Essay
The Nature or Attributes of God Essay: Omniscience
An A grade essay on the omniscience of God.
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Madison CharlesAsses the problem for believers who say God is omniscient.
To describe God as omniscient typically is to describe him as ‘all-knowing’, however, there are lots of
different types of knowledge and it is heavily debated by scholars what type of knowledge God
possesses. The main problem regarding the omniscience of God is its compatibility with his other
attributes, such as his omniscience and justice, and omnipotence. For example, if one takes knowledge
to mean divine foreknowledge, but this brings into question our free will: are we truly free if God knows
what we will do in the future? Numerous theologians and scholars have attempted to reconcile this
issue and demonstrate how the attributes of God are compatible with his omniscience, but it is
debatable how convincing they have been.
One of the main issues concerning God’s omniscience is whether it endangers our free will and in turn
questions his justice and omnibenevolence. Swinburne argues that God cannot know the future, since
this would mean he knows what we will do in the future and thus we are not truly free and it would be
unjust for God to punish or reward us in the afterlife. If God does not know the future, however, can we
really describe him as ‘omniscient’? Several scholars attempt to reconcile this issue, such as
Schleiermacher, who suggests that God knows what we do in the future but in a similar way to how we,
as humans, know what our friends will do since we know them so well. This idea is supported by Bible
passages which suggest that God has an intimate knowledge of every human, for example, in Jeremiah
1:5 he says “before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. In this sense, God knows what we will do but
we still have free will since, thus Schleiermacher concludes “even divine foreknowledge cannot
endanger free will”. However, in Schleiermacher’s analogy, the knowledge we have of what our friend
will do is fallible, it can be wrong, however Schleiermacher insists that God’s knowledge is infallible since
he is omniscient and Aquinas’ emphasis on the difference between human knowledge and divine
knowledge supports this. While human knowledge is fallible, God is an omniscient and divine being thus
his knowledge is different and the easiest way to understand it is through Schleiermacher’s analogy. To
an extent, however, this somewhat undermines his argument, since God therefore accurately knows
what we will do in the future is it still just for him to punish or reward us?
Boethius and Anselm present alternative ways in which God’s omniscience can be compatible with the
free will of humanity, which is generally perceived as essential if God is understood to be
omnibenevolent. Boethius suggests that God does not see the ‘future’ as such instead he is outside of
time and sees the past present and future at once in his state of “unchanging present”. Therefore, since
he sees it all at once he does not know what we will do because for him, it is all happening at the same
time. Thus, Boethius distinguishes between simple necessity, things that must happen that are out of
human control, such as death and conditional necessity, things that happen as a result of the choices we
as humans make. Since God does not know what we will do in the future and all of our actions are
conditionally necessary, Boethius concludes that God’s omniscience is compatible with his
omnibenevolence and God remains just in his punishment and rewarding of us. Boethius’s argument,
however, is flawed. As Kenny suggests it is somewhat incoherent to view God in this way and events like
God creating the world and the day of judgement appear to happen at a point in time. Anselm can be
seen to make a more convincing argument, suggesting that the “eternal present” God exists in is non-
temporal and the fourth dimension alongside height, width and depth. In this argument, Anselm suggest
that, like Boethius, God sees us in our past, present, and future at once, since these are not concepts
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