God's Knowledge (Aquinas 101) 

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It's our joy!

@@ThomisticInstitute Hi, I have a question: according to catholic theology, when was Purgatory created? Was it created at the moment of Christ's death and descent into hell?

Fernando, our pleasure!

We're so glad the video helped! Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment. May the Lord bless you!

You're welcome! Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment. May the Lord bless you!

Thank you! May the Lord bless you!

Thank you! Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment. May the Lord bless you!

@@ThomisticInstitute It is you who have improved my worldview and strengthend my apologetics so much in the last two years!

This quotation from Edith Stein gives some indication as to the "authority" from which St. Thomas operates. I hope you find it as helpful as I did! “What has been called St. Thomas’s “system” took shape in this work of assembling, sifting, ordering. The body of knowledge of his time became organized in his mind. He wrote no “philosophical system,” nor has the system behind his works been written so far. Yet anyone who studies his works will find clear, definite answers, perhaps to more questions than he himself could ask. And what is more, the organon that the Master bore within himself and that enable him to settle a host of issues with a firm, serene, respondeo dicendum, leaves its mark on his “disciple” and gives him the ability to answer questions in Thomas’s spirit that Thomas never asked and possibly at the time could not have been asked at all. This may well also be the reason why folks today are going back to his writings. Ours is a time that is no longer content with methodical deliberations. People have nothing to hold on to and are looking for purchase. They want a truth to cling to, a meaning for their lives; they want a “philosophy for life.” And this they find in Thomas. Of course there is a world of difference between Thomas’s philosophy and what passes for “philosophy for life” today. In his philosophy we will look in vain for flights of emotion; all we will find is truth, soberly grasped in abstract concepts. On the surface much of it looks like theoretical “hair-splitting” that we cannot “do” anything with. And even after serious study it is not easy to put our finger on practical returns. But a person who has lived for some time with the mind of St. Thomas-lucid, keen, calm, cautious-and dwelt in his world, will come to feel more and more that he is making right choices with ease and confidence on difficult theoretical issues or in practical situations where before he would have been helpless. And if later he thinks back-even surprising himself-on how he managed it, he will realize that a bit of St. Thomas’s “hairsplitting” laid the groundwork. At the time that Thomas was working on this or that problem, he naturally had no idea what it could some day be “good for,” nor was he concerned about it. He was but following out the law of truth; truth bears fruit of itself.”

My initial take is that it's analogous to God's knowledge of temporal facts. Just as God exists eternally rather than temporally, he also exists (in the vocabulary of possible worlds semantics) outside the range of possible worlds.

If God was changing our universe would crumble apart

Intellect is part of God's eternal and necessary nature. God has no external finality requiring intellect. However, His infinite perfection includes fully actualized rational self-possession through intellect. In God, intellect is an expression of absolute actuality and existence, not something added on. Intellect is not something added to being but actualizes and perfects it. God's intellect just is His essence.

yes, but this is not what it is claimed here. The video (series) is "circumscribed" to Aquinas' theology; it does not aim to cover the much broader spectrum of Christian theology. Merry Christmas by the way! *´

@@barbaraosimani6285 If you're interested in different perspectives on divine simplicity, you might listen to this podcast (pintswithaquinas.libsyn.com/176-divine-simplicity-william-lane-craig-w-fr-gregory-pine) with Matt Fradd and Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. We have also have a few lectures on divine simplicity which are available on the Thomistic Institute soundcloud account. This one (soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/the-divine-attributes-god-as-perfectly-simple-and-perfectly-good-prof-edward-feser) with Ed Feser is especially good. You can also check out the www.aquinas101.com and navigate to the page for this lesson (aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/the-divine-attributes) where we have some resources.

@@ThomisticInstitute Thank you, I am an epistemologist, but my research is focused on foundations of statistics and the scientific method. However, as a catholic and candidate to enter the third Dominican order, I am interested in everything related to Aquinas philosophy. Your videos are not only very enjoyable, but also very informative and elegant, and they are informative in being elegant, that is parsimonious in the use of means, or better, the form perfectly fits the meaning that is intended to be conveyed. Compliments to all the production staff, from authors to graphic people! Please pray for me and my research!

