There are Many Possible Worlds🌍, Part 2

Beyond the Word-Machine. How can God know? Does He know guilt by experience?

A man who talks to cats and a man who builds robots. These are private reflections of such a man, not Church documents or official theological positions. They are put online for discussions and will be regulary updated. If you take them serious, that is on you, however, if you do so, you’ll see that we can have a lot of fun! This is the greatest invention of them all, communication, using the best biological tool, reflection.

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In today's article, we shall examine several questions that arise in connection with the notion of the Word-machine.

If you missed our previous discussion, I highly recommend starting with this, the first part.

How can God know?

Stahl: The Word-machine is an interesting solution to the problem of connection between the elements of one created world (i), multiple possible worlds (ii) and God as actus purus (iii) in divine simplicity (iv). But there are some problems that we would need to solve before accepting such a model, and I am interested to hear how you would go along doing so.

Problem I) I am speaking to you now. Before that, I wasn't speaking, I was listening to a sermon. Speaking (S) is true now, but it wasn't true a moment ago, and soon it won't be true anymore. God knows about my speaking. But what about His knowledge about the fact that I am speaking right now?

The proposition “Stahl speaks”—“Stahl” specified far enough to pick me out—is true now, it wasn't true just before and it won't be true just after. This means that a proposition has changed in reality from false (F) to true (T), and will change back to false when I stop speaking to you. If this would not also change in God, i.e. the knowledge of what is true right now, He would not have omniscience, since He would then not be able to distinguish between the same proposition being true and being false, would not know when Stahl:T(S) [“Stahl speaks is true”] and when Stahl:F(S) [“Stahl speaks is false”]. But if this proposition were to change, something would change in God and He has potential.

Justus: I am thankful for your reply, and want to answer it.

Answer I) The common answer given is to relate time to eternity, and thereby to maintain the same relation to God in every moment. Which means Stahl:T(S) and Stahl:F(S) are not exhaustive descriptions of situations, but Stahl:T(S) in moment b and Stahl:F(S) in moment a, both of which are equally real to God, have equally zero distance to God and are different to each other by relation. It would be, then, this relation which outputs the phenomenon of one moment in distinction to another, or of one reality being true and another false. Thus, God has knowledge of what is happening right now, and what we perceive (phenomenally) to be happening—even to be the whole reality—right now, since “right now” is a sub-quantity of eternity. Each “right now” with its associated experiences constitutes the complete perception of God concerning time. Change is merely phenomenon or manifestation (in creation); in truth, zoomed out so far that only God has this clarity of perception, there is the eternal and not the temporal, and no change, that is always merely a limited perception of relation.

Stahl: That is certainly a possibility. But I would like continue to look more closely into the problems, if you are okay with that.

Problem II) Even if the temporal is presented as a limited perception of the eternal, and every moment is at the same distance from or to God, zero distance, His knowledge of what is true right now would be dependent on creation, still, a creation that isn't necessary, and so we would end up at the problem that you tried to solve with the Word-machine. There would be no problem of change, now, but of dependency.

Justus: Sure! I am okay with that.

Answer II) God knows what is true because He has the knowledge of all options for creation. Thus, He always knows what is true, as this knowledge exists in the “folders of all possible worlds,” each folder representing one possible world and what would be true right now were that world to be actualized, which He sees in parallel. In His omniscience, it is therefore like this, for example:

• Given world A has been actualized => in moment a-14 , content a-x-14 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. In moment a-15, content a-x-15 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. a-14 and a-15, along with all other moments, a true at once, only perceived in distinct notions for created entities: time is an inner-relational reality.

• Given world B has been actualized => in moment b-14, content b-x-14 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. In moment b-15, content b-x-15 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. b-14 and b-15, along with all other moments, a true at once, only perceived in distinct notions for created entities: time is an inner-relational reality.

• Given world C has been actualized => in moment c-14, content c-x-14 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. In moment c-15, content c-x-15 is real (actualized,) and all contents of this moment would be true. c-14 and c-15, along with all other moments, a true at once, only perceived in distinct notions for created entities: time is an inner-relational reality.

• And so forth.

Many lights are possible.

