How does God know that he's all knowing?

[Sparkythedog]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

 

[hicetnunc]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

Interesting question sparky. To know everything would include knowing that there is nothing else to know. In other words, to have unlimited knowledge means that knowledge is not limited by possibility: there is no potentiality in total knowledge.

As for your second point, I take you to mean, how can we know that God is omniscient? Our knowledge of God’s omniscience is derived from knowledge of God’s omnipotence (omniscience follows on omnipotence because knowledge is a kind of power). How can we know God is omnipotent? Because he is pure act, which means there is no potency in God (there is nothing he can become nor is there anything he lacks). Knowledge that God is pure act can be derived by the light of natural reason; however, for most of us–given the limitations of our reason–we have to rely on Revelation, or authority, to know this.

Additionally, I recommend Thomas’ treatment on the knowledge of God, in question 2 of the De Veritate, which adresses your points:

dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeVer2.htm#2

 

[Eleve]

Here’s a rough sketch of one possibility: Suppose there’s at least one sound argument for the existence of God. Let’s say it’s the ontological argument, just for the sake of simplicity. Since God is omniscient, he recognizes that the ontological argument is a sound argument and, therefore, that God exists. Further, God realizes that, given everything else he knows, it must be that he is the being that the ontological argument proves to exist. He is God. Finally, he knows that God is an omniscient being. So, he knows that he is omniscient.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

This is a curious post.

If God is omniscient, then He knows everything, by definition. If He is omniscient, He knows He is, by definition. If he didn’t know those things, then He wouldn’t be omniscient.

Now, one might argue that God is not omniscient, but that’s a different question.

If God is God as Christians understand Him, He would demonstrate to humans what He wanted humans to know, and in a way He chose to communicate it, and for the purposes He had. Such a God would be so far beyond us that we could not possibly know His ways or methods, or judge them by any meaningful standard.

But following up on the speculation, let’s say I see a blind and deaf sea slug at the shore. If I want to make my existence known to the slug, I would have to do it in a way the slug could “understand” to the extent sea slugs can understand anything. Perhaps I would be limited to touching it. I certainly couldn’t meaningfully explain Shakespeare to the slug or play Mozart to it because those things would be massively beyond its power to perceive or comprehend.

And my method might vary with my purpose. If I didn’t want the slug to go to a particular spot to which it was headed, I might pick it up and deposit it elsewhere. It, of course, would have no comprehension of what I was doing or why, or even what I am beyond my fingertips.

When it comes to humans, an omnipotent being might well choose to make His presence and nature known in ways humans of varying degrees of sophistication might comprehend. He might do it through events, or stories of events. He might do it by presenting a presence of Himself much like that of humankind, just as I might wiggle my finger beside the sea slug as if my finger is a sea slug too, depending on what I wanted to communicate.

One assumes your question really is preliminary to some thought of your own about all of that. Not knowing what it is, it’s difficult to actually respond to an unknown ultimate question.

 

[John_Martin]

Here’s a rough sketch of one possibility: Suppose there’s at least one sound argument for the existence of God. Let’s say it’s the ontological argument, just for the sake of simplicity. Since God is omniscient, he recognizes that the ontological argument is a sound argument and, therefore, that God exists. Further, God realizes that, given everything else he knows, it must be that he is the being that the ontological argument proves to exist. He is God. Finally, he knows that God is an omniscient being. So, he knows that he is omniscient.

You are considering God to be in potentiality to knowing he is omniscient, then moving to the complete state of knowing he is omniscient. But, in fact he always knows that he knows all, and it is delightful to him, so delightful that he shares his delight. But he does not use reason or logic to come to any conclusions as we do.

John Martin

 

[Eleve]

Well, I meant to speak metaphorically, but I didn’t make that clear at all. The idea I meant to convey is that God could justify his belief in his own omniscience by reasoning like what I described, not that he would actually start believing it by reasoning himself from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge. So if, for example, someone were to ask God “How do you know you’re not just some guy who thinks he knows everything?”, he could answer by appealing to the reasoning I described.

 

[Foofaraw]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

Your question is a stroke of genius! You’ve dismantled the entire concept of omniscience.

