Is God Omniscient?

[TRUTH over TRADITION]

Where in scripture does it tell us God knows all things? I am aware that our lord knows the end from the beginning, but I am not at least off the top of my head familiar with any scripture that tells us that God is ALL KNOWING. Can someone supply more info?

 

[mcgyver]

Good question. FYI that is a question that has been debated by theologians and philosophers for millenia!

I personally hold that God is omniscient, but that is built from (if you will) a preponderance of the scripture vs a single verse.

(All Scripture quotes NKJV copyright Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982)

Rev 19:6 says: And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!(Emphasis mine)

Can one be all powerful without being all knowing? Or should it be phrased: "does one have power over something with which one has no knowledge?"

Isaiah 46:10 states: Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’

When one considers all the fulfilled prophecies, and even those yet to be filled, the question arises: "How could God orchestrate all these things if He did not have a perfect foreknowledge?"

Romans 4:17 speaks to this very thing: (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nationsâ€) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; (emphasis mine)

Couldn't do that if He didn't know.

Hebrews 4:13 is another one: And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

Certainly, throughout the Psalms David let's us know that God sees all things...

Tying this all together, if God is not omniscient, then He must be reactionary...and I don't think that is what the bible teaches.

JMO

 

[elijah23]

Where in scripture does it tell us God knows all things? I am aware that our lord knows the end from the beginning, but I am not at least off the top of my head familiar with any scripture that tells us that God is ALL KNOWING. Can someone supply more info?

[20] If we had forgotten the name of our God,
or spread forth our hands to a strange god,
[21] would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart. Psalms 44:20-21RSV

 

[TRUTH over TRADITION]

Mcgyver,

When I was thinking about starting this thread my first thought was about the relationship between omnipotence (being all powerful) and being all knowing. Are they mutually exclusive or must the be intertwined?

At this point I believe they can be mutually exclusive. I also feel that we can glean from scripture that God may not know every detail about every decision each of us will make. The real question I guess is does God every claim to know everything we will do and think before we do or think them?

 

[Who Says]

Where in scripture does it tell us God knows all things? I am aware that our lord knows the end from the beginning, but I am not at least off the top of my head familiar with any scripture that tells us that God is ALL KNOWING. Can someone supply more info?

Have you ever noticed that the scriptures do not say that God knew all things ahead when it comes to God's creating things but instead says he used his wisdom and understanding to make them?

Proverbs 3:19 The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

Jeremiah 10:12 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

Jeremiah 51:15 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding.

 

[Who Says]

[20] If we had forgotten the name of our God,
or spread forth our hands to a strange god,
[21] would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart. Psalms 44:20-21RSV

Very good Elijah. It says God must first discover it.

Then it tells how he discovers it because he is able to search hearts to know what is in them.

1 Chronicles 28:9 "And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.

Romans 8:27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Why would he need to judge men according to their works if he knew aforetime what their works would be?

 

[mcgyver]

Mcgyver,

When I was thinking about starting this thread my first thought was about the relationship between omnipotence (being all powerful) and being all knowing. Are they mutually exclusive or must the be intertwined?

At this point I believe they can be mutually exclusive. I also feel that we can glean from scripture that God may not know every detail about every decision each of us will make. The real question I guess is does God every claim to know everything we will do and think before we do or think them?

There's the crux of the problem, for sure. Folks a whole lot smarter than me have been debating the same thing (seems like) forever....Calvin/Arminius (election & predestination for example)...reckon if there was a clear-cut answer we wouldn't be having this discussion!

The real problem (as I see it) is that if God is not omniscient, then open theism (that God can only know that which is knowable) logically must follow, and to me that presents a plethora of problems.

 

[Drew]

What do you make of the following text from 2 Kings 20 (with bolding added by me):

1 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover." 2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, 3 "Remember, O LORD, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: 5 "Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, 'This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the LORD. 6 I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.' " 7 Then Isaiah said, "Prepare a poultice of figs." They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.

