How does God think if he is immutable?

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fisherman_carl said:
Then how do you interpret this scripture passage?

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.” (Ps 139:17-18)
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When I pay attention to what goes on around me I cannot help but feel awe; and then, reflecting on what is going on in my own being I feel amazed: all that is too much for my human capacity. I feel so small. It is impossible for me to comprehend such richness. I would spontaneously say the words of the psalm; and they would express my admiration for the vastness of God’s creation. Just imagine how much more incomprehensible would God Himself be for us. Unimaginable! Unimaginable!
fisherman_carl said:
Really, though, do you not agree that all of our thoughts on this are conjecture and inadequate as Scripture says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”? (Isa 55:9)

And elsewhere it says,

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Rom 11:33-36)
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I do agree, Carl! Sometimes I even feel uncomfortable thinking and writing about all this. God is so high! He is, and we are not. We are saying nothing, Carl!

He is so loving and merciful that He comes to us, and by doing so He becomes incredible to us. Have you noticed that? What can be done? We are “like to children sitting in the marketplace, and speaking one to another, and saying: We have piped to you, and you have not danced: we have mourned, and you have not wept.” When God descends, He talks to us, and all what is implied in this. What else do you expect me to say?
 
The doctrine of God’s simplicity rejects every kind of composition. For example, there is no distinction between God’s essence and God’s existence; and so on. Why then we talk about God as if He was very complex? Because there is no other way for us. For us, to understand something means to introduce complexity into it. Simplicity is unintelligible and incommunicable to us. Do you see it?
 
JuanFlorencio said:
The doctrine of God’s simplicity rejects every kind of composition. For example, there is no distinction between God’s essence and God’s existence; and so on. Why then we talk about God as if He was very complex? Because there is no other way for us. For us, to understand something means to introduce complexity into it. Simplicity is unintelligible and incommunicable to us. Do you see it?
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It may reject composition, but not distinction. For example, the Trinity.
 
fisherman_carl said:
It may reject composition, but not distinction. For example, the Trinity.
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You annihilate me, Carl! The Trinity is beyond my comprehension, but I adore it, and I humbly acknowledge that I know nothing about God.
 
JuanFlorencio said:
You annihilate me, Carl! The Trinity is beyond my comprehension, but I adore it, and I humbly acknowledge that I know nothing about God.
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Ha! I could never annihilate you. Only God could do that. 😃

Besides, I would never annihilate a nice guy such as yourself. 😉

And, I don’t know anything either. I am just trying to understand.😉
 
fisherman_carl said:
You said that God does not think, but he simply knows. However, just knowing implies passivity.
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God is existence itself. That’s not passive. He simply IS.

Remember, God is not potential, He is act.
How then can God act? For instance, when he says ‘Let there be light’, how does just knowing something cause light?
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It’s a performative utterance. By simply willing it to be, it is. We do similar things (but on a much smaller scale). When a JP says, “I now declare you man and wife”, that utterance is not only declarative, but performative: they are a married couple then!
Wouldn’t he have to actively will that there be light, which is more than just knowledge, but a thinking and willing of there to be light?
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Yes, but I don’t see the problem there. In His eternal now, He wills that there is light. That ‘willing’ is not ‘tensed’ (as you tend to put it), it is (and continues to be)! It is active.
 
Gorgias said:
God is existence itself. That’s not passive. He simply IS.

Remember, God is not potential, He is act.

It’s a performative utterance. By simply willing it to be, it is. We do similar things (but on a much smaller scale). When a JP says, “I now declare you man and wife”, that utterance is not only declarative, but performative: they are a married couple then!

Yes, but I don’t see the problem there. In His eternal now, He wills that there is light. That ‘willing’ is not ‘tensed’ (as you tend to put it), it is (and continues to be)! It is active.
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What is the alternative to thinking? If God speaks a word to us was that a result of a thought from God? For example, when God speaks in Scripture? For example, when he says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” (Is 55:8). Are you saying God has no thoughts? Just knowledge and will?
 
fisherman_carl said:
What is the alternative to thinking?
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Knowing and understanding, of course!

From Aquinas’ Compendium of Theology:
St Thomas Aquinas:
CHAPTER 29

GOD’S INTELLIGENCE NOT POTENTIAL OR HABITUAL BUT ACTUAL

Since in God nothing is in potency but all is in act, as has been shown. God cannot be intelligent either potentially or habitually but only actually. An evident consequence of this is that He undergoes no succession in understanding. The intellect that understands a number of things successively is able, while actually understanding one thing, to understand another only potentially. But there is no succession among things that exist simultaneously. So, if God understands nothing in potency, His understanding is free from all succession. Accordingly, whatever He understands, He understands simultaneously. Furthermore, He does not begin to understand anything. For the intellect that begins to understand something, was previously in potency to understanding.

It is likewise evident that God’s intellect does not understand in discursive fashion, proceeding from one truth to a knowledge of another, as is the case with our intellect in reasoning. A discursive process of this sort takes place in our intellect when we advance from the known to a knowledge of the unknown, or to that which previously we had not actually thought of. Such processes cannot occur in the divine intellect.
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If God speaks a word to us was that a result of a thought from God? For example, when God speaks in Scripture?
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No; it is a result of the Divine Will.
For example, when he says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” (Is 55:8). Are you saying God has no thoughts? Just knowledge and will?
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He has no thoughts in the way that we humans have thoughts. He simply knows. His existence is a pure act – a pure expression of His being. It is not, at any time, a simple thought about this thing over here or that thing over there.
 
Gorgias said:
Knowing and understanding, of course!

