SEVENTEENTH LECTURE
Concerning divine intelligence, we must note:
1. God knows himself, because to know something is to be that thing in a spiritual manner; and because the divine essence, being pure Act, is at the supreme degree of intelligibility. Therefore divine essence is the proper object of divine intelligence, which is this very essence, and the existence of God is His very act of knowing Himself.
2. God knows other beings. Because knowing Himself perfectly He knows perfectly all that which is in His creative power, as primary cause of being. Moreover, all things are within Him according to His own mode of existence, which is a supremely spiritual and intellectual mode.
3. God knows other beings in Himself, that is to say, not in their intelligibility or in their created light, not in an objective reason for knowing (species) which would be commensurated to them, but in His own intelligibility and uncreated light, in an objective reason for knowing (species) which is His very essence, and of which all creatable things are an inadequate participation. Things are known by divine intelligence in their very nature and existence as object of knowledge, but they are not known by divine intelligence in their nature and existence as reason for knowing or means of knowing.
The argumentation by means of which Aristotle stated that the Pure Act is the only reality worthy of the divine intelligence, and its only specificating object, is the very reason by virtue of which Thomas Aquinas asserts that God must also know the world, yet He knows it in His own essence. Because He cannot know perfectly the creative essence without knowing creation -- creatable things -- known in and through that essence.