16. God’s knowing is creative
16. GOD’S KNOWING IS CREATIVE
In one of Christ’s parables, God says to the damned, “Depart from Me, I never knew you” (Mt 7:23). How can God not know anything? Mustn’t He know everything real?
Augustine says, Not because they are, does God know all creatures spiritual and temporal, but because He knows them, therefore they are. The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art. . . (I,14,8).
In one sense the damned are real (and in that sense God knows them) but in another sense they are not real because He does not know them. He knows of them (“wissen”) but He does not personally know them (“kennen”). He says to them: “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers” (Mt 7:23).
He created the world by thinking it into being, by knowing it into existence. He is a creative artist, we are scientists; He thought up and designed and created what we discover. The world is our science but God’s art. (See #17.) He knows it into being, as Tolkien knew hobbits into being.
God’s knowing and willing are one: He wills us into being by knowing us into being. In us, knowing and willing are two, and we have to know something (real or imagined) before we will it.
We have earthly existence, earthly life (bios), because He knew us into being as bios when He said “Let there be this person.” And we have eternal existence because He knew us into eternal existence, eternal life (zoe), in Christ, in Whom He knew us (kennen) and prepared His Kingdom for us to inherit “from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).
But to the damned He will say “I never knew you; depart from me” (Mt 7:23). Thus Psalm 1 describes the difference between eternal happiness and unhappiness this way: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish” (Ps 1:6).
A consequence of this principle about divine knowing is the vanity of earthly glory:
Man’s happiness cannot consist in human fame or glory. For glory consists in being well known and praised . . . Now the thing known is related to human knowledge otherwise than to God’s knowledge: for human knowledge is caused by the things known, whereas God’s knowledge is the cause of the things known. Wherefore the perfection of human good, which is called happiness, cannot be caused by human knowledge, but rather human knowledge of another’s happiness proceeds from and in a fashion is caused by human happiness itself, imperfect or perfect. And therefore man’s happiness depends, as on its cause, on the glory which man has with God (I-II,2,3).
A significant part of our joy in Heaven will be to know that God knows us and is pleased by us, as a father knows, and pays attention to, and is pleased by, his tiny infant’s first clumsy walking steps, or first attempt to draw Daddy a picture birthday card. What a joy to be recognized by Daddy! That is why we will have, and now rightly desire, rewards in Heaven: not because our Heavenly Father is a cosmic Santa, a means to the rewards He gives, but because the rewards are Himself, His “well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25:21). What is that joy? It is that very recognition and approval.
It does not enter into us, we enter into it. It is not in us, we are in it, because we are in Him. We are real, and good, and joy-filled, because God says so. He makes it so by knowing it.
He spoke the universe into being, and He does the same to us, first in our creation and then in our redemption, and He does all three creative acts by His creative Word: (1) His Word “let there be” created the universe. (2) He only “made” our bodies out of some “stuff,” but He created our souls out of nothing, as He had created the “stuff” out of nothing by His Word. (3) And that same Word died to redeem us and remake us, to “create” new hearts (Ps 51:10). Making saints out of sinners was even greater than making something out of nothing. For nothingness put up no resistance to Him, as we did.
How much resistance? Look at a crucifix to see what He had to do to conquer that resistance.