  Yet how are essences constituted in their being? As mentioned above, essences depend on the divine intellect, which is their exemplary cause. More precisely, essences correspond to divine ideas, which represent their eternal exemplars. This might seem to be the habitual scheme of Christian Platonism, though scholars (especially de Rijk 1991) have pointed out that, beginning with Henry, the term “idea” loses its traditional meaning of “subsisting form” and moves closer to its meaning in Descartes and Locke of “instrument” or “term” of knowledge. According to Henry an idea is in God for the fact that divine essence is in some ways imitable by creatural essences. God's knowledge of what is different from Himself coincides with the knowledge of the different ways in which He considers Himself imitable, since divine knowledge is not determined by the presence of external objects, but rather is itself the formal (exemplary) cause of its own contents. Here, however, the classic question of the relation between divine simplicity and creatural multiplicity again arises. Were God to know immediately the plurality of creatable objects (essences), His simplicity and unity (divine knowledge is not really distinct from divine essence) would be irremediably compromised.