The objection
The Father knows “I am the Father.” The Son cannot truthfully think this of himself. Do they then have different knowledge and thus different divine minds?
1. The same word does not always designate the same speaker
“I” is an expression whose reference depends on the speaker. If the Father says “I am the Father” and the Son uses the same wording, they do not assert the same fact. The first sentence identifies the Father; the second would falsely identify the Son with the Father.
Different truth values of these utterances therefore do not yet entail a lack of knowledge. Omniscience obliges no one to consider a false self-identification true. Rather, it includes knowing each person as who they are.
2. Knowledge of a relationship is not its possession
The Son fully knows the truth that the Father is the Father. He need not himself be the Son's Father for this. Likewise, complete knowledge of creation does not make God a creature. Knowing and being must not be dissolved into each other.
The New Testament connects precisely personal distinction with unique mutual knowledge: The Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father; Matthew 11,27 sets this relationship apart from creaturely knowing. The difference lies in the “who” known and knowing, not in a truth remaining hidden from the other.
3. The actual philosophical question extends further
One may ask whether self-knowledge is a particular mode of knowing that cannot be translated entirely into third-person statements. This concerns the structure of personal knowing, not yet proof of three limited bodies of knowledge. Williams expressly treats such self-references as a subject of Trinitarian modeling.[2]
The classical distinction begins here: The one divine knowing is no fourth person behind Father, Son and Spirit. It is their undivided perfection. The persons are distinguished by their relationships, not by mutually sealed-off informational spaces.[1]
4. The objection needs an additional premise
For the alleged contradiction, it would have to be shown that every real I–you relationship necessarily presupposes several mutually separate spiritual beings. Our experience with humans supplies examples of this, but no proof about God's mode of being. At the same time, naming different speaker references does not suffice for a positive explanation: A model must make intelligible how personal self-knowledge belongs together with one undivided divine act of knowing.
We thereby claim no exhaustive psychology of God. We reject the specific fallacy: That the Son is not the Father and knows this perfectly does not contradict his omniscience. Knowledge that blurred this distinction would precisely be false.
5. What speaking of “Mentalese” is intended to achieve
“Indexical” here designates expressions such as “I,” whose reference depends on the particular speaker. The subject is personal self-knowledge. This must be distinguished from whether God's knowledge of “now” presupposes a temporal perspective. Nor does Williams's 2013 article Indexicals and the Trinity designate a settled anti-Trinitarian proof; instead, it develops explanatory models.[2]
Speaking of a shared Mentalese—an assumed language of thought—makes one such proposal more precise: A shared mental expression is supposed to permit personally different self-references. Williams connects this with numerically shared cognitive faculties and mental tokens.[3] Scripture does not commit us to language-like building blocks of divine thought. Anyone rejecting this assumption has therefore initially criticized this model. Its weakness would be neither remedied by merely appealing to God's mystery nor already proof against the Trinity. It would remain to show that undivided knowing and real personal self-distinction are incompatible at all.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 29, a. 4: personal distinction through subsistent relationship.
- Scott M. Williams, Indexicals and the Trinity: Two Non-Social ModelsJournal of Analytic Theology 1 (2013), pp. 74–94; on the philosophical debate over personal self-references.
- Scott M. Williams, In Defense of a Latin Social Trinity: A Response to William HaskerFaith and Philosophy 37/1 (2020), pp. 96–117; his own explanation of shared mental faculties and tokens with differing personal self-reference.