Stahl: Problem III) But does God also have knowledge of which creation was actually created? E.g. we live in possible world B. The answer just given provides God with knowledge about what is currently true given a specific option, and what is true in moment 1, 2, 3, etc., but He still lacks knowledge about which option, “folder”, is exactly true.

Justus: Answer III) Indeed, He possesses this knowledge; otherwise, He would not be omniscient. But your question is in reality concerned with the “how” of that. Thus, I propose:

How can God be independent in His knowledge?

Problem IV) It cannot be that creation adds knowledge to God, and thus, that God knows due to creation. How then is this knowledge not dependent on the specific decision or form of creation and thus opens up a passive-potential in God, meaning something that acts on Him, since His knowledge is an aspect of Him that now has a passive potential?

Indeed, that was the most difficult question to answer.

Answer IV) The solution, it seems to me, is to identify God's knowlegde with His nature or energy, that it is the mere eternal actuality of positive reality and no recursive thinking. Creation, then, is a (negative) syntax mapping to divine (positive) semantics. Because His knowlegde is identical to the divine positivity, there is no change to it when ex nihilo negative syntax is mapping onto it, expressing created hypostases. God's knowledge of creation is an emergent knowledge pre ex-nihilo, eternal and necessary, I concluded, and just as Jesus appropriated human nature, which was created also, but the fact that He does is eternal and necessary, God appropriated a knowledge of creation, the knowledge being eternal and necessary.

The person of Jesus will appropriate the nature of the pinnacle of creation, which is referencing content only if there is a creation. This was not a “Plan B” as some suggest, but necessary even without the fall and sin. Creation is a gift from the Father to the Son through the Spirit, as it is said, and Jesus represents the bridge between God and man in his very person. If creation had not occurred, this necessity would have been exercised in the appropriation of no nature at all, for the pinnacle of creation would then bo nothing. As I discussed:

“[…] that it is natural of God to adopt the nature of the highest and direct representation of Him in creation iff (if and only if) creation accurs. Or rather, the operation is logically always fulfilled. But the highest nature is {∅} if creation did not happen, which is why ∅ gets adopted; which is no adoption in actuality.”

It is necessary that God would appropriate the knowledge of the specific creation actualised, necessary because God is actus purus and has all knowledge. If it had not come to creation, this necessity would have been exercised in the appropriation of the knowledge that there is no creation. The second actuality, the specific nature of the pinnacle of creation, or at least the fact that there would be a creation and thus the human nature that Jesus would appropriate (1), and the knowledge of the specific creation, as well as the appropriation of this knowledge (2), is the manifestation of the first actuality in the collapse of the metaphysical quantum state¹.

Stahl: Problem V) How then is God's omniscience not dependent on creation?

Justus: Answer V) God's omniscience would be truly all-encompassing even if creation had not occurred.

It is thus not dependend on creation, but on God deciding on creation (which is distinct!) And, of course, I do not speak of “deciding” in a way of deliberation, which includes passive-potency, change and uncertainty and is thus not proper to God. No, it is that one unspecific act is in regards to the option which creation comes about is acted out, and, because of His power and authority, willing an option, a specific option comes forth. Now, God decides on creation and adopts the knowledge that came forth.

But if another knowledge was possible to come forth, and the knowledge is proper to God, then there is chance (possibility) in God. That means that knowledge, to contain chance (possibility), is proper to creation.

One must posit that God's knowledge operates differently from human understanding, especially in relation to specific functions. Suppose that among the set of possible worlds, only the knowledge of one world—our world, which belongs to the set of the best possible worlds—is within God’s intention to create. Thus, if any world were to come into existence, it would specifically be ours, as it alone is wholly compatible with God: with His knowledge about something to be or become true. We could then say that there is only the option to create no world at all, or to create our world. It is also conceivable that this one option encompasses not merely our world but all the best possible worlds. Nevertheless, whether this be the case or not, in this thought experiment there is only one true option for substantial or hypostatic creation, and another in which no creation occurs.

