Chapter 68 — That God knows the movements of the will

In the next place we must show that God knows our mind’s thoughts and our secret wills.

For everything, in whatever way it exists, is known by God inasmuch as he knows his essence, as we have shown above. (Cc. 49–50.) Now being is something in the soul, and something in things outside the soul. Therefore, God knows all these differences of things, and whatever is contained under them. Now the things in the soul are those that are in our will or our thought. It remains, therefore, that God knows what we have in our thoughts and will.

Moreover. God knows other things in knowing his essence in the way that effects are known through their cause being known. (Cc. 49–50.) Accordingly, by knowing his essence, God knows all the things to which his causality extends. Now this extends to the works of the intellect and will. For, since every thing acts by its form, which gives the thing some kind of being, it follows that the highest source of all being, from which also every form is derived, must be the source of all operation. For the effects of second causes are to be referred in a still higher degree to first causes. Therefore, God knows both the thoughts and the affections of the mind.

Again. Even as his being is first, and consequently the cause of all being, so his act of intelligence is first, and consequently the cause of all intellectual operation. Therefore, just as God, by knowing his being, knows the being of everything, so by knowing his act of intelligence and will he knows every thought and will.

Further. God knows things not only as existing in themselves, but also as existing in their causes, as proved above, (Ch. 66.) for he knows the relation between cause and effect. Now the products of art are in the craftsman through the intellect and will of the craftsman, even as natural things are in their causes through the powers of the causes. For just as natural things liken their effects to themselves by their active powers, so the craftsman by his intellect gives his handiwork the form by which it is likened to his art. It is the same with all things done of set purpose. Therefore, God knows both our thoughts and our wills.

Again. Intelligible substances are no less known to God than sensible substances are known to him or to us, since intelligible substances are more knowable in proportion as they are more actual. Now the informations and inclinations of sensible substances are known both to God and to us. Consequently, since the soul’s thought results from its being informed, and since its affection is its inclination towards something—for even the inclination of a natural thing is called its natural appetite—it follows that God knows our secret thoughts and affections.

This is confirmed by the testimony of Sacred Scripture. For it is said in the Psalm: you who try the minds and hearts are God (Ps 7:9); and: hell and destruction lie open before the Lord: how much more the hearts of men (Prov 15:11); and: he himself knew what was in man (John 2:25).

The dominion which the will exercises over its own acts, and by which it is in its power to will and not to will, removes the determination of the power to one thing, and the violence of a cause acting from without, but it does not exclude the influence of a higher cause from which it has being and action. Thus causality remains in the first cause, which is God, in respect of the movements of the will: so that God is able to know them by knowing himself.