Knowing God: 9 - God is All-Knowing

God is Omniscient

God can see all reality and events at once.   He knows all truth and the current state of reality "as it actually is".   He is also infallible in the sense that He knows all truth, and deception or error have no effect on His knowledge.   How He has this knowledge if frankly beyond the human mind's limited ability to grasp:

Psalm 139 1-18  "Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up; You understand my thoughts from far away. You observe my travels and my rest; You are aware of all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, Lord. You have encircled me; You have placed Your hand on me. This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it"... 

"For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began....God, how difficult Your thoughts are for me to comprehend; how vast their sum is! If I counted them, they would outnumber the grains of sand".... HCSB

Job 28:24  For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.  HCSB  

Proverbs 15:3  The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.  HCSB

God can see our thoughts:  He sees directly into our hearts; knows our intentions and motives and desires.  These things, being fully revealed to Him, make Him a perfect judge of our actions and motives:

Jeremiah 17:9-10  The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.”  HCSB

Hebrews 4:13  “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.  HCSB

Job 34:21-23  For His eyes are upon the ways of a man, And He sees all his steps. There is no darkness or deep shadow Where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. For He does not need to consider a man further, That he should go before God in judgment.  HCSB

God can see what "would" happen

God can also see all events in the future, and any possible alternative future events in any possible scenario.  He knows what "would" happen and what "could" happen, and what "will" happen.  "Middle Knowledge" is a term used in theological literature about this attribute of God.  This concept was written about at length by a Spanish Roman Catholic priest in the late 1500's named Luis de Molina.  His name bears the thesis that God both knows what actually "is" and what "could" possibly have been or would be given different circumstances and difference decisions made by humans.

That God has perfect knowledge of potential things that could happen but did not is borne out in Scripture.  Recall the Book of Jonah, where the city of Nineveh was to be destroyed if the warnings of Jonah were not heeded.  Destruction most assuredly  "would" have come since God proclaimed it so.  "But," they repented - and it did not come to pass.  

There are other instances in the Scripture where there is inference of a possible alternative series of events known to God that did not come to pass, including:

• Exodus 13:17
• Isaiah 5:4-5
• Ezekiel 12:3 
• Jeremiah 3:6-7, 3:19:20, 7:31, 19:5, 26:3, 32:35  
• I Samuel 13:13
• 1 Chronicles 2:15
• Matthew 26:39

This “middle knowledge”, or the ability to know what “would” happen in a certain set of circumstances allows God to operate in the world Providentially without harming man's free will.  He knows how a person would respond in all possible situations and circumstances, and can influence events in the world to ensure His Will comes to pass without violating men's free will choices.  So this resolves the seeming paradox of Pharaoh’s hardened heart (after 10 chances) and Judas's betrayal of Jesus.   God knew their hearts and simply acted with knowledge of their actions in advance.

God already knows all possible circumstances and outcomes of our actions, because He cannot learn.  No events are ever unforeseen.  Therefore, any free moral choice we make does not surprise Him or frustrate His Will.  A detailed examination of this topic and competing perspectives on God's Foreknowledge can be found here:  The Mystery of Divine Foreknowledge

Job 21:22  “Can anyone teach God knowledge, in that He judges those on high?”  HCSB

Romans 11:33-36  Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counselor?  Or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to Him again?  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever.  Amen  HCSB

Why God's Omniscience should gives us comfort

First, God’s omniscience is a basis for total trust in God’s guidance in your life.  God, because he is all-knowing, never makes a mistake.  He never changes his mind because of a lack of foresight.  He never overlooks anything; nothing catches him by surprise. Therefore we can be fully confident in his guidance for our lives.

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths.”  HCSB

So based on God’s being all-knowing and infallible, we can trust him to guide us, to direct our paths as we make our way through life. In fact, his way and his will for us are perfect.

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul tells his readers that they should present their bodies as a living sacrifice, pleasing and acceptable to God, and to be transformed by the renewal of their minds.  Why? He says, “so that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  That is the description of God’s will for your life.  It is good; it is acceptable, both to you and to the Lord; and it is perfect.  That means that anything you do to try to improve upon God’s will can only damage it. It is perfect, and you don’t tamper with the perfect.  So, on the basis of God’s omniscience, we can trust him totally for his guidance in our lives, even when this takes us through deep waters and the valley of the shadow of death.

