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Catholic Concept of the Divine is the Catholic Church definition of divine, as published in ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' Vol. II. This content is in the public domain. To form a more systematic idea of God, and as far as possible, to unfold the implications of the truth, God is All-Perfect, this infinite Perfection is viewed, successively, under various aspects, each of which is treated as a separate perfection and characteristic inherent to the Divine Substance, or Essence. A certain group of these, of paramount import, is called the Divine Attributes. ==Knowledge of God mediate and synthetic== Our natural knowledge of God is acquired by discursive reasoning upon the data of sense by introspection, ''"For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and Divinity"'' (St. Paul, Romans, i, 20). Created things, by the properties and activities of their natures, manifest, as in a glass, darkly, the powers and perfections of the creator. But these refracted images of Him in finite things cannot furnish grounds for any adequate idea of the Infinite Being. Hence, in constructing a synthetic idea of God, before one can apply to the Divinity any concept or term expressing a perfection found in created being, it must be subjected to rigorous correction. The profound disparity between the Divine perfection and the intimations of it presented in the world-copy may be broadly laid down under two heads: *Number: :The perfections of creatures are innumerable, the Divine Perfection is one. *Diversity: :Created perfections differ endlessly in kind and degree; the Divine perfection is uniform, simple. It is not a totality of various perfections; absolutely simple, the Divine perfection answers to every idea of actual or conceivable perfection, without being determined to the particular mode of any. Hence, when any attribute expressing modes characteristic of the world of being that falls within the range of our experience is applied to God, its significance ceases to be identical with other cases. Yet it retains a real meaning in virtue of the ratio that exists between the finite being and its Infinite analogue. In philosophical phrase, the use of terms is called analogical predication, in contra-distinction to univocal, in which a word is predicated of two or more subjects in precisely the same sense. (See analogy) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Catholic Concept of the Divine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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