Is God Omniscient?

Any historically orthodox Christian with half a brain will look at that title and say, "Huh? Well ... of course He is!" If you do that too readily, I would suggest you haven't closely examined the question.

Here's what we know. We know that God "knows the secrets of the heart" (Psa 44:21). We know that David was certain that "in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them" (Psa 139:16). "Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord" (Psa 139:4). King David told his son, "The LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought" (1 Chron 28:9). Quite clearly "The eyes of the LORD are in every place" (Prov 15:3). The disciples prayed "You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men ..." (Acts 1:24). How many times were there incidents like when David asked God if his enemies would surrender to him and God told him they would (1 Sam 23:12)? Or who could forget the story of Jesus when they brought the young paralytic to Him. He forgave his sin. The scribes were reasoning in their hearts, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" The text says, "Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them ..." (Mark 2:8). Jesus was quite sure "Father knows what you need before you ask Him" (Matt 6:8). He claimed that a sparrow doesn't fall without God knowing it and that "the very hairs of your head are all numbered (Matt 10:29-30) (suggesting that no knowledge is too small for God). In fact, Jesus knew what people would have chosen had their circumstances been different (Matt 11:12). The author of Hebrews tells us, "There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do" (Heb 4:13). And John was not ambiguous when he wrote, "God is greater than our heart and knows all things" (1 John 3:20). And then there is the pile of biblical prophecy where God and His prophets made predictions about all manner of things that all came true.

Here's what else we know. We know that God asks questions. Typically questions are asked because we lack information. God asks questions. He asked, "Where are you?" when Adam and Eve were hiding (Gen 3:9). He asked Cain, "Why are you angry?" (Gen 4:6) and "Where is Abel your brother?" (Gen 4:9). When the woman with the issue of blood touched Jesus's garment, He asked, "Who touched My garments?" (Mark 5:30). Questions.

In other places there is the very clear implication that God is discovering something new. When Abraham lifted his hand to sacrifice his only son, God stopped him and told him, "Now I know that you fear God" (Gen 22:12). On multiple occasions in Jeremiah God says of Israel's sin, "Nor did it ever enter My mind" (Jer 7:31; 19:5; 32:35). When the centurion told Jesus just to order his servant well, it says "Jesus marveled at him" (Luke 7:9).

So, which is it? Is He omniscient or isn't He?

Without actually trying to correlate the apparent contradiction, many will assure us that God is omniscient but doesn't know what Man will do. Pure, unmitigated cognitive dissonance. He knows everything but doesn't know everything. "Man has Free Will," they tell us, "and in order to have Free Will God cannot know what we will choose or we are not free to choose." Some take it beyond that to Open Theism, where God knows all that can be known ... but that doesn't include Man's choices. They redefine "omniscient" to mean something different. "See?" they say, "He knows all things ... that can be known." Still, traditional, historical, orthodox Christianity sides with the Scriptures that indicate absolute omniscience rather than contradictory or limited omniscience. Which is it?

The Genesis 4:9 reference gives us a hint about God and His questions. He asked Cain where Abel was, but it is explicitly clear that He knew the answer. Cain gave the classic denial, "Am I my brother's keeper?", but God answered, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground" (Gen 4:10). This is a repeated thing in God's dealing with people. He asks not because He doesn't know, but because He does know and needs them to recognize it.

There is another factor to consider. While we understand "know" to mean one basic concept -- "knowledge" -- the Scriptures use the term in a few different ways. One is the same as ours -- to mentally apprehend something. But far more often it is used in a rather different sense. When Adam "knew" his wife, it was not a mental apprehension of a fact. When Jesus "never knew" those false prophets, it was not a failure to have knowledge. Greek, in fact, includes two basic ideas of "know". One is ours. The other is more at experiential knowledge. So you may "know" what it means to jump out of an airplane by watching films of it, but your knowledge of it will not be the same as when you actually do it. In this sense, then, God can know that Abraham feared Him and still, in a different sense of the word, "experience" it when he offered his son as a sacrifice. That is, it moved from "know" to actual practice, not requiring any change or new information for God.

There is another concept that is sometimes at work here. In many places in Scripture God deals with His creation in terms that His creation can understand. It is called "anthropomorphism" and sometimes "phenomenological language". We know, for instance, that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Gen 6:8), but we also know that God is spirit. You see, a spirit doesn't have eyes. Nor hands. Nor feet. Nor a head. Nor a nose. Yet all of these components (and more) are used in varying descriptives of God, not because He has them, but because we understand them. Anthropomorphisms. And phenomenological language refers to those types of things that are described as how they appear without necessarily meaning what actually happens. An obvious example is "sunrise". It appears that the sun rises. We all know it doesn't. But we use the term. We know, for instance, that God doesn't change His mind, yet some passages are worded to say that He "repents" (or "relents" or ...). That's what it looks like. That's the phenomenon. That's not what actually happens. So when it appears that God doesn't know something, it may be merely an appearance without a reality. When Jesus marveled, it wasn't necessarily because it was new information. The language describes the phenomenon of Jesus experiencing the truth He already had. And we are to "make known" to God our petitions (Phil 4:6) even though He already knows what we need (Matt 6:8).

God is omniscient. The massive weight of Scripture makes that clear. There is nothing that God doesn't know. His knowledge, in fact, isn't like ours. We know by acquiring knowledge. He knows it by His nature. Certainly there are passages that imply that God might not know something. For those, you have a few options. You can decide that Scripture is unreliable, no such God exists, and be done with it. You can hold contradictory views in tension, believing that God knows everything but doesn't know everything. Or you can read them in such a way that aligns the two views rather than placing them in competition. I choose the latter.