@@barbaraosimani6285 agree, I was just mentioning only for others who do not know. thanks a lot.

@@theoldpilgrimway9129 Thanks to you!

In this video, the speaker makes an argument rooted in Scripture, but that reasons upon the surpassing character of divine knowledge as both discovered in the tradition proper to philosophy and revealed in the tradition proper to faith. So, for instance, from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, we read "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." Thus, God's knowledge is not like our knowledge in that it is not a response to things as discovered. Rather, it is a creative knowledge. We can reason that since God is the giver of being (something St. Thomas has established earlier in the Summa), that his knowledge is coextensive with his creative agency. So, God knows all things through and through and innermostly. We don't find any contradictions in God's knowledge of evil when we keep in mind the theory that St. Thomas inherits from St. Augustine: namely, that evil is a privation. The evil in angelic and human choice is the lack of a good order among the goods affirmed. God can know choice as giving being and agency, but this does not entail that it "inheres" in his mind as evil. That I can have theoretical knowledge of what sin entails does not make my mind, ipso facto, sinful. As for the final point, it does not help the situation to posit potency in God. Just because God's dealings with men account for change does not mean that he himself changes. It seems that given what we have argued for earlier--namely that God is subsisting being itself, exhausting all that there is of being--that if we were to posit potency in God, we'd lose a lot more than we'd gain.

@@ThomisticInstitute Thank you for your reply. However, I do not think that you have shown any Scriptural support for the idea that "He knew what our choices would be". That He knew Jeremiah before he was formed in the womb indicates that He intended to bring that particular individual soul into existence. It does not say that He knew every thought and choice which Jeremiah would have, although He would have known the mission He intended to give him and the circumstances in which He was placing him, and the possible choices before him. I agree that evil is a privation, and that God knew the basic nature of evil which might arise among His creatures, but the specific details of that evil, the inventions of rebellious minds, He need not have known until He observed it in time. That observation did not mean that there is any change in God, nor does His changing his dealings with men in response to their obedience or disobedience mean a change in God, as His dealings are always consistent with His unchanging character. If by saying that, knowing specific instances of sin, depravity and malice from all eternity does not entail it "inhering in His mind as evil" you mean that God is not in some way affected by it, the fact remains that you make these instances of evil, evil itself, as eternal as God. I know that your ideas are based on a particular philosophical theory of God's own timelessness necessitating that He sees all time in one simultaneous moment, but there is no Scriptural support for that, and I would think that it might be challenged rather than accepted as a basic presupposition. Your argument is based upon the theories "discovered in the tradition proper to philosophy", but these should not be treated as infallible, and should not be given authority over the Scriptural revelation of God. St Paul tells us that the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, and that in their philosophy the world knew not God. It seems that your system has exalted philosophical speculation above revelation. I know that you will view me as being lamentably ignorant of the philosophical system which you think essential to the Faith, but I think I may be right in saying that your idea has never been defined as de fide by the Church universal. A papal encyclical defining the Immaculate Conception can speak of God's original plan for Adam being thwarted by sin, and alleged words of the Blessed Virgin in recognized apparitions, like Holy Scripture, speak of some future things being conditional on whether or not people change their ways. There is nothing in revelation to say that every thought, word and deed of each human being has been known by God from all eternity. Thank you again for your attention, and for your videos which I do find interesting, even if I disagree on this particular matter. I would be curious to know if there is any alternative view among Catholic theologians on this particular point.

