HoG: The Most Divine Content-Fallacy, and ‘Is the Divine Word Practical Knowledge?’ (Scott)

“If I think of pork-products, is that a self-conscious act of thinking?”

What follows is the first of a two part post.

Part 1: The Divine Word as Divine Practical Knowledge
Part 2: If God Weren’t a Trinity, then Creatures Would Necessarily Be Created.

Part 1

In pre-Nicene days (and post-Nicene days) there was much debate about the ontological status and (narrative) identity of the Son of God. One branch of discussion focused on the Apostle John’s claim that the Son of God is the Word of God. In various places in the New Testament the Son of God is identified as the agent through whom the Father creates the world, which is equivalent with saying the Word of the Father and the Father create creatures.

From these sources a ‘Logos-theology’ was born (that you can read about in the history books). The Logos is that by which creatures are created, have their existence and persistence in existing.

Now, Henry takes up the question as to whether the Word is ‘practical knowledge’. Henry generally gets his definitions of kinds of knowledge from Aristotle. From Aristotle we learn about three kinds of knowledge: speculative knowledge, practical knowledge and productive knowledge.

Speculative knowledge is knowledge for its own sake. There is no other end in mind than just knowing some X.

Practical knowledge includes the conceptual content of speculative knowledge but has a certain end or action in mind. Medical doctors have practical knowledge; they know all sorts of things about the human body in order to repair broken and malfunctioning parts of the body. Doctors know about human bodies for the purpose of healing human bodies. What doctors do is some action, e.g. repair a cancerous heart. What they do is adjust or re-shape something that already exists (e.g. people’s eyes, hearts, hands).

Productive knowledge is about some x for the purpose of making an x; and existence has its own independent existence (e.g. an axe is a product with its own existence). For example, a poet knows how poems are supposed to be constructed (prosody, etc.) and then makes poems. What remains after the action of the poet is some product with (independent) per se existence, i.e. some poem there on the written page or there produced in the memory of the hearers of the poet when the poet recites his/her poem. Productive knowledge presupposes some material on which to make the product. A sculptor requires marble, clay or bronze in order to make his/her statue.

So Henry asks whether the divine Word is practical knowledge. What this amounts to is whether the divine Word contains some kind or sort of knowledge that the other kind of divine knowledge does not contain. What is this other kind of divine knowledge?

In short, this other kind of divine knowledge is the knowledge that the three divine persons have in common. If some thinker is constituted by the divine essence, and the divine essence includes the power to think/’have’ knowledge; and there are three who are constituted by the divine essence, then there are three thinkers who ‘have’ divine knowledge. This common knowledge, in medieval speak called ‘essential knowledge’, is conceptually perfect in every way; there is no lack or conceptual defect in divine essential knowledge. This perfect essential knowledge is what Henry calls ‘simple knowledge’; this basically means that the divine intellect is passive, it simply receives all of its conceptual content from its object (divine essence) which is present to the divine intellect. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Henry thinks the divine intellect is passive (that results in simple knowledge) and then active (that results in the produced mental Word).

Henry says certain provocative things like, ‘the Word is cognition of an intellect knowing that it knows what it knows and knowing the very act of knowing what it knows’; this could possibly be glossed in modern day language as ‘the Word is self-conscious knowledge’. (I have certain hesitations that Henry thinks the Word is the formal cause of self-conscious knowledge in the three divine persons on the premise that Henry thinks divine essential knowledge is perfect in every way; ‘perfect knowledge’ should at least amount to self-conscious knowledge, no?)

So, in SQO 59.6, the last article and question on the Son and Word of God, Henry asks whether the Word is practical knowledge? He dialectically goes through six possible definitions of practical knowledge that basically covers the ways a thinker can gain/obtain practical knowledge (by being taught by a teacher, knowledge from experience, etc.). But after a long discussion, he says that simple knowledge and the Word can both be called practical knowledge in a most general sort of way in that both manifest what is true. It is only an act of love that is practical; i.e. only a volitional act of love can have some end in a creature. Of course, a volitional act of love requires/presupposes knowledge of the true (God makes true humans, not false square-circles).

So, no, the Word is not practical knowledge. The Word is not knowledge per se for the purpose of doing some creative action. What then is peculiar about the Word in distinction from simple essential divine knowledge? Well, the Word is an intellectual product and divine simple essential knowledge is not a product qua product. So, what Henry does is to try to capitalize on the notion that the Word is a product, i.e. produced-knowledge; and b/c it is produced-knowledge it has some sort of affinity with produced-creatures, namely creatures and the Word are both produced. Of course, the production of the Word and the production of creatures differ in rather significant ways. The produced-Word has necessary existence; produced-creatures have contingent existence. The produced-Word is identical with the divine essence; produced-creatures are identical with their divine exemplars (divine idea of some possible creature) and not with the divine essence. Still, Henry thinks there is something to saying the Word is produced-knowledge and saying creatures are produced. What is the affinity? Well, b/c both have this modal similarity _being produced_ there is some sense to saying that the Word is ‘like’ creatures in a way that divine simple essential knowledge is not ‘like’ creatures, namely that the Word is produced (in a very peculiar way) and creatures are produced.

In other words, Henry seems to commit what Robert Pasnau [‘Aquinas and the Content Fallacy’, The Modern Schoolman, 1999?] calls the ‘content fallacy’ to the nth degree. The content-fallacy is when you equate the ontological status of some concept/knowledge with the concept/knowledge itself. The classic problem, as Pasnau states it is thus: scholastics thought that the (human) intellect is immaterial and that universals are immaterial; therefore, b/c the intellect is immaterial it thinks with (immaterial) universals and not with material individuals. Pasnau argues that there is no reason to say that b/c the (human) intellect is immaterial it can only think by means of universals—for the intellect can and does directly think of (material) individuals.

In Henry’s case, the ontological status of the Word as (ontologically) produced is the bridge by which he tries to say that the Word is practical knowledge (i.e. conceptual content oriented toward producing creatures) b/c the Word has this modal property being produced in common with creatures that are by definition produced. Of course, Henry makes all the expected distinctions btwn. the Word as an ad intra divine production and creatures as ad extra creaturely contingent productions.

If Pasnau is right about what he calls the ‘content fallacy’, then Henry has no way to suggest how the divine Word might be practical knowledge. But if Pasnau is wrong, then Henry has a branch to stand on. Unfortunately for Henry, I have yet to see how Pasnau might be wrong on this score. Perhaps in time I might find a way through the ‘content fallacy’.