ARTICLE XIII

In the Thirteenth Article We Ask: DOES GOD'S KNOWLEDGE CHANGE?

Difficulties:

It seems that it does, for

1. Knowledge is an assimilation of the knower to the thing known. Now, God's knowledge is perfect. Hence, He will be perfectly assimilated to the things He knows. However, the things God knows change. Therefore, His knowledge changes.

2. Any knowledge which is open to error can change. Now, God's knowledge is open to error since it is about contingent things, which are able not to be. Should they not be, then His knowledge is erroneous and, consequently, can change.

3. Our knowledge, which is had by receiving from things, follows the mode of the knower. Therefore, God's knowledge, which takes place by reason of the fact that He confers something upon things, follows the mode of the things known. But things which God knows can change. Therefore, His knowledge can change.

4. When one of two terms in a relation is taken away, the remaining one is also taken away. Hence, when one term changes, the other also changes. Now, what God knows changes. Hence, His knowledge of things changes.

5. Any knowledge that can be increased or diminished is subject to change. But God's knowledge can be increased or diminished. Therefore.--Proof of the minor is as follows: If a knower at times knows more things, at other times fewer, his knowledge changes. Therefore, a knower who can know more or fewer things than he now knows possesses knowledge subject to change. Now, God can know more than He knows: He knows that there are, or were, or will be things made by Him; however, He could make more which He is never going to make. Consequently, He could know more things than He does. Similarly, He can know fewer than He does, since He could do away with a part of what He is going to make. Therefore, His knowledge can be increased and diminished.

6. The answer was given that even though more or fewer things could fall under God's knowledge, His knowledge itself could not change.--On the contrary, just as the possibles are subject to divine power, so are knowable things subject to divine knowledge. Now, if God could make more than He could previously, His power would be increased; and it would be diminished if He could make fewer. For the same reason, if He could know more than He knew previously, His knowledge would be increased.

7. At one time God knew that Christ would be born. Now, however, He does not know that Christ will be born but that He has been born. Therefore, God knows something which He previously did not know, and He has known something which now He does not know. Hence, His knowledge is changed.

8. A manner of knowing, as well as an object of knowledge, is required for knowledge. Now, if the manner in which God knows were changed, His knowledge would be changed. For the same reason, therefore, when the objects of God's knowledge change, His knowledge will be changed.

9. There is said to be a knowledge of approval in God by which He knows only good people. However, God could approve those whom He has not approved. Hence, He could know what He previously did not know; so, it seems that His knowledge is changeable.

10. Just as God's knowledge is God Himself, so God's power is God Himself. But we say that by the power of God things are brought into being through a change. For the same reason, therefore, things are known by God's knowledge through a change, without any detriment to the divine perfection.

11. Any knowledge changes if it goes from one thing to another. But God's knowledge is of this kind because He knows things through His essence. Hence, His knowledge changes.

To the Contrary:

1'. The Epistle of St. James (1:17) says of God: "With Whom there is no change . . . ."

2'. Whatever is moved is reduced to the first unmovable being. But the first cause of all things that change is God's knowledge, just as art is the cause of products. Hence, God's knowledge cannot change.

3'. As is said in The Soul, motion is the act of an imperfect thing. But in divine knowledge there is no imperfection. Hence, it cannot change.

REPLY:

Since knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known, it can vary in two ways: first, on the part of the knower; second, on the part of the thing known. On the part of the knower, we can consider three things: his knowledge, his act, and the manner of his act. According to these three, changes can take place in knowledge on the part of the knower.

On the part of knowledge itself, a change takes place when knowledge which was not had previously is newly acquired or when knowledge of what was known previously is lost. Accordingly, we can speak of a generation or corruption, or of an increase or decrease, in knowledge. Such a change, however, cannot take place in God's knowledge, since, as we have shown, its object is not only beings but also non-beings, and there cannot be anything beyond being and non-being because between affirmation and negation there is no middle ground.

It is true that in a certain respect the objects of God's knowledge are only things existing in the present, past, or future, namely, in so far as His knowledge is ordained to the work which His will carries out. However, even if He would know something by this kind of knowledge that He did not know previously, there would be no change in His knowledge, because on its part it pertains equally to beings and non-beings. If there were any change in God, it would be in His will, which would be determining His knowledge to something to which it had not previously determined it.

This, however, could not cause any change in His will, either; for to produce its act freely belongs to the nature of the will, because, of its very nature, the will is equally able to go out to either of two opposites. For example, it can will or not will to make or not to make a thing. However, the will cannot make itself simultaneously will and not will; nor can the divine will, which is immutable, first wish something and later not wish the same thing at the same time, because then God's will would be circumscribed by time and would not be entirely simultaneous. If we are speaking of absolute necessity, therefore, it is not necessary for Him to wish what He wishes. Therefore, absolutely speaking, it is possible for Him not to wish it. On the other hand, if we are speaking of the necessity following a supposition, then it is necessary that He wish it if He wishes or has wished it. On this supposition, then, namely, if He wishes or has wished, it is not possible for Him not to wish.