@@anselman3156 Righto. Let's work on marshaling some texts. This one from Psalm 139 is especially beautiful: [0] To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. [1] O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me! [2] Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. [3] Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. [4] Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. [5] Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. [6] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. [7] Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? [8] If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! [9] If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, [10] even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. [11] If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," [12] even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee. [13] For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. [14] I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; [15] my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. [16] Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. [17] How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! [18] If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. [19] O that thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God, and that men of blood would depart from me, [20] men who maliciously defy thee, who lift themselves up against thee for evil! [21] Do I not hate them that hate thee, O LORD? And do I not loathe them that rise up against thee? [22] I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. [23] Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! [24] And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Many of the lines of this psalm suggest that God knows every thought and choice which the psalmist would have (esp. vv. 4-6, 13-16). If this is still unsatisfactory, we can work with others. A more global point though regards the practice of exegesis. St. Thomas is of the mind that Scripture is the soul of theology. It imparts life to theology, supplies its principles, directs its course, and perfects what is lacking therein. St. Thomas also works with the confidence that we, as rational animals, are entrusted with the responsibility of reasoning upon Scripture and teasing out its implications. Like, the notion of the Most Blessed Trinity, for instance, I would argue, is present within Scripture. But, the word itself is not. What is more, it took the first few ecumenical councils to tease out fully and solemnly define the essential features of Trinitarian faith. Next, a word about the existence of evil. I do not think that God's foreknowledge of evil makes it to be coeternal with him. Things can exist in a variety of ways, and existence is to be understood analogically. God exists in way that surpasses our experience of existence. He exhausts all that there is of being. Created things exist in participated fashion. They have their being as a gift. But beyond this vertical analogy of being, we can talk about things existing in other things. Ed Feser summarizes Aquinas by describing how an effect can preexist in its cause formally, eminently, or virtually. He gives a nice description on pp. 22-23 of his book Aquinas as a reading of St. Thomas's commentary on the Metaphysics. This all to say that it's not as if evil exists (because, for one, it doesn't) as coeternal with God (because it doesn't exist as he does), but rather as attendant upon things that he intends to create and that preexist in him formally as foreknown. To your last point about what must be believed: You're right that many things taught by St. Thomas are not solemnly defined. If that impression is given in these videos, apologies for the doctrinaire tone. I think St. Thomas is in pursuit of a wisdom (a vision of the whole), one borne on by love of the God whom he sought in prayer and study. The lover cannot content himself with knowing just a thing or two about his God, and so he reasons through the connections of what he does know to fill out the picture of the beloved. This is the vision that St. Thomas both seeks and imparts. We hope that it's helpful in your study of the faith.

@@ThomisticInstitute One of the things I appreciate most about you all is the perfect patience, care, attentiveness, effort, peaceful-calmnesss and humility with which you address every single comment, objection, rebuttal, argument, or insult thrown at you by viewers, no matter what their personal objective or agenda may be. Be it that they may have a genuine & honest thirst for knowledge; or perhaps a conceited, self-indulgent, prideful, ego-trip; or even when it's just a kind comment; I consistently find myself in awe at your pointed, thorough, beautifully-crafted, yet kind, humble & charitable responses, explanations and expoundings to every single comment posted by the viewers on all of your videos. Seriously, it's breathtaking and is one of the finest examples of how we are ALL called to express God's love to one another with perfect charity. Thank you for what you do. Much peace & love y'all...God bless!

@@BayouMaccabee You're wonderful. Thanks so much for this. It is very encouraging. All the best you and yours.

Well, we have the universe, don't we?

High praise! Thanks Carl!

What a pompous and ignorant comment. This video was eight minutes of special pleading, unfalsifiable definitions, and claims to knowledge for which no one has any evidence. Science doesn't require any of this. Science exists and progresses _in spite_ of claims and pronouncements like this, however calmly they may be presented.

@@scotte4765 A pompous and ignorant comment indeed! Calling a whole school of philosophy "special pleading" and "unfalsifiable" based on eight minutes and thirty three seconds of exposure to it, followed by a creed in the existence and supreme goodness of "science". Truly pathetic. Go read about the philosophy of science to understand what is domain is and, more importantly, what it isn't. Then you should be less eager to embarrass yourself on the Internet.

@@tiagorodrigues3730 I didn't call a whole school of philosophy those things. I called the content of this video those things. If a whole school of philosophy can be accurately described in an eight minute video, then it's not going to have much to offer us anyway. I also didn't claim anything about the "supreme goodness of science." I merely countered Carl Smith's claim that science proceeds from this religious tripe when in fact science arose in spite of it. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension, or else pick on comments with easier words and shorter sentences, so you can address the things people actually say.

