61. Suffering, Undergoing, and Divine Understanding

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Lecture Notes

The Analogy of Suffering and Undergoing #

Multiple Meanings of Suffering (Passio) #

Berquist traces a progression of meanings:

• First meaning: Material change contrary to nature (negative, destructive)
  • Example: clay sphere molded into cube—the material loses its former shape
• Second meaning: Being acted upon materially but not contrary to nature
  • Example: the eye receiving the form of external objects; senses being perfected
• Third meaning: The intellect receiving intelligible forms
  • Example: reason understanding the nature of a triangle or dog
  • This is “perfect” undergoing—perfection through being acted upon

The Problem with English Language #

The English word “suffering” is etymologically stuck on the first (negative) meaning, making it unsuitable for describing intellectual perfection. Berquist proposes undergoing as a more flexible term that can accommodate all levels of the progression from material to intellectual reception.

Undergoing as Universal Reception #

Undergoing (being acted upon) exists across different levels:

• Sensory level: The senses undergo being perfected by their objects (e.g., listening to Mozart perfects the ear)
• Intellectual level: Reason undergoes being acted upon by intelligible forms, resulting in understanding
• Key distinction: Undergoing at these higher levels is not necessarily suffering in the sense of harm or diminishment

Thomas Aquinas on Motion and Understanding #

The Crucial Distinction: Imperfect vs. Perfect Act #

Thomas distinguishes two types of motion (motus and undergoing):

• Motion in the strict sense (actus imperfecti): the act of what is able to be, insofar as it is able to be; incomplete

  • Defined in Aristotle’s Physics, Book III
  • Examples: walking home (incomplete until arrival), building a house (incomplete until finished)
  • While these acts are ongoing, they are unfulfilled

• Perfect act (actus perfecti): an act that is complete and perfected in the one acting

  • Examples: understanding what a triangle is, loving someone
  • When I understand something, I have understood it—the understanding is complete now
  • When I love someone, I have loved them—the act is fulfilled now

Understanding as Act of the Perfect #

Understanding is NOT motion in the imperfect sense. Rather:

• Understanding is an operation that remains in the one understanding
• It is immediately complete and perfected
• It does not proceed outward to something external (unlike making or building)

God’s Understanding and Divine Substance #

God’s Understanding is His Substance #

Thomas establishes that God’s understanding is not other than his very substance:

• If understanding were other than divine substance, it would be:
  • A perfection added to substance
  • Making substance merely an ability (potentia) in relation to this act
  • This contradicts God being pure act (actus purus)
• Therefore: In God, to understand = to be = his very substance

The Proportion of Divine Understanding to Divine Being #

Just as:

• Natural being follows upon form (the form makes something actually to be)
• So understanding follows upon the intelligible form (the form makes something actually to be understood)

In God:

• There is no distinction between form and being (from the question on simplicity)
• Therefore, there is no distinction between understanding and being
• The intelligible form in God is his very substance
• Hence, God’s understanding is identical with God’s substance

Understanding and Being Made Alike #

In creatures:

• The intellect must be perfected by the intelligible form
• It becomes “like” what is understood by receiving the form
• Just as the eye is not like your shape until it receives your shape
• Intellect as ability differs from the understandable form it receives

In God:

• God’s understanding is not an ability—it is pure act
• Therefore, God is not perfected by something understandable
• God is his own perfection and his own understandable object
• In God: what understands, the act of understanding, and what is understood are all one and the same

God’s Self-Knowledge vs. Human Self-Knowledge #

Arqueil’s key principle: Our understanding knows itself only insofar as it knows other things.

• We must first understand external things, then reflect on our act of understanding, then know our understanding power
• God, by contrast, knows himself through himself—no external objects needed
• This radical difference reflects the difference between pure potency (our intellect) and pure act (God)

The Analogy of First Matter and Possible Understanding #

First Matter as Pure Potency #

• First matter (considered in itself) is pure ability (potentia pura)
• It is not knowable in itself but only by proportion
• Example: First matter is to man and dog as clay is to sphere and cube

The Proportional Likeness #

The proportion must be understood correctly:

• NOT that first matter is a substance to two accidents (as clay is substance to accidental shapes)
• Rather: First matter is able to be man or dog (but not both simultaneously)
  • When actually one, it retains ability to become the other
  • Becoming the other requires ceasing to be the first
• Similarly, possible understanding is able to be actualized by various intelligible forms

Understanding as Potency in the Order of Intelligibles #

• Just as first matter is pure potency in the order of natural things
• So our possible understanding (intellectus possibilis) is pure potency in the order of intelligible things
• Our understanding cannot have intelligible operation except by being perfected by the intelligible form of something else
• Thus our understanding knows itself through intelligible form, just as it knows other things

The Divine Understanding: Pure Act #

God represents the opposite extreme:

• God is pure act in the order of natural existence
• God is pure act in the order of intelligibles
• Angels stand in between, being partly in potency and partly in act

God’s Self-Knowledge and Comprehension #

What It Means to Comprehend #

To comprehend (comprehendere) in the strict sense:

• Means to come to the end of knowledge of something
• Means to know something as perfectly as it is knowable

The Problem of Infinity #

Objection: To comprehend means to grasp or surround something; God is infinite; therefore God cannot be comprehended—even by himself.

