WHAT DOES GOD KNOW?

According to Scripture, God is “all-knowing” (1 Sam. 2:3), and his ”wisdom” and “knowledge” are beyond human comprehension (Romans 11:33). But how, then, is God’s omniscience to be understood? What, exactly, does it mean to know everything?

     Any answer to this question must proceed, a la St. Thomas Aquinas, from God’s absolute simplicity. As pure act, in whom there is no transition from potentiality to actuality, God does not grow in knowledge but, rather, knows all in a single indivisible cognitive act (simplici intuitu). It follows, then, that God does not have this or that bit of knowledge but, in fact, is himself knowledge. God is his own understanding (Deus est suum intelligere). Ultimately, to say this is to say that God knows everything in knowing himself. If he knew creatures as things apart from himself, then his knowledge would move from potency to act. However, as pure act and as the cause of all things, he knows all extra-divine things by virtue of fully knowing his own essence. “God is light and in Him there is no darkness” (1 John 1:5).

 

IS GOD PRESENT EVERYWHERE?

St. Paul at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22ff.)

The psalmist writes of God, “Whither shall I go before thy spirit? or whither shall I flee before thy face? If I ascend to the heavens, thou art there; if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.” Likewise, albeit in different language, St. Paul states, “[God] is not far from any one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have or being’” (Acts 17:27ff.).

     That God is omnipresent, then, has been attested throughout the Church’s history. St. Augustine wrote a monograph on the topic (Liber de praesentia Dei ad Dardanum), and a number of other theologians have treated it as well. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, God is omnipresent inasmuch as he is the source of all being and, therefore, intrinsic to all created things (S. th. I 8, 1). This definition does not mean that God expands or diffuses into every nook and cranny of creation–for God is simple and does not extend spatially–but, rather, that God has a repletive presence (praesentia repletiva). In other words, it is not that one part of God is in this place and another in that, but that God, as creator, is wholly present everywhere.

 

DOES GOD CHANGE?

The prophet Malachi

To change is to go from one state or condition to another. All creatures change, insofar as they live and die, grow and degenerate, etc. However, God does not change. That is to say, he is absolutely immutable (incommutabilis).

     This is a teaching that has a solid basis across the tradition. In one of Kierkegaard’s favorite biblical passages, James writes that, in God, there is “no change nor shadow of alteration” (1:17). Or, as Malachi records, “Surely I, the LORD, do not change” (3:6). And yet, God’s unchangeableness is not a lifeless stasis, but, rather, an eternally active fullness–a “mobility beyond motion” (Wisdom 7:24). Even God’s ad extra operations (such as creation) proceed from the eternal resolve of his eternal will, though the effects of that will (created things themselves) are mutable. St. Augustine sums it up well: “Being is a name which connotes immutability. For all that changes ceases to be what it was and commences to be what it was not. True Being, Genuine Being is possessed only by Him who does not change.”

 

CAN GOD SIN?

God’s will pefectly corresponds to his perfect nature. There is no gap, as it were, between what he wills and what he is. Hence, ontologically, he is absolute goodness–a designation that accords with Scripture. As it is written in Luke 18:19, “None is good but God alone.” And yet, since God is the causa exemplaris, efficiens, and finalis of creation, his goodness is communicated to created things. Thus 1 Timothy 4:4: “For every creature of God is good.”

     Implicit in God’s ontological goodness is his moral goodness or holiness. In other words, his will is identical with the moral norm. This identity between God’s will and that which is virtuous not only means that God is free from sin (impeccantia), but also that it is metaphysically impossible for him to sin (impeccabilitas).

 

IN WHAT SENSES IS GOD THE TRUTH?

There are three sorts of truth–in being (essendo), in knowing (cognoscendo), and in acting (agendo). Consequently, God’s truth is threefold:

1. God really corresponds to the idea of God, and so, ontologically, he is the truth. For him, to be is to be true. Thus he is also supreme truth, for, while creatures participate in and reflect God’s truth, they are not one with truth itself.
2. God’s knowing is in full agreement with things, and so, logically (or intellectually), he is the truth. In knowing himself, he knows all created things in their origin.
3. God’s speech agrees with his knowledge, and his action with his speech, and so, morally, he is the truth. He neither lies nor contradicts himself. That is to say, he always tells the truth, and he always does what he says.

