ter into divine predication, everything that savors of
imperfection; and everything that expresses perfection is to be
retained in them. Hence it is said, "With Him is wisdom and strength,
He hath counsel and understanding" (Job 12:13).

Reply Obj. 3: Knowledge is according to the mode of the one who
knows; for the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of
the knower. Now since the mode of the divine essence is higher than
that of creatures, divine knowledge does not exist in God after the
mode of created knowledge, so as to be universal or particular, or
habitual, or potential, or existing according to any such mode.
_______________________

SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. 14, Art. 2]

Whether God Understands Himself?

Objection 1: It seems that God does not understand Himself. For it is
said by the Philosopher (De Causis), "Every knower who knows his own
essence, returns completely to his own essence." But God does not go
out from His own essence, nor is He moved at all; thus He cannot
return to His own essence. Therefore He does not know His own essence.

Obj. 2: Further, to understand is a kind of passion and movement,
as the Philosopher says (De Anima iii); and knowledge also is a kind
of assimilation to the object known; and the thing known is the
perfection of the knower. But nothing is moved, or suffers, or is made
perfect by itself, "nor," as Hilary says (De Trin. iii), "is a thing
its own likeness." Therefore God does not understand Himself.

Obj. 3: Further, we are like to God chiefly in our intellect,
because we are the image of God in our mind, as Augustine says (Gen.
ad lit. vi). But our intellect understands itself, only as it
understands other things, as is said in _De Anima_ iii. Therefore God
understands Himself only so far perchance as He understands other
things.

_On the contrary,_ It is written: "The things that are of God no man
knoweth, but the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:11).

_I answer that,_ God understands Himself through Himself. In proof
whereof it must be known that although in operations which pass to an
external effect, the object of the operation, which is taken as the
term, exists outside the operator; nevertheless in operations that
remain in the operator, the object signified as the term of operation,
resides in the operator; and accordingly as it is in the operator, the
operation is actual. Hence the Philosopher says (De Anima iii) that
"the sensible in act is sense in act,