knowing about vs knowing

The completeness of God's knowledge is often referred to as His omniscience. By claiming that God is omniscient, theists typically mean to say that:

1. God has all propositional knowledge.
2. God has perfect acquaintance with all things.

Propositional knowledge is, simply put, knowledge that can be expressed by indicative sentences or "that-clauses": God knows that football and philosophy are two active enterprises at Notre Dame; God knows that the earth is the third planet from the sun; God knows that 2 + 2 = 4; God knows that equality is a transitive relation; and so forth. Following a number of their medieval predecessors (who wrote in Latin), philosophers often refer to this as knowledge de dicto.

In ordinary language we sometimes distinguish between having knowledge about an object or person and more directly knowing that thing or person. I may have a great deal of knowledge about guitarist Eric Clapton without its being true that I know him. I may know about Paris from reading many descriptions and histories of that city. But ordinarily, I can't be said to know Paris unless I have been there to establish intimate firsthand acquaintance with its many delights. The firsthand intimacy of knowledge by acquaintance is often referred to by philosophers as knowledge de re.

The extent of God's omniscience includes absolute completeness in both knowledge de dicto and knowledge de re.

- T. V. Morris, Omnipotence and Omniscience

from God's perspective, He both knows about us and knows us. from our perspective, it is one thing to know about God and another thing to know God.

links: more on knowing about vs knowing (5 sep 09), even more on knowing about vs knowing (9 sep 09)