​ @Scott E By that argument, won't _every_ popsci video on RU-vid also special pleading and unfalsifiable? For example, I was watching a video by PBS Space Time on why magnetic monopoles _should_ exist, and it has a bunch of results which are presented as they are, with the barest hadwave as an explanation, just the same as in this video. Are they specially pleading, then, like you argue Father Gregory is doing here?

High praise! Thank you!

You've got all this life and the next to contemplate it!

The Thomistic Institute ha ha! When you put it that way absolutely!! Jesus please save us! 🎄🙏🏼

@@SUZMIC1 Come Lord, and do not delay!

@@ThomisticInstitute What evidence is there that there is a life after this one ? Our consciousness requires a functioning physical brain. When that's gone, so is our consciousness, so what are you left with ?

@@lewis72 "A life after this one"? You make me remember the story of the twins in the belly of their mother: one of them, trusting in life longed to be born, the other one complained to him: 'I bet there's no life out there...' In some way, you may be right: there's no life after this one. Eternal life has already begun. Life doesn't end, it's transformed, just like a seed sown, grows, and then bears fruit. Can you show us evidence there would be no life "after" this one? You claimed: "Our consciousness requires a functioning physical brain..." Was there a time when you had no brain and so had no conscience, so that you can now make the comparison? Could you please tell me: Some one who has lost his mind, or is not conscience can he /she still be alive in "this" life?

You are welcome. May the Lord bless you!

That's an excellent question. We can think about this in terms of God's eternity. God exhausts all that there is of being. God just is subsisting "to be." As a result, all being is present to him in an eternal now. Eternity as St. Severinus Boethius defines it just is the "whole and simultaneous possession of endless life." Now, in God's knowledge of himself, he knows all of the ways that his being can be participated, and to some, by one act of love, he conjoins his will, and those things exist in creation. God's knowledge of these existing things is a creative love, and he gives each its being and its proper agency. Now, in giving each its proper agency, he makes things to cause according to their proper form. We say that God wills necessary things to happen necessarily, contingent things to happen contingently, and free things to happen freely. In the case of human beings, God causes our agency in and through our very use thereof. So, by our exercise of the virtue of prudence, we are real protagonists in the world, disposing means towards a good end. We are real agents, and our choices really matter. Mind you, God knows how it is going to end as all moments are present to him in an eternal now, but he is causing the unfolding reality of our lives to be in and through our proper agency. God makes us to be this type of creature--a free one with a defectible will. Such is the nature of his generous plan that he wanted to fill each facet of the intelligible universe with variegated testimony of his divine abundance. We are embodied souls capable of choosing for or against, and the way that we glorify God is bound up with this drama of decision. In his unsearchable wisdom, he saw fit to permit human volition to fail in an ultimate sense in certain cases. Why? We know not. But we believe that he would not have done so were he capable of bringing about from it some kind of good. So, if we go to heaven, it is by God's grace. If we go to hell, it is by human fallibility. Does the possibility of hell impugn God's dignity? Some would suggest that it does, but in St. Thomas's understanding, we must first recall that he does not owe us a supernatural destiny in the strict sense, and--in light of original sin--we have all justly merited condemnation. That he has seen fit to predestine any to heaven is already testimony of his infinite mercy. Check out the videos on freedom (30 December) and predestination (1 January) for more on these themes!

​@@ThomisticInstitute One major difficulty I have with all this is that, even though we have agency and are not "predestined" to anything (cue O Fortuna in the background), there is still the matter that God knew which of his rational creatures would reject him, dooming themselves to an *eternity* of relentless suffering, and still created them. One can argue that he loved them regardless of their own choice of evil, a very acceptable idea, and that somehow existence is still a good and better than non-existence. Thus their eternity in damnation is better than annihilation at death or never being created in the first place - a not so easily acceptable idea. This is particularly scandalous when we consider that hell will be the removal of nearly every single good except being. Even the lesser goods that the person worshipped in this life will be unavailable, even though their seeking those goods was a fulfillment, albeit very inadequate, of what they were created to do - love the good and seek it. They won't go on being vicious yet capable of enjoying passing pleasure. They will be in a relentless agony we cannot comprehend. Furthermore, one could say that, in a collective sense, the total "net value" of this "creation experiment" is positive and the outcome something good. The existence of hell is, in a mysterious way, good. Yet for the individuals who are damned this is debatable, to put it mildly, especially if we consider that a narrow path leads to salvation. And that narrow path is anything but a smooth walk in the park either. Anyone who is living a life of devotion sincerely will soon echo the words of Saint Theresa - "If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!". This is a monumental mystery and certainly a lifetime, or many lifetimes, of discussion cannot exhaust it. I get the strong impression that not many people worry so much about this particular question, but the ones of us who do are being invited to repeatedly make acts of trust in the goodness of the Lord. This is so completely opaque to us that I can see it as nothing but an invitation to radical abandonment to God. There is little else we can do about it. Now how to approach this in evangelization, with nonbelievers? Don't ask me!