There are several classes of knowledge, such as the things we know, and the things that we know to be known by others (e.g. quantum electrodynamics) which we know that we do not know.

But there are things that we do not know, and which we do not know that we don’t know. (Hark back to your 3rd grade mentality.) It is not possible for any intelligent entity to know that which it does not know and does not know that it does not know. (i.e. It is logically impossible to know anything that is the second derivative of ignorance).

With a single question you’ve rendered millions of words explaining omniscience irrelevant and obsolete. How about tackling omnipotence next?

 

[hicetnunc]

Your question is a stroke of genius! You’ve dismantled the entire concept of omniscience.

There are several classes of knowledge, such as the things we know, and the things that we know to be known by others (e.g. quantum electrodynamics) which we know that we do not know.

But there are things that we do not know, and which we do not know that we don’t know. (Hark back to your 3rd grade mentality.) It is not possible for any intelligent entity to know that which it does not know and does not know that it does not know. (i.e. It is logically impossible to know anything that is the second derivative of ignorance).

With a single question you’ve rendered millions of words explaining omniscience irrelevant and obsolete. How about tackling omnipotence next?

Hi Foofaraw;

All you’ve engaged in here is circular and self-refuting reasoning. “It is not possible for any intelligent entity to know that which it does not know that it does not know” is simply begging the question. It seems to me that you’ve started with an anthropomorphic understanding of the way in which finite beings acquire knowledge, and declared this to be the foundation of all intelligence.

But your claim is also self refuting: if it is not possible to know what you do not know, then you couldn’t possible know that there is no being which knows everthing.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

Answer for you and for Greylorn (Foofaraw):

That God is omniscient or possesses the most perfect knowledge of all things, follows from His infinite perfection. In the first place He knows and comprehends Himself fully and adequately, and in the next place He knows all created objects and comprehends their finite and contingent mode of being. Hence He knows them individually or singularly in their finite multiplicity, knows everything possible as well as actual; knows what is bad as well as what is good. Everything, in a word, which to our finite minds signifies perfection and completeness of knowledge may be predicated of Divine omniscience, and it is further to be observed that it is on Himself alone that God depends for His knowledge. To make Him in any way dependent on creatures for knowledge of created objects would destroy His infinite perfection and supremacy. Hence it is in His eternal, unchangeable, comprehensive knowledge of Himself or of His own infinite being that God knows creatures and their acts, whether there is question of what is actual or merely possible. Indeed, Divine knowledge itself is really identical with Divine essence, as are all the attributes and acts of God; but according to our finite modes of thought we feel the need of conceiving them distinctly and of representing the Divine essence as the medium or mirror in which the Divine intellect sees all truth. Moreover, although the act of Divine knowledge is infinitely simple in itself, we feel the need of further distinctions — not as regards the knowledge in itself, but as regards the multiplicity of finite objects which it embraces. Hence the universally recognized distinction between the knowledge of vision (scientia visionis) and that of simple intelligence (simplicis intelligentiae), and the famous controversy regarding the scientia media. We shall briefly explain this distinction and the chief difficulties involved in this controversy.

Source

God would know that He is omniscient (by definition of omniscience). He would know that there is nothing outside of His knowledge (by definition of omniscience).

He could easily demonstrate it to us by giving us some information we do not know (the grand unified theory, something about the future, something someone is thinking, etc).

 

[Sparkythedog]

Thank you all for your responses. It seems that there are a lot of commonalities within your posts so I’ll try to summarize what has been said and respond to that. For the sake of the reader, I’ll break my responses up into two posts – one for each of my original questions.

Please let me know if I leave anything out.

Just to clear things up: Despite the fact that I’m not a theist, for this discussion, I’m assuming that we already know there is a God who created the universe (all we can observe). I’m also assuming that this God can communicate with us either directly or indirectly. (I believe these two things are in line with a Catholic understanding of God) I’m not trying to prove or disprove God’s existence here. I only want to speak to God’s attributes.

More to come…

 

[Ion]

God created everything and of course he knows everything.

