| 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. | |