Objection: hatred of sins and things God cannot undo; reply — essential beatitude
But you will say: if God is blessed because He can, knows, and loves all things, He seems not perfectly blessed, because He holds many things in hatred, as sins, and many escape His power, because He cannot make what is done undone.
Reply: Gods blessedness is God Himself, the adequate object of His love, and of wisdom and power. For blessedness is not from outside and accidental to Him, as Bernard puts it, but for God to be and to be blessed are the same. Hence the being all things, and the knowledge of Himself which is at once of all things, make Gods blessedness.
But to be able outwardly, as regards active or passive power, and likewise to know and love exterior things, is not essential blessedness but a flight from and remedy of need, as in us who love food, wife, honor, by which we are conserved because we cannot be conserved in ourselves and through ourselves. Therefore in us to be and to be blessed are not the same. But God is not so, since the infinity of His perfections is without beginning of deficiency and need, and their object is the same as they themselves. It can be said that God outwardly can all things, knows all things, and loves all things, while in Himself He can be what He is, and knows Himself and loves Himself. For all things participate His likeness. But God is said not to be able and not to know and not to will certain things which are not truly beings — sins, contradictions, privations — concerning which it is certain that to be able, know, and love those does not hang on power, wisdom, and love, but on impotence, folly, and, so to speak, dislike, or a share of these.
Latin
Sed dices, si Deus est beatus, quia omnia potest, scit, amat, videtur non esse perfecte beatus, quia multa odio habet, ut peccata, multaque effugiunt ejus potentiam, quia facta infecta facere nequit. Resp. Beatitudo Dei est ipse Deus, sui amoris objectum adaequatum, et sapientiae et potentiae. Neque enim beatitudo est illi ab extra et accidentalis, ut ait Bernhardus, sed idem est Deo esse et beatum esse. Unde potentia essendi omnia, et scientia sui, quae simul est omnium, faciunt Dei beatitudinem. Posse autem ad extra, quod spectat ad potentiam activam aut passivam, similiterque scire et amare exteriora, non est beatitas essentialis, sed indigentiae effugium et medela, sicut in nobis, qui amamus cibum, uxorem, honorem, quibus conservamur quoniam in nobis et per nos ipsos non possumus conservari. Quapropter non est in nobis idem esse, quod beatum esse. Deus autem non sic, cum perfectionum ipsius infinitas sit absque principio sideriae et indigentia, idemque sit objectum earum, quod ipsae. Dici autem potest, quod Deus ad extra potest omnia, et scit omnia, et amat omnia, dum in se potest esse quod est, et scit se et amat se. Omnia enim participant ejus similitudinem. Dicitur autem Deus quaedam non posse et nescire et nolle, quae vere entia non sunt, ut peccata, contradictiones, privationes, de quibus certum est, quod ista posse, scire et amare, non ex potentia sapientia amore pendeat, sed ex impotentia, insipientia, et, ut sic loquar, disamore, vel horum participio.