St. Thomas and Infidel's Knowledge of God

Brief Notes on Cajetan's Response

A controversy that comes up here and there among Catholics concerns the identity of God in other religions. Typically, it is framed as something like this: “do Muslims/Jews/etc. worship God?”

I’ve spoken on this topic in other places in more detail, but here I wanted to deal specifically with a point of interpretation concerning various statements of St. Thomas. Often, those of a more “traditionalist” persuasion will quote texts from St. Thomas and other scholastics like the following: “Nor is it possible for one who has a false opinion of God, to know Him in any way at all, because the object of his opinion is not God.” (ST.II-II.Q10.A3)

The reason for this conclusion is taken from the dogma of Divine Simplicity: “There cannot be false knowledge of simple things: because they are either perfectly known inasmuch as their quiddity is known; or they are not known at all, if one cannot attain to a knowledge of them. Therefore, since God is absolutely simple, there cannot be false knowledge of him in the sense that something might be known about him and something remain unknown, but only in the sense that knowledge of him is not attained.” (Ioan.C4.L2)

How do we “get around” such clear testimony from St. Thomas? Luckily for us, explanations of the proper sense of these texts have existed for centuries.