The Nature Of Our Knowledge Of God

THE NATURE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Before we begin our actual examination of the attributes of God, we must ask the question of what will be the nature of our knowledge of God. Theologians have suggested three possibilities:

Equivocal Knowledge|Univocal Knowledge|Analogical Knowledge|
Our understanding of truth is different from God's understanding|Our understanding of truth is the same as God's understanding|Our understanding of truth has common elements with God's understanding| Equivocal Knowledge. When you say that both a tree and a dog have a bark, you are predicating “barkness” to both of them, but you are not saying the same thing. The Equivocal theory of knowledge says that when we speak of God, we cannot comprehend Him as He truly is and that what we think of God is different from what He really is. This position was held by Cornelius Van Til, professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. He said that God and man are not on the same order of being — that they are ontologically different.

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While nearly all Christians would agree with such a premise, Van Til also maintained that God's knowledge is completely different from man's knowledge.

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||||| Univocal Knowledge. When I say that Big Ben in London is a timepiece and that a sun dial is also a timepiece, I am saying the same thing with regards to what they are. That does not mean that Big Ben is the same in all respects to a sun dial, but it says that they are the same with regard to their nature as a timepiece. The Univocal position says that we understand God in the same way that He understands Himself.

Francis Schaeffer coined the term “true truth” to describe the fact that we can truly know certain things. He sometimes signed his letters, “Yours truly, but not exhaustively.” In the same way, the Univocal position admits that our understanding is not as comprehensive as God's understanding. When a mechanic speaks of the workings of a care, his description will be more complete than my own. And yet, we can communicate because I at least have a rudimentary knowledge of what is a radiator and a fan belt and a piston. In the 1940's there arose a bitter debate within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church between Cornelius Van Til versus Gordon Clark. Van Til taught that even when God is thinking about a particular thing (like a rose), His thoughts about it were never identical to man's thoughts. God thinks the thoughts of a Creator while man thinks the thoughts of a creature. Clark insisted that there is not a discrepancy between God's knowledge versus man's knowledge at every point; otherwise, man could not be said to know anything. Clark would argue that the statement “2+2=4" has the same meaning for God that it has for man.

Van Til challenged Gordon Clark to name one truth that he could know in the same sense that God knows. Clark replied, “David slew Goliath.” He was saying that his knowledge of that event, although not exhaustive as God's knowledge, was nevertheless of the same nature as God's knowledge.

Analogical Knowledge. When I say that there is an analogy between an apple and an orange, I mean that, while there may be some differences, there are at least some univocal elements; some common elements. The problem with both the Equivocal and the Analogical views is that when I say that something is true, I do not mean that it is true in the same sense that God sees it to be true. If either the Equivocal or the Analogical view in epistemology were correct, then this entire debate would be fruitless because no matter what conclusion we came to, it would not be true in the same sense that God sees it to be true.

Jesus went against this kind of teaching when He said, You shall know the truth (John 8:32). If He does not mean that you could know the truth in the same sense that God knows the truth (and if we hold to the deity of Christ, then also in the same sense that He knew the truth), then what does He mean? Certainly He is not saying that you can only know something that is similar to the truth but that the truth itself cannot be known. The arguments of the Equivocalist and the Analogicalist also fail to recognize the foundational truth (no pun intended, but they would not even recognize it as such, for it would not be truth, but only a similarity to the truth) - they fail to recognize and apply the truth that man is created by God as a being in the image of God. Certainly if this means anything, then it means that there is a basis of communication between God and man. Animals do not communicate with God, but man does.

If we say that man's knowledge is not univocal with God's knowledge, then we are forced to conclude that there are certain things that God does not know, since He does not share in the knowledge that man possesses. On the other hand, we can affirm both the continuities and the discontinuities with our thoughts versus God's thoughts:

GOD'S THOUGHTS VERSUS OUR THOUGHTS|
Discontinuities|Continuities|
God's thoughts are uncreated and eternal|Divine and Human thoughts may have the same objects|
God's thoughts decree what comes to pass|It is possible for both God's thoughts and man's thoughts to be true|
God's thoughts are true because they are His|Our thoughts and God's thoughts are both validated by Him|
God does not need to have anything revealed to Him.|All things are potentially knowable?|
God has not chosen to reveal all things to us||
God's thoughts are all non-contradictory||