Whether there are ideas in the mind of God?
Objection 1. To attribute mental properties to God may be to describe God as having human properties, and thus to engage in anthropomorphic thinking. If we describe God as having ideas, then we inevitably attribute human thinking and reasoning processes to the way in which God exists. Any conception we may have of thinking and reasoning processes inevitably reflects the way in which humans engage in thinking and reasoning. We don't really know what non-human thinking and reasoning may consist of or what form it may take.
Objection 2. To describe God as having a mind may to attribute some kind of executive agency to God's mind over the rest of his being. It may also lead to the question of wheher God is a mind or merely has various attributes or faculties of mind.
Objection 3. A plurality of ideas in the mind of God may be contradictory to God's unity, insofar as these ideas may be contradictory to one another or may include disparate conceptions of objects, persons, or things. The unity of divine ideas would therefore seem to include a plurality of conceptions of the world, and if God is the One, then he would also include the Many. The unity of divine ideas would have to include a plurality of constituents, which may be contradictory to God's not being constituted by various elements or parts.
Objection 4. If we suppose that God has a mind, then we may be imposing limits upon what God can will or cause to happen. If God's powers are truly beyond our understanding, then he may transcend all concepts of mind, and he may have supramental powers beyond any that we can imagine.
Reply to Objection 1. If God is a being with infinite powers, then we would assume that he is capable, to an infinite degree, of everything that human beings are capable of, such as thinking, reasoning, knowing, willing, and other acts of mind. We would also assume that he is capable of being addressed as a divine person, and that as such he has divine personhood. We would also assume that he is capable of entering into a personal relationship with us, and that his being for us is therefore to some extent relational in nature.
Augustine says in the Eighty-Three Different Questions (De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, 388-396) that the original or principal forms of things, which Plato called ideas, are eternal and unchangeable, and that they are contained in the divine intelligence or mind. These divine ideas do not come into being or pass away, but everything that does come into being or pass away is formed in accord with them. And everything that comes into being has its being by participating in them.1
Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae (1265-1273) that if the world was made by God acting through his understanding, then there had to have been ideas or forms in God's mind, in the likeness of which the world was made.2 Divine ideas are the exemplar causes of all things.3 The exemplarism of divine ideas consists in the fact that all things in the world God created are likenesses or examples of ideas that he had in his mind before he created them.
Aquinas also says in the Disputed Questions on Truth (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, 1256-1259) that an idea is nothing but the exemplary form (of whatever is created by God.)4
If God is omniscient, then he must have a mind. If God is infinite, then his mind must also be infinite. If God's mental faculties are infinite, then he must be capable, to an infinite degree, of perception, intuition, reasoning, thinking, memory, imagination, judgment, understanding, and other acts of cognition that we may not be aware of or be able to comprehend.
While we may not be able to say anything with certainty about what God's mind is or what is in God's mind, we may attempt to determine what would have to be true if God does indeed have a mind.
If God has a perfect mind, then he also has perfect thoughts, ideas, intentions, desires, reasoning, judgment, emotions, and other cognitive faculties.
While God may know every thought in our minds, he doesn't think our thoughts, because he doesn't have any wrong or imperfect thoughts. We can only know God's thoughts insofar as he reveals them to us.
God knows things that we cannot know. He knows what we know and what we don't know. He knows what we will know and what we will never know.
J.I. Packer (1993) argues that if God is omniscient, then he knows everything about everything, all the time. He knows everything that has happened, everything that could have happened but didn't happen, everything that is presently happening, everything that could happen but won't happen, and everything that will happen. If we remember that God is always aware of us, then we may be reassured that we've not been forgotten by God, but we may also be reminded that we can't hide ourselves or conceal our mistakes or errors from God.5
Linda Zagzebski (2013) argues that if God is omniscient, then he must also be omnisubjective (capable of knowing the conscious experience of every conscious being). He is therefore capable of perfect empathy, because he knows exactly what it feels like for someone to experience life in the way they experience it.6
God not only knows everything about the world he created, he also knows everything about all possible worlds he could have created.
Are all ideas in God's mind actually perfect ideas? Why then did God create an imperfect world if he knew all its imperfections before he created it?
The world may have been a thought in God's mind before he created it, but in its subsistence it must be more than that, because there is evil and corruption in the world, but no evil or corruption in God. So the world in its subsistence must have some other existence than in the mind of God.
