Theology Club: Open View Theology

Bright Raven

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Is it true or is it false? I do not see how it can be true

From Gotquestions.org

Question: "What is open theism?"

Answer: “Open theism,” also known as “openness theology,” the “openness of God,” and “free will theism,” is an attempt to explain the foreknowledge of God in relationship to the free will of man. The argument of open theism is essentially this: human beings are truly free; if God absolutely knew the future, human beings could not truly be free. Therefore, God does not know absolutely everything about the future. Open theism holds that the future is not knowable. Therefore, God knows everything that can be known, but He does not know the future.

Open theism bases these beliefs on Scripture passages which describe God “changing His mind” or “being surprised” or “seeming to gain knowledge” (Genesis 6:6; 22:12; Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10). In light of the many other Scriptures that declare God's knowledge of the future, these Scriptures should be understood as God describing Himself in ways that we can understand. God knows what our actions and decisions will be, but He “changes His mind” in regard to His actions based on our actions. God’s disappointment at the wickedness of humanity does not mean He was not aware it would occur.

In contradiction to open theism, Psalm 139:4, 16 state, “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD...All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” How could God predict intricate details in the Old Testament about Jesus Christ if He does not know the future? How could God in any manner guarantee our eternal salvation if He does not know what the future holds?

Ultimately, open theism fails in that it attempts to explain the unexplainable—the relationship between God's foreknowledge and mankind's free will. Just as extreme forms of Calvinism fail in that they make human beings nothing more than pre-programmed robots, so open theism fails in that it rejects God's true omniscience and sovereignty. God must be understood through faith, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6a). Open theism is, therefore, not scriptural. It is simply another way for finite man to try to understand an infinite God. Open theism should be rejected by followers of Christ. While open theism is an explanation for the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human free will, it is not the biblical explanation.
 

JudgeRightly

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Is it true or is it false? I do not see how it can be true

From Gotquestions.org

Question: "What is open theism?"

Answer: “Open theism,” also known as “openness theology,” the “openness of God,” and “free will theism,” is an attempt to explain the foreknowledge of God in relationship to the free will of man. The argument of open theism is essentially this: human beings are truly free; if God absolutely knew the future, human beings could not truly be free. Therefore, God does not know absolutely everything about the future. Open theism holds that the future is not knowable. Therefore, God knows everything that can be known, but He does not know the future.

Open theism bases these beliefs on Scripture passages which describe God “changing His mind” or “being surprised” or “seeming to gain knowledge” (Genesis 6:6; 22:12; Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10).

See below.

In light of the many other Scriptures that declare God's knowledge of the future, these Scriptures should be understood as God describing Himself in ways that we can understand.

In other words, the author is telling the reader that the verses should not be read plainly, without interpretation, first, but that they should interpret it in such a way that it fits with the settled view.

That's called question begging. Assuming the truth of your position to prove your position is correct.

Instead, what the reader should do is read the scriptures presented, and whichever position uses them with the least amount of interpretation and explanation of those verses is probably the correct one.

Think Occam's razor.

God knows what our actions and decisions will be, but He “changes His mind” in regard to His actions based on our actions. God’s disappointment at the wickedness of humanity does not mean He was not aware it would occur.

In contradiction to open theism, Psalm 139:4, 16 state, “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD...All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Ok, so, Taking two verses out of their context and saying that they then contradict an entire doctrine is a bit much.

First of all, "before a word is on my tongue" just means before I say something. And where is speech before it is uttered? In the brain. Is GQ ignoring that relatively simple fact? Because it refutes the first part of their claim that the verse contradicts open theism, because God can know what is on a person's mind before they say it. He's powerful enough to do that.

Second, verse 16 is not talking about the entire life of a person. Verses 13-16 are verses on fetology, and are also a powerful weapon against abortion:


The Sanctity of Unborn Life – Biblical Fetology: "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb… My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth [womb; see below]. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them." –Psalm 139:13-16
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you..." –Jeremiah 1:5