This text will not be unfamiliar to some of you. I think this text is pretty much a slam dunk against God's exhaustive foreknowledge. The only respectable explanation I have heard from a believer in God's exhaustive foreknowledge is that there is an unwritten caveat to the "you will not recover" statement, namely that it really should be understood as "you will not recover unless you pray" and, of course, God know that Hez would indeed pray. Fine

Well, this is not what the text says, and adding such a caveat does substantially change the meaning. However, for the sake of argument, let's say that we accept the possibility that some texts need to be subject to such "implied qualifications". This same kind of argument can be used in regard to texts like Psal 139:16:

"Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them."

What if I were to propose an "implied qualifier" to the effect that "the days were ordained, subject to your following my ways".

I suggest that it is clear that, unless we can find some basis for not reading this 2 Kings text "as she is wrote", then we have here an example of God not exhaustively knowing the future.

 

[mcgyver]

Well, I don't see that as an example of God's foreknowledge (or lack thereof)...God told Hezekiah that he'd die (Thus says the Lord...), then when Hezekiah prayed and sought God, God (for His own purposes) healed him.

In fact God said He'd add 15 years to Hezekiah's life...not "lets see how much longer you live..."

This is a simple recounting of what happened, a statement of the facts, and doesn't need an "implied qualifier"...to do more is to read a meaning into the text that just isn't there IMO.

This is rather a picture of God's omnipotence and mercy. Sorry, I just don't see how it could be applied as God not having a foreknowledge of what was going to happen...;)

 

[TRUTH over TRADITION]

It seems to me that oftentimes the believer seems to think that god would somehow be less "God" if He were not omniscient despite the apparent conclusion the scriptures give us that God may not have ever made such a claim about Himself. Could our need to have God fit into our view of what He should be be us sort of making an idol in our own minds of what we want in our god as opposed to accepting and submitting to who GOD actually is?

 

[mcgyver]

It seems to me that oftentimes the believer seems to think that god would somehow be less "God" if He were not omniscient despite the apparent conclusion the scriptures give us that God may not have ever made such a claim about Himself. Could our need to have God fit into our view of what He should be be us sort of making an idol in our own minds of what we want in our god as opposed to accepting and submitting to who GOD actually is?

Good point...but yet the reverse could be a case of humans trying to "fit" God into a certain mold based on our own understanding. Cuts both ways, I reckon.

But I'm reminded of Ecclesiastes 3...

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die...

A time and a purpose....I'm just glad God doesn't look down and say: "Ooops"

 

[Drew]

Well, I don't see that as an example of God's foreknowledge (or lack thereof)...God told Hezekiah that he'd die (Thus says the Lord...), then when Hezekiah prayed and sought God, God (for His own purposes) healed him.

Perhaps I need to explain more fully. When Isaiah reports that God said this:

"This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover."

....Isaiah is clearly ascribing to God the belief that Hez will shortly die. And yet, as it turns out this is not what happens. If we take the text as she is wrote, we have to admit that, at a certain point at least, God was planning that Hez would be dead shortly, and therefore God's knowledge of the future would have included the belief that Hez will shortly be dead.

But we know that things did not turn out that way. So either we say God did really know the future perfectly when He said what He said to Isaiah about Hez, or that God was "mistaken" about the future. I see no other option, and I prefer the first explanation.

 

[Drew]

It seems to me that oftentimes the believer seems to think that god would somehow be less "God" if He were not omniscient despite the apparent conclusion the scriptures give us that God may not have ever made such a claim about Himself. Could our need to have God fit into our view of what He should be be us sort of making an idol in our own minds of what we want in our god as opposed to accepting and submitting to who GOD actually is?

You have a major insight here, in my opinion. Let's remember, God delegates the goverance of the world to mankind. And, if you believe in free will, God is not the master puppetmaster controlling everything in the universe. So I think we need to leave the "Sunday School" definitions behind and seek a more nuanced understanding of such concepts as omniscience and omnipotence.

 

[TRUTH over TRADITION]

A time and a purpose....I'm just glad God doesn't look down and say: "Ooops"

This is another issue. God has on various occasions "looked down" and been sorrowful that He had allowed certain thinks to transpire. The flood is the first thought that comes to mind, after that we have Babel, and we have God having to be convinced by Moses not to wipe out the children of Israel to start over with Moses.

 

[mcgyver]

Well, the problem seems to boil down to the relationship of the "free agency" of man and the sovereignty of God...the age old issue....