Now, since a change requires two terms, it always views the final term in its relation to the first. Consequently, only this would follow, that it would be possible for His will to change if it were possible for Him not to wish what He wishes, if He had previously wished. It is clear, therefore, that no change is affirmed of His knowledge or will by the fact that more or fewer things could be known by God through this kind of knowledge; for to say that He is able to know more means simply that He can by His will determine His knowledge to make more things.

On the part of the act, there are three ways a change takes place in knowledge. The first occurs when knowledge actually considers what it previously did not consider. For example, we say that a person changes who passes from habit to act. Now, this kind of change cannot be found in God's knowledge, because He does not know habitually but only actually, since in Him there is no potentiality such as there is in a habit. Change is found in a second way in the act of knowing when it considers now one thing, now another. But neither can this be found in God's knowledge, since He sees all through the one species of His essence, and consequently looks upon all things in the same intuition. A third kind of change occurs when, in his contemplation, a person passes from one thing to another. But this, too, cannot be found in God, for discursive reasoning is a passage between two members, and there is no discursive reasoning in knowledge that sees two things if it sees both in one intuition. This is what actually takes place in the divine knowledge, since God sees all things by one intuition.

From the point of view of the manner of knowing, there can also be changes in knowledge by reason of the fact that one can now know something more clearly and perfectly than he did before. This can arise from two sources. First, it can arise from a difference in the medium by which the cognition takes place. For example, one may first know something through a probable middle term, and later through a middle term that is necessary. This, however, cannot take place in God because His essence, which for Him is the medium of knowing, never changes. Secondly, it can come from the intellectual power which causes a man of greater acumen to know something more penetratingly, even through the same medium, than another man does. This, too, however, cannot take place in God, since the power by which He knows is His own essence, and this does not change. Hence, it remains that God's knowledge does not change in any way whatsoever from the point of view of the knower.

But from the point of view of the thing known, knowledge can also change in its truth and falsity, because, if a thing is changed while the judgment of it remains the same, the judgment which was previously true is now false. This, however, cannot take place in God either, since the intuition of God's cognition is directed to a thing as it is in its presentness, that is, in so far as it has already received this rather than that determination; and in this respect it can change no more. Even if that thing should receive another state, that state will again fall under the divine vision in the same way; hence, God's knowledge changes in no way whatsoever.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. The assimilation of the knower to the thing known does not take place through a conformity of nature but through a representation. So, it is not necessary for the knowledge of changing things to change.

2. Although the thing known by God may be other than it is if considered in itself, it falls under God's cognition inasmuch as it cannot be other than it is, as we have already shown.

3. All knowledge, whether had by receiving from things or by an impression upon the things themselves, takes place according to the manner of the knower, since both take place in so far as a likeness of the thing known is in the knower. Moreover, what exists in someone is in him according to the manner of him in whom it exists.

4. That to which God's knowledge is related is changeless in so far as it falls under His knowledge. Therefore, His knowledge does not change, either, with respect to its truth, which could be changed by a change of the afore-mentioned relation.

5. When it is said, "God can know what He does not know," one can understand this in two ways--even if we are speaking of His knowledge of vision. First, we can understand it in its composite sense, that is, on the supposition that God has not known what He is said to be able to know. In this sense it is false; for the following two things cannot be true simultaneously, namely, that God should have been ignorant of something, and later know that thing. The proposition can also be taken in a divided sense. In this sense, no supposition or condition of His power is included, and in this sense it is true, as is clear from our discussion.*

Although it may, in some sense, be conceded that God can know what He did not know previously, we cannot concede in any sense that He can know more than He knows; for, since the word more implies a comparison to what has previously existed, it is always understood in a composite sense. For the same reason, we can in no way concede that God's knowledge can be increased or diminished.

6. We concede the sixth argument.

7. As we said previously, God knows propositions without joining and separating. Just as God knows many different things in the same manner, both when they exist and when they do not, so does He know in the same manner different propositions, both when they are true and when they are false, because He knows each to be true at the time when it is true. For example, He knows this proposition, "Socrates is running," to be true when it is true; similarly, this proposition, "Socrates will run," and so forth. Hence, although it is not true now that Socrates is running but that he has run, nevertheless, God knows each because He simultaneously intuits each time when each proposition is true. If He knew a proposition by forming it in Himself, however, then He would know a proposition only when it is true, as happens in us. Then His knowledge would change.

8. The manner of knowing is in the knower himself. The thing known, however, is not in the knower according to its own nature. Therefore, a variation in the manner of knowing would make knowledge vary, but changes in the things known would not.

9. The answer to this is already clear.

10. This act of power terminates outside the agent in the thing as it is in its own nature--in which the thing has a changeable act of being. So, if we consider the thing produced, we must concede that it is given its act of existence by means of a change. But knowledge concerns things in so far as they are, in some way, in the knower. So, since the knower is unchanging, He knows things in an unchanging manner.

11. Although God knows other things through His essence, He does not pass from one thing to another; for in the same intuition He knows both His essence and other things.