God wrote the book of fetology, that is, the development of the baby in the womb which is described in the human genome and the gametes of the parents. That book documents the course of a child's fetal development and birth. In verse 16, David is bragging about God's extraordinary design of the development of the baby in the womb. The embryo goes through the trimesters of development not haphazardly but by direction from God. The child forms in the womb by God's intricate plan of fetal development, which we now know He recorded in the written instructions of our DNA and in the cells of the ovum and sperm which unite to form the single-celled brand new human child (organism). That single cell contains step-by-step, day-by-day directions of the 280 days of gestation which the Spirit inspired David to write about, the days of the child's development in the womb. "You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb," explains that God designed the process by which the baby is formed, protecting the little one (Latin, fetus) within his mom. "My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." David praised God, for even as he developed in the womb, God could see his frame (Hebrew, skeleton, lit. bones) being knit together, "skillfully wrought," in "my mother's womb." The Hebrew idiom, "the lowest parts of the earth" was a common expression for "the womb" as one can see from the reverse use of the idiom in Job 1:21, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there." No one returns to their mother's womb at death, but rather, goes into the grave, i.e., the lowest parts of the earth, which phrase came to be a Hebrew figure representing the womb, even as Man was made from the earth, the dust of the ground. The genetic code written by God describes the development of the baby in the womb, so God reveals, "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed (as the baby travels down the fallopian tube, even before he is formed in the womb, Jer. 1:5) and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." God sees the child, who he or she really is, the baby's substance, all through the extraordinary DNA code which God wrote (which David of course had no concept of, but which as the author, God knew all about). So, from the moment of conception, "being yet unformed," that is, as just a single cell in my mother's fallopian tube, God saw me, and knit me together, and in His book of instructions for the baby's awesome development in the womb, all "the days fashioned for me," that is, all the days which God decreed for the fashioning of a fetus, they were written and set from the very beginning, before a single day's growth unfolded, even before the first cell divided into two, all 280 days of gestation, beginning with that moment of fertilization. So regardless of one's theology about predestination and free will, Psalm 139 does not teach that if a child is aborted, that moment of death was written in God's book. Rather, the book and its pages describe the development of the fetus, not his lifetime and ultimate death. Psalm 139:16 presents a couplet, a simple Hebrew parallelism. The two sentences of Psalm 139:16 both speak of the same topic, with each further explaining the other. Thus "the days fashioned for me" were not the days of my childhood, or my marriage, nor do they describe the child's death certificate, for these were the days when only God could see "my substance, being yet unformed." For He knows what each human being is like, in the most extraordinary detail, at the moment of conception. And the wonderful passage at Jeremiah 1:5 is another Hebrew couplet, where both parts describe aspects of the same unformed single-celled child in the womb. "Before I formed you in the womb... before you were born" (Jer. 1:5). Both halves of the couplet are describing the same time of when the baby was in his mother's womb. Likewise, God created the Earth yet calls it unformed (Gen. 1:1-2) because the dry land hadn't yet appeared until the third day when it was then ready to support life. So God didn't have to wait for Jeremiah to graduate from high school, so to speak, or even for him to be born, before He could know him. God knew him from the moment of conception, that is, from the moment he was conceived in his mother's womb!​

- https://americanrtl.org/what-does-the-bible-say-about-abortion#Fetology

How could God predict intricate details in the Old Testament about Jesus Christ if He does not know the future? How could God in any manner guarantee our eternal salvation if He does not know what the future holds?

Because God is powerful enough and wise enough to bring about that which He plans.

Ultimately, open theism fails in that it attempts to explain the unexplainable—the relationship between God's foreknowledge and mankind's free will. Just as extreme forms of Calvinism fail in that they make human beings nothing more than pre-programmed robots, so open theism fails in that it rejects God's true omniscience and sovereignty. God must be understood through faith, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6a). Open theism is, therefore, not scriptural.

That's not what was said above:


Open theism bases these beliefs on Scripture passages which describe God “changing His mind” or “being surprised” or “seeming to gain knowledge” (Genesis 6:6; 22:12; Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10).



There's also Jeremiah 18, John 11, and many others that show that the future is not settled.

Saying it's not a scriptural belief is just flat out lying.

It is simply another way for finite man to try to understand an infinite God. Open theism should be rejected by followers of Christ.

RATHER, instead of making such a hasty defense of their beliefs as if they were scared of the doctrine of open theism, the author of this article should have taken the time to consider what it actually says, as most of his rebuttals have already been addressed by proponents of the doctrine.

While open theism is an explanation for the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human free will, it is not the biblical explanation.

Again, saying it doesn't make it so, and it has been shown otherwise, especially with Jeremiah 18.

There's not a lot of substance to this article, it's basically just open theism bashing, without actually trying to understand what open theism really is about.
 

Bright Raven

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See below.



In other words, the author is telling the reader that the verses should not be read plainly, without interpretation, first, but that they should interpret it in such a way that it fits with the settled view.

