God’s knowledge, According to Avicenna and Duns Scotus’ Points of View

Discussion about the divine attributes has a long term history in theology and philosophy. Among all of the divine attributes, “knowledge” has received more attention because of its effectiveness in determining all of the verbal issues related to interpretation of this divine specification. Avicenna and Duns Scotus are representatives of the two main theories about the Gos’d knowledge among the Islamic and Christian philosophers whom I have studies and compared in this research. The main difference between these two philosophers in divine knowledge can be recorded as Scotus’ God is a purposeful actor (fa’el-e bel-qasd), however, Avicenna introduces the God as the wise and single-minded actor (fa’el-e-bel-enayah) justifying the creation based on the grace. While there is this big difference, there are many similarities between these two opinions; such as, both of them consider God as a cause for creation. Both believe in existence of creatures in divine knowledge before their real creation without considering reasonable forms or platonic parables as separated creatures. Both of them believe that God has no other purpose except for his essence for creation of universe or human.