Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the Ocean of Truth. Thank you Manwe and Richard for your comments last night on Stormy. My family is doing better today, but it’s still hard, and last night as I went to bed, I do admit the world seemed a bit empty. However, today we need to continue our study of the doctrine of God using the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas that can be found at NewAdvent.org. We are discussing the topic of the knowledge of God and we are asking if God knows the enunciable.
Think of something. Anything. Really ponder it.
Does God know what you’re thinking? Do you have to say it?
That’s the question.
Aquinas answers that God does indeed know our thoughts. Now when it comes to prayer, I think it can be important to still pray out loud and honestly, I don’t know if I do or not. It’s something I haven’t thought about, though I’m thinking that usually I don’t, and personally, I’m not the best at public prayer.
This is good news for those of us then that are like me. Of course, I do think there is a place for public prayer and I do think there is something to sometimes saying what you believe out loud. I think saying it out loud can really show the depth to which it reaches in you.
But how is it that God knows the enunciable? He knows it the same way that he knows everything else. He knows it by knowing himself. Because he knows all the ways that being can be, he knows all the ways we can think about being. We are incapable of thinking of something new. It is like trying to think of a new primary color. It cannot be done.
All works of imagination bring out some kind of being and just change it in some way. Consider one of my favorites of Superman. We simply took a man and gave him unique powers that were alterations of what was already there and then we threw in things like unique weaknesses such as kryptonite and magic.
On a related note, some people ask if the demons know our thoughts. It’s my opinion that they don’t. They don’t have the range of being that God does. I do believe they could be great readers of human nature. Many times, we can get an idea of what someone is thinking by watching them and it wouldn’t surprise me if demons did that. I do also think demons and angels can both in some way influence our thinking. They can’t see into our thinking, but I have no problem with them trying to send us thoughts to get us to do what they would have us to do.
What can we conclude from this? God knows those little silent prayers you pray when you can’t confess something vocally. He hears you. We also need to learn to watch our thought life and try to get it under control. We can’t control random thoughts that come into our minds, but we can control what we do with them.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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