The problem of divine knowledge for Gersonides is centered on two basic questions: Does God have knowledge of particulars, especially the particular actions of individual human beings? And how can an omniscient God’s knowledge of future contingent events leave the contingency of those events unaffected? If God knows from eternity that a person will commit a certain action, then it would seem impossible for that person not to commit that action; thus, the problem runs, the act would not really be free and the person could not be held morally responsible for performing it. This is the classic problem of how to reconcile divine foreknowledge with human freedom.
With regard to God’s knowledge of particulars, Gersonides tries to steer a middle course between the Aristotelian view that God does not know particulars at all, but only universals (including the species of things), and Maimonides’ view (which Maimonides claims is the only one consistent with Torah) that God knows every particular in all its particularity. Gersonides says that God does have knowledge of particulars, but not in their particularity. God lacks the right kind of cognitive faculties, such as sense organs, to grasp the temporal, mutable features that distinguish different individuals of the same kind. What God does know of particulars is all of those aspects of them that are determined by the species to which they belong and the more general laws of nature that govern them. Just as God knows of every molecule of water that it will contain two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and of every grain of salt that it is soluble in water, so He knows of every single human being that he will have reason and certain instincts. God has knowledge Of particular events only to the extent to which they are “ordered in a determinate and certain way’’ by the laws of nature; He knows how things in general behave according to their kinds. And this knowledge covers most of what happens in nature.
But for Gersonides, there is a certain domain of events in the world of which God has no particularized knowledge, namely, the free choices of human beings. These are not determined by the species or laws - otherwise they would not be free - and so they escape the eternal knowledge of regularities that God has. God may know the general patterns of things, but these patterns can be disrupted by human volitions. For this reason, Gersonides denies that
A definite individual (Wars NI.5, Gersonides 1987:136).
God may know what a human being of a certain kind would, in general, do in certain circumstances; but there is always the possibility that in such circumstances a free agent will not do what a member of the species will ordinarily do. Thus, God does not know for certain how such an agent will act.
This account of God’s knowledge of particulars provides Gersonides with an easy (although highly controversial) answer to the problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge and human freedom. Essentially, Gersonides says that God does not in fact have foreknowledge of free human actions before they occur. God may know that human beings, given their native endowments, will sin, but He does not know whether or not a particular human being will sin in certain circumstances.
Gersonides is not concerned that this position undermines divine omniscience. For him, omniscience does not mean knowing everything; rather, it means knowing everything that is in principle knowable. And, he insists, future contingents are simply not knowable. Unlike events in the past, the particularities of contingent events that have not yet taken place have no determinate truth-value and therefore cannot be known.
World History
