Does God Think?

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This is a more abstract Theological and Philosophical question. To those experienced in these subjects I have a few questions:
  • Would you say that God thinks?
  • How does he think (as in is it different from the way we humans think)?
  • What does it mean to say God thinks?
  • Is there an official teaching of the Church which proves your idea (besides obvious intrinsic truths of the faith unless you are taking it to mean something new.)?
I think that this is a pretty interesting question.
Some of my thoughts: God knows everything all the time so it’s not like he has sudden revelations constantly about things; he already knows it all. Are possibly be two types (or more!) of thinking: propositionally and contemplatively. Propositionally would contain “new” thoughts and ideas while contemplatively would be more like admiration and wonder (though not in the sense of wondering about something not known before). God would then think contemplatively (some argue that Jesus Christ is God’s eternal contemplation of God since it’s his word) but not propositionally. When God thinks about something, does it automatically become true/exist? Can he ever think about something bad?

If you can’t already tell this is a bit more of a lofty, philosophical question but if there is a serious Church teaching on this specific issue (like if it was at one point a major heresy or something like that) then please tell me! Being in line with the 2018 years (and counting!) of wisdom spoken by the Church of Christ matters most to me!

Thanks a lot! 🙂

-MC
 
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Why don’ t you put this in the “Apologetics>Philosophy” category? (You can still change it.)
 
Oh! I didn’t see that. Ya that would be more appropriate… 🙂
 
It seems to me that “thinking” in terms of the human understanding, either propositionally or contemplatively, implies that something is on one’s mind at one point and not at another (for the latter I suppose that something is emphasized over others), which I don’t think we could really say is true of God as He is eternal and unchanging, and as the Catechism says, “God alone IS”.

I’m not sure how God’s “thought” is best expressed, but I figure it would have to be understood in the same way as His will, or His being itself, i.e. “God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end” (CCC 213). It definitely wouldn’t be understood sequentially; perhaps in a similar way it is something like “the fullness of thought.”

I can’t say I’m exactly experienced when it comes to this though; this is something that I’ve wondered about in the past too.
 
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But would contemplation count as thinking? God knows he is perfect and so eternally and unchangingly contemplates his perfection. Since this would always be happening it would be fair to say that God is that. And an early theory on the nature of God states that Jesus Christ is God’s contemplation. So does contemplating count as thinking. Also, since God is not physical he doesn’t have a human brain so where would the “thinking” and/or contemplation occur? I’d like to hear your thoughts on these. 🙂
 
po18guy said:
We think because we lack the fullness of knowledge.
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I also disagree with this statement. An example would be thinking about how to show your affection to a loved one for instance which wouldn’t necessarily fit in with your defenition and would be more similar to what we know of God’s nature. It seems to be more choice then knowledge. But then again, maybe it all boils down to knowledge of the right thing to do. Of course I am open to having my mind changed, prove me wrong! 🙂
 
That’s a good point. Thinking itself signifies a change in thinking. So maybe it is not appropriate to call it thinking. But at the same time I am pretty much certain that God contemplates himself and derives pleasure from doing so since he knows he’s perfect and will continue to be. He doesn’t become more perfect. Maybe a good way to analyze this would be to think of love. God is love and he constantly loves himself. And since he is perfect and loving himself who is perfectm the resukt is perfection which turns out to be God the holy spirit. God doesn’t change in love when he loves himself. And God is not only love but also wisdom, power, etc. So it could be entirely possible that thinking doesn’t actually signify a change in understanding/belief etc. just as the loving of God doesn’t signify a difference of hus love before or after. Thank you for your thoughts! I’d be grateful to hear back from you… 🙂
 
Thinking is synonymous with understanding and thus it is an act of the intellect which is a spiritual power. The object of the intellect or understanding is truth, wisdom, knowledge, being. Now God has an intellect and understands truth and knowledge, in fact, since God is infinite he has infinite knowledge and the direct object of this infinite knowledge can only be himself, his own being and existence, which is infinite, infinite Truth. God is Truth and Being (or existence) itself. By God’s perfect contemplation of himself he knows all things such as the creatures he created who are a finite reflection of God in one way or another. God the Son is generated from the Father’s intellect by the infinite contemplation, understanding, or knowledge of himself which is why the Son is called the image of the Father, God from God, Light from Light.

