(Prov. XV. 3.) " Hell and destruction are before the Lord ; how much more then the hearts of the children of men ? " (Prov. xv. 11.) " Great is our Lord and of great power : his understanding is infinite.'* (Ps. cxlvH. 5.) " O house of Israel, .... I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them." (Ezek. xi. 5.) " Known unto God are all his works from the be- ginning of the world." (Acts. xv. 18.) " The very hairs of your head are all numbered." (Matt. x. 30.)
This knowledge of God is not only all-comprehending, but it is intuitive and immutable. He knows all things as they are, being as being, phenomena as phenomena, the possible as possible, the actuaLasactual, the necessary as necessary, the free as free, the past as past, the present as present, the future as future. Although all things are" ever present in his view, yet He sees them as suc- ,c^ssiye i^ijime. The vast procession of events, thoughts, feelings, and acts, stands open to his view.
This infinite knowledge of God is not only clearly and constantly asserted in Scripture, but is also obviously included in the idea of an absolutely perfect being. Such a being cannot be ignorant of anything ; his knowledge can neither be increased nor diminished. The omniscience of God follows also from his omnipresence. As God fills heaven and earth, all things are transacted in his presence. He knows our thoughts far better than they are known to our- selves. This plenitude of divine knowledge is taken for gi'anted in all acts of worship. We pray to a God who, we belieA^e, knows our state and wants, who hears what we say, and who is able to meet all our necessities. Unless God were thus omniscient. He could not judge the world in righteousness. Faith in this attri- bute in its integrity is, therefore, essential even to natural religion.
B. The Objects of Divine Knowledge.
Various distinctions are made by theologians as to the objects of the divine knowledge.
1. God is said to know Himself and all things out of Himself. This is the foundation of the distinction between the scientia neces- saria and the scientia libera. God knows Himself by the necessity of his nature ; but as everything out of Himself depends for its existence or occurrence upon his will, his knowledge of each thing as an actual occurrence is suspended on his will, and in that sense is free. Creation not being necessary, it depended on the will of God whether the universe as an object of knowledge should exist or not. This distinction is not of much importance. And it is
398 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine ATTRiBUTKg
liable to the objection that it makes the knowledge of God depend- ent. Being the cause of all things, God knows everything by knowing Himself; all things possible, by the knowledge of hi? power, and all things actual, by the knowledge of his own purposes. 2. This distinction between the possible and actual, is the foun- dation of the distinction between the knowledge of simple intelli- gence and the knowledge of vision. The former is founded on God's power, and the latter upon his will. This only means that, in virtue of his omniscient intelligence. He knows whatever infinite power can effect ; and that from the consciousness of his own pur- poses, He knows what He has determined to effect or to permit to occur. This is a distinction which the modern philosophical theo- logians ignore. Nothing, according to their philosophy is possible, but the actual. All that can be, either is, or is to be. This follows from the idea of God as mere cause. He produces all that can be ; and there is in Him no causality for what does not exist.
The Actual and the Passible. It seems to be an inconsistency in those orthodox theologians •who deny the distinction in God between knowledge and power, to admit, as they all do, the distinction between the actual and possible. For if God creates by thinking or knowing, if in Him^ as they say, intelligere etfacere idem esf, then all He knows must be, and must be as soon as He knows or thinks it, L e., from eter- nity. If, however, we retain the Scriptural idea of God as a spirit, who can do more than He does; if we ascribe to Him what we know to be a perfection in ourselves, namel>% that our power exceeds our acts, that a fliculty and the exercise of that faculty are not identical, then we can understand how God can know the pos- sible as well as the actual. God is not limited to the universe, which of necessity is finite. God has not exhausted Himself in determin- ing to cause the present order of things to be.
C. Scientia 3Iedia. Intermediate between things possible and actual, some theolo- gians assume a third class of events, namely, the conditionally fu- ture. They do not actually occur, but they would occur provided somethinor else should occur. Had Christ come a tliousand years sooner than the date of his actual advent, the whole history of the world would have been different. This is a popular mode of re- garding the concatenation of events. It is constantly said, that if Cromwell had been permitted to leave England ; or, if Napoleon