The existence of ideas in the mind of God is incompatible with physicalism as it is understood in the philosophy of mind. The theory that mental properties are reducible to physical properties (reductive physicalism) or that they at least depend or supervene on physical properties (nonreductive physicalism) is incompatible with the existence of ideas in God's mind, since God has no physical attributes or properties. If God had physical attributes or properties, then he would be governed by the laws of physics, which would be incompatible with his having created a universe governed by the laws of physics.
The existence of divine ideas may also be incompatible with some non-physicalist theories of mind. Thus, it may be incompatible with substance dualism (the theory that the mental and the physical are two different substances), since God isn't a substance that can belong to other substances. It may also be incompatible with property dualism (the theory that the mental and the physical are two different kinds of properties that can belong to the same substance), since divine ideas aren't properties that can belong to substances having physical properties. It may also be incompatible with emergentism (the theory that mental states may emerge from physical states without being reducible to them), since divine ideas don't emerge from anything other than God.
The existence of divine ideas may also be incompatible with panpsychism (the theory that all constituents of reality have mental or proto-mental properties), insofar as panpsychism sees mental or proto-mental properties as belonging to physical matter (unless it takes a pantheistic view and sees divine ideas as belonging to physical matter).
However, the existence of divine ideas may be compatible with some forms of idealism (the theory that the world depends upon the mind for its reality, and that the world is not real independently of mind). Thus, it may be compatible with Platonic, subjective (Berkeleyan), transcendental (Kantian), and absolute (Hegelian) idealism, although perhaps not with pluralistic (Leibnizian) idealism (insofar as it sees reality as consisting of a plurality of monads or minds). From an idealist standpoint, reality consists of mind, spirit, or ideas, and the world isn't real independently of them. Thus, the reality of the world is ideal rather than material, and the world is only real insofar as it represents or consists of ideas.
Reply to Objection 2. If God is the first cause of things and not an effect of some other cause, then his mind doesn't have a causal effect over his being. His mind therefore doesn't have an executive function with regard to his way of being. And if he's capable of acting as well as willing, then he's not merely a mind, he's also an actor or agent who can direct (or not direct) the world according to his will.
Since we can only know what's in God's mind by what he reveals to us, we can't otherwise say or know anything about the nature of God's self-consciousness. God's consciousness of his own infinite being is beyond our finite powers of understanding. God knows everything about himself, as well as everything about the entire universe.
Aquinas says that God perfectly understands and comprehends himself. God knows everything about himself, and everything about things other than himself.7
John Duns Scotus says in his Ordinatio (1300-1304) that God also knows himself as three persons, and that God's unity therefore includes a plurality of persons. (Duns Scotus cites Matthew 28:19, which says that Jesus said to his disciples, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.")8 God's oneness and unity is shown by his having infinite intellect, infinite will, infinite goodness, infinite power, absolute infinity, necessary being, and omnipotence.9 God could not have all these attributes unless he were one and an absolute unity.
Duns Scotus also says that God not only has determinate knowledge of all things, including their conditions of existence, he also has certain, infallible, and immutable knowledge of all things, including their conditions of existence.10
Reply to Objection 3. Aquinas says that the plurality of ideas in God's mind isn't contradictory to his unity, since God's understanding of those ideas is unitary. It isn't contradictory to God's unity that he knows or understands many things. What would be contradictory to his unity would be if his knowledge or understanding were formed by many things.11
Reply to Objection 4. If God's mind is infinite, then there isn't any real distinction between his having infinite mental powers and his having supramental powers. There are no limits to what he can do or cause to happen. He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. His infinite mind transcends any concepts we may have of what a mind is or how it functions.
FOOTNOTES
1Augustine, Eighty-Three Different Questions, translated by David L. Mosher (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1977), p. 81.
2Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 15, Article 1, translated by Alfred L. Freddoso, 2024, p. 129, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques15.pdf
3Ibid., Part One, Question 44, Article 3, p. 351, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques44.pdf
4Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Question Three, Article 3, translated by Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), online at https://isidore.co/aquinas/QDdeVer3.htm
5J.I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), pp. 31-32.
6Linda Zagzebski, Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2013).
7Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 14, Article 3, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso, 2024, p. 110, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques14.pdf
8John Duns Scotus, The Ordinatio of Blessed John Duns Scotus, Volume 1, On Revelation and Theology, Book One, Second Distinction, Second Part, translated by Peter Simpson, 2022, pp. 205-206, online at https://www.aristotelophile.com/Books/Translations/Ordinatio%20I.pdf
9Ibid., p. 197.
10Ibid., Book One, Thirty-Eighth Distinction, Single Question, p. 711.
11Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 15, Article 2, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso, p. 131, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques15.pdf
