Q&A: Does God Have Certainty in His Knowledge?
Does God Have Certainty in His Knowledge?
Question
To the illustrious Rabbi, pillar of philosophy and true beacon of enlightenment, greetings.
It is obvious, absolutely obvious, that a human being has certainty about nothing.
But I wondered to myself whether, on the logical level, certain knowledge is even possible for any being whatsoever. How does God Himself know with certainty any piece of knowledge He has, and is He in fact certain? After all, even if He has some awareness that makes Him understand that a certain item of knowledge is certain, that very awareness is itself not certain and could be mistaken and misleading, and therefore the knowledge too is not necessarily correct.
It seems to me that certain knowledge is not logically possible, and therefore even God Himself is not exempt from this.
Answer
I didn’t understand this piece of casuistry. You are assuming that His knowledge is like ours, and therefore there is always the question of whether the knowledge is certain (a reflection upon the knowledge). But perhaps, as Maimonides writes, He and His will are one, and He and His knowledge are one. And perhaps the meaning is that His knowledge is not something external to Him, so it makes no sense to wonder about its certainty.
But all this is just dialectical hair-splitting. I do not see any point in discussing whether God knows something with certainty. I have no idea what He knows or how He knows things.
Discussion on Answer
(I now saw in the email that it was sent twice):
And as for the question appearing twice, it was not intentional on my part; it was a technical malfunction on the Rabbi’s website, and I did not mean to do it.
You can also program people to think that it is possible to program people to think that their knowledge is certain because they and their knowledge are one. There is no end to this, and no point in dealing with it.
Well, obviously you can, and that is exactly why certainty can never exist, for anyone, whoever they may be. And indeed the loop has no end, and therefore the conclusion is final.
To y,
As Rabbi Michi mentioned here, in Maimonides’ thought, the reason your knowledge is not perfect when you know yourself is that the act of knowing is not identical with who you are and with your existence: you are one thing, and there is an additional act through which you know yourself. All the more so when it comes to knowing things outside yourself—not only is this a separate act, you are also supposed to grasp forms that are not identical with yourself. (True, the intellect is shaped by the identity of the forms at the moment they are grasped—but even then this is only a contingent identity and not something necessary in the knower.)
With the Holy One, by contrast, there is no distinction between His existence, His understanding, and the act by which He knows Himself. He does not need to “look” outside Himself in order to receive any information; rather, by knowing Himself He also knows the things that exist through Him at every moment. Since we are not dealing with distinct matters but with literally the very same thing—He, His knowledge, and His life are one—the concept of error is impossible.
God’s absolute identity with His knowledge and attributes follows from His being the Necessary Existent, and therefore so does His inability to err.
The question is less about God and more about the possibility that certain knowledge could exist at all for any being whatsoever.
You can program creatures to think that they and their knowledge are one, and that still would not be true. (Besides, I didn’t understand how the concept that He and His knowledge are one gives certainty, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument.)