§ 55. By the divine Omniscience is to be understood the absolute spirituality of the divine Omnipotence.
- This explanation is quite in keeping with the manner in which we arrived at this conception above.1 And yet even here it is to be premised that everywhere it is chiefly intended much more to bring out the truth that the divine causality should be thought of as absolutely living than that a similarity should be definitely established between God and that which we designate as spirit in the existence presented to us. The former is essential if the feeling of absolute dependence, or piety, is to be true and real; for a lifeless and blind necessity would not really be something with which we could stand in relation; and such a necessity, conceived as equal to the whole of finite causality yet contrasted with it, would really mean positing the latter alone, and thus declaring an absolute dependence unreal, because as self-caused beings we are not absolutely dependent on finite causality. But to define the similarity between God and the spiritual in a finite sense is certainly a problem only to be solved by endless approximation; for owing to the intermixture of receptivity and passivity in some degree to be found (even if unrecognized) in every available term, we inevitably co-posit something which must then be got rid of again by the use of some other term. If then here (where we are considering the feeling of absolute dependence only in its essence, and so have to do with the divine causality also only in its essence), Spirituality be denoted by the function of knowing, our first rule must be to exclude from the spirituality of the Divine Essence everything which necessarily contains in itself receptivity or passivity. Therefore just as the divine will must not be thought of as a faculty of desire, so the divine omniscience must not be considered as a perceiving or experiencing, a thinking together or a viewing together. Now since we are acquainted with no other kind of knowledge than that in which spontaneity and receptivity pervade each other, only in different degrees, we distinguish, according as one of the two predominates, between the knowledge which is chiefly constructed from within and that which is chiefly derived from without; and still more, since the greater part of our thinking presupposes existence as its object, and is related only slightly to our productive activity, we distinguish between the purposive activity of thought upon which production follows, and the observing activity which relates to something already present. But this last distinction is completely inapplicable to God, for there are no objects of observation for Him other than those which exist through His will, but the divine knowledge is exclusively a knowledge of the willed and produced, not a knowledge for which an object could be given from any other source.2 Indeed, since there is for Him no succession, it can never be said that in Him the purposive thought-activity precedes the will-activity.3 In consequence of the above, there can be in God no distinction between resolving and the execution of the resolve (where in our case purposive ideas remain wholly or in part ideal), since otherwise the divine omnipotence would not perfectly express itself in the finite.4 Just as little can any activities more analogous with the corporeal or any kind of matter5 be added to the divine thinking, so as to make its object real. Hence the divine thinking is the same as the divine will, and omnipotence and omniscience are one and the same. And since in God there is no duality between thought and word (nay, even the term ‘word’ can only mean the activity of the thought outwards), this precisely is the point expressed in all formulæ which exhibit the divine Word as creating and preserving; and it is quite correct to say, as has been said in multifarious ways, that everything exists by reason of God’s speaking or thinking it.6
Since then this divine knowledge is recognized as the very productivity of God, the creative as well as the preservative, it follows at once that it is entirely the same divine knowledge which constitutes the divine omniscience and the divine wisdom.7 If the two are separated, something out of our existence is transferred to God, which even if we make it infinite can still be for Him only an imperfection. Since it is the least part in the existence which surrounds us that proceeds from our own activity, a knowledge of things independent of our influence upon them certainly is for us a good and a perfection. But if in thought we shut off the sphere of our formative production by itself, for all that it is so limited, then it will always indicate an imperfection if the later cognition by the artist of the whole of his works contains something besides what was in his purposive idea, whether it be that the original image or the formative activity was imperfect, or that the sphere was not so completely shut off but that some foreign influence could have told upon his works. But now the world as the whole content of the divine formation and production is so self-enclosed that there is nothing external which could gain an influence upon it. Thus every distinction in content between wisdom and omniscience must presuppose an imperfection in God. But even as to form, a distinction between the two can hardly be granted; for neither can the one have a more inner and the other a more outward origin, nor can the one be more and the other less bound up with the divine will. If omniscience is simply the absolute livingness of the divine will, this must be just as true of the divine wisdom, if wisdom be a comprehensive name for the divine purposes.