But I'd like to approach this from a little different angle, and use a couple of OT prophecies that (I believe) illustrate a harmony between the foreknowledge of God and the free will of man (I don't think the two are mutually exclusive).

First is Cyrus. In the book of Isaiah 44:24-45:13 (written circa 700BC) God says that He will raise up a man called Cyrus, that Cyrus will re-build the walls of Jerusalem, lay the foundations of the temple, cause Jerusalem to be inhabited, will set the exiles free etc. At the time of writing...all these things already were...

Now the Babylonian captivity wasn't until about 580 BC...and it wasn't until circa 539 BC that Babylonia was conquered by the Persians...and Cyrus issued his decree as recounted in Ezra.

Were the Persians and in particular Cyrus exercising their free-will in attacking Babylon and letting the Jews go back to Jerusalem?

Another is the prophecy against Tyre in the book of Ezekiel chapter 26, written around 580 BC and fulfilled to a "T" by Alexander the Great in 332 BC.

Was Alexander the Great exercising his free-agency when he decided to take Tyre to neutralize the threat of the Persian navy?

The of course there are the prophecies concerning Babylon, Sidon, Samaria, and others that were fulfilled (in some cases) hundreds of years after the prophet was dead and gone...

How would one explain this apart from God's foreknowledge?

 

[mcgyver]

Here's another thought...

One of the attributes of God is perfection...He alone is perfect.

Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds are balanced,Those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?

Matthew 5:48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Just to name a couple.Here's the question: Can a perfect being (God) have an imperfect/incomplete foreknowledge?

 

[Drew]

How would one explain this apart from God's foreknowledge?

I agree that there is no conflict between God's foreknowledge and the free will of man. But I don't see how this speaks to the omniscience issue. What you assert would be true whether or not God was omniscient.

 

[mcgyver]

I agree that there is no conflict between God's foreknowledge and the free will of man. But I don't see how this speaks to the omniscience issue. What you assert would be true whether or not God was omniscient.

True...but the very definition of omniscience is having an infinite or total knowledge, i.e. all-knowing. Foreknowledge is but a part of omniscience.

The question remains then, can a perfect being have anything less than a perfect, infinite, and total knowledge by definition?

 

[Who Says]

Here's another thought...

One of the attributes of God is perfection...He alone is perfect.

Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds are balanced,Those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?

Matthew 5:48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Just to name a couple.Here's the question: Can a perfect being (God) have an imperfect/incomplete foreknowledge?

The problem yet remains by that logic in that it is we imperfect humans that are judging that God's foreknowledge must contain knowledge of everything even before it was purposed by anyone to be created and therefore does not yet exist.

Humans in the image of God have the power to purpose and to create too you know.

Are we who insist that God must be absolutely omniscient afraid that God would not know how to deal with it if he did not know it ahead?

I believe we impune God worse by saying he must have an absolute complete knowledge of everything aforetime else his knowledge is imperfect. That is no different than saying he is imperfect and all because we set our self up as a judge toward him, we in our pitiful little knowledge and understanding.

 

[Drew]

Here's another thought...

One of the attributes of God is perfection...He alone is perfect.

Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds are balanced,Those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?

Matthew 5:48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Just to name a couple.Here's the question: Can a perfect being (God) have an imperfect/incomplete foreknowledge?

My response to this is to assert that the author of Job was speaking "poetically" when He made his statement. As for Jesus, I think it is obvious that Jesus is not really expecting us to be literally perfect - more evidence that we need to be careful as to how we read things in the Bible.

I assert that we in the 21st century west have lost sight of the fact that the Bible is "literature" - now don't anyone dare distort what I am saying into a claim that the Bible is not God's word. Because we misunderstand the genre of the Bible, we make all sorts of mistakes, such as taking all those "end of the world" metaphors (from Revelation and other places) literally. So while I know this will be somewhat unpopular, I think we need to recognize the "poetic" style of the Job text, on the one hand, and acknowledge Jesus cannot really be expecting us to become "perfect", on the other.

Besides, we still have texts like the 2 Kings 20 text - does anyone dispute that Isaiah has God declaring that Hez will die of his illness shortly, and yet this does not happen. How can this be possible if God perfectly knows the future?