Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God and right now, we’re studying the knowledge of God. Our text for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re going to be asking if the knowledge of God is variable.
Part of the problem with the Aristotlean system was to ask how God could know all things in a changing world if he himself was unchanging? One of the problems however that Aristotle had was that he had not really developed a doctrine of existence itself. This was a more medieval formulation. Aquinas helped shape much of this thought for his time period and for ours as well.
To begin with, if God has knowledge of the variable, does that means his knowledge is variable? No. All that follows from the fact is that God knows things that vary. However, God can know what they will be like at point X in time and then he can know what they will be like later in point Y.
However, it could be that God had created more than he created. Even if you wish to posit a multiverse for the sake of argument, we can always say God could have created one more of any object that we see. If that is the case, and God knows all that he makes, it would seem that he can know more than there is since there could be more.
Again however, this does not mean that God’s knowledge is changing but he knows how things that he made could change. If God had created X that doesn’t exist, he would know it as an actuality. As it is, he knows X as a potentiality that will simply never be. By knowing himself, God knows all things as they are and all things as they could be and all things that could have been.
What about temporal truths? For instance, that Christ was born is a historical fact. Around 2000 years ago, Christ is born would have been a historical fact. 4,000 years ago “Christ will be born” would be a fact about the future, but still true. Can the eternal God know a truth that is temporal?
This assumes however that God knows the things as they happen as if he is in time. He doesn’t. God sees the entire spectrum but he can look at any point on it and know the truths that are at that point. He also knows them in relation to all other points. That does not mean of course that his knowledge is changing but he has knowledge of things that can change.
What we can learn from this is that God is not in flux in his knowledge. If he knows something, he knows it, and that will not change. This is something helpful to keep in mind when we wonder if God knows what is going on in our lives. Yes. He does. He has always known it and he will be there if you choose to trust in him.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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