Category: Summa Theologica

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.

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.

Hello everyone and welcome to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We are continuing our quest into the knowledge of the doctrine of God with our guide being St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologica. You can read a copy of his work for yourself at newadvent.org. We are studying the topic of the knowledge of God right now and we are on the thirteenth article. Tonight’s question is if God knows future contingent things.

I am sure this will be a very controversial one and if I have to do another blog to answer objections, I’ll do that. My rule is to do only one more however and I leave it to readers if they want to debate it out here in the comments. I might jump in. I might not.

To begin with, I think it’s important to start with our doctrine of God. We have to keep in mind all that has been said about God before with regards to his simplicity, eternality, immutability, infinity, etc. If we change something here, we must go back and see the ramifications of what that will be on God. If God does not know the future, what will that mean?

Also, for those who are strict Calvinists, Aquinas does believe in free will and when he gets to his doctrine of man, he will defend that. For now, he assumes it and so will we for the sake of argument. That, however, is not a discussing I wish to get in. I avoid that debate like the plague.

By contingent, we mean things that were not necessary to be. We could simply ask that if God knows something is it contingent? Could it have been another way? My answer to this is that if God knows you will do something then yes, you will do it. However, he also knows what kind of action it is. It is an action that you freely do.

Our actions are contingent because we are. None of us had to be and God did not have to create any of us in order to be God. God could have gone without creating anything and he would have still been God. God alone is the one who is necessary for if he is not, then nothing else can be. If you and I were not, the universe could get on just fine.

However, if God does not have knowledge of the future, then he is informed by something outside himself which means first off that he’s not without limits and is thus not infinite. It also means that he’s not eternal for he goes from not knowing X to knowing X. That would mean that he changed in some way which means he’s not immutable. Then, that counts as motion and whatever undergoes motion has parts which means God’s simplicity is called into question.

Now of course, there are many who do say that these doctrines aren’t true, but we must begin with God before we decide that. I fully believe in the free will of man. I have no hesitancy saying God knows my future entirely but also saying that my future is free. God has entire knowledge of what I will freely do.

So now, let the objections fly!

Maybe we’ll continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. Much praise to God for a large donation that came in from a friend today. It is good to know that when you are at hard times in your life, you do have friends in your life. God always provides. Today, we’re going to go back to our study of the doctrine of God and we’re going to crack open once again the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you do not have your own copy to crack open, you can use your browser instead and go to newadvent.org. We are discussing the topic of God’s knowledge and asking if God knows infinite things.

This is an interesting one for we know that an infinite can only be known successively by us. We know one part after another and as soon as one person thinks he knows all the parts, there are still more parts. We cannot know infinite things for this is how we possess knowledge in this life.

Aquinas asks us to consider how we know what men are. When I look at an individual, I can know this man or that man. For instance, I have friends who are identical twins. However, there are some minor differences that I can see so that when I see one of them, I know which one it is. (Granted, I still have not learned to tell their voices apart)

However, it is not by my senses alone that I can tell they are men alone, but it is by the intellect pondering what has come through the senses. I can look at each of them and tell certain things about men. I can look at women and tell certain things about women. I can look at men and women and tell certain things about humanity.

All of these I learn through inference. I take this piece of information and from that I reason to this piece of knowledge. However, God does not think in the same way as he learns nothing by inference for if he did, then he would be dependent on something else for his knowledge. There would be, in essence, knowledge that existed outside the mind of God.

God, rather, knows all things at once as it has been said, by knowing himself. Aquinas does not include this in the knowledge of vision however as we’ve already seen his position on infinities in the material world. Things can be relatively infinite, but he does not hold to actual infinities, save for God alone who is infinite not in a quantitative sense but in a qualitative sense. God is without limits.

The importance of this question for us is that it helps us better understand how it is God knows the material world. We are beings that reason from sense experience and the drawing of inferences to conclusions. This is also a problem with a scientism worldview that believes that all truth is that which can be explained through the scientific method. Proper inferences are to be followed for every field and that is philosophical. The method collects the data. Sound reasoning works with the data. God, however, does not know as we know. He knows all things eternally by knowing himself.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters as we continue our dive into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas in our goal to understand the doctrine of God in Christian theology. Spurgeon called this the highest thought any Christian could ponder and he was right. What could be pondered that could be greater than God? In Anselmian thought, that would be God, to which I could agree. If you want to follow along with us, we’re in God’s Knowledge on question 11. A copy of the Summa can be found at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re asking if God knows singular things.

The reason this question is asked is that God is pure actuality and is in no way material. Matter is the individuating principle however that separates holders of essences. The reason I am not you is because the matter that makes me up is not the same as the matter that makes you up.

