like the exhaustive division, which likewise yields certainty, as has already been set out elsewhere.
If the question of the Beatific Vision and the factor that validates it can be presented in this way, then how much more so matters that are even clearer. Thus, if someone says, “An agent among us acts by choice and envisions what he is about to do, so the Creator is even more entitled to know what He creates,” or says, “If a voluntary act on our part is conditional upon knowledge, then this is even more fitting for the Creator,” we reply: the link by which will necessitates knowledge must either be confined to the servant alone or be something shared; the first is impossible, so the second necessarily holds. The fact that will entails knowledge is a perfection in the agent, not a defect, and the Necessary Being has a greater claim to every undiminished perfection than the contingent, created being. Accordingly, if a servant knows what he does, the Creator is even more entitled to know what He does.
Likewise, if it is said, “Once the Lord is acknowledged to be living, His being hearing, seeing, and speaking becomes possible—and whatever attribute is possible for Him is obligatory for Him,” we answer that the affirmation of His attributes does not depend on anything outside Himself. Nor does anything other than Him endow Him with the attributes of perfection, for whoever perfects another is more deserving of perfection than the one perfected, yet that “other” is His creature. It is impossible that His creature be more perfect than He, and it is likewise impossible that He should have acquired the attributes of perfection by bestowing them upon Himself, for that would entail a prior circularity, in addition to other proofs explained elsewhere.
In their discussion of analogy they did not address individual issues, nor do we need to. Our purpose is merely to give examples of questions in which many people find analogy difficult on account of the material involved, so that it becomes clear that such questions do have material from which proofs can be drawn. That material can be cast at times in universal form and at other times in exemplificatory form: when presented universally, one sees that its particulars are not all equal; when presented by example, one sees that the Lord is more entitled than any other existent to every perfection free of deficiency and to the negation of every imperfection.
Response to their claim:
“Even if the alternatives are exhaustive, it is still possible that the rationale lies in the aggregate, or in some component that is not found in the branch case.”