GOD’S OMNISCIENCE

LO: I will know about the difficulties in understanding God’s omniscience

Starter: Peter Vardy chapter on Omnipotence

Hmk for tomorrow: Read Dialogue article on Boethius and Paradox

BRUCE ALMIGHTY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgBFI4P6hmg&feature=related

KNOWLEDGE …

How would you define ‘knowledge’ ...

•Theoretical or practical understanding•Justified belief •Awareness or familiarity•Gained through our senses

PHILOSOPHER’S GUIDE – 15 MINS!

Construct a summative guide on what philosophers have said with regards to God’s omniscience. Use pg 422-427 of Taylor. Focus on the following areas:

Philosophers and Omniscience (Quite a few get mentioned)

The limits of God’s knowledge Do humans have free will if God is omniscient?

PAIRS

Share your information with each other ensuring that there is total understanding by quizzing them at the end.

WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF GOD IS OMNISCIENT?

We will read page 427-428 together

Key questions: If God knows, then do we have real choice

and real moral responsibility? If God knows evil before it happens, why

not intervene? If God has the power to stop evil, and

knows about it before it happens, is he responsible?

How does this match up with traditional religious beliefs about God judging us in the afterlife?

SOME SOLUTIONS: KEY WORDS

Omniscience – refers to God’s unlimited knowledge, including all history, past present and future. God is outside of time and has knowledge of the whole of time from beginning to end.

Limited Omniscience – God’s knowledge is limited to what it is logically possible to know or God chooses to limit what he knows to allow human free will.

Middle knowledge consists of knowledge of what would happen if certain choices were made or if certain things happened differently.

OMNISCIENCE AND FREE WILL – THE OPTIONS … Are omniscience and free will incompatible?

Either we have no actual free will, or is it free, but only in a limited sense (as in it’s ability to come to salvation, Calvin)

God doesn’t know all the choices we will make (Process theologians)

God is timeless/everlasting, and therefore knows but does not cause our actions

Fixed and flux? (Remember Doctor Who!) Some things are determined, other things are open to possibilities. From a human perspective we can’t see which is which.

Analogy of author writing a book, where God knows and determines the end from the beginning (although in this case the author plays a part in the book.)

THOUGHT POINT – ANDREW WILSON

“[Charles Spurgeon] … prayed as if salvation was entirely a work of God, and evangelised as if it was entirely a decision of the human will. Another analogy you often hear is the way both Shakespeare and Macduff are responsible for killing Macbeth, but not 50/50 or 100/0, but 100/100, in different ways.”

THOUGHT POINT

‘O Lord you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.’ Psalm 139:1-2

If this were true, what would be your response?

Can God change his mind? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9_B-Z1r0-I

SOME CONCLUSIONS FROM WILLIAM LANE CRAIG God’s mode of existence is a contingent property dependant upon his will.

This means that the way God exists is God-determined. God can choose which mode to exist in, and does so with the full knowledge of its implications.

God, out of his love and desire to relate to humans chose to quit this timeless state of perfection, which he enjoyed, in order to enter into this temporal mode of existence in order to sustain relationships with us. The act of creation was an act of grace.

When God chose to create time and space, we can still maintain that God is eternal, in the sense that he has no beginning or end (essential property) It is up to God whether He exists timelessly or temporally, within time (both can still be eternally.)

God maintains his state of perfection, it only changes horizontally from one state of perfection to another once creation comes into being (God’s mode of existence shifts from timeless to temporal), as opposed to changing vertically, in the sense of increasing improvement. If it had been a change in the vertical sense then this would have resulted in losing God’s perfection. Therefore, it must be in the horizontal sense.

It is impossible for God to go from being temporal back to being timeless because given the nature of time, you can’t go back to a state of timelessness after creating time, because then you would have to say that time did exist which would be a logical impossibility once you were in a timeless state after creation had existed.

PLENARY

Remember your reading homework for tomorrow.