God knows: acquaintance and the nature of divine knowledge

Abstract

AbstractTheists typically believe that Godknowsall truths. However, accounts of divine omniscience almost always focus on thescopeof God's knowledge or perhaps on whether certain kinds of facts are there to be known by God, such as counterfactuals of creaturely freedom or future contingent facts. Very rarely do these accounts include for analysis thenatureof God's knowledge. In this article, I develop an acquaintance theory of God's knowledge where acquaintance with an epistemic relation that guarantees that the truth of God's beliefs is necessary for knowledge. I argue that this view achieves an ideal way of knowing, worthy of the divine being.