How God Knows Things Verses How You Know Things

Typically, people who believe in a personal God also believe that God is pretty awesome. Those of us who are theists use big words about God such omnipotence (all powerful) and omniscience (all knowing). However, when it comes to God’s omniscience, even theists usually don’t quite grasp exactly how God knows all things. What most people do is visualize God as a super-computer with amazing brain-power who is all-seeing and therefore knows every little thing that is happening. Well, while it is true that God is aware of all things, His way of knowing something is radically different then my way of knowing—and this makes a big difference.

First of all let’s examine the way humans know things. Let’s talk about cats. How I know a cat as a cat is by a process of abstraction. Literally, I abstract (to remove from something) the immaterial idea of “cat-ness” from the material object of our cat, Fluffy. Once I have abstracted the idea of “cat-ness” I can go anywhere in the world and talk to other humans who speak English and say the word “cat” and they know what I am talking about. I do not need to point at a cat in order for the other person to understand what I am talking about—as long as they have also had an opportunity to create the abstract idea of “cat-ness” in their minds. If I did not have this mental ability to abstract ideas, I could never speak any language. Words are simply verbal signs of abstracted ideas. This whole abstracting process is the definitive ability that makes humans human. To be human is to be able to abstract ideas and use them for reasoning. God never has to do this.

God never has to look at anything to discover what it is or to abstract any idea about it. Human knowledge comes via the senses to the mind. The fact is, the potentially known object of the human mind exists whether or not anyone knows anything about it. In other words, Fluffy can exist without me knowing anything about her. However, Fluffy cannot exist without God knowing her. Here is how Aquinas puts it:

“Now, the relation of a thing known to our knowledge is this, namely, that the known thing can exist without having a knowledge of it…” (SCG I, 66, 2).

God’s knowledge goes in the opposite direction. His knowledge does not come from objects but, rather, His knowledge creates objects. His knowledge goes from Himself to the object. You cannot do this. In fact, I can barely understand a lot of things, while God creates all things by His knowledge. Aquinas puts it this way:

“Moreover, the divine intellect does not gather its knowledge from things, as ours does; rather …it is through its knowledge the cause of things” (SCG I, 65, 7).

Okay, you say, what difference does it make that God doesn’t have to investigate anything or abstract any concept in order to know things? What difference does it make that God’s knowledge of all things is the cause of all existence? Well, first of all, you and I wouldn’t be alive on planet earth if God didn’t “know” us. We exist because God knows us. His knowing us is the cause of our very existence. I don’t know about you, but that makes a HUGE difference to me—I like being alive! Another important aspect of the issue of God’s knowledge is that God does not have to do any fact-finding or investigation to know something. His knowledge is the actual sustaining force of all things. The Apostle Paul touches on this in his beautiful first chapter of the book of Colossians:

Colossians 1:16-17 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Finally, God’s creative knowledge is the key to understanding the mysterious doctrine of predestination. But that is another subject for another time.

Some religions and a lot of people imagine that God exists as a kind of generalized force (Star Wars) or as a positive energy source (Wayne Dyer). On the other hand, most Christians believe that God is a personal being that willfully is involved in the universe and in our lives. To Christians God is not an impersonal force but a dynamic, living and active being. However, when it comes to understanding exactly how God thinks, Christians usually visualize God as just a way-bigger one of us. He is seen as bigger and smarter and He can think a lot faster than us. We think of Him as having a super-computer brain that can calculate all possibilities in a blazing flash of speed. Therefore, He is able to predict with great accuracy all things that will happen. He stays ahead of us by out-thinking us like a chess master would a novice chess player. This vision of God’s intellect is wrong.

The first thing to realize about God is that He is a simple being. This does not mean He is simpleminded like a backwoods bumpkin. It means He does not have component parts or systems and that all things in Him are completely unified as one. What this means is that God does not have to move from one thought to the next and do what is called discursive reasoning. He sees and completely understands all things infinitely without any sequence. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way:

“There is, therefore, no succession in the divine consideration. Thus, all the He knows God considers together” (SCG I, 55, 7).

The second thing to try and grasp is that there are no time constraints on God. All of time is available to God at once. Again, here is Aquinas:

“The divine intellect, therefore, sees in the whole of eternity, as being present to it, whatever takes place through the whole course of time.” (SCG I, 66, 7).

Eternity is not a very, very long time. To be eternal is to exist outside of time. Therefore, all events that happen in time are simultaneously available to God all at once. Here, again, is Aquinas:

“Whatever is found in any part of time co-exists with what is eternal as being present to it…present to the whole of it” (SCG I, 66, 7).

At a practical level, what this means is that God does not have to predict the future. The future is totally and fully available to Him just as the present is available to us. We experience time one nano-second at a time which we call the “now.” God experiences all of time—past, present and future—all at once. His “now” is all of time. Just like we know past events to have happened in a certain way and we realize they are now frozen as past-tense completed events, so, God knows future events as they actually will be. Again, He need not predict anything. Just like I know that I had a bacon and cheese hamburger at Applebee’s for lunch yesterday and this will never change, God knows future events as real. What God knows as real cannot be anything other than what He knows.

This more accurate way of understanding God does not preclude freewill for humans. What it means is that all of our future free choices are known by God in one instantaneous, simultaneous, present-tense and intuitive thought. What we will experience as real, free choices in five or ten years from now, are fully and utterly known to God and cannot be anything other than as He knows them. One more quote from Aquinas:

“If each thing is known by God as seen by Him in the present, what is known by God will then have to be” (SCG I, 67, 10).

Mind-boggling, huh-- don’t you agree?

Next: How you think as opposed to how God thinks.

The most essential and fundamental statement given to us by the revelation of Scripture is from Genesis 1:1 “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Everything we know about God begins with this verse. It tells us several things: 1) the universe had a beginning; 2) God is the creator and originator of all things; and 3) God created everything from nothing. These insights remain on the cutting edge of philosophical speculation and scientific dispute. Of the three, the second is probably the most important because it has to do with the Who of creation and not just the how.

In natural theology, the most essential and fundamental statement is probably this one by Aquinas:

“No man wills and works evil to himself, except he apprehend it under the aspect of good. For even they who kill themselves, apprehend death itself as a good, considered as putting an end to some unhappiness or pain…” (Summa I-II, 29, 4)

Aquinas makes the case that humans cannot intentionally choose to do the bad to themselves. In all actions humans must always choose what they consider to be the good of the moment—even if it is committing suicide. This is the “first” or fundamental principle and it is built into our nature. A first principle is something that doesn’t have to be proved because you cannot honestly think the opposite, meaning you cannot think that humans always willingly choose the bad for themselves. It is self-evident that they choose the good as they see it, no matter how perverted or dangerous it may really be.--“Every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good” (Summa I-II, 94, 2).

From this principle which is inscribed upon our nature springs the first “precept” of natural law. It is, “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided…all other precepts of the natural law are based upon this” (Summa I-II, 94, 2).

I am continuously amazed and intrigued by Aquinas’ compact and self-assured statements. He says more in one paragraph then most theologians say in whole volumes. Essentially Aquinas tells us that because humans have an undefeatable desire for good they also have an inescapable ought—an ought with a capital “O.” That ought is that humans are to do good and avoid evil. Since we all desire good, we ought always to do good.

A corollary concept to this is that “nature does nothing in vain.” In other words, if nature has inscribed upon the human will a fundamental desire for good, then that desire has a purpose. The purpose of a first principle is manifested as an “operation”—our language for this is behavior. The behavior that ought to be manifested by the first principle that we must choose the good (or apparent good), is that we should always do good. My mom would have simply said that God designed us to be good people. What do you think?