Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters as we are continuing our dive into the ocean of truth. We’re studying the doctrine of God right now and we’re using the Summa Theologica as our guide. This work of Thomas Aquinas can be read for free at Newadvent.org. Right now, we’re on the topic of the knowledge of God and tonight, we’re going to be discussing the question of if God has knowledge of that which is not.
Does God have knowledge of what is not? How could this be since God is said to have knowledge of the true and true is convertible with being? For Aquinas, God’s knowledge however is not just of things that are currently true, but also knowledge of things that could be true.
This would have to be true we realize because there was a time when there was nothing but God and then there was something. Obviously, there had to be knowledge of something in the mind of God in order for him to create that something. God had knowledge of what it was he was to create.
This also means that God has knowledge of you before you exist. He knows who you are and he knows who you will be and he knows who you are meant to be. All of this is a reality to him even if it is not present. God has knowledge of things not just that exist at the moment but that did exist and that will exist.
God also has knowledge of what it is that you will think even if it will never be. Your favorite fictional TV series, book series, movie, or video game was already known in the mind of God before it was ever thought of by the creator that. However, Aquinas does make a distinction in the knowledge of God here. God knows the things that will be and have been and are by knowledge of vision. He knows the others by simple knowledge.
Aquinas tells us that God sees all of time in one moment and so the vision knowledge will encompass all that is. The simple knowledge will not however because those only exist in potentiality. They do not actually exist and a lot of them we can be sure will never exist in actuality.
What about truth being convertible with being? These things do have being in some way. Your favorite series has being in the sense that it’s an idea in the mind of someone and in the case of your having viewed it in some way, it has an existence outside the mind. However, even if it only exists in the mind, that is in some way a kind of existence and so God can have knowledge of it.
What we can get out of it is the blessing that God does indeed know our thoughts. We can look at what we are thinking today and even though we don’t like it and in many cases we shouldn’t, we can know that God already knew about it and yet he loves us anyway.
That is good news.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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