Yet, within God exists not only the knowledge of this specific option that may or not may come about but also the knowledge of all other best options; whether possible or not. One might object: “But then God would not know which of these options became real without adding to Himself! Because if He were to adopt from creation for His all-knowledge, it [creation] would be necessary for Him, and were He not to adopt from it, He would change and only after that change, after the coming forth of knowledge about creation, He would be all-knowing.” However, this objection stems from an anthropomorphic understanding of the divine intellect.

All possible worlds and all truths are present within God.
God Himself is the truth to which our propositions correspond.

In the language of Descartes, this is formality. Propositions themselves pertain to creation—possibilities that may or may not hold true. Using Descartes’ terms, this would be objectivity, or reality as experienced within ourselves.

Creation ex nihilo is the process by which hypostatic boundaries are imposed upon essence and existence, (making us ontologically distinct from God and negating ex deus as the primary way creation came about, though, surely ex nihilo uses ex deus) which [= essence and existence] are distinguishable only within the context of the hypostases, that is the way I understand these matters as of right now. God’s knowledge of which creation is real is expressed through His immanence ex deus. It is not that external signals are received by God and then attributed with a truth value. Rather, His presence in the world is truth itself. Therefore, God knows which creation is real through His own immanence. There are no propositions in God; His knowledge is pure truth.

Creation intersects with truth, emerges within truth, and in creation, we can speak of propositions that correspond to truth, others that do not, and still others that are partially true and partially false by composition and relation. But truth itself is formally real here, “beyond ourselves,” and propositions are only objectively real, “within ourselves.” God’s knowledge is not discursive (i.e., not based on reasoning through propositions as human knowledge is.) God knows all things because He is pure truth, which is synonymous with pure substance.

The attribution of “being true” to a proposition [about a thing] exists only within a created mind and is not what knowledge really is: knowledge is the truth found within that thing; and the truth within that thing is according to substance, or to energy, which are of God and eternal. But because we are limited in knowing truth, propositions come about within ourselves. These, then, are judged according to incoming signals to be true, false, or a mixture of the two by being constructed out of smaller propositions.

Does God know which creation is true?

Because creation is truly, substantially, of God, yes; eternally even. However, in terms of hypostases creation is ex nihilo; and these form an intersection with the divine by participation of essence and existence; and second energies. God knows these entities comprising creation insofar He is [present] in them but propositions exist only within these entities by the entities, not by God. That means, for them to avoid to be substantial and thus of God and thus providing a change and chance in God, the hypostatic bindings (that which conjoins essence and existence) are dependend on whether or not essences and existence, found in God, particularize themselves, which happens following His eternal unspecific will for creation.

Thus, creation adds substantially and positively nothing to God, which is: it adds nothing to Him in terms of truth and knowledge; nothing new that can be known, truly known, only reflected in a limited way by discursive thinking. Now, that also means the ex nihilo hypostatic bindings are negative—but not evil in the sense of privation—it provides a distinction to “essence” and “existence” by adding to them what they are not: an outline of negation. And this negativity, though ontological, makes us distinct from God, distinct hypostases, though that distinction, truly, is objective: pertains to an inner reality.

The only alternative I can think of if when saying “possible” Worlds are only possible insofar not considering God’s eternal decision to create a certain world. And the creation of that certain world can only be said to be “not necessary” insofar that non-creation is equally compatible with God, and the only reason He didn’t choose it, is because He did choose otherwise.

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A well respected theologian stated that the act of creation is not natural. That statement I discussed with Darpos:

Justus: “Yet, if-statements can be real to what is natural to God. Because the incarnation can come about, it is natural. The act of God does not change, it is the same movement, only that either it returns empty or not, either God created or not. In His acts all stays the same, even His act of creation is the same between creating and not creating (it seems to me,) just that this variable was included; that one possible option for creation comes about: zero worlds, one world or infinite many worlds in harmony with His nature.”

Darpos: “This isn't referring to God's active potency though, the idea is that there is nothing in God's nature which makes the incarnation happen because of what God is.”

Justus: But there is something in God's nature which makes the possibility of incarnation happen because of what God is (the distinction between possibility and potency is important.) What that something is? Well, we might say that everything is from the Father to the Son, producing the Spirit, which thus also leads to iff creation, then and only then this is also true for the incarnation/human nature resp. adoption of human nature.