God understands all things at once by one eternal act of his intellect. He is pure act which means his intellect is always in act (his will too), never in potentiality, always in understanding or thinking if you will. But this does not involve successive acts of his intellect in which there would be a before and after which involves time. God is eternal so by one eternal act of his intellect He knows all things.

We also have an intellect. It is a spiritual power of our immortal souls by which along with our spiritual will we are principally made in the image and likeness of God. But we gain knowledge by a reasoning process, successive acts of our intellect, composing and dividing, drawing conclusions from principles, reasoning from the particular to the common. For example, it takes time to learn trigonometry. God doesn’t know things by a reasoning process though he understands the process. As I said above, he knows all things simultaneously, at once, by one eternal act of his intellect. Since only human beings, angels, and God have an intellect, thinking and understanding is only properly applied to these beings. Brute animals do not think or understand, they only have sense knowledge.

There are many passages in the Bible pertaining to God’s wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Christ himself is called the wisdom and power of God. In fact, Jesus being God said ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ Vatican Council I declared that God has all perfections in an infinite degree, wisdom, goodness, love, being, justice, mercy, power, eternity, etc.
 
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This is a difficult question and I’m interested to see what other people say.
My suggestion to the answer is
I don’t think God “thinks” in the way we do it. I think God simply “IS”.
 
ModernCatholic said:
But would contemplation count as thinking? God knows he is perfect and so eternally and unchangingly contemplates his perfection. Since this would always be happening it would be fair to say that God is that. And an early theory on the nature of God states that Jesus Christ is God’s contemplation. So does contemplating count as thinking. Also, since God is not physical he doesn’t have a human brain so where would the “thinking” and/or contemplation occur? I’d like to hear your thoughts on these. 🙂
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Our thinking or contemplating doesn’t occur in our brain but in our intellect which is a spiritual power of our soul distinct from our material brain which is an organ of our body. Our brain is involved in sense knowledge in conjunction with sense powers of our soul like the brains of the animals.
 
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So is “intellect” different from intelligence and how is “intellect” translated into knowledge in our brain. And animals and robots (artificial intelligences) don’t have souls but yet we say that artificial intelligences can think (although it is true that it is not and cannot be the same as it is in humans since they don’t have free will as well as many other things which would prevent them from thinking as humans do)? What about animals, like really intelligent ones such as octopi? Do they think, just to a lower degree then humans or would you say that they don’t think at all? Does humans free will come from the soul? Should there maybe be a distinction between thinking which happens in the brain and which happens in the soul? 🙂
EDIT: Oh oops sorry, let me read through your whole other post first. 😮
EDIT2: Also is this a position taken officially by the Catholic Church or just your belief? Or is it a belief that is supported by the Church but not officially claimed by it? Thanks!
 
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ModernCatholic said:
Would you say that God thinks?
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I would say God does not think. God just knows everything. To think, implies a potentiality for knowledge or an actualization of potential which is something that cannot be applied to God. But what it would be like to just know everything without a process of thinking is beyond our comprehension. It cannot be imagined.
 
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No God does not in the human sense of the term: “THINK”

For GOD; time does not exist; everything is present: the Past, the Present and the Future. Thus GOD has no actual /real need to think as does humanity.
 
Nope, I don’t think God thinks as we understand it. If God is being itself then God just IS, as someone else has already pointed out. I pretty much came to the conclusion that I can’t understand much beyond that about God the Father. Jesus is a lot easier to relate to.
 
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