Book One — God, Chapter 36 — Summa Contra Gentiles
[1] From this it is further evident that, although God is absolutely simple, it is not futile for our intellect to form enunciations concerning God in His simplicity by means of composition and division.
[2] For although, as we have said, our intellect arrives at the knowledge of God through diverse conceptions, it yet understands that what corresponds to all of them is absolutely one. For the intellect does not attribute its mode of understanding to the things that it understands; for example, it does not attribute immateriality to a stone even though it knows the stone immaterially. It therefore sets forth the unity of a thing by a composition of words, which is a mark of identity, when it says, God is good or goodness. The result is that if there is some diversity in the composition, it is referred to the intellect, whereas the unity is referred to the thing understood by the intellect. On the same basis, our intellect sometimes forms an enunciation about God with a certain mark of diversity in it, through the use of a preposition, as when we say, there is goodness in God. Here, too, there is indicated a certain diversity, which belongs to the intellect, and a certain unity, which must be referred to the reality.
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