 

[Sparkythedog]

My first question was about how God knows that he is omniscient. I’ll define omniscience as the state of having universal or complete knowledge of everything including God. (let me know if you want to tweak or contest that)

The responses to this question seem to go along these lines:

hicetnunc –
“To know everything would include knowing that there is nothing else to know. In other words… …there is no potentiality in total knowledge.”

Ridgerunner –
“If God is omniscient, then He knows everything, by definition. If He is omniscient, He knows He is, by definition.”

These are indeed definitions of omniscience, but they do not answer my question. I cannot think of any way that one could sufficiently prove to oneself or anyone else that they are omniscient. This is what I’m asking.

The problem as I see it lies in the ideas of knowledge and belief. God can believe himself to be in a state of omniscience and believe that he comprehends everything. And in that belief claim that he is justified in knowing that he is in that state, but how can he know that he is not mistaken. That question of knowing is always an unknown and therefore a limitation.

Even if God is not temporal and, unlike us, “sees” his entire knowledge set instantaneously. I don’t see how he gets around the problem of not knowing if something is outside of that set.

What test could be performed to show that nothing is outside of that set?

And my second question…

 

[Blinky]

Deuteronomy 6:16

 

[hansard]

Does God need to be omniscient? Is that one of the requirements of a god?
What if he just knows a whole lot more than anything in his creation, and therefore it seems as if he is omniscient?

 

[hicetnunc]

I think the problem arises from thinking of God’s knowledge and essence in anthropomorphic terms: taking our experience of knowledge and knowing, and applying this to God. We are made in God’s image…not vice versa, and so we can’t understand God by appealing to our own experiences.

The word ‘knowledge’ does not apply to creatures and God univocally: God does not ‘acquire’ knowledge in the way that we do; nor is God’s knoweldge a set of discrete facts which have to be mentally retained. God’s knowledge is his essense; these is no division in God between knower and known, as there is in us. So the difficulty you appeal to seems to be derived in thinking that of God’s knowledge in human terms.

Omnisicience is not a quantitative “state”: it doesn’t describe a very large number of facts that God ammasses. We don’t and can’t know what God knows; but our understanding of God as being omniscient is not derived from an analysis of how much information he can hold in “his mind”. Rather, God’s omnisicience is derived from an understanding of omnipotence. St Thomas explains in detail why omnipotence logically entails omniscience.

The irony of sorts in this discussion is that we don’t fully undertsand what human knowledge is properly, or how the brain works, or how memory retains certain things or what constitutes the mind. There are great debates about this in philosophy and psychology, and no general consensus. That should put our attempts to unravel the mystery of the infinite mind of God into context!

 

[Pugsly]

I’ve heard christians say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I’m curious about omniscience. How would God know that he knew everything? How would he know that there wasn’t something outside of his knowledge?

Also, if he is all knowing, how could God demonstrate that to us?

Any thoughts?

That is one of the best theological questions I’ve encountered. Here is my personal opinion on the matter…God doesn’t reveal in Sacred Scripture that He is ALL-KNOWING…but to the contrary…Jesus experiences human wisdom as He grew up. God is Perfectly Wise…but in the sense that He can Perfectly estimate what will occur when this thing and that thing interact…or this person and that person interact…etc. Therefore, God’s Perfect Wisdom implies that all the possibilities are known to Him inadvance…but as far as experiential knowledge…it is as new to Him as it is to us.
The Bible refers to the union of man and woman (sex) as the man "knew" his wife. In the end there will be the great Wedding Feast of the Lamb where the Church will know and be known by God forever. Will there be offspring produced?....only God knows in Wisdom.

 

[Pugsly]

Here’s a rough sketch of one possibility: Suppose there’s at least one sound argument for the existence of God. Let’s say it’s the ontological argument, just for the sake of simplicity. Since God is omniscient, he recognizes that the ontological argument is a sound argument and, therefore, that God exists. Further, God realizes that, given everything else he knows, it must be that he is the being that the ontological argument proves to exist. He is God. Finally, he knows that God is an omniscient being. So, he knows that he is omniscient.

Your post has led me to consider this angle…God knows He knows everything because He exists.

