| The defense is to claim that there are two sorts of concepts possible of a substance, quidditative concepts, which are captured in the real definition, and concepts that express the quiddity only confusedly. |
|
| The concept of being is a quidditative notion that indicates the aptitude to exist and that is univocally predicated of God and creature, without – and this is the major innovation here – positing a reality common to them. |
|
| Since the concept can never yield full quidditative knowledge of God then Aquinas must insist that we are joined to God quasi ignoto. |
|
| Essentia is the nature belonging irrevocably to the being of this actuality as the foundation of the quidditative determinateness of such an existent. |
|