Darpos: Yes but God has the power, or possibility, or active potency […] to perform any act which is not privative because He is literally pure act, that's what He is. The idea is whether or not God's nature somehow conditions the incarnation of its the tri-hypostatic self-consciousness to transcends its own nature in the creative act.

Or in other words: are the logoi expressions of the essence or not?

[…]

Justus: “Is the choice abritrary if it is an unspecific input and following His authority it is specifically filled?

It would be abritrary if He chooses let's say specific option s under all options v. But it is not abritrary when He calls forth v without specifying that it should be s, t or u.”

It cannot be based on deliberation as well, which is build on change and uncertainty

Darpos: “If God always chooses according to His Goodness and authority then it is not libertarian. Libertarian free will is essentially just the ability to spontaneously have done otherwise. God always does that which is most proper to His Goodness.”

Justus: “Right! What I meant is that the same act could've had another output, not that He chooses otherwise, which is distinct.

Now, is your question whether the logoi are bound to God's nature (as expressions of His essence) or whether they are a result of God’s free, creative act, which, while not privative, may still be contingent rather than necessary? In my mind, they are aspect of His energies, which are necessary. Lower-”l”-logoi depicting a reality of different energies are given withing mutul indwelling energies, depicting the logos in on certain aspect and together form that idea wholly.”

God Creating Heaven and Earth, title page from "The Creation of the World" - Jan Muller, 1589

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How can God know eternally?

Johnathon: I would say that His knowledge need not be a created knowledge, since His decision to create takes place, as you've mentioned before, in eternity, and so there never was a “time” when God didn't know both if He would create or which world He would choose to create. I think God's knowledge, being infinite and unbounded, can encompass even the products of His own free will and is not something He would need to “wait to see what He chooses.” His knowledge would be logically dependent on His free decisions, but not in a way that would require potential in His being since the decisions themselves are eternal, in that they were made outside of time.

Change is also something that is rooted in creation, and not God, so there wouldn't be any change in His knowledge at any point, even about His own decisions. The state of the metaphysical wave function as uncollapsed is something that is a logical abstraction and not something that is ever actually the state of things, as God's decision is made in eternity, and thus the wave function is collapsed eternally. Though I think one needs to be careful here because it can start to make creation seem like it might've been necessary when we speak this way, but I think if we view God's will as infinitely free, anything that is the product of it cannot, by definition, be necessary. Perhaps there's a sense in which, from our limited perspective, it appears “necessary” from the perspective of time, but I think God's will is supralogical and thus cannot be subject to necessity whatsoever, else it wouldn't be truly free.

Justus: Thank you for that thoughtful response, and I hope my response will be of sufficient quality to you.

1. God's will, from my perspective, cannot be absolutely free in the sense that it can contradict His nature. It cannot be contra love, or justice, but is absolutely free in all that it can be, given God's operations, which some others call His essence. God's will and His being are interdependent, akin to π and the circumference of a circle. The will is what it is because of God's actual being, and His actual being is what it is because of His will. They are neither prior but dependent on each other, forming the “simple basic reality” that serves as prototype for all. Truly, in the identity of all of God’s properties are all others, and His will. There is nothing external to God that constrains His will, except that “eternal thing,” which is itself an effect or manifestation of God's nature and just the knowledge of and will for creation. If God were to overrule man's nature in the incarnation, His will would contradict itself, which is impossible. Anything following from His nature is also in accord with His will.

And I think the notion that God changed His mind in time, or His plan, is merely manifestation. Changing one's mind consists on one hand in a change of heart, and on the other hand in the decision itself because of a change of heart. If God regretted something, then from eternity the regret of a decision was in God, and it merely manifested itself at that point, but positive attitudes outweighed the negative ones, which is why He created knowing a subset of it would be regret [that He adopts because of creation, in an eternal but logical secondary way]. And it was also clear from eternity what decisions God would make, that He would change His decision because of person or deed x is merely the manifestation of “without person or deed x, I would act this way, but since there will be person or deed x, I will act that way”, which was fact from eternity.