Let me unpack that a bit…God exists because He recognizes a Law of Life that He does not violate…we refer to this Law as Wisdom. God knows all the paths of life…and therefore His own (unchallanged) existence testifies to His Omniscience.

 

[Foofaraw]

Hi Foofaraw;

All you’ve engaged in here is circular and self-refuting reasoning. “It is not possible for any intelligent entity to know that which it does not know that it does not know” is simply begging the question. It seems to me that you’ve started with an anthropomorphic understanding of the way in which finite beings acquire knowledge, and declared this to be the foundation of all intelligence.

Guilty as charged. I am an anthropomorphic being, using a common anthropomorphic language, expressing my little anthropomorphic thoughts about knowledge and intelligence that I acquired from spending many years in this anthropomorphic body-- enough to get the spelling of anthromoporphic right more often than not.

What other body of understanding do you propose that I work from?

Given that my limited audience consists of anthropomorphic beings, to whom might I address such non-anthropomorphic thoughts?

BTW, I’m using definition #1 from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: anthropomorpic: adj. Described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes.

But your claim is also self refuting: if it is not possible to know what you do not know, then you couldn’t possible know that there is no being which knows everthing.

That is a nice, succinct argument! I’ve no direct refutation of it, and given the quantity of negatives in the statement, an attempt to refute it would surely drive readers nuts.

However, I’d challenge it thusly: It is fundamentally impossible to know everything in a universe within which new information is being created, often randomly, with every interval of Planck time.

If it is impossible to either know or predict new information, then how can any being do so?

Of course that challenge only applies to our universe. There could be other universes, other states of being, to which these logical thoughts do not apply.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Guilty as charged. I am an anthropomorphic being, using a common anthropomorphic language, expressing my little anthropomorphic thoughts about knowledge and intelligence that I acquired from spending many years in this anthropomorphic body-- enough to get the spelling of anthromoporphic right more often than not.

What other body of understanding do you propose that I work from?

Given that my limited audience consists of anthropomorphic beings, to whom might I address such non-anthropomorphic thoughts?

BTW, I’m using definition #1 from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: anthropomorpic: adj. Described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes.

That is a nice, succinct argument! I’ve no direct refutation of it, and given the quantity of negatives in the statement, an attempt to refute it would surely drive readers nuts.

**However, I’d challenge it thusly: It is fundamentally impossible to know everything in a universe within which new information is being created, often randomly, with every interval of Planck time.

If it is impossible to either know or predict new information, then how can any being do so? **

Of course that challenge only applies to our universe. There could be other universes, other states of being, to which these logical thoughts do not apply.

The problem remains the same: you are anthropomorphizing God into Human capabilities. God is not human, so please stop thinking that He is limited like us!

 

[Foofaraw]

Here’s a rough sketch of one possibility: Suppose there’s at least one sound argument for the existence of God. Let’s say it’s the ontological argument, just for the sake of simplicity. Since God is omniscient, he recognizes that the ontological argument is a sound argument and, therefore, that God exists. Further, God realizes that, given everything else he knows, it must be that he is the being that the ontological argument proves to exist. He is God. Finally, he knows that God is an omniscient being. So, he knows that he is omniscient.

An old tale from computer lore goes like this…

The greatest engineers on the planet got together and built a super-supercomputer of gigantic proportions. Then the best scientists, philosophers, theologians, historians and encyclopedists spent twenty years feeding this machine with their knowledge,

After creating and teaching this machine, the smartest of the finest gathered together for a “First Question” party and drew lots to determine who would submit that question. A philosopher won, and typed in this question: “Is there a God?”

The computer went to work, lights flashing, hard drives buzzing away. It worked for weeks. The human questioners had either gone home or taken hotel rooms and returned daily to participate in the vigil. A foresightfull few had brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor, dining from vending machines, bathing with the assistance of restroom sinks.

Suddenly the lights stopped flashing and drives no longer whirred. Sensing something was not right, a technician opened the door to the power supply room, with the intention of pulling the computer’s main switch. He was electrocuted on the spot, while the computer typed its reply: “Now there is!”

Your argument reminded me of this old and fictional tale.