Back to God’s attributes. Since God is everywhere (i.e. ubiquitous) He sees everything that’s going on in space and time. From that, theologians deduce that God is all-knowing; in Latin omniscient. Nothing exists that God does not know about.
Now, is this consistent with how the bible describes God? What about the passages where it looks like He doesn’t know something—where He has to ask people questions, or appears to be surprised by an answer, or can be talked into—and out of—something?
And this is a valid concern for two reasons: It either means He’s not all-knowing, and we got that part wrong. Or it means He is all-knowing—but for whatever reason He’s acting or pretending like He’s not all-knowing, and doesn’t that suggest, to some small degree, that He’s not entirely being honest with us? Both ideas are kinda disturbing. Are either of them accurate?
Well, let’s get to that.
What does God know?
First we need to recognize that God is indeed consciously aware of things. He’s not just an unconscious force in the universe. The writers of scripture describe Him being aware of things, (Ge 20.6) and sometimes aware of things that we humans aren’t aware of. (1Sa 23.10-12) Seems awfully basic, but you’d be surprised how some people think God is only unconsciously aware of everything, and say that’s the reason why sometimes it appears He doesn’t know things.
Second we need to state that we honestly don’t understand how God, who fills all of time, learns new things, or gains knowledge. Some theologians claim He doesn’t gain knowledge; that He already knew everything from the very beginning. But there are scriptures that obviously state that God gains knowledge. Take this statement God made to Abraham.
I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant. I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.
—The LORD, Genesis 18.20-21 NLT
Wait, wouldn’t an all-knowing God already know whether Sodom and Gomorrah are as bad as He was told? Didn’t He basically admit to Abraham right here that there was something He didn’t know?
This is hard to explain, because we’re dealing with a God who exists in all of time simultaneously, and we don’t work that way. I’ll put it this way:
God won’t know something that doesn’t exist. That’s because it doesn’t exist; it’s nothing. There’s nothing to know. If it exists in His mind—or your mind, or mine—it does exist; it’s something, it’s in the universe, and God knows it. But if it doesn’t exist, in reality or in anyone’s mind, it’s nothing, and He won’t know it. Get it? (Read that again if you don’t.)
Okay. If something doesn’t exist now, it might exist later. We time-bound humans couldn’t know it until it comes to exist. God, who’s not limited like we are, could know it long before it comes to exist.
But at what point would He know it? At the instant it came to exist. The moment nothing becomes something, God learns of it, and knows it. While we (who are time-limited) would only be able to bring that knowledge with us into the future, God (who is in all of time) brings that knowledge into Himself—and He fills all of time, future and past. So this is how He would know things before He learned them.
Yeah, that sounds like a paradox, and is gonna bend your brain a lot. We don’t work that way. But we can deduce from scripture that God apparently does. For us, cause always comes before effect. For God, it doesn’t always. The time He learns something can come long, long after the time He knows something. That’s how He knows the future.
God doesn’t show surprise because He guessed about the future, and guessed wrong. (In fact, the many instances of His surprise in the bible would then imply He guesses wrong a lot.) God is surprised because His position, in all of time, makes it so He never needs to guess. Why guess when you know everything? Why risk being wrong when you can always be right? And God always is right, because He’s speaking out of foreknowledge, not educated guesses. He declares the end from the beginning (Is 46.9-10) not because He hopes it will turn out that way, but because He’s already at the end, and sees it happening. So likely He never guesses; and when you come at every new bit of information with no preconceived notion, your honest reaction is often gonna be surprise.
But at the same time, He knew it was coming and was prepared for it. And neither is a dishonest reaction. Both are true.
Hence the writers of the bible flat-out state that God knows everything. (1Jn 3.20) He knows what’s in every human heart, (1Ki 8.39) meaning He knows what’s in the innermost self of every person on earth. Paul wrote that he was known completely, (1Co 13.12) obviously by God. Only God can incorporate our terrible acts into His plans, and make good come out of every one of them. (Ac 2.23) But for more on that, look at His almightiness.
God’s ability to learn, and immutability.
Thomas Aquinas taught that God is immutable—He doesn’t change, just as Christ Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (He 13.8) So for that reason He can’t learn anything new; you can’t add stuff to an unchanging God, because that would change Him. In essence, Thomas believed God always knew everything from the beginning of time; nothing took Him by surprise, and any time we read He was surprised, we ought not take that literally.
I do agree that God’s character does not change, and His promises do not change, but will be fulfilled because of His immutable character. (He 6.18) But the context of Hebrews 13 is that the essentials of Christianity do not change—so “remember your leaders who taught you the word of God,” and “do not be attracted by strange, new ideas.” (He 13.7-9) Namely those that lead you away from Jesus.
Those who believe God doesn’t change, regularly make the mistake of applying it too widely. They presume God would never, ever do a new thing—even though the scriptures describe otherwise. (Nu 16.30, Is 43.19) Jesus’s covenant with us was a new covenant, after all, (He 12.24) and the Holy Spirit regularly does new, unexpected things—all of which have the same fruit of pointing us to Jesus.
