If God Knows Everything, What Does He Think About?

I was asked recently, "If God is omniscient, what does he think about?" I didn't have the presence of mind to ask, "What do you mean?" I'm not exactly sure what the inquirer had in mind, but let's speculate. If he meant, "He already knows everything; what more is there to learn or know if he already knows it all?" then he's just shown that he believes that the purpose of thought is strictly the pursuit of knowledge and nothing more. This seems to me a deficient view of the purpose of thought.

As a means to knowledge, Yes, thought is invaluable, indispensable, suitable, and constructive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that knowledge is got by rational, and not irrational, methods. Whether, as Christians, we say that this rational pursuit of knowing things must necessarily remain subservient to the Scriptures, or, as Atheists, we say that this rational pursuit of knowing things is, itself, our criteria for discovering what "is" in the world, the point remains: irrational pursuit of what "is", of Truth, of Reality, is an oxymoron. So, in the end, discovery, learning, knowing, etc. require us to think.

But that's not the question. The question is, "Once you've learned all there is to learn, to what purpose now does one put one's thinking?" It brings to mind an image of an antique collector who's set out to acquire one of every original antique that's ever existed (I know, it's ridiculous; just stay with me), and now that they've succeeded, there they are, sitting, eternally looking at all their finds. Now what? This, I think, is not the situation in which we find our omniscient God. What, then, is he doing? It seems to me that he's rejoicing, delighting, loving, thrilling, exulting, basking, and any other suitable "-ing" that involves the divine affections. God knows everything, and he's not indifferent to what he knows; his affections are employed and engaged with respect to what he knows, both with respect to himself and with respect to creation.

When Jesus prays for his Father to restore him to the glory that he shared with his Father before the world began and the incarnation, I don't think he had in mind going back to heaven in order to share glory like you share peanut butter; I think he had in mind sharing glory like one shares joy: you participate in it as well as enjoy it. And this, I think, reveals an essential quality of the Triune God: he not only knows all things, but he's not indifferent to what he knows; his knowledge is not merely a rational acquisition of facts, data, info, etc. He knows things not merely intellectually, but affectively, emotionally, heartily, passionately. It's one thing to "know" algebra; it's another to "know" that as you're driving across the bridge constructed on the right calculation of algebra that you're not falling into a rubble heap below, and to like that fact. God, in his omniscience, knows things most fully, most penetratingly, most soundly, most usefully, which is to say that he knows nothing merely in its "abstractness" (i.e. like algebraic symbols on the page), but that everything he knows, he knows in relation to himself and to all things, and in these things he knows he rejoices (or rages, or laughs, as the case may be, Psalm 2).

Thought, whether human or divine, is necessary in the pursuit (or, as in the case of God, the act) of knowing things, but once we know this or that, the point is not "there, I've learned it, now I can put it down, forget it, never use it, etc." The point is, "What kind of response does this knowledge call for from me?" And if the point of the Bible is that we are meant to do everything in such a way as to display the glory and greatness of God, this would include the affective manner in which we regard what we know, whether of God or of anything else. Yes, in the eternal state, we will ever and always be encountering fresh discoveries of the glory of our Savior that were unknown to us before, but he will always be full of the knowledge of God and of all things: what will he be doing while we're learning? I think, among other things, he'll be smiling, and (similar to the way we delight in watching children make fresh discoveries) saying, "Nice" -and he'll mean it.