Posted on 07/21/2015 5:54:37 AM PDT by metmom
Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways. I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee. In the light of Thy perfect knowledge I would be as artless as a little child. Help me to put away all care, for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou hast tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.
To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.
The Scriptures teach that God has never learned from anyone. ”Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to Him the way of understanding?” ”For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?" These rhetorical questions put by the prophet and the apostle Paul declare that God has never learned.
From there it is only a step to the conclusion that God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into His mind knowledge that He did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, He would be imperfect and less than himself. To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth.
This negative approach to the divine omniscience is, I believe, quite justified in the circumstances. Since our intellectual knowledge of God is so small and obscure, we can sometimes gain considerable advantage in our struggle to understand what God is like by the simple expedient of thinking what He is not like. So far in this examination of the attributes of God we have been driven to the free use of negatives. We have seen that God had no origin, that He had no beginning, that He requires no helpers, that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being there are no limitations.
This method of trying to make men see what God is like by showing them what He is not like is used also by the inspired writers in the Holy Scriptures. ”Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,” cries Isaiah, ”that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” And that abrupt statement by God Himself, ”I am the Lord, I change not,” tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out.
God’s eternal truthfulness is stated negatively by the apostle Paul, ”God… cannot lie”; and when the angel asserted that ”with God nothing shall be impossible,” the two negatives add up to a ringing positive.
That God is omniscient is not only taught in the Scriptures, it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning Him. God perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.
God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.
Because God knows all things perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions.
God is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know – Himself, perfectly. ”The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Only the Infinite can know the infinite.
In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the Godhead. That God knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear to the man that has something to hide – some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or God. The unblessed soul may well tremble that God knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly the real reason for it. ”Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden. But where shall they hide? ”Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?… If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day.”
And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us. ”For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”
Our Father in heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His own sake engaged to save us (Isa. 48:8-11). His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish. His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God knows and cares as no one else can.
He doth give His joy to all; He becomes an infant small; He becomes a man of woe; He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh And thy Maker is not by; Think not thou canst weep a tear And thy Maker is not near.
O! He gives to us His joy That our griefs He may destroy; Till our grief is fled and gone He doth sit by us and moan. William Blake
Tozer ping
It is impossible for God to be omniscient or omnipotent, which are essentially both the same thing.
If God knows the future then the future is fixed and no one can change it, not even God. That is a limit on his power.
If God is omnipotent then he is responsible for every single thing that happens, both good and evil. That is a fault with his ethics.
I intuitively believe from logic that is impossible for any being to be perfect.
Big statement... no proof.
Your argument stems from a human understanding of God... and that by all accounts is limited.
We, as humans, cannot define God on our terms.
Hoss
You just did define God in your terms.
If you are going to use the argument that humans can’t understand the mind of God then any statement about the nature of God is just as valid as any other statement.
Hoss
With respect, I think it stems from a human understanding of time and space.
Both time and space are creatures (or aspects of creation); neither exists apart from God. Furthermore, time and space are really the same thing: ways of expressing or experiencing the variability within creation. We humans can only experience one particular place-time. In order to get to a different place-time, we have to travel there.
For God, all places, all times are eternally present. For us, only "this particular place" and "this particular moment" are "here and now". For God, ALL places, ALL times are "here and now". We must wait for things to happen. For God, they simply exist.
Frankly, human language is inadequate to express the "God's Eye" view.
Well put. What we can and do know, we do get from His word.
Hoss
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some hint of it in Scripture, but I've never found it.
In any case, the Scriptures tell us that God created everything (Gen. 1, John 1) ... therefore space-time is completely subject to Him, not the other way around.
God stands outside time and can view it from that perspective.
That gives Him the ability to foresee, from our perspective, what is going to happen.
However, that does not mean that He determines it or orchestrates it. It does not turn Him into a master puppeteer, making Him responsible for what happens.
If God is not omnipotent, then He is not and cannot be in complete control of everything. That means that there is something outside of God at work which robs Him of His Godhood.
