by the Lord and, in their terminology, are His effects; He is their Creator.

Knowledge of the complete cause entails knowledge of its effect, so He must know these things. And if He knows them, and they are the cause of temporally originated events, He must know those events.

Their claim that, despite not knowing particulars, He knows every attribute within a human being and his inner self, together with all his associated features, attributes, and necessary consequences, so that nothing escapes His knowledge, and that He knows all this universally—is a claim […] two individuals in something existing outside the mind. Indeed, no two things are alike in every respect, even if they resemble one another in some respects.

Knowledge of the respects in which people resemble one another is knowledge of some of their universal attributes; it is not knowledge of all the attributes of each individual. Nor do each individual’s attributes and incidental features resemble another’s in every respect, such that knowledge of what they share would constitute universal knowledge encompassing them both. Rather, each individual has distinctive characteristics that no one else shares.

Knowledge of what they share does not encompass any of those distinctive characteristics.

An actually existing human being is the particular human being he is by virtue of his distinctive characteristics, not what he shares with others.

Indeed, what they share exists only in knowledge, not in actual existence.

Whoever knows only the universal—that is, what things share—knows nothing whatsoever of actually existing things.

We benefit from universal knowledge only in matters