7. Item, it is asked: in what sense is it said that God's existence cannot be thought not to exist? If because it can in no way fall into thought, that is manifestly false: if because it cannot be truly thought, then by equal reasoning every necessary truth will be such a truth.
Item, it is shown that God's existence is a dubitable truth.
8. Richard of Saint Victor: "We hold nothing more certainly than what we apprehend by faith"; but concerning those things which we apprehend by faith there can be doubt: therefore much more so concerning every other thing known.
9. Item, what is most hidden most admits of doubt: but God is most hidden, since He inhabits inaccessible light: therefore concerning Him and about Him it is most possible to doubt: therefore if concerning other things it is possible to doubt whether they exist, much more so concerning God.
10. Item, it is possible to doubt concerning those things which are below the soul and alongside the soul: but these are more accessible to the soul than those things which are above the soul: if therefore God's existence is a truth which is above the human intellect, it seems that concerning it one can most especially doubt.
11. Item, for God, that God exists and that He is just are the same: but it is possible to doubt concerning God whether He is just: therefore by equal reasoning it is possible to doubt whether He exists.
12. Item, in vain does one strive to prove that concerning which no doubt can arise: if therefore God's existence can be doubted by no one, in vain does one strive to demonstrate it: if therefore the Saints and doctors who demonstrated it did not strive in vain, it is established that concerning it one can doubt.
13. Item, no one knows this principle: every whole is greater than its part, unless he knows what a whole is: therefore no one knows that God exists unless he knows what God is: if therefore it is dubitable what God is, it is therefore dubitable whether He exists.
14. Item, if there could be no doubt concerning this truth, that God exists, there would be no merit in believing it: but this is the principle of all merit, to believe that God exists, because it is said in Hebrews 11: He who approaches must believe that He exists, etc.: if therefore this falls under merit, it can also fall under doubt.
CONCLUSION.
That God exists is not dubitable, if by dubitable is understood some truth which lacks the reason of evidence either in itself, or in comparison to a proving middle term, or in comparison to the apprehending intellect. Nevertheless it can be doubted on the part of the one knowing, namely on account of a defect in the acts either of apprehending, or of comparing, or of resolving.
I respond: For the understanding of the foregoing, it should be noted that "indubitable" is said through the privation of "dubitable." Now "dubitable" is said in two ways: either through the discourse of reason, or through the defect of reason. In the first way it signifies something on the part of the knowable and of the knower; in the second way only on the part of the knower. In the first way some truth is called dubitable because the ground of evidence is lacking to it, either in itself, or in comparison to the proving middle term, or in comparison to the apprehending intellect. But in none of these ways is certitude lacking to that truth which is that God exists.
For it is certain to the one comprehending it, because the knowledge of this truth is innate to the rational mind insofar as it holds the character of an image, by reason of which there is implanted in it a natural appetite and knowledge and memory of him to whose image it was made, toward whom it naturally tends, so that in him it may be beatified.
It is also more certain in comparison to the proving reason. For all creatures, whether they are considered according to their completive properties or according to their defective ones, cry out with the strongest and loudest voices that God exists, whom they need on account of their defect and from whom they receive their completion. Whence, according to the greater and lesser completion that they have, some cry out with great voices, some with greater, and some with the greatest voices, that God exists.
That truth is also most certain in itself, because it is the first and most immediate truth, in which not only is the ground of the predicate enclosed in the subject, but the very being which is predicated is entirely identical with the subject which is subjected. Whence, just as the union of things supremely distant is entirely repugnant to our intellect, because no intellect can think that some one thing simultaneously is and is not, so the division of what is entirely one and undivided is entirely repugnant to it, and accordingly, just as for the same thing to be and not to be, to simultaneously supremely be and in no way to be, is most evident in its falsity, so that the first and highest being exists is most evident in its truth.
And therefore, if "indubitable" is taken insofar as it privates doubt through the discourse of reason, that God exists is an indubitable truth, because whether the intellect enters within itself, or goes outside itself, or looks above itself, if it reasons rightly, it knows with certitude and without doubt that God exists.
But if indubitable is said in the second way, insofar as it privates doubt which is through the defect of reason, so it can be conceded that on account of the defect of men it can be doubted by someone whether God exists, and this according to a threefold defect of the knowing intellect: either with respect to the act of apprehending, or with respect to the act of comparing, or with respect to the act of resolving.
