2 DIVINE ATTRIBUTES II Omniscience Omniscience God knows

-2 DIVINE ATTRIBUTES II

Omniscience Omniscience: God knows everything. Divine knowledge therefore is certain and complete. Nothing escapes from his knowledge. There are those who establish a necessary relationship between divine knowledge and timelessness. For the defenders of Divine timelessness God’d knowledge is complete and unchanging. Even so, he knows all temporal facts in a non-temporal (timeless) and non-indexical way.

That God’s knowledge is eternal, complete and unchanging has generated some problems. Most significantly is the question: Given this account, can human beings be free? i. Granted that Divine foreknowledge is not compatible with human freedom some think that his knowledge is somewhat restricted in this respect. ii. Some, following Molina, argue that God has a middle knowledge. (God knows how x will behave under conditions C). iii. Another proposal is that, since a human action is contingent in itself, God’s eternal knowledge of that action does not make it necessary. God’s knowing that p is the case, does not make p necessarily the case. (Aquinas expresses this in terms of de dicto necessity and de re necessity).

Omnipotence refers to another aspect of Divine perfection. God is all-powerful. There are no limits to his almighty. Can God make a contradiction true, then? Many rightly think that God can do only what is logically possible. Because what is logically impossible does not refer to anything. Some believe that God can make even a contradiction true. But it remains difficult to understand such a claim as it generates some unintelligible and absurd consequences which cannot held even from a theistic viewpoint.

The Stone Paradox Can God create a stone which he cannot lift? This is known as «the stone paradox» which aims to demonstrate that there is at least one thing which God cannot do. Is this a geniune paradox? Some think that God can create such a stone but he does not. However, it has been argued that since the stone paradox involves an inconsistency it denotes something that is not logically possible. If so, it makes no harm to Divine omnipotence.