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It is present in a most most immediate manner to the reason of the rational moral man that every sentence is either true or false, and no sentence can at the same time be both true and false. With this consideration in mind, let the contrary be abolished from our thoughts, lest our reason become irrational, and our sensibilities be rendered senseless.
Aware of the impossibility of concurrent contraries we consider now the way in which God Most High (Who cannot not be) is. For a moment let us consider our own being, realizing that in the world there are things which are, things which were not, and things which are not yet come; it seems as though all things are constantly coming into being and perishing. With each second a minute grows old and dies, and dying brings the death of hours, days, weeks, months, years...
Even though a thing seem to be more or less the same of itself as the moment, the hour, the day...the year before, it nonetheless is not the same; the thing of yesterday has died, and present before our eyes is the thing of the present, moaning aloud with labor pangs, pregnant always with the same thing of the minute which has not yet arrived, though never it gives birth.
Are we even for a moment to think that Our Most Holy God is such a thing? Let us not even consider it, for it is only too obvious that nothing truly can be said to be inheringly in the temporal world, the world of sense perception; it is a world which (like the Phoenix) is constantly perishing and being born anew. Our God, however, cannot not be; were He temporal, then He who cannot not be would forever be buried, deceased, with the dead past, nor yet would He ever have been (for though we race ahead with leaps and bounds towards what is to be, the future always yet is swifter).
Nay, far be it from us even for a moment to entertain the thought that Our Deathless God can either die nor not yet be, but rather bury the notion that Our Immortal God is in constantly dying temporality. Our God, rather, is He who lives forever, though without even a moment passing, in perpetual youth (mirabile dictu). Let us say with St. Augustine: "In the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present (Confessions 11:11:13)."
From this, therefore, God's changeless eternity wherein nothing either leaves or enters, neither dies nor is born, wherein God has willed to create all that is. It is from this perpetual present, from all forever, which God speaks His "fiat," and by which "all things were made (John 1:3)."
For indeed, we cannot suppose even a moment that God spoke more than a single word (indeed, One Eternal Word), or that God's creative act was elongated by even a moment. Think we otherwise? Then let us sing aloud our most favorite Psalm, crying out with King David to the Lord: "Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam (Psalm 50:3 in the Vulgate)..."
Behold, even as as the second syllable is spoken, the first syllable is gone, and with the third spoken, the second...and so forth and son. How fitting is it then that many words, dying and being born anew, would belong to Our Most High God, or that God's actions would be elongated at any length, wherein they might find passing away and coming to be? Indeed, it is not at all fitting; let us purge from our minds such thoughts, knowing rightly that God speaks but a single word from all eternity (ex aeternitate), and likewise God's creative action is one (wherein He, though affecting, is entirely unaffected).
Thus, from all eternity (by the Eternal Word) all things were made, and God (making all things) truly knows all things which are made (since knowledge precedes the creative act). Yet, herein we find for ourselves a great paradox, a great mystery: wherein lies God's knowledge of things created?
We cannot say that God, having created the particular, gains knowledge of the particular (logically, not temporally) after it have been created...for knowledge precedes creation. Further still, God (being timeless and necessary) neither gains nor loses anything. Yet, before it was created, we cannot say that the particular was (lest the term 'creation' be rendered meaningless).
Truly, then, God knows in one act of knowing from all eternity (ex aeternitate)...yet at the same time the supposed objects of his knowledge (all things) are temporally preceded by the act of knowing (and this cannot be). In fine, we cannot say that God knows because things are...rather, all things are because God knows.
If, then, God's knowledge precedes creation, and (logically, not temporally) before creation there is nothing (save God), then what else can we say is the object of God's knowledge save for God? Indeed, the object of God's knowledge is Himself, and it is in God's knowledge of Himself that God's entire knowledge must be said to subsist. Yet, we rightly say that God knows His creation, for knowledge must be said to precede creation, and God assuredly is the creator of all things. Let us shudder, then, in appreciation of God's knowledge with King David: "Behold, O Lord, thou hast known all things, the last and those of old (Psalm 138 in the Vulgate)."
