people falling into error because this term has different meanings under different terminological conventions—more instances than can be enumerated here.

That being so, even if His acting essence and His knowledge of Himself were one and the same—assuming that this is so—it would not follow that His creation, which is distinct from Him, and His knowledge of that creation are one and the same. For the created thing is distinct from Him, whereas the Creator’s knowledge is an attribute of the Creator subsisting in Him. His knowledge does not therefore subsist in the created thing, as His apprehension of His essence subsists in His essence.

In that former case, those who identified His apprehension with His essence did so because, according to them, knowledge is identical with the knower, not because knowledge is identical with the object known.

But there, the essence of the knowledge and of the object known was one and the same, leaving only knowledge to be considered; and according to them, knowledge is not additional to the essence. They therefore said:

“His essence and His apprehension of His essence are one and the same.”

Here, however, the knower is distinct from the object known. Knowledge is an attribute of the knower, subsisting in him, not an attribute of the object known, subsisting in it. It was therefore not possible to identify the created thing, which they call the first effect, with the Creator’s knowledge of it.

[The Fifteenth Argument]

It may be said that knowing that knowledge of a created thing is not the created thing itself is self-evident and cannot be overturned by specious arguments. Indeed, to challenge it is sophistry.

If this necessarily entails that His knowledge of Himself is not Himself, then whatever necessarily follows from truth is itself true. Affirming this is part of affirming that the created thing is the Creator’s very knowledge. If, however, this does not necessarily entail that His knowledge of Himself is Himself, then the argument is invalid.