Thomas’s response:

• The verb “to comprehend” should be understood by negation
• Similar to how “God is in himself” is grammatically affirmative but means negatively that God is not contained in another
• Similarly, God comprehends himself not by grasping or surrounding himself, but by having nothing of himself hidden from himself
• Augustine: “Whole is comprehended in seeing, that is seen in this way, that nothing of it is hidden from the one seeing”

God’s Perfect Self-Knowledge #

God comprehends himself perfectly because:

• On the side of knowability: God is pure act; something is knowable to the extent it is act; therefore God is completely knowable
• On the side of knowing power: The power of God in knowing equals his actuality in existing; God is pure act; therefore God knows with supreme perfection
• Aristotle’s principle: The knower in act and the knowable in act are the same
• Therefore: God knows himself as much as he is knowable—he comprehends himself perfectly

Key Theological Implications #

The Distinction from Human Self-Knowledge #

Berquist notes the pedagogical importance:

• Babies sometimes refer to themselves in third person
• This reflects how human self-knowledge develops: we first understand other things, then our acts of understanding, then our understanding power
• This order is necessary for creatures; it is not necessary (and does not apply) to God

Understanding and Being #

From Augustine: “In God it is the same thing to be, and to be wise; but to be wise is to understand; therefore for God to be is for God to understand.”

• This is not true of creatures: for us, being and understanding are distinct
• This identity is a fundamental attribute of the divine nature

Preparation for Trinity #

Berquist emphasizes that understanding the identity of God’s understanding with his substance is essential for later understanding the Trinity:

• The operation of God is the same as his substance (just as his will is the same as his substance)
• This principle enables understanding how the Son (as the Word or Expression of God’s self-understanding) can be God
• The usual ordering in theological treatises (substance → operations → Trinity) is pedagogically sound

Important Definitions #

Motus (Motion in the Strict Sense) #

From Aristotle, Physics III: “The act of what is able to be, insofar as it is able to be.” Characterized by:

• Incompleteness
• Proceeding from one thing into another
• Unfulfilled quality while the motion is ongoing

Intelligere (Understanding) #

Contrasted with motion:

• An act of the perfect existing in the one acting
• Remains in the doer (does not go outside)
• Immediately complete and perfected

Actus Purus (Pure Act) #

God’s nature:

• Complete actualization with no potentiality
• Being that is not mixed with any ability to be something else
• The reason for God’s supreme knowability and supreme knowing power

Species Intelligibilis (Intelligible Form) #

• In creatures: a form received from external objects that enables understanding
• In God: identical with his essence; God understands through his own substance

Comprehensio (Comprehension) #

• Not “grasping” or “surrounding” in the finite sense
• Rather: the complete absence of anything hidden from the knower
• Knowing something as perfectly as it is knowable

Questions Addressed #

Is God’s Understanding an Operation Going Forth from Him? #

Objection: Operations go forth from their agent; if understanding is an operation, it proceeds from God externally.

Resolution: Understanding is not an action going forth to something extrinsic (unlike making or building). It is an action that remains in the one understanding as his act and perfection. Such operations can constitute God’s very substance without implying composition.

Doesn’t Self-Understanding Imply Infinite Regress? #

Objection: When God understands himself, he understands his own understanding, and then understands that understanding, infinitely. How can this be identity with substance?

Resolution: In creatures, these are indeed distinct things (understanding a triangle, understanding that understanding, understanding that second understanding, etc.). But in God, because he is not an ability receiving forms but pure act itself, there is no multiplication. The infinite regress that occurs in creatures (where each understanding is of something other than the previous understanding) does not occur in God, whose understanding is identical with his being.

How Can God Comprehend the Infinite? #

Objection: Comprehension requires grasping or surrounding something finite; God is infinite; therefore God cannot comprehend himself.

Resolution: Comprehension should be understood as the complete absence of anything hidden, not as grasping or surrounding. God comprehends himself perfectly because he is pure act and therefore completely knowable, and his knowing power equals his actuality.