Author Topic: God's Omniscience?  (Read 267 times)

ClassicalLiberal.Theist

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God's Omniscience?
« on: October 28, 2021, 02:57:24 pm »
Not sure if anyone still chats here, but if you're reading this, good to "see" you. I'm having a hard time working through Aquinas' (and Feser's) demonstration of God's omniscience.

Feser appeals to the PPC in order to prove God's omniscience (since God is the cause of all things, all things must exist in God in some way); however, I don't see why we need to ground things in God by way of knowledge. Meaning, can't we just say that all things exist in God because of his omnipotence, his capacity to do all things? That seems just as good to me. For example, when a robot creates something, that thing must exist in some way in the robot, but we don't say it has knowledge. Rather, the robot just possesses the ability to create that thing. This line of argument, as far as I can tell, can be applied to God as well.

As for Aquinas, he states that immateriality is the knowledge-making-property of beings. He then continues, since God is the highest degree of immateriality, he must also be omniscient. But this doesn't seem right to me. I think that knowledge entails immateriality, but I don't know if this necessarily works the other way around.

Hopefully someone has some answers. Thanks!

theophilius

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Re: God's Omniscience?
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2021, 07:14:00 am »
Hello ClassicalLiberal.
Keep in mind that a robot does not create something but "assemble", "produce", something. The act of creation, properly speaking, can be said of a God's act only because only God can create without any existing thing (creatio ex-nihilo). Therefore when God creates, necessarily knows what create, as a composer knows what music he is composing. Now, since nothing can exists without the act of existance and the act of existance is God's first cause, it follows that God knows everything that exists or can exists.