As regards the act of apprehending, doubt arises when the meaning of this name God is not rightly and fully grasped, but only according to some condition of it: just as the pagans thought that whatever was above man and could foresee some future event was God: and therefore they believed idols to be gods and worshipped them as gods, because they gave some true responses about future things.
As regards the act of comparing, doubt arises when the comparison is made only in part, as for instance when the fool sees that manifest justice is not executed upon the wicked: he infers from this that there is no governance in the universe, and consequently that there is no first and highest ruler in it, who is God most high and glorious.
Similarly, as regards the deficiency in the act of resolving, doubt arises when the carnal intellect does not know how to resolve except up to those things which are evident to the senses, as are these corporeal things: for which reason some thought that this visible sun, which holds the primacy among corporeal creatures, is God, because they did not know how to resolve up to incorporeal substance nor up to the first principles of things.
And in this way, regarding the question of God's existence, doubt can arise from the deficiency of the intellect itself in apprehending, or comparing, or resolving: and according to this understanding it can be thought by some intellect that God does not exist, because the meaning of this name God is not sufficiently and fully grasped by it. - But by that intellect which fully apprehends the meaning of this name God, thinking God to be that than which nothing greater can be thought, not only can it not be doubted whether God exists, but it can in no way be thought that God does not exist. Hence the arguments proving this are to be granted.
1. 2. 3. To that which is first objected to the contrary from the Psalm and from Damascene, the response is already clear: because it proceeds from doubt which comes from a deficiency of reason, of the kind that exists in the foolish intellect, which, darkened by its own dimness, neither sufficiently resolves nor rightly compares nor fully apprehends the meaning of this name God. For the intellect itself has within itself sufficient light from its own condition, by which it could drive this doubt far away and free itself from foolishness. Hence in this defective consideration of the foolish intellect, it falls short voluntarily rather than by compulsion, not on account of a deficiency on the part of the object known, but on account of a deficiency on its own part.
And through this the response to the objection concerning the idol is clear. For the reason a pagan thinks that God is an idol is that his apprehension of God is defective: for he does not apprehend Him as the highest and best, but as something powerful that man cannot be; and hence there arises in him the error of deception and the wavering of doubt, into which error he casts himself by his own obstinacy, so that he becomes utterly inexcusable. Nor yet is he entirely deprived of the knowledge of God, because, although out of his own perversity he wills to worship an idol, he nonetheless has a natural instinct to worship God, against which he fights by casting himself into voluntary error.
4. To the objection that what can be signified can also be thought: it must be said that something can be thought in two ways: either by bare thought, or by thought with assent. By bare thought, what is false can be thought just as readily as what is true, and what is manifestly false just as readily as what is manifestly true. By thought with assent, nothing is thought except what is true or something similar to the true. The first kind of thought extends to whatever speech extends to; but the second kind of thought does not extend to as many things. And it is of this latter kind of thought that both Anselm and Augustine speak, and of this kind of thought it is said that God cannot be thought not to exist.
5. To the objection raised against Augustine's argument, that a contradictory does not entail its own contradictory: it must be said that this is true insofar as they are contradictories. But it must be understood that an affirmative proposition has a twofold affirmation: one by which it asserts the predicate of the subject, and another by which it asserts itself to be true. In the first, it is distinguished from a negative proposition, which removes the predicate from the subject; but in the second, it has something in common with it, because both a negative and an affirmative proposition assert themselves to be true. Contradiction is considered with respect to the first, not with respect to the second. Now when it is said: "no truth exists," this proposition, insofar as it denies the predicate of the subject, does not entail its opposite, which is that some truth exists. But insofar as it asserts itself to be true, it does entail that some truth exists; nor is this surprising, because just as every evil presupposes a good, so what is false entails what is true. And therefore this falsehood — that no truth exists — since on account of the removal of the predicate from the subject it destroys every truth, and on account of the assertion by which it asserts itself to be true it posits that some truth exists, includes both parts of the contradiction. Therefore both can be inferred from it: both that it is in itself false, and that it is unintelligible to an intellect rightly apprehending. And this is what Augustine means to say.