God is…omniscient?

Does God know everything? This may seem like an obvious question to answer for anyone who’s a Bible-believing Christian.

Most of us would answer very quickly: of course he is…next question?

Are there are any reasons to think he’s not?

And what difference would it make to your life or mine?

Is it true?

Are there some Christians who would argue God is not omniscient?

Yes. Certainly not a majority, but there are some.

How is that possible? How can anyone believe God’s message and his promises and yet not believe he knows everything?

Let’s think about the future. Does God know what’s going to happen in the future?

Again, that might seem like an obvious question. The Bible is full of prophecies and promises and predictions, making it abundantly clear that God can tell us in advance what’s going to happen.

Whether it’s a promise of a childless couple later having an incomprehensible number of descendants, or a prediction of the ever-changing geopolitical landscape as it affects the servants of God, or a prophecy of the birth, death or resurrection of Jesus…it’s blindingly obvious that God can tell us the future before it happens.

Can’t he?

Here’s where some people have difficulties: free will.

Why is that a problem?

Here’s why: how can we truly have free will, some people ask, if God already knows what we’re going to do? How can your choices be free when the future is already known? Doesn’t that mean it would have been impossible for you to make a different choice?

A different choice on your part might have had major repercussions for world history. Now you might argue that your actions are unlikely to have that much impact. But major political or military figures from history? Those who were involved in events specifically prophesied by God? People like Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon or Cyrus of Persia or Alexander of Macedon. How could God’s prophecies have come true if those people had made different choices that led to them dying in their very first battle?

Do you see the problem?

Let me be honest up front. There is no easy answer to this problem.

Some Christians insist that free will must be real and thus they take a limited view of God’s omniscience and argue that he doesn’t have complete knowledge of the future.

Other Christians take it the other way. They insist God is omniscient in all things, including the future, and their solution is to deny that free will exists. All of your choices and decisions, in their view, are determined and couldn’t have been anything else.

Is it possible to accept both?

I personally am happy to accept both premises, namely that God is omniscient and we do have free will, but if you were to ask me to explain how the two are reconcilable, I could not give you a compelling answer. I have several suggestions but they are some way beyond the scope of a casual weekly blog such as this.

The best short answer I can give is that God almost certainly exists outside of time as we understand it. He doesn’t experience concepts such as past, present and future. All events within the universe which are past, present or future from our perspective are already fully known to God. However, God’s foreknowledge of these events does not necessarily have any causal effect on the decisions made by human beings to bring them about – and therefore, arguably, free will is preserved.

Does that make sense? I really hope it does.

Does it matter?

The question that is almost certainly more important for daily life as a Christian is the following: what does God’s omniscience mean on a practical level?

As I said, the majority of Christians would probably accept that God is fully omniscient. He knows everything. That includes everything you’ve done in the past, everything that you’re think about right now, and everything you will go on to do in the future.

If you believe that God knows everything – or if you say that you believe this – do you actually listen to him when he tells you things? Or do you prefer to verify them for yourself?

This is the question that Adam and Eve had to answer in the garden in Genesis 3. Would they listen to God telling them the difference between good and evil – namely, obedience to his commands versus disobedience – or would they experience it for themselves by eating from the forbidden tree?

We know the option they chose. The wrong one.

It’s the same question Abraham and Sarah faced when God stated as a simple fact that they would one day have an uncountable number of descendants. They believed him, but they still had a choice to make.

Sarah had never been able to have children and was now at or beyond the point at which it was even physically possible for her. Would they trust God’s statement and wait for him to make this impossible thing happen, or would they try to find a way of doing it that made sense to them – namely having another woman bear a child for Abraham, who Sarah would adopt as her own?

Again, they made the wrong choice.

It’s the same question Peter faced when he swore that he’d stand by Jesus’ side no matter what his enemies tried to do to him, but Jesus told him that within a few hours Peter would be shaking in fear and denying that he even knew Jesus. Would Peter listen to Jesus and try to make sense of what might be going to happen next, or would he argue and double down on his promise never to abandon him?

We know that he doubled down, and did so with so much certainty that his later failure made him break down in tears of almost unbearable guilt and shame.

Et tu?

But what about you? Do you believe God is omniscient? If so, do you live as if you believe that?

Do you believe the things God has said even when they go against what modern popular culture says? Or against what people around you think? Or even when they go against your own perception of common sense?

If God says that marriage is only to be between one man and one woman for life, do you believe him? Or would you rather believe what popular culture says?

If God says that there will be fighting and violence when Jesus returns to the earth, do you believe him? Or would you rather go with an emotional dislike of those things?

If God says that something you find very difficult to stop doing is a sin, do you believe him? Or would you rather listen to people who tell you there’s nothing wrong with doing it?

It’s very, very easy to say you believe God is omniscient but then listen only selectively to what he actually says.

Nobody would have felt this temptation more than Jesus. We know that in the garden of Gethsemane he begged God for some other way to bring about the hope of eternal life for us all. Jesus’ mind must have been racing frantically, trying to think of other ways God might achieve it, anything that would enable him to escape the agony and humiliation of the cross. His natural instincts, desperate to survive and avoid pain, must have been screaming at him to find some other solution and then find a way to justify doing that instead.

But Jesus never followed those instincts. He asked God for another way and none was available. And so he went ahead with it, because he loved God and trusted him completely. He trusted that God knew everything and that if God said there was no other way, then there was indeed no other way. It was no use trying to imagine or invent some alternative solution that somehow hadn’t occurred to God.

So there’s the challenge for you when you make decisions.

Do you have free will? I believe you do and therefore are responsible for those decisions.

If God’s message has anything to say which bears on your decision, do you listen to him? Do you trust him enough to assume he knows best? That his way is better than anything you might be able to come up with?

Is it easy? No. Is it what Jesus did? Yes.