CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 1:

• God and His Attributes
• The Blessed Trinity
• Creation
• The Angels
• The Days of Creation
• Man
  • 75. Man's Soul
  • 76. Union of Soul and Body in Man
  • 77. Faculties of the Human Soul: In General
  • 78. Faculties of the Human Soul: In Particular
  • 79. The Intellective Human Faculties
  • 80. The Appetitive Human Faculties
  • 81. The Sensitive Appetite in Man
  • 82. The Intellective Appetite in Man: The Will
  • 83. Free Will
  • 84. Man's Knowledge of Bodily Reality
  • 85. The Manner or Mode of Man's Understanding
  • 86. What the Intellect Knows in Material Things
  • 87. Man's Knowledge of Himself
  • 88. Man's Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things
  • 89. Knowledge in the Separated Human Soul
  • 90. The First Production of Man's Soul
  • 91. The Production of the First Human Body
  • 92. The Production of Woman
  • 93. Man as the Image of God
  • 94. The Intellect of the First Man
  • 95. The Will of the First Man
  • 96. The Ruling Power of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 97. The Preservation of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 98. The Preserving of the Human Race in the State of Innocence
  • 99. The Bodily LIfe of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 100. The Righteousness of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 101. The Knowledge of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 102. Paradise
• The Divine Government

88. Man's Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things

1. Since the proper object of intellect, in the present earthlylife of man, is the essences of material things, the intellectunderstands by using phantasms, that is, sense-images of materialthings presented in imagination. Now, there are no phantasms ofnonmaterial things. Therefore, in this life, the human intellectcannot knownonmaterial things directly or per se. Itcannot know, for example, what nonmaterial substances, such asangels, are in themselves.

2. We know material things by turning the light of theagent intellect on phantasms; this is a sort of intellectual X-raywhich penetrates what is individual in the phantasms and shows uptheir essence. We call this process abstraction. We say that theintellect abstracts its ideas from phantasms. This is a kind ofprocess of de-materializing and de-individualizing material things.And we can continue this process, refining more and more, drawingideas from ideas, and reaching more and more abstract ideas. But wecan never attain by such a process to the perfect idea of spiritualsubstance as such. Spirit is an essence altogether different frommatter; hence no process of de-materializing can reveal spirit asit is in itself.

3. We cannot, therefore, have a perfect knowledge ofinfinite spirit. By reasoning we can know God's existence, andmany of the divine attributes. But to know God directly in hisspiritual essence is something we cannot have this side of heavenwith its light of glory. Therefore, here on earth and exercisingnatural powers, man cannot know God directly in himself, butindirectly by reasoning back to the First Cause of creatures.Therefore those teachers are much mistaken who hold that thefirst thing known by the human intellect is God.

"There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good."
St Philip Neri

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"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine

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"Try to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God. "
Thomas á Kempis

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