That's called question begging. Assuming the truth of your position to prove your position is correct.

Instead, what the reader should do is read the scriptures presented, and whichever position uses them with the least amount of interpretation and explanation of those verses is probably the correct one.

Think Occam's razor.



Ok, so, Taking two verses out of their context and saying that they then contradict an entire doctrine is a bit much.

First of all, "before a word is on my tongue" just means before I say something. And where is speech before it is uttered? In the brain. Is GQ ignoring that relatively simple fact? Because it refutes the first part of their claim that the verse contradicts open theism, because God can know what is on a person's mind before they say it. He's powerful enough to do that.

Second, verse 16 is not talking about the entire life of a person. Verses 13-16 are verses on fetology, and are also a powerful weapon against abortion:


The Sanctity of Unborn Life – Biblical Fetology: "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb… My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth [womb; see below]. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them." –Psalm 139:13-16
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you..." –Jeremiah 1:5

God wrote the book of fetology, that is, the development of the baby in the womb which is described in the human genome and the gametes of the parents. That book documents the course of a child's fetal development and birth. In verse 16, David is bragging about God's extraordinary design of the development of the baby in the womb. The embryo goes through the trimesters of development not haphazardly but by direction from God. The child forms in the womb by God's intricate plan of fetal development, which we now know He recorded in the written instructions of our DNA and in the cells of the ovum and sperm which unite to form the single-celled brand new human child (organism). That single cell contains step-by-step, day-by-day directions of the 280 days of gestation which the Spirit inspired David to write about, the days of the child's development in the womb. "You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb," explains that God designed the process by which the baby is formed, protecting the little one (Latin, fetus) within his mom. "My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." David praised God, for even as he developed in the womb, God could see his frame (Hebrew, skeleton, lit. bones) being knit together, "skillfully wrought," in "my mother's womb." The Hebrew idiom, "the lowest parts of the earth" was a common expression for "the womb" as one can see from the reverse use of the idiom in Job 1:21, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there." No one returns to their mother's womb at death, but rather, goes into the grave, i.e., the lowest parts of the earth, which phrase came to be a Hebrew figure representing the womb, even as Man was made from the earth, the dust of the ground. The genetic code written by God describes the development of the baby in the womb, so God reveals, "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed (as the baby travels down the fallopian tube, even before he is formed in the womb, Jer. 1:5) and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." God sees the child, who he or she really is, the baby's substance, all through the extraordinary DNA code which God wrote (which David of course had no concept of, but which as the author, God knew all about). So, from the moment of conception, "being yet unformed," that is, as just a single cell in my mother's fallopian tube, God saw me, and knit me together, and in His book of instructions for the baby's awesome development in the womb, all "the days fashioned for me," that is, all the days which God decreed for the fashioning of a fetus, they were written and set from the very beginning, before a single day's growth unfolded, even before the first cell divided into two, all 280 days of gestation, beginning with that moment of fertilization. So regardless of one's theology about predestination and free will, Psalm 139 does not teach that if a child is aborted, that moment of death was written in God's book. Rather, the book and its pages describe the development of the fetus, not his lifetime and ultimate death. Psalm 139:16 presents a couplet, a simple Hebrew parallelism. The two sentences of Psalm 139:16 both speak of the same topic, with each further explaining the other. Thus "the days fashioned for me" were not the days of my childhood, or my marriage, nor do they describe the child's death certificate, for these were the days when only God could see "my substance, being yet unformed." For He knows what each human being is like, in the most extraordinary detail, at the moment of conception. And the wonderful passage at Jeremiah 1:5 is another Hebrew couplet, where both parts describe aspects of the same unformed single-celled child in the womb. "Before I formed you in the womb... before you were born" (Jer. 1:5). Both halves of the couplet are describing the same time of when the baby was in his mother's womb. Likewise, God created the Earth yet calls it unformed (Gen. 1:1-2) because the dry land hadn't yet appeared until the third day when it was then ready to support life. So God didn't have to wait for Jeremiah to graduate from high school, so to speak, or even for him to be born, before He could know him. God knew him from the moment of conception, that is, from the moment he was conceived in his mother's womb!​

- https://americanrtl.org/what-does-the-bible-say-about-abortion#Fetology



Because God is powerful enough and wise enough to bring about that which He plans.



That's not what was said above:


Open theism bases these beliefs on Scripture passages which describe God “changing His mind” or “being surprised” or “seeming to gain knowledge” (Genesis 6:6; 22:12; Exodus 32:14; Jonah 3:10).



