How does God know that he's all knowing?

[Foofaraw]

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!

Alberti,

I’m not the one to blame for anthropomorphizing God. The Church did that when it officially declared that Jesus Christ is God.

I do not think that God is human, yet, the major monotheistic religions persist in attributing human-like attributes to him. Religious followers commonly voice notions such as, the “hand of God,” or the “mind of God.”

I support Greylorn’s more interesting and more logical opinion that an entity he calls “beon” is an integral component of every intelligent being, including God, humans, angels, ghosts, and beings born on other planets.

 

[Eleve]

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.

Why should that be impossible? Obviously, it is possible to learn new information at some rate or another; there is nothing obviously incoherent about that rate being, for some beings, greater than the rate at which new information is created. If the world just consisted of a single coin being flipped every three minutes, obviously it would be possible to keep up. I see no principled reason to think that there is some sort of metaphysical “rate limit” that prevents some more intelligent being from being able to absorb even greater amounts of information.

Besides, as discussed above, the traditional account of God does not have him learning about new events as they happen. Instead, God is outside time. The knowledge that he has of our “future” is, for him, just knowledge about a different point in our timeline. There is no “new” information for God to absorb.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Alberti,

I’m not the one to blame for anthropomorphizing God. The Church did that when it officially declared that Jesus Christ is God.

I do not think that God is human, yet, the major monotheistic religions persist in attributing human-like attributes to him. Religious followers commonly voice notions such as, the “hand of God,” or the “mind of God.”

So you’re 5 now? Playing the blame game?

The Church can at least accept the notion that God is more powerful than we can fathom, whereas you believe that He is limited.

I support Greylorn’s more interesting and more logical opinion that an entity he calls “beon” is an integral component of every intelligent being, including God, humans, angels, ghosts, and beings born on other planets.

Obviously. It would take some psychological issue to deny your own theory .

 

[Aloysium]

God knows Himself and the world in a similar manner that we know we exist.
We are finite and we know our finite selves.
God is infinite and knows His infinite Self.

I’m not sure it is important to know about His omniscience as it is to know about His infinite love, which He demonstrated by the cross.

 

[Sparkythedog]

PART I:
Again thank you for your well thought out response! I will try to address it in several posts so it doesn’t get too wordy.

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.

I partially agree with you. God would certainly be a different thing or being (for lack of a better word) from us. I have to disagree with the accusation that I am anthropomorphizing God and in my most annoying schoolchild voice yell “But you did it first!”.

God is spoken of in human terms throughout scripture and Catholic tradition. God is called “He” and not “It”. Is God a male? Male refers to a very small group of living organisms on this planet that produces motile gametes. I’m guessing God probably doesn’t do that. If we’re trying to find the best analogy and God is a Creator by nature, then we should at least refer to God as “She” – as females are the only natural creators.

The Trinity is described as three “persons”. But this is not right either. At best, the Trinity could be said to be one actual person (Jesus) and “two other things that we don’t really understand”.

Catholics reverently call God “Lord”. Why Lord? Lord is a human title. There are no cat lords or rock lords or table lords (that i know of). And the word lord comes from a specific time in history. Is God a feudal ruler? Probably not.

And so on…

Different though God may be, God is an anthropomorphized concept. And to speak of God otherwise means that we need to throw out a lot of this human centered language and start referring to God as “It” or God the “Pure Act”. But no Catholic that I know expects to finally see the “face” of God, only to reel back in horror as they realize its not a face at all.

I would also disagree that we cannot understand God by appealing to our own experiences. In fact I think it is the only way we can understand anything. What other ways of understanding are there?

 

[Sparkythedog]

PART II:

The word ‘knowledge’ does not apply to creatures and God univocally:

I’m going to stop you right here. If the word “knowledge” is not not going to mean the same for both God and man then we need to stop using it for both. My working definition of human knowledge is “the range of one’s information and understanding based on the best available evidence”. Yours?

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.

We agree (for the sake of this argument) that God does not acquire his (I guess I’m gonna say “knowledge” here). He already has it. I will also grant that he doesn’t need to work to retain it.

But what do you mean that God’s “knowledge” is not a “discrete set of facts”? If knowledge is not a collection of some information and understandings (or all the information and understandings), then what is it?

What do you mean by “God’s knowledge is his essence”? Would God not be God if he were not omniscient?

What do you mean by “ there is no division in God between knower and known, as there is in us”?

Omnisicience is not a quantitative “state”: it doesn’t describe a very large number of facts that God ammasses.

Minus God amassing his “knowledge”, omniscience is exactly the state of having a large number of facts. It is, in fact, a state of having all the facts (and understanding, insight, etc…). But it is most definitely a state.

