by jimwalton » Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:07 am
God knows what it's
like to be wrong, but He has never experienced it; He has certainly observed it in others, and is able to know their minds. When we say that God is omniscient, we are undeniably talking about all things that are proper objects of knowledge. For instance, God doesn't know what it's like to learn, he doesn't know what it's like not to know everything, he doesn't know what would happen if an unstoppable force met an immoveable wall. These are absurdities. By omniscience we mean that God knows himself and all other things, whether they are past, present, or future, and he knows them exhaustively and to both extents of eternity. Such knowledge cannot come about through reasoning, process, empiricism, induction or deduction, and it certainly doesn't embrace the absurd, the impossible, or the self-contradictory.
To complicate the problem of defining omniscience, it can't be established what knowledge really is and how it all works. What are the principle grounds of knowledge, and particularly of God's knowledge? Does he evaluate propositions? Does he perceive? What about intuitions, reasoning, logic, and creativity? We consider knowledge to be the result of neurobiological events, but what is it for God?
But let's continue on to the true issue at hand: Is an omniscient being capable of thought? Of course he is, because thoughts are more than just knowledge, and they are more than just evaluating propositions, and the Bible defines God's mind as...
- creating new information (Isa. 40-48)
- showing comprehension
- gaining new information (Gn. 22.12, but it's not new knowledge)
- He orders the cosmos (Gn. 1)
- He designs (viz., the plan for the temple)
- He deliberates (Hos. 11.8)
- He can reason with people (the whole book of Malachi; Gn. 18.17-33)
- He can change a course of action (Ex. 32; 1 Sam. 8-12)
- He remembers (all over the place)
None of these conditions negates His omniscience. Generation of thoughts is not a process that negates His omniscience. If God is going to be responsive to human free will, which the Bible indicates He is (Jer. 18.1-12, Jonah 3), then thought does not imply a change of divine characteristics.
Is God's omniscience propositional or non-propositional? Can God have beliefs (since beliefs can be true, and beliefs are different than knowledge)? Are God's beliefs occurrent or dispositional? As you can see, this can all get pretty deep pretty quickly. At root, a cognitive faculty is simply a particular ability to know something, and since God knows everything, his cognitive faculties are both complete and operational. Perhaps we can define God's omniscience as:
- Having knowledge of all true propositions and having no false beliefs
- Having knowledge that is not surpassed or surpassable.
God knows what it's [i]like[/i] to be wrong, but He has never experienced it; He has certainly observed it in others, and is able to know their minds. When we say that God is omniscient, we are undeniably talking about all things that are proper objects of knowledge. For instance, God doesn't know what it's like to learn, he doesn't know what it's like not to know everything, he doesn't know what would happen if an unstoppable force met an immoveable wall. These are absurdities. By omniscience we mean that God knows himself and all other things, whether they are past, present, or future, and he knows them exhaustively and to both extents of eternity. Such knowledge cannot come about through reasoning, process, empiricism, induction or deduction, and it certainly doesn't embrace the absurd, the impossible, or the self-contradictory.
To complicate the problem of defining omniscience, it can't be established what knowledge really is and how it all works. What are the principle grounds of knowledge, and particularly of God's knowledge? Does he evaluate propositions? Does he perceive? What about intuitions, reasoning, logic, and creativity? We consider knowledge to be the result of neurobiological events, but what is it for God?
But let's continue on to the true issue at hand: Is an omniscient being capable of thought? Of course he is, because thoughts are more than just knowledge, and they are more than just evaluating propositions, and the Bible defines God's mind as...
[list]- creating new information (Isa. 40-48)
- showing comprehension
- gaining new information (Gn. 22.12, but it's not new knowledge)
- He orders the cosmos (Gn. 1)
- He designs (viz., the plan for the temple)
- He deliberates (Hos. 11.8)
- He can reason with people (the whole book of Malachi; Gn. 18.17-33)
- He can change a course of action (Ex. 32; 1 Sam. 8-12)
- He remembers (all over the place)[/list]
None of these conditions negates His omniscience. Generation of thoughts is not a process that negates His omniscience. If God is going to be responsive to human free will, which the Bible indicates He is (Jer. 18.1-12, Jonah 3), then thought does not imply a change of divine characteristics.
Is God's omniscience propositional or non-propositional? Can God have beliefs (since beliefs can be true, and beliefs are different than knowledge)? Are God's beliefs occurrent or dispositional? As you can see, this can all get pretty deep pretty quickly. At root, a cognitive faculty is simply a particular ability to know something, and since God knows everything, his cognitive faculties are both complete and operational. Perhaps we can define God's omniscience as:
[list]- Having knowledge of all true propositions and having no false beliefs
- Having knowledge that is not surpassed or surpassable.[/list]