2. I agree that the metaphysical wave function can never actually be uncollapsed; the collapsing is an abstraction, and the logical sequence of events, such as “first A happened, then B, then the collapsing of the wave function,” is not one that occurs in time.

3. However, I think it is important to classify this collapse as a creation, but a creation pre-ex nihilo: before a substance has been created. The wave function collapse cannot be itself aspect of God, otherwise God has potency. Second actuality, which selects one of multiple possible options first actuality can express itself or manifest, cannot lie within God. Otherwise there exist multiple possibilites in God, ontologically, of which not all must be actualized, but God must be everything He can be at every moment and do everything He can do at every moment to be actus purus.

Overall. In my view, God acts on the will to choose one option for creation: first actuality. This occurs via the operation of the Word-machine, collapsing the unstable quantum state of “resonance between logoi and corresponding energia” [something I will come to] to produce one creation. Now, this happens in eternity; the quantum state never actually exists un-collapsed, and the collapsed quantum state results in creation ex nihilo at one point we call the beginning of time². The collapsing of the quantum state is an act of creation, for it to contain every potential of possible worlds/second actuality, not within God but dependent on Him. And because this is eternal, God has knowledge of it eternally. There is knowledge God has [logically] directly from His essence, but also knowledge God has [logically] from the first (and eternal) act of creation determining which creation will be actualized “at one point far later.” This eternal act of creation is dependent on God. The logical sequence I see to be as follows:

1. Essence in the individualization of the Trinity, from the Father to the Son and Spirit.

2. Energia and logoi, the ideas of things pre-existing in Gods mind and eternal movement of God. God is beyond being, but His movement is the mode of being which serves as ground for creation.³

3. Resonance between the energia and logoi produces the metaphysical quantum state.

4. A necessary input into Word-machine collapses the metaphysical quantum state into one (second) actuality.

5. God adopts the second actuality of the collapse as knowledge.

All of this is eternal and begotten by His essence, which is the essence of God the Father⁴.

The first seven days of Creation according to the book of Genesis. From The Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel, circa 1493.

Imagining a being as a circle, “actuality” as stable areas of the circle and “potential” as overlaying areas of the circle that can be a bunch of things. God is a circle necessitating the existence of a quantum state in distinction to the circle of Himself, dependent on God though it is not God. The material of this circle would consist only of God, still, through being the infinite potential of resonance between logoi and energia.

This quantum state, which is purely overlayed area while God is purely stable area, collapses by eternity. From that collapse a single stable area imerges, that is adopted by God. It is purely knowledge of creation. This operation of adoption is stable in God as well: necessary, He is actus purus. God is necessary, eternal and has no potential. The metaphysical quantum state is necessary, eternal but has potential and is dependend on God. The Son and Spirit are dependend on the Father, but the quantum state is dependend on the whole Trinity. Since all this is merely a logical sequence and not an actual one in time, just as it is a logical sequence to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit have the essence from the Father, although all exist eternally, God is all-knowing from eternity, just as He is triune from eternity. A creation consisting of “beyond God there is order” is not of actual substance but this fact, knowledge of what will be actualized (or not). God receives necessary knowledge of this order, which will yet be realized in creation ex nihilo.

Thus I hold to a necessary creation that is just order in form of knowledge of what will be actualised (or whether there will be something actualised at all beyond the knowledge), though the form of that knowledge is not necessary but by potency of creation.

Stahl: But wouldn't that mean that God has no absolute control? After all, He has no providence over the product of the Word-machine.

Justus: God limits His control due to His perfection.

On the one hand God created us in detail but did not fatalistically determine these details in our creation, God does not predestine everything in the sense that our existence, identity, and actions are programmed by His will, even though He created everything. His providence does not destroy our Free Will or His own. Nor limits it His knowledge because the Word-machine's output is eternal, dependent on God. Fatalistic determination would negate Free Will or result in accidents, as I hold to the classical understanding of Free Will “things could have been otherwise” at most in addition to other understandings, and see no reason to give up on this. God's attributes and will work in harmony, neither being destroyed. And just as I see no problem in relating His attributes to His will, I have no problem in relating His will to His attributes, seing that both work in harmony without either getting destroyed.