 

[Sparkythedog]

PART III:

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.

It would seem to me that omnipotence is dependent on omniscience not the other way around. One certainly could not be omnipotent without being omniscient. But one could be omniscient without being omnipotent. If we knew that God was omnipotent we would have already verified his omniscience. But we haven’t crossed that bridge yet.

I apologize if this sounds a bit snippy but I want to hear your arguments for omnipotence and omniscience. I’m curious how you (and others on this forum) understand it. If your understanding is derived from Aquinas’, then that’s fine, but I want to read your version. Even if you think Aquinas said it better. If I want to read St. Thomas’ own words, I’ll go to the library.

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!

I agree that this is a difficult topic to fathom. And the workings of God’s mind would be much more mysterious than the workings any human mind. However, just because a concept is mysterious does not mean we don’t investigate it. But if a concept is beyond our ability to understand, what reason can we give for accepting it?

It’s late now – going to bed. Sparky out.

 

[Sparkythedog]

Deuteronomy 6:16

1 Peter 3:15

 

[Linux]

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…

1. God by definition is ultimate reality, the source of all things.
2. If God is the source of all things, then it follows that he is the source of all truth.
3. Assuming that it is possible to logically prove the existence of an ultimate reality from which all other natures are born, we can say that God knows that he is ultimate reality simply because he knows himself, he knows his nature. Therefore he knows the source of all truth.
4. If something begins to exist, that thing is contingent on God for its existence and therefore knows it exists.

Conclusion: since God is the source of all things, and is the creator of all contingent natures, it follows that God knows all things because he is the source of all truth and therefore all true knowledge.

 

[hicetnunc]

Again thank you for your well thought out response! I will try to address it in several posts so it doesn’t get too wordy.

Ditto!

God is spoken of in human terms throughout scripture and Catholic tradition. God is called “He” and not “It”. Is God a male? Male refers to a very small group of living organisms on this planet that produces motile gametes. I’m guessing God probably doesn’t do that. If we’re trying to find the best analogy and God is a Creator by nature, then we should at least refer to God as “She” – as females are the only natural creators.

God is neither male nor female; he has, for some reason, chosen to reveal himself as “Father.” I think this is important: the Divine Name of Father is not simply a cultural label, but a self-revelation of God. In God is the true meaning of male and female, and whatever it is in us that is the cause of maleness and femaleness is derived from God. But the Christian tradition has not chosen the Names of God but has received them, because God communicates himself to us and in language that we can understand.

The Trinity is described as three “persons”. But this is not right either. At best, the Trinity could be said to be one actual person (Jesus) and “two other things that we don’t really understand”.

The term person applies properly to God, and only analogically to us. “Person” describes an “individual substance of a rational nature”, and God is certainly a substance of a rational nature. Is it possible that your test of personhood of the Trinity (and the reason why you don’t think it fits) is because you can see a transference of the notion of human personhood to God?

Catholics reverently call God “Lord”. Why Lord? Lord is a human title. There are no cat lords or rock lords or table lords (that i know of). And the word lord comes from a specific time in history. Is God a feudal ruler? Probably not.

Again, we do so only analogically. All human government is a participation in the Divine Government. We can only use human words to speak of God. But this is not to say that our human words have no authentic relationship with God, because our very being and existence is derived from God as the first cause. Hence, whatever we find in the created order is in some way a reflection of the source from which it comes.

Different though God may be, God is an anthropomorphized concept. And to speak of God otherwise means that we need to throw out a lot of this human centered language and start referring to God as “It” or God the “Pure Act”. But no Catholic that I know expects to finally see the “face” of God, only to reel back in horror as they realize its not a face at all.

I would agree that God is of course a concept, but it is a concept derived from a reality. All of our concepts are limited by the nature of the reason which forms them. But you are right: ultimately, our language of God falls infinitely short of what it wishes to express. In the final analysis, there is only silence and awe: what the ancients called ‘apophatic’ expressions of God: mystical and communal, beyond language. But language is not rendered useless by this infinite divide. It is the starting point of the journey to that ineffable encounter we one day hope to have.

 

[hicetnunc]

And you are right too in saying that God does not have a ‘face’ which we encounter in a physical sense. However, Jesus Christ, who is God, has a human face in which we encounter God. The vision of God in his essence will be a vision of the heart, not of the senses as such.

I would also disagree that we cannot understand God by appealing to our own experiences. In fact I think it is the only way we can understand anything. What other ways of understanding are there?

We have no disagreement here, I totally agree: all of our knowledge begins in the senses. Though, unlike the empiricists, I don’t believe that our knowledge terminates in sense experience. Because all of our knowledge begins in the senses, it is necessary to appeal to sense-derived language in order to speak of God in the first instance.

