Univocity and God's Knowledge

The reason we cannot predicate knowledge of God and humans univocally is because anything positive of God can be predicated only analogically, whereas everything else known about God is via negation. Thus, we are saying that God has *something like* knowledge when we predicate knowledge of Him: *something like* what we understand knowledge to be from our experience of it in humans and brute animals. We must acknowledge that God’s knowledge is radically transcendent and entirely of a different mode than any created being, including angels. So, whatever similarity we posit concerning knowledge in creatures and God we must recognize an infinite dissimilarity along with it. Let us explore this issue more deeply.

Knowledge in us occurs when there is similitude between knower and thing known – ultimately, a sharing of form. We know something when we possess its form intentionally. For example, I know a horse when I possess the form of horse. However, since I do not become a horse when knowing a horse, I do not possess that form materially (otherwise I would just become a horse); rather, I must possess that form immaterially, which is just to say, in an intellectual way. This is the general understanding of how knowledge works (many details omitted) for Aristotelians and Thomists. (Good intro Thomistic epistemology book here.)

Next, we must understand how we arrive at the point of predicating knowledge of God, which — for Thomists, anyway — comes through causal reasoning. We begin, of course, by establishing the existence of God as primary cause. God is that in which there is no real distinction between essence and existence: whose essence just is his existence. There can only be one such being, since nothing stands outside of existence to determine it; thus, God is not susceptible to individuation, otherwise we are saying God is susceptible to being caused in some way, which is impossible for ipsum esse subsistens. Now, if a being whose essence just is its existence is “uniquely unique” then everything else must be a being whose essence is really distinct form existence – in which case, it is a contingent being requiring a cause. But if there can only be one being that exists in virtue of itself (God), then everything else must exist only and ultimately because God imparts existence to it.

At this point, another principle must be introduced: that nothing in the effect can be greater than what is found in its total cause. To deny this principle is to suggest something can come from nothing, which is absurd. However, it must be noted that what is in the effect can be contained in its total cause either formally, virtually, or eminently. This is to simply to acknowledge that I need not be a chair (be the form of chair, say) to produce a chair: I only need to have a chair-producing power, which I possess in virtue of my rational animality and the material resources at my disposal.

Now, if everything in the effect must (in some way) be in its total cause, we can say this. The world is suffused with essences or determinate patterns of being. There is a pattern of existence that is man, and a pattern of existence that is horse, and a pattern of existence that is electron, and so on. These patterns of existence – essences, more traditionally – and undeniably real and necessary for our understanding of reality. But these too cannot come from nothing; ultimately, such essences must trace back to that fundamental first cause, which is God. How, then?

Of course these essences cannot be contained in God in a material way, since God is immaterial in virtue of being purely actual; plus, for God to contain the form of cat materially, would just be for God to be a cat, which is absurd. As much as people may love cats, very few every suggest that God is one of them. There is only one other option: God must contain these forms in an immaterial way – that is, in a way like intellect contains form. This allows for the inference that God has intellect and knowledge. However, since God is utterly simple, God does not contain these forms as a plurality, nor is it right to say God has intellect or knowledge; instead, God IS his intellect just as God IS his knowledge just as God IS his divine idea (singular). And in God’s act and object of understanding (also identical) God understands everything about everything. Clearly, this is not how humans know, so we are talking about a mode of knowledge that radically transcends ours. Our knowledge is participated and fallible and discursive. Not Gods, whose knowledge is perfect and infallible and identical with the divine nature as such.

Another dissimilarity is this. We acquire knowledge by being acted on by the world – most of the time, anyway. We know things by going out and observing and running experiments and doing philosophy and whatnot. Not so for God. God knows things through the divine nature, and God knows everything about the universe, not because God goes out and “scans” the universe, but because God creates the universe. Thus, God’s knowledge is executive. God doesn’t know things because they exist; things exist BECAUSE God knows them.