Someone might ask “Well what about angels? Aren’t there individual angels? Angels aren’t material.” To that, we agree. However, angels are also different by essence. Each angel is its own essence. Michael is Michaelness. Angels are simply existence + whatever their essence is. They can all be spiritual beings, but they are all of a different essence.

Aquinas of course says that God does know singular things. All perfections of creatures pre-exist in God. Some of these exist actually and some virtually. The ones that exist in actuality are the ones that are not limiting principles by nature. I would include under this ones like goodness, truth, beauty, knowledge, wisdom, love, etc. Perfect “Deeper Waters Bloggerness” however does not exist in God actually since I am limited by matter and God has no limitations in him. However, the idea of who I am meant to be when I truly fulfill the role of the person God has in mind for me exists in his mind eternally.

For Aquinas, the knowledge of God extends as far as his causality extends. We spoke when we talked about the omnipresence of God that God is the cause of the existence of place. God exists in an omnipresent way not as if he was extended across space, but rather as he is the cause of every place entirely. There is no place you can go that he is not there as the full cause of that place.

God’s knowledge extends the same way in that as he is the cause of all things, including matter, he has knowledge of those things and he has knowledge of material beings simply because he knows all the ways matter can be. It is because of his being what he is that he can know all that he knows.

Our application for today? God knows you. God knows the singular you out of all the people on Earth and not only does he know you, God eternally knows you. God has known you throughout eternity and because he must know all, he cannot not know you. Rest assured if you are in difficulty, it is not because God has forgotten you.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I thank you all for your faithfulness in prayer and I ask that you keep it up. Myself and those around me are convinced God will provide. We are looking at the doctrine of God now and we are using the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas as our guide. Those of you who do not have a copy can find one at newadvent.org. The topic for tonight in our look at the knowledge of God will be the question of if God knows evil. Let’s see.

There are some problems with the idea of God knowing evil. For instance, does God know what it is like to sin? How does God know evil if he knows all things through knowing himself? Especially since there is nothing evil in himself. How can he know that which is directly opposed to him? Can evil be known since it is basically that which is not?

To begin with, we should define evil as the last question did. Evil is not really a substance in itself in Thomistic thought, which goes back to Augustine who answered the question on the problem of evil. Evil is not a thing in itself but rather it is the privation of the good that ought to be there. It is not an evil if a rock does not have eyesight. That is expected. It is one if a person doesn’t. That is not to say the person is evil, but to say that there is a lack that is there when one should be there. As one who is disabled myself, I would never say the disabled are evil.

God knows all the ways the good can be. In knowing this, he also knows all the ways the good can be corrupted to be that which it is not meant to be. However, if evil is also that which is not, there can never be a total corruption. The fallen angels still have goodness in ontology. Existing is a good. It is what they have done with their existence that is twisted and evil. We should make sure we apply the same idea to our fellow man. While he may be evil in his actions, in his being, he is good. The problem is he’s not measuring up to the being that he is supposed to be.

God does not know evil firsthand or by experience in the divine essence. Thus, when we are tempted with sin or do evil, God does not know what that experience is like. It is not my contention that omniscience refers to knowledge of experience but rather knowledge of truth claims. This would also further reinforce the post from recently on if God is the cause of all things. Aquinas does not consider evil a thing so God is not the cause of evil but he is the cause of the goodness through which evil eventually came.

What we can get from this is that God knows all that there is to know about us including how it is that we can be corrupted as well as knowing this about the world he created. Let us not close it there however. He also knows what it will take to change that and is bringing it about.

Isn’t that good news?

We shall continue tomorrow.

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.

Hello everyone and welcome to Deeper Waters. I would like to give thanks to a kind reader who donated to the work being done here and offered support in a difficult time, and thanks to my church. I’ve found out today they’re making a very generous offering. I am thankful that God has indeed provided. We’re going to continue now our look at the doctrine of God in Christianity. Our source for this will be the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at newadvent.org. We are on the topic of God’s knowledge and we are asking if God’s knowledge is the cause of things.

This can be a very difficult one because as soon as I answer yes, as Aquinas does, then one can get in a very difficult position. Am I advocating determinism? Am I saying that God’s knowledge is also the cause of all of our actions? I am not saying that. I am saying however that we do work with him in whatever we do and even our rebellion against him is dependent on him. Of course, I am avoiding the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. I leave that for my readers.

When the medievals spoke about transcendentals, they meant attributes something has by virtue of being. These were one, other, good, true, beautiful, and thing. By virtue of being, something can be called a thing. However, this would only refer to a substance, that is, an essence that could have properties.

An event or an action does not fall under the category in the same way and thus I do not believe Aquinas is speaking of God as the cause of our actions, though I do affirm that we cannot do our actions without the power of God. Even the action of rebelling against God relies on having the power of God. Of course, it is still debated amongst philosophers how exactly one defines an event or an action.