I’m going to stop you right here. If the word “knowledge” is not not going to mean the same for both God and man then we need to stop using it for both. My working definition of human knowledge is “the range of one’s information and understanding based on the best available evidence”. Yours?

Perhaps you are confusing non-univocal language for equivocal language. Just because language is not univocal does not mean it is equivocal. If it were equivocal, then you would be correct—we would have no basis on which to speak of God’s knowledge if all we had were a concept that was totally unrelated to that to which it wished to express. But I suggest that our use of words like “knowledge” is used analogically of God and not simply equivocally; the difference being that there is a causal connection between our concept of knowledge and the source of that knowledge.

 

[hicetnunc]

But what do you mean that God’s “knowledge” is not a “discrete set of facts”? If knowledge is not a collection of some information and understandings (or all the information and understandings), then what is it?

This is a great question, and not one I (or anyone!) can adequately answer, for to know the nature of God’s knowledge would require knowledge of God’s essence, since there is no division between God’s essence and his knowledge. But a metaphor may help: even here in our created experience, we see that there are different kinds of knowledge. For example, my knowledge of myself is not the same kind of knowledge I have of another person. My knowledge of myself has a certain immediacy and intimacy which transcends the nature of a mere factoid. Again, knowledge of playing the piano will have different expressions for people who have varying degrees of proficiency at playing the piano. Someone who is intimately and expertly conditioned to playing the piano will understand piano playing in a way that is far superior to the person who can barely hammer out “twinkle twinkle little star” with one finger. Martin Buber distinguishes these different kinds of knowing with his expression of “I/You” and “I/It” relationships.

God, who is the source of all being understands things with an intimacy and immediacy that we cannot possess. He knows you and I better than we know ourselves.

What do you mean by “God’s knowledge is his essence”? Would God not be God if he were not omniscient?

Exactly that: if God were not omniscient, he would not be God.

What do you mean by “there is no division in God between knower and known, as there is in us”?

For us, there is an essential difference between what I know and who I am. I forget things, and acquire new things, while remaining substantially the same person. My knowledge is accidental. The things that I know are not, generally speaking, contingent on me for their existence. But there can be no potentiality in God (for then he would not be infinite), and so no process of learning, acquiring or forgetting. There are no accidents in God, since accidental qualities require a relationship of potentiality to actuality, which there cannot be in God.

 

[hicetnunc]

Minus God amassing his “knowledge”, omniscience is exactly the state of having a large number of facts. It is, in fact, a state of having all the facts (and understanding, insight, etc…). But it is most definitely a state.

For us, yes. But not for God. Again, there is a risk here of defining God’s knowledge by our own standards and experience.

It would seem to me that omnipotence is dependent on omniscience not the other way around. One certainly could not be omnipotent without being omniscient. But one could be omniscient without being omnipotent. If we knew that God was omnipotent we would have already verified his omniscience.

Our natural knowledge of God cannot begin with God’s knowledge and move to his power. In God, there is no distinction between his power and his knowledge, and no priority between them. But the way in which we come to know God logically involves understanding God’s power first. As you say, we haven’t had a chance to cross this bridge yet, but to put it briefly: the first attribute of God which we can naturally know is his power, as this is derived from an observation of causes and the ruling out of infinite regress, etc. (the so-called cosmological argument, etc.). The notion of a First Cause entails infinite power in the first instance. Omniscience follows logically on omnipotence because it is further removed from observation, and what is most remote from us is the last thing we come to know.

 

[hicetnunc]

I agree that this is a difficult topic to fathom. And the workings of God’s mind would be much more mysterious than the workings any human mind. However, just because a concept is mysterious does not mean we don’t investigate it. But if a concept is beyond our ability to understand, what reason can we give for accepting it?

Yes, I agree: the human mind is created naturally curious, and we want to know…and should indeed strive to know as much as we can. There will come a point where we are reduced to silence! But until then, let the discourse continue…

Ultimately, faith must play its part too. I love the old expression of Augustine and a favourite of Anselm, “I believe in order to know, not know in order to believe.”

Thanks very much for the great questions! Here’s a couple for you:

Do you think we can ever make sense of omniscience in a way that will help faith grow? Do your questions come from a personal faith-quest, or a purely philosophical interest?

All the best Sparky.

 

[Sparkythedog]

1. God by definition is ultimate reality, the source of all things.

What do you mean by “ultimate reality”? The concept of “reality” needs no qualifier – something is either real or not. What would different levels of reality entail?

And what do you mean by “God is ultimate reality”? Unpack those terms.

