Update Three

A short look at God's omniscience.

The Doctrine of the Omniscience of God
Does God really know everything exhaustively? More importantly, does it really matter? What could this possibly mean for us? These questions, though once unthinkable within our bastion of protestant catholicity for centuries, have been raised in this post-modern era within even our own walls. While the beginnings of what these questions assert have been extant for as long as man has had to ponder God theologically, outside the Garden that is, their coming to fruition within Christianity is a more recent development. Now, in our post-modern age, such questions are no longer taboo. Yet still in this new age our hearts should be somewhat burdened by the crassness and callousness in which these questions are thrown about with little or no regard for upholding the character of God. It is for just such a reason, among others, that giving the correct answers to such doctrinal questions is near to paramount importance.
Why is this question so important to be answered rightly? The post-modern thinker would deny that any lasting importance lays in the finding such an answer, if that were even possible. We do not, after all, wish to offend. But it is God who is offended when we besmirch His name. The Divine character is offended when we propagate that which is not the Divine character as the Divine character. This is the most crucial reason to uphold a right view of God’s attributes, to rightly bring Him the glory due His name. Second to this is a more anthropocentric reason. To follow the true God, be in a good relationship with Him, and to accept Him as savior, one must now who that God is. To follow any God who has not the attributes of the one true God is to not follow the one true God.
Case in point is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They follow one they call God, the almighty one of the old and new testaments. This God has many attributes that Christians hold as pertaining to the true God. In fact, many are deceived into believing that they are just another denomination within the fold of Christianity. But some startling differences quickly appear that destroy any notion of unity. One example is that of Joseph Smith’s description of God, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also.”[1] This one alteration of the description of God destroys the semblance unity and renders one view a false interpretation. More examples could be given in regards to the Church of Latter Day Saints as well as a plethora of examples from many pseudo-Christian cults and religions, but the point of this is all to show that a difference in the attributes is a difference in Deity. A difference in Deity is a difference in message. The danger of this is told to us by Paul who said, “As we have said before, and now I say again, if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be condemned to hell!”[2]
Extreme care must be taken here as this cannot be extrapolated to the nth degree. Mere finite mortals could never grasp the awesome grandeur of God in His fullness or the endless displays of His character nor the depths of His infinite heart. Mistakes will be made and no one, even in glory, will know all the depths of God. Here on earth no one has a view that is one hundred percent correct. We must be humble enough in our approach so as not to turn away a brother and so go against what God wants for us to do. Neither is this to say that we can drag out such people as those who question the specifics of God’s omniscience as heretics. Many, most, if not all of them are still our brothers and sisters and deserve the respect and love due them as such and the benefit of the doubt as we ourselves will never know the mysteries of God fully either.
Still, this disturbing question has already been raised. This question within the Christian Church for more than a millennium has had an easy answer. That nearly unconscious answer was yes, God does know everything. This was believed to mean that God knew all that was, all that is, and all that would ever be. However, the diffusion of Christian authority at the time of the Reformation and the increase of secular thinking during the enlightenment opened the door to a renewed look at the basics of theism. Deism within the west quickly rose to prominence. It was regarded as sophisticated to see the world in this new light. It was passé to hold to the quaint theology of theism, especially in the high intellectual circles. With deism, God was no longer a personal knowledgeable God active in the world. God was only the first cause, the cosmic watchmaker who put the world together and let it run its course. God was only to be seen in the laws that held the world together and made it run. This view would eventually evolve into naturalism, especially with the help of Mendel’s genetics and Darwin’s natural selection to provide a framework for a Godless worldview. No longer was God needed to provide the backdrop for nature. All things just were, with their existence not contingent on any reasons. This theological philosophy separated itself into the many braches of what modern man called the sciences. One effect of this on Christian theology is twofold. First, the diversity and acceptance of emerging ideas within the intellectual culture eventually penetrated the whole of culture bring challenge to the orthodoxy far more varied than the Reformation. Second, the underlying precepts of enlightenment thinking with its focus on freedom, liberty, and the excellence of man tended theology towards humanism and the exaltation of man over God. These coming together allowed the development of the alternate traditionally non-orthodox views of the attributes of God to enter into the Christian theological discussion as never before.
Within this theological discussion the major views are the simple foreknowledge view, the middle knowledge view, the openness view, and the traditional Calvinist view. The simple foreknowledge view of omniscience claims that God does know everything exhaustively in the past, present, and future. This view claims that despite this absolute knowledge man can still be free as it is man’s free choices that make up what God foreknows. The middle knowledge view of God’s omniscience claims that God knows all things because He knows all counterfactuals and He ordains all situations. Counterfactuals are demonstrated in statements like “if x happens you will choose y.” By this, God knows all decisions and in setting up events actualizes the free will choices determined in His mind. The openness view claims that God is omniscient in that He knows all that can be known, but that much of the future cannot be known. In this view God exhaustively knows the present and the past and as such can accurately predict much of the future. The future is already known in some degree to God based on what He has already decided to do, but He is limited in that He does not know what decisions His creatures will make until they make them at which time He reacts to the changing decisions. The Calvinist view takes a harder view of omniscience similar to that of simple foreknowledge. God knows all. This view does away with the pretense of libertarian free will that exists in simple foreknowledge and freely admits, if not glorifies in, that free will is significantly limited by the absolute knowledge of God. God knows all not because He knows what will happen or what has happened. God knows all because He has already ordained it all to happen. Beyond these defined theological systems, which themselves exist as spectrums rather than cut and dry positions, lays a more extreme spectrum more common in folk and lay theology. On one end is the idea that the omniscience of God is totally restricted to the here and now and that God is truly surprised at how things turn out, view that goes beyond even open theism. The other end is that God is so totally wrapped up in His knowledge of all so much that we are indeed automata who have no control and are merely puppets of God for His amusement, a position far more extreme than the Calvinist position.