 

IS GOD MADE UP OF PARTS?

 

Creaturely life is distinguished by composition. For example, a body has arms, legs, a head, etc. Or one can identify the basic material that makes up a certain thing and the form (or structure) that distinguishes it in the world. Or one can locate the difference between a thing’s accidental traits (e.g., maroon leaves, ten feet in height) and its essential nature (tree).

     God, however, is an absolutely simple substance or nature (substantia seu natura simplex omnino). That is to say, God is not composed of parts of any kind. Thus he is neither a body nor a composition of body and spirit, but, rather, a pure spirit. In God one cannot find distinctions of material and form or accidents and essence. He is what he has. From this it follows that there is no potentiality in God. He is not moving from a state of potentiality (say, an acorn) to one of actuality (an oak tree). Such is the case with all creaturely things, which possess materiality and so have potential. But God is spirit (immaterial) and thefore purely actual.

 

IN WHAT SENSE IS GOD PERFECT?

 

With regard to finite things, “perfect” is a relative term, referring to a fullness that, nevertheless, is correspondingly finite. Only that which is absolutely perfect excludes all deficiency and contains every excellence. It is in the latter sense, then, that God is said to be perfect, for he lacks nothing and is infinite in every pefection (omni perfectione infinitus).

     Scripture attests to God’s perfection (Cf. Mt. 5:48) and fullness (Cf. Sirach 43:29), as do the Church Fathers. St. Irenaeus (d. ca. 202, pictured above) states, “God is perfect in everything…”. For St. Thomas, naturally, it is the relative perfections of created things that indicate God’s absolute perfection, insofar as every relative perfection receives being from God, who is the first cause and, indeed, being itself.

 

DOES GOD HAVE ATTRIBUTES?

St. John the Evangelist (d. ca. 110)

Human beings say that God has attributes, not because he is composed of certain characteristics, but because human reason imperfectly attains to God, arriving at a number of incomprehensive, yet nevertheless true, concepts about God’s nature. In other words, since God subsists as absolutely simple being, the attributes named by human reason are to be understood as identical among themselves and with God’s essence. There is no real distinction between God and Godhead. As Ludwig Ott explains, “God is not good because He does good, but He does good because He Himself is good.” Famously, this teaching is reflected in 1 John 4:8, where the apostle writes, “God is love.”

     Are, then, the divine attributes found in Scripture merely synonyms? According to St. Thomas, they are not synonymous, but, rather, virtually distinct (Cf. S. th. I 13, 4). That is to say, while finite human reason is able to attain to God through a variety of inadequate concepts, this variety is not unfounded, for God’s essence is infintely full. Thus the divine attributes may be understood inclusively, meaning that one attribute implicitly includes the other.

 

WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR IDENTIFYING GOD AS ipsum esse subsistens?

The primary, but by no means the only, basis for identifying God’s essence as ipsum esse subsistens is a passage from Scripture–namely, Exodus 3:14, where God, speaking to Moses from the burning bush, gives his name as “I am who am.” In other words, he is the one whose being is to exist. His essence is to be.

     The Patristic writers adopted this understanding. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 330-389) puts it, “[God] is always; for ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are divisions of our time and of nature which is in constant flow. But He is the Constant Being; and thus He called Himself, when He answered Moses on the mountain. He holds sealed off in Himself the whole fullness of being, which has neither a beginning nor an end, like an endless and boundless ocean of being, transcending every notion of time and (created) nature.”

 

WHAT IS GOD’S METAPHYSICAL NATURE?

In other words, what is it, exactly, that distinguishes God from created things? is it the total accumulation of his perfections? is it his radical infinity? is it his absolute intellectuality?

     The most cogent view is that God is subsistent being (ipsum esse subsistens). Unlike creatures, God does not receive existence from another being, but, rather, exists a se or from himself. Thus there is no distinction between his existence and his essence. He is being itself, in whom there is no potentiality. For that reason, it is also appropriate to see God as pure act (actus purus).