From Aquinas’ Compendium of Theology:

No; it is a result of the Divine Will.

He has no thoughts in the way that we humans have thoughts. He simply knows. His existence is a pure act – a pure expression of His being. It is not, at any time, a simple thought about this thing over here or that thing over there.
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But isn’t knowing something a thought? How could you know that you know something unless you could think? And, basically the quote from Aquinas says that God does not grow in knowledge because he already knows. But, it doesn’t tell us how God thinks. Only that God already has perfect knowledge.
 
Also I don’t see why a spoken word from God would not be a thought from God. A thought can also be the expounding of knowledge, not just the acquisition of it. Why could not God have thoughts that originate from his perfect knowledge and from eternity? Isn’t that what you say when you want some action of God to be immutable (like the act of creating)? And if he saw all of time in this eternal now all of his thoughts would be concurrent, and thus could be considered unchanging. In fact God could do anything in such a scenario and be considered unchanging. Even having emotions, if he had them all at once in the eternal now.
 
The more I think of it the more I doubt the b theory of time. Since, if it were true all events of time occur concurrently, including an infinite amount of events in our future. And God would have to see all of these infinite events at once in his eternal now. I find that hard to believe. Yes, creation would have a front edge on the time line where it came into existence. But, it would have no end. So, the analogy of a book starts to break down. Since this book becomes infinitely large, and God would have to know every page of it.
 
fisherman_carl said:
But isn’t knowing something a thought?
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For a human? Sure – we ‘know’ by observation and by ratiocination. For us, something had to precede the knowledge and give rise to it. For God, that does not hold.
And, basically the quote from Aquinas says that God does not grow in knowledge because he already knows. But, it doesn’t tell us how God thinks. Only that God already has perfect knowledge.
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That’s because He doesn’t think. 😉

See Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, I.14.
 
God has no need of thought processes.

We start life with empty heads and need to learn to fill them. God never had a solid head that needed to be filled.

The human ICXC did however have thought processes.

ICXC NIKA
 
I find it difficult to understand Aquinas sometimes because of his style of writing. For instance Aquinas seems to address something we talked about, whether God’s knowledge changes with respect to a changing creation, but I haven’t the foggiest idea of what he is saying. Here is what I mean.
Objection 1. It seems that the knowledge of God is variable. For knowledge is related to what is knowable. But whatever imports relation to the creature is applied to God from time, and varies according to the variation of creatures. Therefore the knowledge of God is variable according to the variation of creatures.
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Reply to Objection 1. “Lord”, “Creator” and the like, import relations to creatures in so far as they are in themselves. But the knowledge of God imports relation to creatures in so far as they are in God; because everything is actually understood according as it is in the one who understands. Now created things are in God in an invariable manner; while they exist variably in themselves. We may also say that “Lord”, “Creator” and the like, import the relations consequent upon the acts which are understood as terminating in the creatures themselves, as they are in themselves; and thus these relations are attributed to God variously, according to the variation of creatures. But “knowledge” and “love,” and the like, import relations consequent upon the acts which are understood to be in God; and therefore these are predicated of God in an invariable manner.
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GEddie said:
God has no need of thought processes.

We start life with empty heads and need to learn to fill them. God never had a solid head that needed to be filled.

The human ICXC did however have thought processes.

ICXC NIKA
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It depends on how you define a thought. If you define thinking as acquiring knowledge then yes God does not do that. Since he already knows. But if you define a thought as an idea or the form of a thing in the mind then Aquinas thinks God has many ideas.

Of course Aquinas would say God thinking is his essence. Or his intellect is his essence. All his ideas are his essence.

I was trying to google something about this on the internet and having a hard time finding anything talking about Aquinas on God’s thoughts. However, I did find this excerpt from a book called ‘The Beauty of the Triune God’.
Aquinas describes the Son as the thoughts that proceed from the thinking of God. The focus is not on what God is thinking about, but on the thinking process. To explain why the thinking of God is itself God Aquinas invokes the principle of simplicity. If God’s acts are different from the nature of God, then there is potentiality in the God. Therefore God’s operation must itself be part of the divine essence. Therefore, the thinking of God is also God. The Word of God, as the thinking of God, contains the forms or ideas of all creatures. Thus, the Word is a Mediator ontologically between the Father and the world.
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fisherman_carl said:
It depends on how you define a thought. If you define thinking as acquiring knowledge then yes God does not do that. Since he already knows. But if you define a thought as an idea or the form of a thing in the mind then Aquinas thinks God has many ideas.
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But Carl, what is an idea in a mind? Is a mind a kind of container which accommodates those special objects orderly or disorderly? Is an idea an object or a certain conscious disposition to act?

How do you conceive an idea? (What is your idea of “idea”?). 🙂
 
JuanFlorencio said:
But Carl, what is an idea in a mind? Is a mind a kind of container which accommodates those special objects orderly or disorderly? Is an idea an object or a certain conscious disposition to act?

How do you conceive an idea? (What is your idea of “idea”?). 🙂
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I’m not Carl, but I’d say that a mind is a conscious process or chain of ideas.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
I’m not Carl, but I’d say that a mind is a conscious process or chain of ideas.

ICXC NIKA
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Without any permanence?, or would it be a process of a more or less permanent entity?

Do you observe that when you say “it is a conscious process” the “I” is embedded there? Would the “I” be a process as well?
 
JuanFlorencio said:
Without any permanence?, or would it be a process of a more or less permanent entity?

Do you observe that when you say “it is a conscious process” the “I” is embedded there? Would the “I” be a process as well?
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I’d venture that what we call the “I” is indeed a process, powered by the life in our bodies.

ICXC NIKA
 
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