Is God All Knowing? (William Lane Craig)

bill I'm not sure whether I believe in God but if I do understanding God's characteristics to me is very important and one of the most interesting ones is that God is this word omission knowing everything right what what does it mean traditionally a person is omniscient if for any proposition P that person knows that P and does not believe not P in other words P mean any entity station any segment of fact right exactly so that an omniscient person would be someone who knows only and all truths okay now what is truth I mean what what kinds of truth there are truths that exist then truths that don't exist the possible truth well that's why I defined it in terms of propositions proposition is the information content of a declarative sentence take any declarative sentence it expresses a certain information content and the idea Tom nisshin's is that there is no fact of the matter there is no truth true information that this person does not know and he believes no false proposition so he would know only in all facts but there are more things in the world than just pure facts well that is a very interesting point I think you're right about that there there is another type of knowledge that we could call non propositional knowledge and this would be knowledge for example how to ride a bicycle or how a watermelon tastes or things of that sort but omniscience isn't typically defined how it feels to have an interview together that's right or for example how it feels to be a sinner and clearly God couldn't have that kind of you and I have never had that feeling oh well I certainly have wouldn't have that sort of feeling and therefore omniscience is defined in terms of propositional knowledge of knowing only in all truths but not necessarily having all non propositional knowledge in fact when you think about it it would be you'd be mentally ill if you had all non propositional knowledge because you would believe not only for example in my case that I am bill Craig but I would believe I am Napoleon or I am Ronald Reagan now with Ronald Reagan believes that he is Ronald Reagan or DiNapoli acacias Napoleon that's a cognitive perfection he is yeah but if I were to believe that that would be not a perfection that would be an imperfection right so to have all non propositional knowledge would actually be a negative so what you're telling me is to know everything is not to know everything right when we say to know everything what we mean we're is knowing all truths knowing all true propositions and believing no false proposition and therefore it avoids these problems like well God doesn't does God have to know what it's like to be Ronald Reagan well no only while the Reagan knows that and if God believed you were Ronald Reagan he would be mentally incompetent so that's not a perfection the idea of omniscience flows out of the perfection of God and st. Anselm defined God is the greatest conceivable being well the greatest conceivable being would know all truth and he would have appropriate non propositional knowledge he would know I am God I am omnipotent I am omniscient he wouldn't know I am Ronald Reagan that he'd been in for but he would know what Ronald Reagan felt being Ronald Reagan exactly and that's a propositional truth that Ronald Reagan knows that he is a movie star that he is the president that he has dealt with Gorbachev all of those propositions God would know he would know for example that it feels lousy to be a sinner that sinners feel guilty and condemned things of that sort he would know all those propositions but he wouldn't have that non propositional knowledge of believing that he is himself Ronald Reagan or that he is tasting a watermelon or something of that sort so it's a subtle idea I'm shocked quite honestly at how quickly you honor this normally most people would just say yeah he knows only and all truth and that's the end of it but you're right to be cognitively perfect you actually have to be more than omniscient you have to have selective yes that's right you have to have all propositional knowledge and then you have to have in addition to that the appropriate non propositional knowledge appropriate to yourself and and both of those elements will be part of God's cognitive perfection so God is actually greater than omniscient and I remember when I first realized this I was just stunned at the idea that God is even more cognitively perfect than being omniscient I thought omniscience was the the ultimate and it's not God is even more than omniscient and true omniscience in the sense of knowing everything would be total confusion yes that would be an imperfection not a perfection and therefore wouldn't be part of God's character is the most perfect man there are three kinds of characteristics of God's knowledge which I'd like you to help me understand natural knowledge free knowledge and what's called middle knowledge right this is the way in which the Catholic Jesuit theologian Luis Molina in the 16th century analyzed God's knowledge and what Molina said is that although everything God knows he knows it once nevertheless there is a kind of priority in God's knowledge a sort of logical order or an explanatory order and he said at the most fundamental level is God's Nach knowledge and this would be God's knowledge of everything that is necessarily true two plus two equals four if it is raining it is raining everything that has a shape has a size any necessary truths would belong to God essentially and he could not lack that knowledge this knowledge is natural to God and essential to God so Molina called it natural knowledge and this would include God's knowledge of all possibilities everything that could happen every possible world now the third that's logical he couldn't square a circle or things like that would be an impossibility so that's for anything possible that's logically possible yes and yes that's correct and then in the third area or tear of his knowledge it's what Molina called free knowledge and this would be God's knowledge of all true contingently true propositions that are dependent upon his will and this would include things like George Bush is the President of the United States in 2001 now tell me why that's contingent it's because it's not necessarily true it's not necessarily true and moreover it's dependent upon God's will which world to create the free knowledge depends upon God's decision to create one world rather than another and had he created a different world quite a different set of propositions would have been true that's why they're contingent exactly and so he would have had different knowledge so the free knowledge of God is not essential to God he could have known other propositions to be true that our in fact false had he created a different world so that's now we have the two boundaries we have yes natural knowledge which is everything that God knows necessarily yes and we have free knowledge which are the contingent truths because God chose a certain world to actualize to make real that's right that's right away the two boundaries now what's in the middle Melina's innovation was saying in between there those there is a third kind of knowledge and for lack of a better name you failed at middle Nala vanity follows in the middle and mill knowledge is God's knowledge of what every possible person that he could create would freely do in any circumstances God might place him so God would know for example that if I were to create Peter in a certain set of circumstances he would deny Christ three times now this kind of knowledge and he would know for example that if I am in a situation asking you a question I would ask you a silly question right and he would know that I would give a silly answer if I were in that set of circumstances now he might not want us to embarrass ourselves on television and therefore he would not create us in those circumstances knowing we would be more serious but the idea mental knowledge is that prior to his decision explanatorily prior to his decision to create a world he knows how any possible person he might create would freely choose in any circumstances he might place that person now this knowledge is is unique because it is not necessary to God that he know this it's dependent upon how we would freely choose and we have the ability in those circumstances to do otherwise so this knowledge isn't essential to God in the way that his natural knowledge is it's contingent in the way that his free knowledge is and yet it isn't dependent upon his decision which world to create because it is on the basis of his mental knowledge that God will then decide which persons to create and which persons to place them because explanatorily prior he would know his middle knowledge of all the different possible worlds he could create yes so he might choose a specific world to create based upon this middle knowledge aptly knowing the results of each a world exactly and so in that sense middle knowledge is like his natural knowledge in that it's explanatorily prior to his decree to create a certain world so in this explanatory hierarchy you have natural knowledge which is God's knowledge of everything that could be then you have his middle knowledge which is his knowledge of everything that would be then you have the divine decree to create a particular world and then posterior to that finally would be his free knowledge and this is his knowledge of everything that will be and that's Molina's theory of of middle knowledge of God's omniscience you agree with that yes I think it's when I first encountered this I was stunned at the theological power of this idea if you take this notion of middle knowledge and you apply it to various difficult theological conundrums you will find it will be a key that will unlock the mystery to many of these difficult theological problems that folks have wrestled with for centuries and I I dare to say that I think this theory of mental knowledge is the most powerful theological concept that I've ever encountered in my life

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Keywords: William, Lane, Craig, omniscience, God, knowledge, middle, molinism, natural, free, Luis, de, Molina, propositional, non-propositional, providence, free-will, sovereignty, choice, decision, future, paste, present, possible, worlds, Robert, Lawrence, Kuhn, Closer, to, Truth, Interview

Id: xfhIkiT3g8A

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 23 2011