How God looks at things

[For discussions dealing with issues raised here, see The Finite and the Infinite, Chapter 8, Section 2, and the following several sections.]

But this brings up how we move from the human way of looking at things (however legitimate it might be) to the divine way, the Christian way, of looking at things.

God's knowledge of things is not and cannot be by way of making comparisons and generalizing, because this way of knowing is based on the knower's being affected by the object, while God's knowledge is creative: God's knowing a thing to be a certain way causes it to be as He knows it.

It follows from this that God has no ideals: God knows a thing to be as it actually exists. Remember, an ideal is a way something "ought" to be (whether it is that way or not). But as an ideal and the way something "ought" to be, the idea is the "real truth" about the thing. Thus, when we consider ourselves as the saints we "ought" to be (the sinless selves we could have been), we take this ideal to be our "real" self and our actual reality as falling short of what we "truly are."

But if God considered the saint I could be as my "real" self, then I would be that saint. Could God have a notion of the "real" George Blair that is unreal? Or if he thought that I "ought" to be that saint, then (since his knowledge is creative and there is nothing to prevent him from doing what he knows "ought" to be done), then I would be that saint.

[On this particular point, see also Modes of the Finite, 1.5.9.]

But doesn't he have that idea, and can't create the saint without making me not free?

No, this won't work. It is a device by which we persist in trying to impose on God our way of thinking; but it contradicts God. If God thought of the saint I could have been as what I "ought" to be, and if I am not that saint, then I have power over God. I can affect him by making his creature something that he would prefer wasn't made, and thwarting him somehow.

That is, either "ought" is meaningless here, or if God thinks I "ought" to be that saint, then God's idea of what I really, truly am is falsified by my perverse behavior, and I have affected God. But this is impossible; he is totally free and independent of me. There is no sense in which God would "prefer" me to be the saint I could have been if I had not sinned.

Hence, the notion of the "permissive will of God," that God allows bad things to happen, but doesn't really want them to happen, contradicts God's nature, and is an attempt to make God think human thoughts, knowing good and evil. It is the succumbing to the serpent's temptation.