Linda Zagzebski: God's Knowledge and Ours

Linda Zagzebski, George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Philosophy and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma, will explore the topic "God's Knowledge and Ours" in the 2014 Harold Stoner Clark lectures.

How can God know us? How can we know God? The gap between creatures and God makes it hard for us to imagine deep, serious knowledge in either direction. Does God know what it is like to be you or to be your dog? Can human beings know anything of God, or must we declare God totally unknowable?

Zagzebski will present an 11:10 a.m. lecture titled "Omnisubjectivity: the Subjectivity of God" and a 4 p.m. lecture titled "Knowing God: a Defense of Religious Authority."

In the first lecture, Zagzebski proposes a divine attribute she calls “omnisubjectivity,” God’s property of having a complete and perfect knowledge of every conscious state of every conscious being from the perspective of each one. She then relates this concept to the practice of Christian prayer, and the doctrines of sanctification and grace.

In her afternoon lecture, Zagzebski argues that the modern rejection of belief grounded on authority arises from historical causes that make authority of all kinds suspicious, and from a mistaken view of the nature of autonomy.

Zagzebski is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and the author of six books, as well as many edited books and articles on theology, virtue epistemology, philosophy of religion and virtue ethics. In 2012-2013 she held a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her book Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief (Oxford UP).

The Harold Stoner Clark Lecture Series, endowed by the late Mr. Clark and sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, was established in 1985.

Admission is free and open to the public. Limited parking is available in the Samuelson Chapel parking lot. Additional parking is available in the parking lots on Mountclef Boulevard north and south of Olsen Road.