Of course, we know that knowledge in God precedes the things that exist. If things were the source of knowledge in God, then God would be dependent on something else for his knowledge and would be growing in knowledge and the systematic theology that has been prior would have to be totally rethought.

We can however say with no problem that God’s knowledge is the cause of things in that these things have to exist in the mind of God before they can exist outside the mind of God. Aquinas uses the example of a painter painting a picture. It must exist in the mind of the painter before it can have actuality and brought to the canvas. In this way, existence precedes essence, however there must be an essence that can be given existence. Something must exist to actualize the essence, but in order to be actualized, that essence must first exist. Existence is added to the essence.

This will get further on into areas that will be more prone to disagreement and already we do have some perhaps. I might write in response to some comments. I might not. Keep in mind however that I welcome readers to comment on this blog and interact with one another. It makes it all the more fun when iron sharpens iron.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello all and welcome to Deeper Waters. I thank you all for your prayers as while I am still unemployed, I have heard news today about income coming in from another place, reminding me of Esther. God does provide in his providence. I do still seek your prayers however. We’re talking tonight about the doctrine of God further and our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. We’re studying the topic of God’s knowledge. If you’d like to read in the Summa for yourself, you can do so at newadvent.org. For now, let’s get to our question of the night.

Is God’s knowledge discursive? First off, what do we mean? Well we mean by this that it is first this and then that. God knows one thing and then he knows another thing. I throw a stone into a pond, I know where the stone hits, ripples will come out, but I do not know where the stone will hit. Once the stone hits, it is then that I know where the ripples will come out.

For those in the sciences, the effects are often seen first and then one reasons back from the effects to the cause. This happens in medicine often. A patient comes in to see the doctor with a condition. He describes it to the doctor and the doctor reasons from the symptoms, the effects, to the cause.

The other way we can think like this is also when we go from one thing to another thing in our thinking. There are some of us who can quite easily be distracted when we do something. I, for instance, am watching a forum I participate in right now as well as having IMs going. When I return, my mind is on the blog, but it is too easy to be distracted. Many of us would love to not be distracted from God, who Jesus says we need to keep in mind implicitly in Matthew 6:25-33.

This is not the case for God however. Why? God knows all things by knowing himself, the one. He knows the effects as they are in the cause. He also does not switch from one to another. This has been established because we’ve already seen that God is eternal and to have knowledge discursively would be for God to go from the unknown to the known.

God then knows all things in one eternal now. Because of this, he cannot know something discursively as he would then have to come to knowledge that exists outside of him, which would mean he could not be his knowledge and could not be simple, but we have already shown that he is. This is once again the importance of building our doctrine of God on other prior doctrines. Aquinas did not put this together accidentally. He had an order. We make a mistake if we try to question one part without considering the ramifications for the other parts.

We conclude then that God knows all that he knows in the eternal now.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. I am thoroughly enjoying our look into the knowledge of God and I hope that you are getting a lot of knowledge out of it. The reason we’re doing this is we’re seeking to understand the Christian concept of God and I have chosen to use the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas as a guide. If you are wanting to follow along, you can read the Summa for free at newadvent.org, though I have no problems whatsoever, and I highly encourage it in fact, with you purchasing a copy of the Summa for yourself.

Tonight, we’re going to ask if God knows things other than himself by proper knowledge. What is meant by proper knowledge? A comparison could be by looking at your English grammar when you were growing up. You were taught about two types of nouns, common and proper.

A common noun would be that which could be general and held by many. A proper noun would be that which referred to a unique one. For instance, you could speak of blogs. We all know what blogs are. However, if you speak of the Deeper Waters blog, you are speaking of a specific blog. Blog is a common term but Deeper Waters is a proper term.

So what about God? It has been said that God knows all things seeing as he knows being, but does he only know a general idea of being? Does he know them as a particular being? The relevance of this question is that while God may love the world as John 3:16 says, do we have any reason to believe that he loves you in particular? He loves humanity, but does he love the human you?

Aquinas answers that God does have proper knowledge. It has already been said that God’s understanding is absolute, but if God did not understand you or I absolutely, then it could not be said that his knowledge is absolute. God cannot then just know us as being, but he must know us as these particular beings. He knows me not as a human being alone but as the particular human being that I happen to be.

We can hear of the Mormon doctrine of pre-existence. While we did not pre-exist as living consciouses before we came here, we certainly pre-existed in the mind of God. In fact, there has never been a time when you have not been on the mind of God. God could not be God if he was not thinking about you. His knowledge would not be complete otherwise.

Let us be careful to not too individualize this however. God still knows himself as the greatest good, but he does know us as good. He also knows you as good. Of course, whether you choose to allow him to shape you into the good that he knows that you can be is up to you. However, you can rest assured you are not an accident. There is a God who eternally knows and loves you.

Isn’t that good news?

We shall continue tomorrow.