Source of Our Natural Knowledge of God
To correct, as far as possible, the inadequate character of the concepts through which we must formulate our idea of God, the first step is to distinguish created perfection into two kinds, i.e. mixed perfections and pure perfections. A pure perfection is one whose exact concept does not include any note formally expressive of defect or limitation; the content of the idea is entirely positive. The idea of a mixed perfection, on the contrary, formally or directly connotes, along with what is positive in the perfection, some privation or deficiency. Examples of the former are power, truthfulness, will; as an instance of the latter, materiality may be offered. For, though the reality that belongs to matter is, of course, a participatlon of existence and activity, yet the concept of it connotes the imperfections of that kind of existence that is composite and subject to disintegration. Again, personality is a pure perfection; for, as Catholic philosophy teaches, though the finite character of human personality comes into play in the awakening of self-consciousness, yet limitation is not an essential constituent of personality. All terms that stand for pure perfections are predicated analogically of God, and are designated attributes in the wide sense of the word. When terms that signify mixed perfections are predicated of God, the analogy becomes so faint that the locution is a mere metaphor.
Read more about this topic: Catholic Concept Of The Divine
Famous quotes containing the words source of, source, natural, knowledge and/or god:
“It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“We do not want them to have less.
But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough.
We drive on, we drive on.
When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“The variables are surprisingly few.... One can whip or be whipped; one can eat excrement or quaff urine; mouth and private part can be meet in this or that commerce. After which there is the gray of morning and the sour knowledge that things have remained fairly generally the same since man first met goat and woman.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)