John Duns Scotus and Divine Atemporal Knowledge
My last piece on Bl. John Duns Scotus went well. He presented us a way of discussing the divine that was univocal (not analogical) in nature, but didn’t take away from either simplicity or aseity. So, how is it that God has what we would call knowledge -or, more accurately, how is it that knowledge is co-extensive with being, and remains at its most intense with God (who is being itself) - and not fall for the following objections.
The first objection is one that I heard formulated so often as the following.
P1 — A thought is a temporal process
P2- God is an atemporal agent
C1- There are no thoughts in God
P3 — Knowledge is that which requires thought
P4- God has no thoughts
C2 — God has no knowledge
Keep in mind, this isn’t where the difficulties end. Consider that God intends to create the world before it even exists, how is it that God can even have a thought before there is even a thing in creation like time? God would have to go from a state where he is the only thing in existence, to the point where he and the universe are co-existent. Further, how would God at each point in creation choose to act? God chooses to send his son, create a covenant with Israel and speak to Adam. Lastly, how does a timeless God enter creation in order to save it?
Well, let’s look to John and see how he answers the questions raised. To review, John holds that there are transcendental properties coextensive to being, and hence they’re predictable to all beings (without analogy). Generally, they fall into three of their own categories that do not break us into Aristotle 10 categories’ of existence. We discussed modal and formal distinctions already, but to get those we need to look at two types of coextensive traits that belong to all in the chain of being.
The first are disjunctive, these are categories that we admit in terms of something necessarily belonging into prior categories. As Michael Sullivan explains,
Every being must belong to one or the other member, and both are transcendental. Examples are the disjuncts finite-infinite, potential-actual, possible-necessary, posterior-prior, dependent-independent, etc. So: not everything is infinite, since only God is infinite, and not everything is finite, since God is not finite, but everything is either finite or infinite, and so falls within the disjunct finite-infinite. Belonging to “finite-infinite” does not indicate belonging to a determinate genus; but neither does belonging to either member: “finite” does not indicate belonging to a given genus, since being finite applies to member of every genus [1]
The other kinds are what can be called “pure perfections”. Sullivan explains them rather well, and they reflect a very Anselmian comprehension (but do differ a tad),
The pure perfections. If I recall correctly St Anselm defines the pure perfections as whatever it is better to have than not to have, but Scotus’ notion of a pure perfection as whatever does not imply limitation is probably better. So, quantity, say, or materiality, or location, are all out, because each of these imply being finite. But (to take an example that Scotus uses) wisdom is a pure perfection and so a transcendental. It can be either finite or infinite. As finite, say in Socrates, wisdom is an accidental quality inhering in the soul and so belongs to a genus, but wisdom is capable of being infinite, in which case it is not a quality, not an accident, and is really identical with God. (It should be obvious how this way of looking at things does some of the same job that analogy does in Aquinas.) Similarly for life, which in finite things is an operation, but when infinite is really identical with God. Finite wisdom and finite love are really distinct and are separable in man, but not in God, and so forth.
The pure perfections are transcendentals that, unlike the others, do not belong to every being or to being as such, since some things do not have certain pure perfections: ants are not wise and do not love. But they still count as transcendental because they do not belong to a genus and can exist in either a finite way or in an infinite way, or even simply in an infinite way: there may be pure perfections which only exist in God and in no creature. Unlike for Aquinas, therefore, for Scotus a transcendental is not necessarily coextensive with being, does not automatically follow upon the notion of being, and is not merely notionally distinct from being. Different properties which in themselves are transcendental may either a) not exist in a given being, b) exist as really distinct in a given being, or c) exist as really identical but formally distinct (as wisdom and love do in God). Similarly, for the disjunctive transcendentals, for each disjunct the greater or infinite member must exist but the lesser or finite member need not, while the existence of the lesser or finite member implies the existence of the greater [2].
So, God has wisdom, although he is timeless. Yet how is this possible? To return to the argument, one can very well accept the argument without there really being any repercussion to the divine attributes. So what if God doesn’t think, it’s not like he needs to think in order to know. A thought denotes one doesn’t have the truth at hand, that you have to think and deliberate that X is the answer to Y over Z is an imperfection. It is a limiting process as John would say (or if you prefer Anselm, something worse to have then not).
Truth is coextensive to being, as such God is the fullness of truth. I grant that this sounds odd to the modern reader, how can “correspondence to reality” be “coextensive to being”? Well, what John means first is that within all being is ‘intelligibility’, he says
I say that all the intelligibles have an intelligible being in virtue of the act of the divine intellect. In these intelligibles all the truths that can be affirmed about them are visible so that the intellect knowing these intelligibles and in virtue thereof under-standing the necessary truths about them, sees these truths in them as in an object [3]
When we grasp something’s intelligibility, we grasp at its truth. Since the intelligibility of all things preexist in God, the source of all truth exists in God as well. Since God knows himself perfectly and without any intermediary thinking process (much like we don’t necessarily need to think to grasp our existence, but just intuit it).
This is how God knows himself in eternity as creator and redeemer of creation. God doesn’t think to create before time and space because a “before” time is like a ‘north’ of the north pole. God creates metaphysically prior to space and time (much like how a materialist would say that atoms sustain our thinking processes). God sustains all time and space in existence (including the points of time and space where God causes miracles and takes up a second nature in the person of Jesus Christ). He does it freely because he isn’t restricted by anything causing him to act either more fundamental to his being, or external to it.
This isn’t libertarian free will, but it is free will in the most maximal of senses. Why does God choose this creation as opposed to others? This is a counter-factual question that would seem to demand an answer, lest one comes to logical necessity.
Counter factual questions claim some kind of truth-maker for why event A happened over event B. However, counter factuals need not be anything more than counter possibilities. Possible worlds God could have created are constructions creatures create from real things in the world, which all preexist in the mind of God as well. Since they entail no contradiction, they are a possibility. Necessity need not follow, nor does God’s capacity to do otherwise.
So the questions are answered as such,
- God creates and sustains space-time from eternity, hence does not create temporally prior to it.
- God is far greater for knowing and creating without thinking.
- Truth itself preexists in God, and manifests in the intelligibility of all contingent being.
- God creates freely because there is nothing constraining his creative power internal or external to him.
- Logical necessity does not follow from counter factuals because a truth maker isn’t necessary for explanation.
Tune in next time for a new post.
End Notes
[1] Michael Sullivan, Transcendentals, http://lyfaber.blogspot.ca/2011/03/trancendentals.html
[2] Ibid
[3] John Duns Scotus, On Divine Illumination, 2 [http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/blackwell-proofs/MP_C13.pdf]