1. If God is the source of all things, then it follows that he is the source of all truth.
2. Assuming that it is possible to logically prove the existence of an ultimate reality from which all other natures are born, we can say that God knows that he is ultimate reality simply because he knows himself, he knows his nature. Therefore he knows the source of all truth.

Again, not sure what you mean by “ultimate reality”. But let’s grant that God knows everything about himself and our universe. But how does God know he is the source of all things? How does he know there isn’t another God hidden in the next room (so to speak) creating a different universe with all it’s truth. How does God know he created all things or that someone didn’t create him to think that he created all things?

1. If something begins to exist, that thing is contingent on God for its existence and therefore knows it exists.

What?

Conclusion: since God is the source of all things, and is the creator of all contingent natures, it follows that God knows all things because he is the source of all truth and therefore all true knowledge.

My question really doesn’t have to do with God. I may have poisoned the conversation by using God as my test subject.

My question revolved around the contradictory nature of omniscience. I am looking for a test that one can perform to show oneself that they know that there is nothing more to know.

And if that test cannot be explained in a way that we can understand. Regardless of whether omniscience exists, how can we be justified in accepting that someone is omniscient?

 

[Sparkythedog]

Sorry about the super late reply. Things got kind of busy for me these last couple of weeks.

Yes, I agree: the human mind is created naturally curious, and we want to know…and should indeed strive to know as much as we can. There will come a point where we are reduced to silence! But until then, let the discourse continue…

Ultimately, faith must play its part too. I love the old expression of Augustine and a favourite of Anselm, “I believe in order to know, not know in order to believe.”

It seems that a lot of our disagreement on this issue stems from differences in our world-views. I’m sure this topic could spin off into many different conversations well outside the scope of this thread! But that will have to wait for another time.

Thanks very much for the great questions! Here’s a couple for you:

Do you think we can ever make sense of omniscience in a way that will help faith grow? Do your questions come from a personal faith-quest, or a purely philosophical interest?

All the best Sparky.

Thank you for the great conversation. I’ve found it quite enjoyable and you’ve given me a lot to think about.

To answer your questions – I’m always interested in the limits of what we can know and the methods by which we come to know those things. I guess you could call that my quest. I’m also interested in understanding the different points of view that others hold.

As far as faith goes, that word probably means something different to you as a Catholic then it does to me. I find the quote from Anselm interesting. “I believe in order to know, not know in order to believe.” My knee jerk reaction is to reject that assertion outright as backwards. But, then again, we cannot say we know something that we do not also believe. So in that sense I would agree. But I would add that evidence needs to be a part of the equation in order to truly know something. The real trick is how we evaluate that evidence.

Perhaps we’ll meet again on these forums.

Cheers!

 

[Linux]

And if that test cannot be explained in a way that we can understand. Regardless of whether omniscience exists, how can we be justified in accepting that someone is omniscient?

You could accept it if somebody successfully argued that a necessary being is necessarily omniscient; this is to say that omniscience is a metaphysical necessity intrinsic to the nature of a necessary being. You cannot logically have one with out the other.

 

[Sparkythedog]

You cannot logically have one with out the other.

Why?

 

[polytropos]

My question revolved around the contradictory nature of omniscience. I am looking for a test that one can perform to show oneself that they know that there is nothing more to know.

Where is the contradiction, exactly? There is a problem in learning everything and becoming omniscient through some method of inquiry, since you can’t prove a negative and therefore could not be certain that there is not something that you have not learned. But there is not a problem with being omniscient.

1. Premise: God is omniscient.
2. It is true that God is omniscient.
3. By 1., God knows 2.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

You know what I’m always saying: “Deep philisophical discussions can always be improved with crudely drawn pictures in Microsoft Paint.”

Let’s assume that A is all of existence, and that B is God, the universe, Heaven, Hell – everything that God is, created, and perceives. We’ll call the later B-space even though it defines more than just space. Starting with Genesis 1, B-space is just God. He then forges the universe and all things material and non-material. In B-space, all things are God; but he is completely unaware of A-space except for that which is B-space.

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Now here is the thing, relative specifically to B-space God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. There is nothing he can’t do, be, or know within B-space. He simply is unaware of non-B-space.

In such a scenario, God is God within that layer of realty that is him and is his work. Yet there is a layer (or layers) above him. He would be all knowing in B-space, yet not in A-space or beyond.

Imagine another scenario where at the same level within A-space there is also C-space. It is another entiy just like our God. He too creates a universe within himself and all that he knows. It would be possible that not only would the Gods of B-space and C-space not be aware of A-space outside of their own spaces, but they would then not be aware of each other.

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