Allah Has Known Everything From Eternity

Now take an attribute of Allah (swt), and put this in perspective: the attribute of knowledge, God's attribute of knowledge. Allah's knowledge is unlike our knowledge, where we develop knowledge, where we develop understanding. Allah, from eternity, has known everything that is to be known, which basically means everything. Allah has known everything that is to be known: all the maʿlūmāt, all those things which are knowable, Allah has known from eternity.

There is the attribute of ʿilm, knowledge. There are the maʿlūmāt, everything knowable, which includes all of us, and everything, from the first day till the last day, and everything beyond that as well. Because Allah's knowledge also expands to the things which are not yet created, which will never be created. Allah's knowledge encompasses all of that, in terms of the generals of it and the particulars of it; the universals of it and the particulars of it. So there is the maʿlūm, and there is the ʿilm; and there is the association.

So consider: this association between the ṣifah of ʿilm and the maʿlūm, is that attribute eternal, or is it created?^* As already explained, the attributes are always eternal; Allah's attributes are all eternal. The effects are always created. The association between the two could be created or eternal, depending on the dynamics of things.

The question here concerns Allah's knowledge: that He has known all things knowable from eternity. All of those things were in His knowledge from eternity. So is this association created or eternal? The question more or less answers itself: yes, it is eternal. Why? Imagine if it were said to be created. Created means that something came up later on, which would mean that He did not have all of that knowledge, or some of that knowledge, from before, and that it was created later on. That association: His ʿilm has encompassed all things knowable from eternity. That means that for ʿilm, there is no created association; it is all eternal association.