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De Moor IV:36: God's Knowledge of All Things Possible, and of All Universals and Particulars

Writer's picture: Dr. DildayDr. Dilday


2. In addition to Himself, God knows things merely and simply Possible through His Omnisufficiency, which things, nevertheless, He does not will to do. This necessarily flows from Self-Knowledge in God. For, if He knows Himself, He knows His Omnisufficiency: if He knows His Omnisufficiency, He knows all Possible things, as it is evident from those things that we set forth concerning the Root of Possibility in § 21. For, since all things depend upon God, nothing is able to be said to be a possibility to another Power besides God, which is not possible by a certain prior right to God as the first Cause, and has not been perfectly known to Him. Much less is God to be conceived of as able to do something that He does not understand: for, if we separate the executing Power in God from His Intellect as the directing Principium, we then most absurdly consider God as an irrational and brute agent. To the extend Impossible things ought also to be said to be known to God, the Most Illustrious VRIESIUS teaches in Exercitatione Rationali XVIII, § 10.



3. God knows all Creatures, both Particulars, that He sustains and governs; and concerning which one might with good reason infer, either either that there is no Providence of God; or, if there be a Providence concerning created things, there is no less a Pervidence[1] of those things before God. For, whatever depends upon God, depends upon Him in a rational manner; and so nothing is produced by Him, except with an intimate awareness of His own influx, now creating, now preserving, now governing.


And Universals, but which He knows, not by mental abstraction, but in all the particulars: for God according to His Independent and altogether Simple manner of knowing forms no abstract concepts of things, by abstracting Universals from Particulars; since Universals are not Real Entities, but only Entities of Reason, and it is impossible that they be drawn into act, since thus the same thing would be one and many at the same time.

[1] That is, a taking in with the mind.

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ABOUT US

Dr. Steven Dilday holds a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Campbell University, a Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia), and both a Master of Divinity and a  Ph.D. in Puritan History and Literature from Whitefield Theological Seminary.  He is also the translator of Matthew Poole's Synopsis of Biblical Interpreters and Bernardinus De Moor’s Didactico-Elenctic Theology.

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