43. The Nature of God's Knowledge
It is generally accepted that God does not "learn" - that is, He does not become aware about things He didn't know previously. [III, 20] In this, He is unlike humans, whose knowledge constantly changes as we are updated with new information. God, on the other hand, knows all, including events that have not yet occurred. For example, He knows that a certain person does not yet exist, but that he will be born at such-and-such time, will live for a particular duration, and will then cease to exist. Unlike us, when this person is born, God doesn't learn anything He didn't know before. Rather, an event transpired as God knew it would. (While God is unlike us in that He knows things that do not yet exist, He is like us in that He does not "know" things that will never exist.)
Other schools of thought erred by attributing to God limitations similar to those of human beings. God's knowledge, however, is so completely unlike ours that it's foolish for us to think that we could use our minds to grasp His. We are simply incapable of understanding things the way He does. If anything, the word "knowledge" should really be understood as a pair of homonyms, i.e., two different words that happen to sound alike. One of these refers to the kind of insight and understanding possessed by mankind and the other refers to the unlimited omniscience unique to God. Some people, however, are confused by the use of the same term and assume that God must possess a knowledge similar to ours, limitations and all.
The big quandary has to do with God's knowledge of things that from our perspective are possible. Since He knows what will occur, doesn't that make future events inevitabilities rather than possibilities? What does it say about our free will if God already knows for a fact who will keep His laws and who will disregard them?
The truth is that God's knowledge of future events does not affect their status as merely potential. We see throughout the Torah that future events are treated as possibilities. For example, we are commanded to place a fence on our rooftops because somebody might possibly fall (Deuteronomy 12). Similarly, a newlywed is excused from battle because he might possibly be killed (Deuteronomy 10). God's knowledge of these outcomes doesn't mean that they're not mere possibilities from our point of view.
God's "knowledge" is different from ours in many ways aside from His ability to know that which has not yet come into existence. Some of these include:
* God is able to comprehend the infinite; * While God is aware of changes that occur in transient objects, His knowledge does not change as ours would; * God's knowledge of outcomes does not determine them.
The real question is: what does God's "knowledge" have in common with ours? Or is the name "knowledge" the only thing they share? In truth, God's "knowledge" is as different from ours as Heaven is from Earth. That's what He told the prophet Isaiah: "My thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not My ways...as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We see that, just as we cannot truly comprehend God's nature, we are incapable of fully understanding His knowledge. We do know that He knows all, even before things happen, and that His foreknowledge does not dictate outcomes. Our inability to understand how this works is largely based on the human limitations of what we call "knowledge."