Further thoughts about “things could have been different” even in an eternal sense relating to ourselves you can find in my conversation with Johnathon in the comments of his article Human Persons as Media of Creative Transformation.

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Can God know guilt by experience?

Stahl: Okay. There is one last thing, and it kind of goes back to something already discussed. I can have read everything about guilt, every possible book, have observed every electrical signal in the brain. Yet, when I experience guilt for the first time, at that very moment something new came to me that I didn't knew before. In that moment, I learned something. Now, how is God all-knowing if He does not know guilt?

Justus: Indeed, the question at hand is intriguing, but I believe the premise requires refinement. Christ bore every consequence that comes with sin on the cross. That means death, but also guilt, shame and other burdens. One might consider the notion that the bad is not truly real, but rather a deprivation of what is real. Consequently, God does not need to experience it directly, as it does not constitute new knowledge. Instead, it represents the experience of a lack of knowledge, which is distinct from the comprehensive knowledge implied when we declare God to be all-knowing. Deprivation is the sensation of lacking something one naturally possesses or strives to possess. Thus, one could argue that God has experiential knowledge of all perfections, not of all imperfections, which are not encompassed in our understanding of divine omniscience.

Regardless, Christ also bore this deprivation on the cross. God does not only know all the good, but also all the bad, or at least the good and the bad in their most basic and, if I may say so, “real” form; the bad manifested in Christ on the cross. But evil does not reside within the Logos, as we have discussed. The divine ideas contain only the good. This evil or bad, then, would emerge with God's appropriated knowledge, as a product of the collapse of the metaphysical quantum state, which, unlike the Logos, does not contain the archetypes but rather how these archetypes synergize with the act of existence and which points of non-existence they produce (which is what we call evil). These points of non-existence can be produced because the potential for evil becomes necessary through our will, as I will discuss in Free Will II. Those who answer the call to existence may carry points of non-existence within themselves, even in their eternal notion [all predicates their predicates], speaking of it: sin.

Das jüngste Gericht - Hans Memling (c. 1430/40-1494). Our whole life is contained in our notion.

Synapsis: Concerning the divine act of creation, the first actuality resides in the general will of God for creation, while the second actuality pertains to the specific endowment of a particular idea—a possible world—with the will for its actualization. However, since both these actualities dwell within the essence of God, unlike a husband who may choose to give flowers to his wife on one day (second actuality) and not on another (second actuality), deriving from his love (first actuality)—where these second actualities are external manifestations of the indeterminate⁵ first actuality and not intrinsic to his being—attributing second actuality to the specific endowment of a will for actualization would imply potentiality within God. That is unless the specification of creation is by manifestation (thus external) and not by endowment of will for actualization, which is internal.

Therefore, given the concept I introduces or a functionally equivalent mechanism, the specification of creation is determined by [random] manifestation and not by an internal endowment of will. But the first actuality, that is, making any decision at all concerning the external world is necessarily endowed with divine will. The specification of the possible world actually created is by random function of the Word-machine.

Likewise, the logoi and corresponding energia must stand in a quantum state between resonating and not resonating, which would be a state between actualized and not-actualized creation, as we have seen in part 1, and not in only purely actualized or only purely non-actualized. I designate this state as the metaphysical quantum state, equating it with the primordial chaos referenced in the Bible in relation to creation.

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I welcome every comment and am eager to respond!

With sincere thanks,
~ Justus.

1

“Thus, I propose that the standard here is neither resonance nor non-resonance. That is why God’s decision is necessary, because it could be both. I believe this resolves the matter, positing that pre-creation exists in a state intermediate between creation and non-creation, and it is the divine decision that resolves this equilibrium. One might even characterize this as the transition from chaos to order. Metaphyical quantum state pre-creation so to speak.” - There are many possible worlds, part 1

2. Maybe [also] within time at different points, if things came to be from no prior substance multiple times and not all at once: which may have happend in the creation account in the Bible.

3. As is teached by the Orthodox Church.

4. As is teached by the Orthodox Church.

5. Or imprecise in the sense that it can take different forms.