Second, we often we find ourselves in situations where we may be unjustly accused of something.  Or others misunderstand us and mistake our motives. They may malign us and speak evil of us, even though our intentions were good. In situations like this we can take comfort in the fact that God knows our heart.

1 Samuel 16:7 “For the LORD does not look on things as a man looks on them; man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”   HCSB

God knows the motives of your heart, even when others misunderstand and malign you. God understands when we fail.

Psalms 103:13-14 “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”  HCSB

God knows that we are mere dust and fallible creatures, and so when we fail, he understands us. Also when our devotion seems low at times, God knows the truth. He knows our hearts.

In John 21:17, Peter is confronted with the risen Christ, who asks him three times, “Peter, do you love me?”  John records that Peter was hurt because Jesus asks him for the third time, “Do you love me,” and Peter said, “Lord, you know all things.  You know that I love you.”  Even when our devotion seems low, when perhaps our lives aren’t all that they should be, God knows our hearts. He knows that we love him, and he understands.  This is a source of comfort to us.

Third, this means that when God makes a promise, He can keep it!  This gives us assurance the God's plans cannot be thwarted or obstructed.   His promises are certain to come to pass; in fact God often describes future events in the past perfect tense "as if" they have already happened.  "Done deal".

Isaiah 46:10 I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done, saying: My plan will take place, and I will do all My will.  HCSB

Finally, God’s omniscience is a source of security in God’s love.  There is no new information about you that could affect God’s love for you.  There are no skeletons in your closet that he is unaware of.  There is no future fall that you might commit that he doesn’t already know in advance that might affect his love for you.  God knows us entirely and thoroughly; he knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows us warts and all – he sees things in us that are so evil and fallen and depraved that we don’t even recognize them ourselves.  And yet he loves us unfailingly. He knows us thoroughly, and yet he loves us unfailingly.

1 John 3:19-20 says, “By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”  HCSB

Even at those times when we look at ourselves and think what spiritual failures we are and how we let the Lord down, God is greater than that, and his love is consistent. Therefore, that means that there is no need to try to hide from God. That is futile anyway; we have seen that God knows everything, even the secret motives of our hearts. Therefore, there is simply no point to try to hide from God and hide our failures and sins from him.

There is simply no reason to hide from God. It is futile anyway!  He loves us anyway, and therefore we have security in him and in his love and his knowledge of us.  We can bring our failures openly to him, be delivered of our guilt, and have security in his love for us.

God's omniscience also requires that God must also be “all present”, not just in the physical realm, but He has understanding of the hearts and minds of men and angelic beings and the deep wisdom finite beings cannot even grasp.   To know what is "happening everywhere", He has awareness and "presence" everywhere.

<<   Knowing God: 8 - God Does Not Change

>>   Knowing God: 10 - God is Everywhere All the Time

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*Acknowledgment here to Dr. William Lane Craig and his "Defender" series for portions of this material.

Scripture citations are from:  Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) © 2009 Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville TN 

Theology - Doctrine of God Part 2 - God is Self Existent

When you start down the path to understand the nature of God, many skeptics will say “there is nothing you can know about God”. Technically, if that were true, then you would in fact know 'something' about God, in that He is unknowable. But we can easily conclude some things about God by definition of what we mean by “God”. He must be Self-Existent, the First Cause, Uncreated, and Eternally Being. That is a fair definition of God's aseity – the nature of His existence.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism describes God as “a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” 

 

God has Infinite Attributes

An aside about the concept of Infinity. It is in essence a negative word describing what “isn't” -- something that is not finite. There are two aspects to infinity. One is the mathematical construct of a set of discrete things for which there is no upper boundary of their quantity. Examples are the set of natural numbers, the set of real numbers, etc. A second aspect of infinity is qualitative.

Dr. W. L. Craig ⁱ “...if we talk about God’s love as “infinite,” what we mean is that it is unconditional, it is boundless; but we don’t mean that it is somehow made up of a collection of definite and discrete parts which are infinite in number. The love of God’s being infinite is not a quantitative notion. Or when we talk about God’s moral perfection and his holiness and we say he is infinitely good or holy, again that is not a quantitative notion. We don’t mean that there are units of holiness, and God has an infinite number of these units. It is more a qualitative infinity. So when we talk about infinity with respect to God, we should use the word as a qualitative notion.”