In light of the above, we can only conclude that God knows creation in knowing Himself, and all things which are made in time first are found in God's Divine Nature. It is when we speak of God's knowledge of Himself as the archetype of created things when we rightly refer to the objects of God's knowledge as "Forms." In fine, God in knowing Himself knows creation, and sees in creation His Own Divine Nature. The Forms, since they are one with God's Divine Nature, are changeless and eternal (for they cannot be seperated from God, who is changeless and eternal).
Furthermore, we have already established earlier that God is the Necessary Being, He who cannot not be. Since God is necessary, He exists in all possible worlds, and could have created any possible world. Therefore, since the act of knowing precedes creation, and God could have created all possible worlds, it follows that in Himself God sees all things which are possible (and so there is a Form for every possible object).
As a sidenote, it should be obvious by now that all things which God has created are good (since they are in imitation of God's Own Divine Nature, which is Goodness itself). Furthermore, it should be obvious by now that the Forms themselves are good, and are objects of beauty (since they are one with God's Divine Nature, which is Goodness itself).
It is here, then, that the most pressing question arises: can Goodness ever be different? Obviously, the answer is "no," given that God is The Good, and God is changeless and eternal. From this, it follows that Goodness likewise is changeless and eternal.
Last but not least, whatever is good for a species (it should be obvious) is necessarily good for that species, since the Form of the species is one with God's nature, and God's nature is changeless and everlasting. It should also be obvious that since God creates all things in imitiation of the Forms, that it is in the Forms that all species find their ideal, and in which man finds an unchanging standard of morality. Finally, it should be obvious that God cannot set a standard of morality which is contrary to the Forms, since the Forms are necessarily Good, and all contradictions are impossible.
Yet, wherein lies morality for man? We do not say that morality in man subsists in a state of the body, but rather either in actions, the will, or in the consequences of actions. Yet, we cannot say that the actions themselves are moral, given that an action which is done without the consent of the will is said to be an accident, and no accident carries moral weight. On the other hand, we do not say that consequences make an action moral, given that if a man intends to obtain a result other than his consequences, then we do praise him for the consequences.
For example, let us assume for a moment that a criminal, willing to fire upon and kill an old lady, instead missed and shot down a rampaging lion which had just escaped from the local zoo, and was about to kill several people. Whereas the consequence of the action (trying to kill an old lady) was surely good (killing the lion), we do not say that he is worthy of praise, but rather that he is to be condemned as a (would be) old lady killer!
We must say, then, that morality for man subsists in the will (even more so since man is a rational animal), and that a man is moral presupposing that he wills what is good (for we do not say that a man can both be moral and bad, nor do we say that a man can both be immoral and good). What, then, is the chiefmost object of the good will, except The Good? Morality, we must say, subsists foremost in the rational man in willing God, and herein lies a law of humanity which is absolutely unabolishable: man has a duty as a rational moral agent to love and will God, who is Good. Not even God can abolish this law, for God is Good necessarily...nor yet can we say that morality can subsist in ought else but the will, since man is made in imitation of the Form, which is eternal and changeless.
Secondarily, furthermore, since we have already established that the Forms are objects of beauty and are good neccessarily, and it is the case that goodness in the particular subsists in being like the Ideal, it follows that man is good insofar as he wills what is fitting for his nature, which is to say, insofar as he wills whatever is not contrary to the Form, and the "natural law" whereby man is obligated to strive towards the ideal, wherein he is said to "sin" in willing what is contrary to the Form, likewise is eternal and changeless. This law likewise cannot be abolished even by God, for to abolish this law would be for God to will contrary to Himself, since the Forms are one with God's nature, and this is contradiction.
For example, health is a good for man, and so man is obligated to will what is conduscive to health, and is barred by his nature from willing what he knows is contrary to his health. For this reason, we say that gluttony (for example) is contrary to our nature, and not even God can will otherwise.
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