Those who believe God is immutable also tend to believe that God exists outside of time and looks down on it, instead of filling all of time just as He does space. Since part of the nature of time involves change, this means an unchanging God shouldn’t have anything to do with time. There are all kinds of problems with this thinking. (The most obvious to me is that God loves music, and is worshiped in heaven and earth with it, but music can’t exist without time. Think about it.) The biggest one is that it describes God as not being everywhere, but outside of it; and the scriptures describe Him otherwise. See how one flawed idea can lead to others?
As for open theism’s view on how God and time work, I discussed it elsewhere.
What does Jesus know?
I should point out—as I have in many theology pieces—that this attribute of God does not describe who He is; it is only what He can do. Because Jesus voluntarily gave all-knowingness up when He became human. He stayed God; but all He knew was what the Father showed Him. And sometimes the Father left bits out.
However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son Himself. Only the Father knows. —Jesus, Mk 13.32 NLT
Jesus knows the Father, because He came down from heaven (Jn 3.13) to share the Father’s thinking with us. But the Father didn’t bother to tell Him anything that wouldn’t accomplish His will. He didn’t try to cram His infinite knowledge into Jesus’s finite, time-limited human brain. Do you download the entire contents of your backup hard drive into your cell phone? No; you carry what you know you’ll need. So how much did Jesus know? Everything He needed to. Nothing He didn’t.
Naturally, some theologians disagree, and say Jesus was as all-knowing as the Father, because they can’t conceive of a depowered God. That, to them, would not be God. Of course, this is why there are certain myths about Jesus where, just after He’s born, He sits up in His cradle and talks like an all-knowing adult to the people around Him: He’s a little baby God, yet still omniscient. Freaky. But they were left out of the bible for good reason.
See, an all-knowing Jesus who claimed He didn’t know things is not explainable. I can explain how a time-unlimited God can learn new things, yet know everything. I can’t explain how a time-limited God can know everything and yet say He didn’t know everything. We just wind up back with our original concern: Jesus says He’s not all-knowing, and if He actually is, He’s not being completely honest with us. And if He’s not entirely honest with us about who He is, our faith is in a whole lot of trouble: We can’t know anything for certain about a dishonest God. We’d never know where He was telling the truth, and where He was faking it.
So which idea must we set aside: Jesus is true, or Jesus is all-knowing? Which is more important to us: Truth or power?
For me, that’s an easy choice; Jesus admitted He wasn’t all-knowing, so that’s where I hang my hat. For others, God’s sovereignty outweighs everything else, so that’s where they hang theirs.
Practical consequences.
So when we pray, are we telling Him anything He doesn’t know already? No; He knows it well in advance. (Mt 6.8) But because God won’t know something that doesn’t exist, the fact is that if we never make a prayer request, there’s no prayer request for God to know in advance.
Fr’instance: Say I need a new computer. (I don’t; we’re just saying.) Naturally, God knows I need a new computer; He learned it the instant I needed one, whether I recognized I needed one or not. He can, independently of me, just because He’s generous like that, get me a new one. He can also, because He’s teaching me to depend on Him, have me figure out that I can’t get one on my own, and turn to Him; to make a prayer request, which He will answer. And, as I’ve explained previously, He can answer it retroactively—He can arrange for me to get that computer long before either of us find out I need one.
But let us say that I, stubbornly, decide that I will get a computer on my own, without God’s help, and never request it of Him. If I never make a prayer request, it doesn’t exist. And as I pointed out above, if it doesn’t exist, it’s nothing; God won’t know it. So does God know my prayer request before I make it? Not if I never make it.
Occasionally I hear or get the question, “Why should I pray for things if God already knows what I’m going to pray for?” Because you never pray for them, there is no “what I’m going to pray for” that God will already know. God will know what you need, which is a totally different thing. But again, if there’s no prayer request, then there’s nothing there for God to know.
This line of thinking makes some Calvinists* nuts, because it sounds a bit like God is dependent on us to determine what He’s gonna do. You know, like predestination: Calvinists insist God determines everything, and He bases nothing on our repentance. Whereas other Christians recognize that God does all the saving, (Ro 9.16) but He does hear us when respond to the Holy Spirit’s call, and saves those who call to Him. (Ro 10.12-13) We are agreed that God is unlimited; He is never limited by our choices, and can always do as He wishes. But what He wishes is to be in relationship with us.
And this is how two-sided relationships work: People react to one another. God acts and we respond; we act and God responds. Because God is unlimited, He always has the upper hand. But He permits us input into the relationship, and voluntarily acts upon it. He doesn’t want it to be one-sided, with Him doing all the work, and us doing as we please; He calls that sin. He wants it to be interactive. When we call out to God, we aren’t talking to someone who already has His mind made up, and condescendingly ignores us while He, who knows better, does His own thing. We’re talking to someone who desires our input, who knows better but still wants to hear our take on things, who uses that knowledge to shape us into the image of Jesus, and from there uses us to shape the world into that image. And while our activity is limited by time and limited knowledge, His isn’t.