These views, which are the main competitors for the omniscience of God, have much to look for in the scriptures for support. The idea of the omniscience of God itself is clearly stated throughout all of the scriptures. Proverb 15: 3 tells us that, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on those who are evil and those who are good.” This passage indicates that God knows all that is happening on earth. Jeremiah 17:10 relates to us God’s word that, “I, the Lord, probe into people’s minds. I examine people’s hearts. I deal with each person according to how he has behaved. I give them what they deserve based on what they have done.” In this we see the knowledge of God that penetrates the physical and looks to those things hidden in minds and spirits. In Isaiah 46: 9-10 God reveals His foreknowledge of events, “Remember what I accomplished in antiquity! Truly I am God, I have no peer; I am God, and there is none like me, who announces the end from the beginning and reveals beforehand what has not yet occurred, who says, ‘My plan will be realized, I will accomplish what I desire,’” Despite these and several other passages that indicate the omniscience of God, there are passages that do seem to express a limited view of God’s omniscience. An example of such a passage would be Genesis 18:20-21, “So the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so blatant that I must go down and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. If not, I want to know.” Another Genesis verse commonly used against divine omniscience is Genesis 22: 10-12, “Then Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife, and prepared to slaughter his son. But the Lord’s angel called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am!” he answered. “Do not harm the boy!” the angel said. “Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.” While opponents of the full omniscience view of God use such verse to say God’s knowledge is limited in different ways depending on their particular theological system, the historical consensus has been that such passages are examples of anthropomorphic language that God uses to enable us to better grasp situations.
It is my view in light of these scripture passages that God’s omniscience is total in the sense that he knows all that has ever happened, all that is, all that will happen, and all that never has nor never will happen. The view this falls in line closest with the middle knowledge. God knows all that could have happened and choose to actualize this particular world out of all the possible worlds He could have created because He knew the counterfactuals involved. He knows all things that will happen because He ordained all circumstances knowing what the effects would be. Somewhat deviating from middle knowledge, though, is that God does not know the future only because He ordains events. His knowledge is not limited by what we are willing to do in every possible world. He knows all regardless of counterfactuals. But His middle knowledge and His acting from it preserves the free will of man. He has set up the events but His omniscience cannot be rightly said to be logically contingent on this fact, despite the fact that for practical reasons it works out that way. Here is an example for this. God actualized this world out of the possible worlds ordaining the events that would happen, knowing us to choose that which we most desire and following the plan that He has set up perfectly despite our choosing to do it totally of our free will to do those things. Practically God knows exactly the same having set up the events and knowing what we would choose as He does knowing all things. Practically He knows based on His counterfactual knowledge and His ordaining of events. Logically He knows regardless of counterfactual knowledge as He would know all of time anyway.
I support this view of omniscience because it appears to me to fall in line with scripture and conscience. Scripturally God is spoken of knowing the future and all the present, the hearts of men and the darkest of pits. Not only does scripture say this, but scripture constantly exalts God as greater than we can comprehend. I am convinced that ultimate knowledge of everything lies well within the awesome bounds of our great God. Also I am convinced by scripture that man is held accountable for his sins precisely because they are his sins committed wholly by him. My conscience also leads me to this conclusion, that men have freedom to some degree to choose as they will. It is my belief that man will always in every circumstance choose that which he most wants. This is inescapable and yet it is still a choice. God is well capable of orchestrating events to direct the course of history without forcing any decisions simply because He knows what they will be.
The other views of omniscience, in my belief, negate omniscience. If God is limited to knowing only those things He will do, He is not omniscient. To know all include the knowledge of what will be. If He who knows all knows anything concrete of the future He knows it all. Beyond this, to claim that foretelling of events are just very accurate guesses builds up to a large and shaky set of assumptions that is completely unnecessary. If God knowledge of the future means that there is no freedom then omniscience has no value since there is nothing to foreknow, there is only the clock spinning along as it always will. The other positions tread far too close to these options.
A attack brought against this view is that it goes against the verse mentioned above and others like it that seem to show that God does not always know what will happen. I claim to the historical answer to this that this is anthropomorphic speech. This is seen throughout scripture when it talks of the ‘eye of God’ wandering to and fro or when God is said to have anatomical features. Anthropomorphic speech enables us to grasp those things of God that go beyond our understanding. The line is drawn somewhere in this issue wherever you stand, and to draw the line where I do stays consistent with the overwhelming support for God’s omniscience. Another common attack is that this view still limits the free will. This argument does not seem to fit with scripture as many events are foretold, even ones contingent on decisions like the events after Saul visited the witch of Endor, and yet the free will of man is not openly negated in scripture. Scripture seems to both support the possible foreknowledge of any event and the free will of man and I am convinced by this that they are indeed compatible.
This is not merely an academic issue. The very fact that one side is prominent that takes away God’s foreknowledge to make Him more imminent is truly scary for the future of the Church. This affects many areas of our spiritual life. One are is that of worship. What worship do we bring to a God who is no more than us intellectually except in degree? What worship do we offer when it is simply an automatic response that has no beginning in our desire to bring glory to God? Another area is in service. What service should we do if it is just forced? Why do any consciously as God will make us do it if we are just automata? If God is so unknowing that He can be surprised, why should we do service? We have no knowledge that He can do what He said He will, so there is no assurance of the outcome. Finally this affects the very message of salvation. If we take these ideas too far the God we worship will not be the God enthroned in heaven. We will be preaching another Gospel and we will be subject to Paul’s condemnation, “As we have said before, and now I say again, if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be condemned to hell!”[3]






