ut hic actus intentionalis sit simul causa et exemplar omnis cognitionis creatae, quae participatione in eo subsistit.
Whether divine intentionality is the very act by which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things; since God’s knowledge is not the reception of forms from without but the inward expression of Himself, such that this intentional act is both the cause and exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.
Thesis
All true knowledge, whether divine or creaturely, is intentional, ordered toward what is known. In God, however, intentionality is not a relation added to being but is identical with being itself. God’s act of knowing is His act of being. Divine intentionality is therefore the archetype of intelligibility and the ground of theology’s possibility, for to know anything at all is to participate, analogically, in the self-knowing Word of God.
Locus Classicus
Psalm 36:9
Apud te est fons vitae,
et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen.
“For with you is the fountain of life,
and in your light we see light.”
John 1:1, 4
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος…
ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν,
καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
“In the beginning was the Logos…
in Him was life,
and the life was the light of human beings.”
Augustine, De Trinitate IX.10.15
Non sic cognoscit Deus creaturam quomodo creatura cognoscitur a creatura,
sed quomodo cognoscit seipsum Deus.
“God does not know the creature in the way a creature is known by a creature,
but in the way God knows Himself.”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.14, a.5
Deus cognoscit omnia non in seipsis, sed in seipso.
“God knows all things not in themselves, but in Himself.”
These witnesses converge upon a single claim: divine knowing is not receptive but constitutive. God’s light is not an added condition for knowledge but the source in which all seeing occurs. The Logos is not merely the bearer of meaning but the act in which intelligibility itself subsists.
Explicatio
Intentionality names the directedness proper to every act of knowing. In finite intellects, this directedness presupposes a real distinction between knower and known. The intellect reaches beyond itself toward what it is not, receiving determination from an object that stands over against it. Knowledge thus unfolds as a movement across distance, mediated by forms, representations, or signs.
Nothing of this structure may be transferred uncritically to God. In God there is no distance, no reception, no transition from potency to act. Divine knowing is not a movement toward an object but the eternal act in which intelligibility subsists as reality itself. God does not become informed; He is the fullness of form. God does not acquire knowledge; He is knowledge.
The Father knows Himself in the Son. This knowing is not representational but generative. The Son is not an idea of God but the eternal Logos, the expressed intelligibility of the divine essence. Divine cognition is therefore not an act alongside being but the very form of divine life. The identity of knowing and being does not dissolve personal distinction but grounds it. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not divided by cognition but constituted in its fullness. Divine simplicity is not the absence of relation but the plenitude of intelligibility so complete that relation itself subsists without composition.
Within this single eternal act, all that is intelligible is comprehended. God knows creatures not by attending to them as external objects but by knowing Himself as communicable being. Creatures are known in God as finite participations in divine intelligibility. To be created is already to be intelligible, and to be intelligible is already to be comprehended within divine knowing. God’s knowledge of creatures is therefore not observational but causal. God knows all things by causing them to be what they are.
This does not collapse creation into divine self-contemplation. On the contrary, it is precisely this mode of knowing that secures the reality and distinctness of creatures. A creature is finite because it is known as finite. To be known by God is not to be absorbed into God but to receive determinate being within the order of participation. Creaturely intelligibility is not autonomy from God but dependence upon divine reason. A world independent of divine knowing would not be more real but unintelligible.
From this follows the participatory character of all creaturely knowledge. Human knowing is not an autonomous orientation toward truth that later happens to correspond with reality. It is a finite participation in the divine act of intelligibility. When the human intellect knows truth, it does so because it already stands within the light by which God knows all things. This participation is analogical, not univocal. The finite intellect mirrors the structure of divine cognition without sharing its fullness. Illumination does not confer infallibility. It establishes proportion between finite intellect and intelligible being.
The Spirit mediates this participation not by supplying additional objects of knowledge but by conforming the intellect to intelligibility itself. Illumination is not the addition of content but the restoration of right orientation. To know truthfully is to be rightly situated within the light that precedes all cognition. Epistemic autonomy describes the operation of human faculties but not their ground. Theology does not deny the integrity of natural cognition. It explains why cognition is possible at all.
Critical philosophy rightly describes the limits of unaided reason. Theology does not dispute this analysis. It confesses a gift. Participation in divine knowing is not an extension of phenomenal cognition into the noumenal realm, nor an illicit metaphysical inference. It is the transformation of the knower through revelation. God is not known as an object placed before consciousness but as the ground within which consciousness is made possible. The limits of reason are not violated but fulfilled.
Divine intentionality thus names the ontological ground of intelligibility itself. Truth is not first a property of propositions but the temporal echo of an eternal act. Because God is intelligible in Himself, reality is intelligible. Because reality is intelligible, creatures can know. Theology alone renders explicit what every act of knowing already presupposes.
Objectiones
Obiectio I. If God’s knowing is identical with His being, then knowing must imply a distinction between knower and known. Such distinction introduces composition and violates divine simplicity.
Obiectio II. If God knows creatures only in knowing Himself, then creatures lack independent intelligibility and collapse into divine self-contemplation.
Obiectio III. If human knowing participates in divine knowing, human intellect would appear divine or infallible, contrary to experience.
Obiectio IV. Modern epistemology grounds knowledge in human cognitive structures. Divine participation is unnecessary and undermines autonomy.
Obiectio V. Kant restricts knowledge to phenomena. Participation in divine knowing would entail illicit access to the noumenal.
Responsiones
Ad I. The distinction in God is relational, not compositional. Divine knowing is identical with divine being, internally differentiated as personal relation. Simplicity is not threatened but fulfilled.
Ad II. God knows creatures as their cause. Being known in God secures, rather than negates, creaturely distinctness.
Ad III. Participation is analogical. Human knowing is illuminated, not divinized. Finitude remains.
Ad IV. Autonomy describes operation, not origin. Participation grounds cognition without replacing it.
Ad V. Revelation does not extend reason into the noumenal but transforms the knower. God is known as ground, not as object.
Nota
Divine intentionality reveals that truth is not first a property of propositions but an act of God. All finite truth is an echo of divine self-knowing. The Logos is the intelligible act in which all meaning subsists. Creation, providence, language, and knowing all stand within this horizon.
Human knowledge does not stand beside divine knowledge but within it, as participation within plenitude. To know truthfully is already to think within the light by which God knows Himself.
Determinatio
- Divine intentionality is identical with divine being; God’s act of knowing is His act of being.
- God knows Himself eternally in the Logos, and in knowing Himself knows all things as possible and actual participations in His being.
- Divine cognition is not representational or receptive but creative and constitutive of intelligibility.
- Creaturely knowing is analogical participation in divine knowing, mediated by the illumination of the Spirit.
- Human knowledge remains finite and fallible, yet genuinely participates in divine intelligibility.
- Truth is not autonomous from God but the temporal reflection of God’s eternal self-knowing.
- Theology is possible because intelligibility itself is grounded in divine intentionality.
Transitus ad Disputationem XVI
If divine knowing is creative and participatory, then language cannot be treated as a neutral instrument appended to cognition. Speech is the exterior articulation of intentionality, the manifestation of intelligibility in shared signs. Yet theological language bears a unique burden: it seeks to signify the divine act that grounds all signification. How finite words may bear infinite intelligibility now demands inquiry.
Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate, where it is asked how language participates in divine knowing and whether speech, when taken up into revelation, becomes more than sign, namely a vessel of participation in the speaking God.
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