Dist. 39, Art. 1, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/39/q/bon-sent-I-d39-a1-q2
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### Question II.
#### *Whether God knows all things other than himself.*

Secondly, granting that God knows things other than himself, it is asked whether he knows *all* things other than himself. And that he does, [it] seems:

1. By the authority of Jeremiah seventeen: *The heart of man is perverse etc.*, and after: *I am the Lord searching hearts and reins*; but nothing is more uncertain, nothing more hidden than our thoughts: therefore if he knows these, [he knows] all other things too.

2. Likewise, to the Hebrews four: *All things are bare and open to the eyes of him to whom is our discourse.* And again: *The word of God is living and effective,* up to: *and there is no creature invisible in his sight.*

3. Likewise, John final [chapter]: *Lord, thou knowest all things.*

4. Likewise, Augustine in the third [book] *On the Trinity*: «Nothing becomes visible nor intelligible which is not, from the inner and invisible court of the supreme Emperor, either commanded or permitted according to [his] ineffable justice of punishments and rewards and graces and merits». And if this [is so]: therefore he knows all things.

5. Likewise, by reason it seems [so]: because the more spiritual and simpler a substance is, the more it is cognoscitive of; but God is a most simple and most spiritual substance: therefore he is cognoscitive of all things.

6. Likewise, God is creator and rewarder; but inasmuch as he is creator he is artisan, inasmuch as rewarder he is judge; but a perfect artisan knows all things produced, a perfect judge all things to be rewarded: if therefore every creature pertains to [his] handiwork, and every good and evil to [his] judgment, therefore God knows every creature, and every goodness and malice.

7. Likewise, it is impossible that anything be in which God is not by the presence of essence, as was proved above; but to whatever he is present by essence, [also by] cognition: therefore it is impossible that anything be unknown to God.

8. Likewise, if he were in one thing in such a way that not in another, his essence would be limited: therefore if he so knew, that some things were unknown, his cognition would be limited and constricted, and so imperfect.

**On the contrary:**

1. Everything more noble is to be attributed to God; but «some things it is better not to know than to know», as Augustine says in the *Enchiridion*: therefore it is necessary to posit that God does not know those things.

2. Likewise, our intellect, on account of its immateriality, does not understand singulars — whence, as the Philosopher says, «the intellect is of universals, and sense of singulars» — but the divine intellect is far more immaterial than ours; therefore if ours does not understand singulars, neither does the divine.

3. Likewise, our scientific *habit*, on account of its certitude, is only of necessary things, and not of contingents, since Boethius says that «science is of those things which obtain unchangeable existence of themselves». If therefore divine cognition is far more certain than our science, it is plain etc.

4. Likewise, what necessity is there to posit that God knows all things? And it seems [there is] none, because our cognition is no less called perfect, if it does not know one fly; if therefore divine cognition is far less perfected by the knowable, it will not be imperfect, if it does not know these vile [things].

5. Likewise, just as God is omniscient, so he is omnipotent; but the power of evil is not part of omnipotence nor of the perfection of power; therefore likewise neither is the cognition of evil part of the perfection of knowledge, therefore etc.

6. Likewise, the same is shown by authorities, and first by the authority of Habakkuk: *Thy eyes are clean, Lord, lest they see evil etc.* Likewise of evils it is said in Matthew twenty-five: *I know you not.*

### Conclusion.

> *God by the cognition of simple cognizance knows all things, good and evil, but [by the cognition] of approbation only the good.*

**I respond:** It must be said, for the understanding of the objections, that in God there is the cognizance of approbation, and of simple cognizance. And the cognizance of approbation connotes the complacency of the will. By this God does not know all things, since neither evils nor evil-doers, but only the good and the good-doers; and of this are understood the last two authorities. There is another cognition of simple cognizance; and this, since it has the *ratio* of knowing from Truth, which is the supreme light, to which nothing can be hidden, nor are even darknesses obscured before it; therefore of necessity it knows all things, great and small, good and evil, as the reasons for the first part show.

*To 1.* To that which is first objected, that everything more noble is to be attributed to God; it must be said that there is what is better simply, and what is better for this [creature] and according to [its] state. I say therefore that to know all things simply is better and more noble; but for corrupt man, who takes occasion of sinning from cognition, it is better to be ignorant of certain things. Therefore it does not follow, that it [must] be attributed to God.

*To 2.* To that which is objected concerning the immateriality of the intellect, it must be said that this — that it does not know singulars — comes not only from immateriality, rather from the materiality of the conjoined [body] and its own immateriality. For since it is conjoined to a body, it has powers according to which it depends on the body as regards [its] operation, and through which the intellect, while it is in the body, goes out to exterior things, since these [powers] are the means, namely the particular sense and imagination. Since therefore the singular does not arrive at the intellect except through these powers, and the ascent through these is according to abstraction and purification, and abstraction makes a universal of the singular; therefore [the intellect] cannot know singulars *as* intellect, unless the intellect be separated or divine.

*To 3.* To that which is objected concerning the certitude of science, it must be said that this is not on account of certitude simply, but on account of certitude caused by the thing. And since certitude in our cognition is caused [by] or depends on the thing, therefore our cognition cannot be certain unless the thing be necessary. But divine cognition, since it is neither caused nor depends from the thing, can be certain about a contingent thing.

*To 5.* To that which is objected, that the power of evil is not part of omnipotence; therefore etc; it must be said, that it is not similar, since rectitude, remaining rectitude, is the *ratio* of knowing evil; but rectitude is not the cause of evil, except by deviating from rectitude and falling away. Therefore to know evil is part of the perfection of knowledge, but to be able [to do] evil is not part of the perfection of power.

*To 4.* To that which is asked, what necessity there is for God to know all things: it must be said that the infinity and immensity of truth, which does not allow anything to be hidden from God, just as the immensity of divine presence does not allow anything to be absent from God.