In the temporal/physical universe, I've not found an example of either aspect of infinity. There are "potential infinities" such as the dividing of time into ever smaller units, but Time had a beginning, and as such, we have be progressively adding to a set of units of time. But in physical reality, time is discrete units or quanta of 10^-43 seconds. The same can be said of distances – they could potentially be infinite in terms of a set of points in the universe, but real, actual locality cannot exist in a space less than a Planck length, which is approximately 1.616199×10⁻³⁵ meters or 636.30×10⁻³⁶ inches, which is about 10⁻²⁰ times the diameter of a proton. That's really small, but not infinite.

Similarly, I find no infinite forms of superlatives – no qualities or characteristics that would be considered infinite. Some may be considered absolute or complete, but this doesn't raise that to infinitude, even if in our imaginations – one could always imagine just a little more.

God is Self-Existent

God is not contingent on anything else, He is not created, but “is” eternally. God has the power of Being in Himself. God cannot not 'be'. Otherwise, nothing would exist. God is the source of all reality outside himself.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word,[logic] and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  NKJV

Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God.  NKJV

Dr. W. L. Craig ⁱⁱ  “Philosophers draw the distinction between necessary existence and contingent existence. God is a necessary being. His non-existence is impossible; he exists necessarily. By contrast, all other beings are contingent – they are contingent upon God as the independent, self-existent one. So it is not true that if God is a being, he is just one among many. Quite the contrary, God is the source and sustainer of all contingent beings, and he is the only metaphysically necessary being that exists. 

For those who press the question, when you are in conversation with them, “Where did God come from?” I think you can return with the following question: “If there is no God, then where did the universe come from?” On the atheistic view, you have got to believe that the universe is self-existent, unless you think it just popped into being uncaused out of nothing, which seems absurd. That is worse than magic. So on the atheistic view, you have got to believe the universe is a self-existent, necessary being, which is exactly the same thing that we believe about God. In other words, what the atheist is forced to do is simply to substitute the universe in the place of God."

The only two worldviews possible to be logically consistent with reality are that the universe is eternal and is a proxy for God, or God exists. The bible notes that those who substitute the creation for God are subject to God's wrath.

Romans 1:20-22 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened.  NKJV

Even if the universe is ultimately proven to exist eternally (or somehow defies the Law of Cause and Effect in its beginning), the universe is not “necessary”. The universe does not have to exist, or exist in the present form. However, God is necessarily existent, are there are implications for us to consider.

Dr. W. L. Craig ⁱⁱⁱ Theologian Paul Tillich defined God as “the object of ultimate concern.” Since God is the ultimate being, the metaphysically necessary source of all other being, he is properly the object of ultimate concern because he is the ultimate being. Therefore, to substitute anything else for God is literally a form of idolatry. Once you understand how radically contingent we are, how we depend upon God and his pleasure for our very existence moment by moment, then to live independently of God is madness.

God is Eternal

By definition, being self-existent necessarily means being eternal, outside the contingent state of time. The Psalms praise God as everlasting:

Psalm 41:13 Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen   NKJV

Job 36:26 How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.   NKJV

Jude 25: to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!   NKJV

Dr. W. L. Craig “...Scripture is often under determinative with respect to these attributes of God. By that I mean that they don’t make it entirely clear how we are to conceive of a particular attribute of God. For example, the Scripture says that God is eternal; but does that mean that he has existed for infinite time and always will? Or does it mean that he is timeless? The Scripture isn’t altogether clear on that.”

Sidebar:  Time and Eternity

Theologians debate whether God lives outside of time, or exists everlastingly from eternity past through eternity future. The Psalms give the impression God lives in an endless stretch of time from past to future, whereas Jude hints that God is entirely disconnected from time and temporality. We assert time was created, as it is clearly a physical attribute of the universe. And God had to exist outside and before time existed in order to create it.

However, does God now still now live outside of time? This is not clear, because Scripture tells us God will create a new heavens and a new Earth where we will dwell in our resurrected bodies forever. This has the appearance of being temporal (bounded in spatial and time dimensions). Christ as a man clearly experienced temporality on Earth, and will again some day. So the debate occurs around whether God now lives within created time (experiencing a past, a present and a future and causality from events occurring in chronological order), or does God remain utterly unaffected by time.

