Abstraction

The intellect’s deriving intelligible content from sensible presentations, yielding universal concepts from material conditions. Abstraction governs natural human knowing: we begin with particulars and rise to universals by grasping form without matter. Yet abstraction does not exhaust the modes of receiver-side elevation possible under grace, because grace can configure the creature’s operations toward God in a new mode without making the intellect divine or collapsing nature into deity.