Of God and His Creatures
That the Truth to be found in Propositions is not excluded
from God
ALTHOUGH the knowledge of the divine mind is not after the manner
of combination and separation of ideas in affirmative and
negative propositions, nevertheless there is not excluded from it
that truth which, according to the Philosopher, obtains only in
such combinations and separations.*
For since the truth of the intellect is an equation of the
intellect and the thing, inasmuch as the intellect says that to
be which is, or that not to be which is not, truth belongs to
that in the intellect which the intellect says, not to the act
whereby it says it; for it is not requisite to the truth of the
intellect that the mere act of understanding be equated to the
thing, but what the mind says and knows by understanding must be
equated to the thing, so that the case of the thing shall be as
the mind says it is. But God by his simple understanding, in
which there is no combination and separation of ideas, knows not
only the essence of things, but also the propositions that are
tenable concerning them (Chap. LVII, LVIII). Thus what the divine mind says by
understanding is affirmation and negation.* Therefore the simplicity of the divine
mind does not import the shutting out from it of truth.
1.58 : That God does not understand by Combination and Separation of Ideas
1.60 : That God is Truth