While we affirm that God is uncreated, immutable, permanent and will continue to exist forever, there is room for dispute about how God interacts with time. Here are arguments for both timelessness and temporal states.

Dr. W. L. Craig ^iv “In my book Time and Eternity I survey what I think are the best, or most promising, arguments for divine timelessness, and I find that most of these are, frankly, very implausible or weak arguments, with the exception of one. This is the argument based on the incompleteness of temporal life. The idea here is that a temporal mode of existence is, by its very nature, a defective mode of existence. One has only the brief, fleeting present. The future is not yet – one does not yet possess one’s future. The past is gone, irretrievably lost. So all one has is one’s present, and that is ever changing, ever passing away, with no permanence, so that a temporal being cannot possess his life all at once. By contrast, a being which is timeless, outside of time, possesses all of its life at once. It simply has no past, present, or future – it just has a timelessly existing state. It has its life all at once. The claim is that this is a more perfect mode of existence, and, since God is the most perfect being, it would be incompatible with God to have a defective mode of existence. Therefore, God cannot exist temporally.”

The temporary nature of time, how things are transitory; always moving from future to present to past, gives strength to the argument God cannot be affected by time. However there are also arguments for the strength of God to endure everlastingly.

Dr. W. L. Craig  ^v “God is a God who acts in history – first causing one event, then causing another event after that, then causing another. God is intimately involved in the temporal process. He parts the Red Sea, he calls the children of Israel out of Egypt, he sends Christ into the world. The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity is an especially problematic doctrine for those who think that God is timeless. Here God himself enters into human history in the person of Jesus Christ...There was a time when the second person of the Trinity was not yet incarnate, and there was a time after which the second person of the Trinity was intimately united to a human nature...Anything that changes has a before and an after. That just is to be in time.

As an omniscient being, God must know all truths – he must know all the facts that there are. But there are clearly truths which are tensed truths. God must know these tensed truths if he is truly omniscient. For example, God must know that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. But at one time, that wasn’t true. In 1490, it was true that Christopher Columbus will discover America, and God must have known that truth. But if God knows these tensed truths, then that means that his knowledge is constantly changing, as future-tense truths become false and the present-tense versions becomes true. “Christopher Columbus will discover America” was true at one time, then it became false, and it became true that “Christopher Columbus is discovering America.” Then that became false and the past-tense statement “Christopher Columbus did discover America” became true. So God’s knowledge would be constantly changing, and therefore He would be in time.”

Resolving the paradox from the Scriptures

Dr. W. L. Craig ^vi I want to suggest that we understand God’s eternity to mean that God is timeless without creation, and he is temporal subsequent to the moment of creation. God is timeless without creation. Existing alone without the universe, God exists timelessly. With the creation of the world, time begins and God enters into time in virtue of his changing relationships with the temporal world and his knowledge of tensed truths. God is timeless without creation, and he is temporal with creation. That makes sense of the passage in Jude, which says, “. . . before all time and now and forever.” That is a way of expressing in ordinary language God’s existing timelessly without creation, time begins at creation, and God now and forever exists in time.

One more thing – I would say this: a way of thinking of this is as an act of condescension on God’s part. In creating a temporal world, God condescends to give up his mode of atemporal existence and to take on our mode of temporal existence for our sake and our salvation. Then in the incarnation, he condescends even further to take on not merely our mode of existence but our very humanity. I think that is very characteristic of the biblical God – a God who humbles himself and condescends to take on our mode of existence and our humanity."

To summarize, the bible clearly asserts that God “was” before time was created. God had to exist outside and before time existed in order to create it. The best explanation for God's interaction with creation and scripture is that now He condescends to participate with man in a temporal state. For us the issue is to keep the eternal perspective ahead of us. As Paul writes:

2 Corinthians 4 16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.   NKJV

i Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

ii Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

iii Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

iv Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

v Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

vi Defenders Podcast “Doctrine of God”

See further posts on the Doctrine of God

Theology - Doctrine of God Part 1 - Defining Reality

Theology - Doctrine of God Part 3 - God is a Person

Theology - Doctrine of God Part 4 - God's Omnipresence

Theology - Doctrine of God Part 5 - God is Changeless

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Scripture citations are from:  Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) © 2009 Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville TN or New King James Version®. (NKJV) Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson