Does God really know everything? ‘Of course’, we think, ‘he’s God. He must know everything’. Yet absolute knowledge is actually a deeply problematic concept philosophically and theologically. Just like omnipotence. We like to think God can do anything… but even God can’t make a square circle, or a married bachelor, or create a point north of the north pole – these are logical impossibilities (by definition) and God is rational. God is also holy, so he cannot sin, or he would not be God.
Omniscience (all-knowingness) is likewise a theological concept, but what does it really mean? There are impossibilities here too. God can’t know what a Jabberwocky looks like, because it doesn’t exist. So, should we insist God knows everything? Or perhaps more accurately, ‘everything that can be known’? What about the future?
There are many different types of ‘knowledge’. Say you have a child, ask them to choose between a bowl of ice cream or sauerkraut, you ‘know’ which they will choose. Ice cream every time! That’s predictive, relational knowledge; it’s not future or absolute. It’s still possible they could choose sauerkraut (they have free will, right?), but you know they won’t. Likewise, if God has all the facts, knows all our thoughts, sees our hearts, it’s a good bet he knows what’s about to happen next. But that’s also based on present factual knowledge, not future.
Absolute knowledge entails God knowing the future as fully and completely as he knows the past. Every future movement of every atom, molecule, gust of wind, creature, every thought we will ever think. This future ‘exists’ already in God’s mind and therefore cannot be otherwise. But does God really know what colour shirt I will choose to wear 3 years from tomorrow? All this would be incompatible with free will, let alone quantum indeterminacy and chaotic weather systems. But couldn’t God know everything before-hand without compelling it to be? The problem is God isn’t a mere observer – he created the whole system to begin with! If I build a machine that can make toothpicks, then I predict it will make toothpicks, and it does, no one will be too impressed. Add infinite complexity, it doesn’t change the scenario.
But what if God created a truly open universe, one that fundamentally allows free will, indeterminacy, complexity, options? He would still know ‘everything that can be known’, but without knowing an absolute predetermined future.