There's also Jeremiah 18, John 11, and many others that show that the future is not settled.

Saying it's not a scriptural belief is just flat out lying.



RATHER, instead of making such a hasty defense of their beliefs as if they were scared of the doctrine of open theism, the author of this article should have taken the time to consider what it actually says, as most of his rebuttals have already been addressed by proponents of the doctrine.



Again, saying it doesn't make it so, and it has been shown otherwise, especially with Jeremiah 18.

There's not a lot of substance to this article, it's basically just open theism bashing, without actually trying to understand what open theism really is about.

Doesn't Open Theism question the total foreknowledge of God. Isn't it a question as to whether God has just that, a knowing of ALL things.
 

JudgeRightly

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Doesn't Open Theism question the total foreknowledge of God. Isn't it a question as to whether God has just that, a knowing of ALL things.

I don't blame you for it, but that's a bit of a loaded question.

The Bible does not say that God has all knowledge. That comes from Augustine, and he got the idea from Plato.

Open Theism simply asserts that God can know anything He wants to know, and is not forced to know something that he does not want to know (which is the unstated implication of "omniscience"), and that God cannot know something that is impossible to know (to use a simple example, the number of hairs on the boogeyman's head: the boogeyman doesn't exist, therefore there are no hairs to count, thus it is not something that God can know).
 

Bright Raven

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[MENTION=4465]Bright Raven[/MENTION]
Did God know whether or not Abraham would sacrifice Isaac?

Yes

Genesis 22:5 New King James Version (NKJV)
5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the [a]lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
 

Lighthouse

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Yes

Genesis 22:5 New King James Version (NKJV)
5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the [a]lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
-Genesis 22:12 (NKJV)

What do you think He meant?
 

Bright Raven

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And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
-Genesis 22:12 (NKJV)

What do you think He meant?

God tested Abraham in the command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God in his omniscience had always known the heart of Abraham, but here he gave Abraham an opportunity to demonstrate his faith.
 

Bright Raven

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And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
-Genesis 22:12 (NKJV)

What do you think He meant?

God tested Abraham in the command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God in his omniscience had always known the heart of Abraham, but here he gave Abraham an opportunity to demonstrate his faith.
 

Lighthouse

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God tested Abraham in the command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God in his omniscience had always known the heart of Abraham, but here he gave Abraham an opportunity to demonstrate his faith.

God tested Abraham in the command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God in his omniscience had always known the heart of Abraham, but here he gave Abraham an opportunity to demonstrate his faith.

Repeating it isn't going to magically make it true.

Answer the question.

Why did God say, "...now I know.."?

It seems to me to indicate that He did not know before, because He has that choice.
 

Bright Raven

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Repeating it isn't going to magically make it true.

Answer the question.

Why did God say, "...now I know.."?

It seems to me to indicate that He did not know before, because He has that choice.

From gotquestions.org

Omniscience is defined as “the state of having total knowledge, the quality of knowing everything.” For God to be sovereign over His creation of all things, whether visible or invisible, He has to be all-knowing. His omniscience is not restricted to any one person in the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all by nature omniscient.

God knows everything (1 John 3:20). He knows not only the minutest details of our lives but those of everything around us, for He mentions even knowing when a sparrow falls or when we lose a single hair (Matthew 10:29-30). Not only does God know everything that will occur until the end of history itself (Isaiah 46:9-10), but He also knows our very thoughts, even before we speak forth (Psalm 139:4). He knows our hearts from afar; He even saw us in the womb (Psalm 139:1-3, 15-16). Solomon expresses this truth perfectly when he says, “For you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind” (1 Kings 8:39).

Despite the condescension of the Son of God to empty Himself and make Himself nothing (Philippians 2:7), His omniscience is clearly seen in the New Testament writings. The first prayer of the apostles in Acts 1:24, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart,” implies Jesus’ omniscience, which is necessary if He is to be able to receive petitions and intercede at God’s right hand. On earth, Jesus’ omniscience is just as clear. In many Gospel accounts, He knew the thoughts of his audience (Matthew 9:4; 12:25; Mark 2:6-8; Luke 6:8). He knew about people’s lives before He had even met them. When He met the woman collecting water at the well at Sychar, He said to her, “The fact is you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18). He also tells His disciples that their friend Lazarus was dead, although He was over 25 miles away from Lazarus’s home (John 11:11-15). He advised the disciples to go and make preparation for the Lord’s Supper, describing the person they were to meet and follow (Mark 14:13-15). Perhaps best of all, He knew Nathanael before ever meeting him, for He knew his heart (John 1:47-48).