Bibliography

Edy, Paul R. Divine Foreknowledge: Four View Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2001

Sire, James W. The Universe Next Door Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2004

VanHoozer, Kevin J. Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2005

Ware, Bruce A The Lesser Glory of God Wheaton, Crossway Books, 2000
[1] Doctrines and Covenants 130:22
[2] Galatians 1:9
[3] Galatians 1:9

A Short Review of "The Truth About You"

In The Truth About You, Marcus Buckingham leads the reader down an interestingly unique course of vocational advice. More of a self-improvement program than a self-help book, Marcus uses different mediums to ingrain his methods into the reader. Through the use of a motivational DVD, a one hundred page booklet, and the handy ReMemo Pad, Marcus tries to reorganize the categories we have for our weaknesses and our strengths while showing how we can use this knowledge to put us on the correct path for our future. The five pieces of advice he gives that break the booklet up into its chapters are somewhat loud and countercultural, but through the chapter length explanations their importance stands out.

1: Performance is always the point.
2: Your strengths aren’t what you are good at, and your weaknesses aren’t what you are bad at.
3: When it comes to your job, the What always trumps the Why and the Who.
4: You’ll never find the perfect job.
5: You’ll never turn your weaknesses into strengths.

The whole of the program is interesting and engaging. It strives for, and accomplishes, keeping you active and attentive. The packaging of the product itself is also quite eye-catching, something that will stand out on the shelf and hopefully attract curious grazers. The content certainly seems to be of great value if one puts it into effective. On the downside, the booklet is disappointingly short. Coupled with the length of the activities described within, this leads to some confusion and a possibility of losing interest. Also, closer to my heart, the lessons in the program may not necessarily jive with Christian teaching. Thomas Nelson is usually a producer of faith centered works of literature but this particular book seems to run against the Christian ideas found in scripture, most notably in its materialistic focus and its misuse of the so called Golden Rule (Leviticus 19).