Art and Culture God's Knowledge of Everything


by ANDREW SCHWARTZ - Date: 2007-09-10 - Word Count: 341 Share This!

In question 14 article nine of the book Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about the idea that God knows what he causes and he causes what he knows, and besides he wills it. He this article he starts forming a way out of his authorship of evil. Aquinas says that God knows what is not. In this he wants to say that God knowing what is knows what could have been. He states that future contingencies are known and willed by God. He says that God knew and willed that Aquinas was writing this book, and knew that it was his own free choice to do that, for Aquinas, as he writes himself, is the author of his actions.

Aquinas says that God wills people's actions be free, and since this is the will of God, everything happens according to his will. The author states that God's will is so efficient, that his will must happen. God wants our actions to be free, and so they are free. All this is connected with God's divine will. God's action and will are one and the same thing and it would contradict to God's nature to will us be free, and our actions be predestined by him. Additionally, God can not will a defined free act. Our actions are as they are, they are free, and God can not make any changes for it was out of his goodness that he wanted us to be free. As stated above, God knows and wills all contingencies and possibilities, and as a consequence he is aware of each possibility we have, and which one we will prefer. It may appear that in this God must be the creator of our actions, but we have been wanted to be free so that in an impossibility.

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Related Tags: possibilities, free choice, contingencies, goodness, gods will, authorship of evil

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