Clearly, we observe Jesus’ omniscience on earth, but this is where the paradox begins as well. Jesus asks questions, which imply the absence of knowledge, although the Lord asks questions more for the benefit of His audience than for Himself. However, there is another facet regarding His omniscience that comes from the limitations of the human nature which He, as Son of God, assumed. We read that as a man He “grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52) and that He learned “obedience through suffering” (Hebrews 5:8). We also read that He did not know when the world would be brought to an end (Matthew 24:34-36). We, therefore, have to ask, why would the Son not know this, if He knew everything else? Rather than regarding this as just a human limitation, we should regard it as a controlled lack of knowledge. This was a self-willed act of humility in order to share fully in our nature (Philippians 2:6-11; Hebrews 2:17) and to be the Second Adam.

Finally, there is nothing too hard for an omniscient God, and it is on the basis of our faith in such a God that we can rest secure in Him, knowing that He promises never to fail us as long as we continue in Him. He has known us from eternity, even before creation. God knew you and me, where we would appear in the course of time, and whom we would interact with. He even foresaw our sin in all its ugliness and depravity, yet, in love, He set his seal upon us and drew us to that love in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:3-6). We shall see Him face to face, but our knowledge of Him will never be complete. Our wonder, love and praise of Him shall go on for all millennia as we bask in the rays of His heavenly love, learning and appreciating more and more of our omniscient God.
 

Jerry Shugart

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Ultimately, open theism fails in that it attempts to explain the unexplainable—the relationship between God's foreknowledge and mankind's free will.

If you understand that when the Scriptures speak of God's foreknowledge that figurative language is being employed then you can know that open theism is a viable option. The first thing that must be understood is that God, being both infinite and eternal, is not bound by either space or time, as we are. William Ames (1576-1655) was one of the foremost of Reformed thinkers, often known as "the Learned Doctor Ames" because of his great intellectual stature among Puritans, said the following:

"There is properly only one act of the will in God because in Him all things are simultaneous and there is nothing before or after. So there is only decree about the end and means, but for the manner of understanding we say that, so far as intention is concerned, God wills the end before the means."

According to Ames all things in the eternal state are "simultaneous and there is nothing before or after." This idea that all things are "simultaneous" with God was expressed by another prominent Calvinist author, Loraine Boettner:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these. We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are. That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."

In "time" God does not know when a person believes until that person believes. But it can be said that God chooses believers for salvation before the foundation of the world because He exists in the "etenal now" or the "ever present now" and with Him it can be said that the moment in time when a person believes is the same moment before the foundation of the world. In other words, before the foundation of the world God saw the complete history of His creation, including who would and who would not believe, so Paul could say in all truthfulness that believers were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
 
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Lighthouse

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From gotquestions.org

Omniscience is defined as “the state of having total knowledge, the quality of knowing everything.” For God to be sovereign over His creation of all things, whether visible or invisible, He has to be all-knowing. His omniscience is not restricted to any one person in the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all by nature omniscient.

God knows everything (1 John 3:20). He knows not only the minutest details of our lives but those of everything around us, for He mentions even knowing when a sparrow falls or when we lose a single hair (Matthew 10:29-30). Not only does God know everything that will occur until the end of history itself (Isaiah 46:9-10), but He also knows our very thoughts, even before we speak forth (Psalm 139:4). He knows our hearts from afar; He even saw us in the womb (Psalm 139:1-3, 15-16). Solomon expresses this truth perfectly when he says, “For you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind” (1 Kings 8:39).

Despite the condescension of the Son of God to empty Himself and make Himself nothing (Philippians 2:7), His omniscience is clearly seen in the New Testament writings. The first prayer of the apostles in Acts 1:24, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart,” implies Jesus’ omniscience, which is necessary if He is to be able to receive petitions and intercede at God’s right hand. On earth, Jesus’ omniscience is just as clear. In many Gospel accounts, He knew the thoughts of his audience (Matthew 9:4; 12:25; Mark 2:6-8; Luke 6:8). He knew about people’s lives before He had even met them. When He met the woman collecting water at the well at Sychar, He said to her, “The fact is you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18). He also tells His disciples that their friend Lazarus was dead, although He was over 25 miles away from Lazarus’s home (John 11:11-15). He advised the disciples to go and make preparation for the Lord’s Supper, describing the person they were to meet and follow (Mark 14:13-15). Perhaps best of all, He knew Nathanael before ever meeting him, for He knew his heart (John 1:47-48).