Human logic has it’s place, but it is not a tool for knowing God, or evaluating Him.
(For God, ALL places, ALL times are “here and now”. We must wait for things to happen. For God, they simply exist.)
In that case, I can’t imagine the boredom God is experiencing. That means he has all knowledge but NO power.
(Frankly, human language is inadequate to express the “God’s Eye” view.)
Well then, how can you presume to attempt it as you just did in your post?
Amen! God's sovereignty is all-inclusive.
I don't have a mind for math, so I'll settle for the scripture quoted. :D
Hoss
Those comments in parenthesis are not mine.
Why are you asking me for an answer to a question about a comment I did not make?
Again, human reasoning cannot be applied to God. Thinking that He’s bored is applying or humanness to Him. That’s doomed to failure.
You, me and the rest of us are humans: A supremely limited being whose senses make it aware of only a very thin sliver of the entire, vast electromagnetic spectrum of reality.
Many of us humans will then take that limited crumb of awareness and crown themselves masters of the universe with the predictable results to go with it.
However, consider the parts that make up an animal's brain and how each part gives that animal abilities that other animals without those part do not have.
Then, consider that our human brain doesn't have the part(s) necessary that would let us fully comprehend God.
The best we can do is come up with analogy and metaphor to understand what we can't understand otherwise.
As it is, we humans barely use what we have for basic self-awareness and easily fall into traps that prevent greater understanding.
Most are aware of the inner hierarchy of our existence. Many will say that we are body, mind and spirit and Genesis 1:26 tells us we were made in the image of the Holy Trinity.
But, usually, most of us are only aware of the three or four lowest levels of human existence from the bottom up: the physical, emotional, mental and, for some, the intuitive level.
Fewer humans still are aware of their highest three levels of spiritual existence beyond those lower four, the three levels of love in the spiritual plane.
Here in the Schoolhouse Earth matrix God built and programmed for us, we have to overcome each level to advance in our existence, not unlike how we do going through K-12.
You learn and get tested. Sometimes you get the same test again and again until you pass it. Once you do, you rarely get that test again.
If you don't overcome each level, you stay stuck at that level, frequently in some form of arrested development indicative of that level.
People get stuck in addictions, obsessions, the pains of the past, in anger, resentment, mental illness, etc.
The trickster within, the ego, whose place is threatened by the higher levels, uses rational and other tricks to keep its human stuck at the lower levels and "full of itself" with the little ego in charge.
This is the spiritual death Scripture warns about.
The only way for a human to truly understand the things you posted about is to let the Holy Spirit in to teach you and introduce you to Wisdom.
Otherwise, you just don't have the parts to get 'er done.
And worse, that little ego in charge isn't at all interested in looking into it anyway. The personal threat to it and its place in charge is too great.
No matter how long God knocks, the little ego is NOT answering that door.
**It is impossible for God **
Nothing is impossible for God......He can do all things.
Have you ever read Genesis?
Numbers 23:19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Titus 1:1-2 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
Hebrews 6:17-18 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
2 Timothy 2:11-13 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.
10 Things God Can't Do
http://www.christianitytoday.com/iyf/hottopics/defendingyourfaith/things-god-cant-do.html
Things God CANNOT Do
http://www.letusreason.org/Apolo2.htm
Saying that God can do anything is a false premise and usually used to explain a logical contradiction that people can't handle otherwise.
It's a favorite tactic of atheistic philosophers to try to deny the existence of God.
Excellent advice...
Hoss
The first one is interesting take on God.
The second link looks like atheistic site.
They can think that way, but the mere statement of their thesis means they believe there is a God in my opinion.
....”Nothing is impossible for God......He can do all things”....
That is not true....there are things God cannot do, here are just a few ....
It is impossible for God to lie.....
It is impossible for God to be unfaithful....
It is impossible for God to refuse anyone who comes to him in faith......
It is impossible for God to sleep.....
It is impossible for God to be unjust.....
It is impossible for God to change.....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.