What does God know? Treatise on the “divine knowledge” in the structure of natural theology by Francisco Suárez

Abstract

The article is a study of the late scholastic concept of natural theology based on the works of Fr. Suárez, Metaphysical Disputations (1597) and De Deo Uno et Trino (1607), as well as the analysis of the treatise on “divine knowledge” and the demonstration of its significance in the structure of Suárez’s natural theology. First, the article explicates the concept of natural theology as the highest and most noble part of metaphysical science, since the natural theology of Suárez differs both from supernatural or revelation theology, and from the whole metaphysical knowledge about being. Second, the thematic content of natural theology is described in comparison with revelation theology, and the general method of natural theology, which is determined by the specific limitations of the natural knowledge of God in this life, is analyzed. At the same time, the most important role of the traditional scholastic concept of “perfectio simpliciter” as revealing the essence of Suárez’s method in natural theology is emphasized. Third, we point out the reasons for the special significance of the treatise on the “divine knowledge/scientia Dei” contained in section 15 of Suárez’s 30th Metaphysical disputation, and analyze the structure of this treatise, showing how Suárez’s exposition in it corresponds to the general “rule of method”. Fourth, the article thematizes the question of the objects of knowledge of the divine intellect, explains the general division of objects into three classes and explicates the complex type of connection between the cognition of the primary and secondary objects of the divine intellect, since it determines the way God knows finite possible things “in themselves”. Finally, we show a certain ambivalence in Suárez’s understanding of the reality and objectivity of the objective being (esse obiectivum) of possible finite essences as a secondary object that terminates divine knowledge.