Clearly, we observe Jesus’ omniscience on earth, but this is where the paradox begins as well. Jesus asks questions, which imply the absence of knowledge, although the Lord asks questions more for the benefit of His audience than for Himself. However, there is another facet regarding His omniscience that comes from the limitations of the human nature which He, as Son of God, assumed. We read that as a man He “grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52) and that He learned “obedience through suffering” (Hebrews 5:8). We also read that He did not know when the world would be brought to an end (Matthew 24:34-36). We, therefore, have to ask, why would the Son not know this, if He knew everything else? Rather than regarding this as just a human limitation, we should regard it as a controlled lack of knowledge. This was a self-willed act of humility in order to share fully in our nature (Philippians 2:6-11; Hebrews 2:17) and to be the Second Adam.

Finally, there is nothing too hard for an omniscient God, and it is on the basis of our faith in such a God that we can rest secure in Him, knowing that He promises never to fail us as long as we continue in Him. He has known us from eternity, even before creation. God knew you and me, where we would appear in the course of time, and whom we would interact with. He even foresaw our sin in all its ugliness and depravity, yet, in love, He set his seal upon us and drew us to that love in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:3-6). We shall see Him face to face, but our knowledge of Him will never be complete. Our wonder, love and praise of Him shall go on for all millennia as we bask in the rays of His heavenly love, learning and appreciating more and more of our omniscient God.

Is God sovereign over Himself? Or is he restricted? Where does the word "omniscient" appear in the Bible?

Your post is a lot of words to answer whether or not God lied to Abraham.
 

Bright Raven

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Is God sovereign over Himself? Or is he restricted? Where does the word "omniscient" appear in the Bible?

Your post is a lot of words to answer whether or not God lied to Abraham.

Where does the word trinity appear in the Bible. The thought of omniscience appears here.

1 John 3:20 New King James Version (NKJV)
20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.
 

JudgeRightly

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Where does the word trinity appear in the Bible.

Red herring.

The thought of omniscience appears here.

1 John 3:20 New King James Version (NKJV)
20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

From https://kgov.com/bel/20190723


A comment about the Amber shows from a Canadian listener leads Bob to dub Amber a Necessary Being. In reality, God is the only necessary being. But ask yourself if, like Amber, your own theology has turned you into a necessary being, that is, if your theology were true. For example, if you believe in the settled future, and that God has static knowledge, that is, eternally unchanging exhaustive omniscience of everything that will ever be, including you, and that this eternal foreknowledge is an essential attribute of deity, then that means that you too are a necessary being (even though you're not). That is, if God could not be God apart from his knowledge of the human being that is you, then indeed, God could not be God, nor could anything else exist, if it weren't for you. So, either you are a necessary being (which you're not), or your commitment to the pagan Greek humanist doctrine that the future is settled is misplaced (which it is). So we've gone back and retitled the kgov.com/amber program.



Don't make yourself a Necessary Being, BR. You are not necessary to God knowing all things.

http://kgov.com/amber
 

Bright Raven

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Red herring.



From https://kgov.com/bel/20190723


A comment about the Amber shows from a Canadian listener leads Bob to dub Amber a Necessary Being. In reality, God is the only necessary being. But ask yourself if, like Amber, your own theology has turned you into a necessary being, that is, if your theology were true. For example, if you believe in the settled future, and that God has static knowledge, that is, eternally unchanging exhaustive omniscience of everything that will ever be, including you, and that this eternal foreknowledge is an essential attribute of deity, then that means that you too are a necessary being (even though you're not). That is, if God could not be God apart from his knowledge of the human being that is you, then indeed, God could not be God, nor could anything else exist, if it weren't for you. So, either you are a necessary being (which you're not), or your commitment to the pagan Greek humanist doctrine that the future is settled is misplaced (which it is). So we've gone back and retitled the kgov.com/amber program.



Don't make yourself a Necessary Being, BR. You are not necessary to God knowing all things.

http://kgov.com/amber

I take it that you are an open theist.
 

Lighthouse

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Where does the word trinity appear in the Bible. The thought of omniscience appears here.

1 John 3:20 New King James Version (NKJV)
20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.
All things that are knowable.

Did Abraham know whether or not he would go through with it, prior to bringing the knife down?
 
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