@@kitschkat8678 That's an excellent meditation . . . goes to show that our attempts at "answering the question" draw us towards a contemplative gaze upon God and his providence. Christian doctrine is not a problem to be solved, so much as it is a mystery to be encountered.

@@ThomisticInstitute ooooo... That's deep. I'm going to use that in my confirmation classes.

Our pleasure!

gjhkiuhshf

That's gonna be a yikes from me dawg

Cheers!

When we say that God knows all things in knowing himself, we mean that God's knowledge of a thing is antecedent to the thing itself and creative thereof. Whereas our knowing presumes the existence of the thing, God's knowing "goes before" the existence of the thing. So, God knows all the ways in which creation can participate his nature and to some of those ideas, he conjoins his will. These things are just what we mean by creation. So, God's knowledge is a creative (not a reactive or responsive knowledge). A pithy way of summing it up is to say that creation does not add anything to God. God + creation is not greater than God. So too, God loves all things in loving himself. Since God exhausts all that there is of being, created things don't add to God something from without. While they have independent existence, God loves them into being in loving himself. And, insofar as we appropriate knowledge to the Son and love to the Holy Spirit, we can say that God knows all things in the Son and loves all things in the Holy Spirit.

@@ThomisticInstitute thank you so much! We'll need an eternity to dive in the mystery. Cheers!

@@fojedaquintana I hear you...And with God's grace and mercy we will have that eternity.

In a sense yes, because were there no truth of being to a thing, then we'd have no epistemic access to it. In a sense no, because a thing needn't be wholly itself in order for us to know it in some sense. As concerns a judgment that something is a sin, there is still some being upon which the judgment is operative. So, a sin being a thought, word, or deed contrary to the eternal law . . . there is still a thought, word, or deed that has some existential weight. Also, if we describe sin as a disorder in loves, here we know the true order, and the apprehended order, and then we make a judgment comparing the two. Thus, truth of human judgment is still premised upon truth of being of some sort.

@@ThomisticInstitute Thank you very much for your kind and insightful reply. God bless you all!

@@barbaraosimani6285 Cheers!

Before something[ exist it does not exist. How can God know what does not exist? Isn't "knowing" something that does not exist false knowing?

@@wilroese God is immutable and exists outside of time and space, since He created them. For God to have never changed He must never learn anything so for Him to know all things at the end of time He must have known all things since the beginning. Even though He sees what you will choose to do before you choose to do it we trust with faith that the sole factor that determined that reality was your choice and your choice alone. If He saw all the ways it could have gone down then that is fine, but those would just be hypotheticals to Him

If I have a bread and I ate it. I still would "know" what will happen if I didn't or anyone eat it. Due to my knowledge of the bread's nature. I know for one that it will rot or decay if I didn't eat it and let it go to waste.

In God, there is no real distinction between his being and knowing. His being would have been the same as it is if he had not created the world. So, his knowing would have been the same as it is if he had not created the world. This strikes us as puzzling, because we think of knowing as dependent on the thing known and determined by it. And indeed that is the case with knowing in a human mode (or creaturely mode). But God does not know in a human mode (or creaturely mode). God knows all things in one act of knowing himself. And God would have comprehended himself equally whether he created or not.

@@ThomisticInstitute Wow. Can you explain the difference between knowing and comprehending?

Through reason.