Omniscience Does NOT cover the future UNLESS it is EXPLICITLY predestined in Scripture!

God's omniscience is a great concept. It is the right of God who does have infinite knowledge to know everything about everything. Unfortunately, due to the distortions of most theologies and tradition, we have to qualify what God's omniscience actually covers. Furthermore, notice that I previously stated and proved in an earlier blog, that omniscience is a right or power and not an attribute of God. Many classicists fail to see this and our proof is simply that the Incarnate Christ who is and was God in the flesh had almost no omniscience when he was a baby in that manger in Bethlehem....nuff said! An attribute is a quality that is inherent in the object. Lacking that attribute, the object loses its defining characteristic(s). So Christ could not exercise omniscience as a baby but He NEVER ceased to be God. To insist that omniscience is an attribute of God therefore contradicts the nature of the Incarnate Christ. Nope, omniscience is a power that may or may not be exercised by God's will. However, God cannot cease to exercise love, grace, righteousness, faithfulness and truth. These are TRUE attributes for when God loses any of these, He ceases to be the God of the Bible.

Classical theology, because of its great respect for the abilities of God, defines omniscience to include foreknowledge which is none other than God's ability to know the future. The intent of classicism is commendable to say the least. Quite unfortunately, however, this concept is quite un-Biblical. Like Calvinism which is logical and mostly thorough, despite the intent, it borders on quite un-Biblical ideas which have been discussed in our other blogs.

For now, let us confine our discussion to omniscience. To be really biblical, we would have to separate omniscience to things of the past and present while we would agree with the traditional definition and use of foreknowledge which is knowledge of the future.

Note that what God has foreknowledge of is set in stone or diamond and CANNOT change. This is not a theory, it is sheer common sense logic. Otherwise, if it does change, then God's foreknowledge of it was a mistake! Here is another logical downfall of classical theology, they refuse to declare that what God has foreknowledge of has actually been predestined! So they are logically sitting on the fence in this where they are not able to explain these concepts in a simple understandable way.

It is quite TRUE that God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than ours, but that in no way means that either He nor man is illogical. We are created in God's image and hence SHOULD have the same logical capabilities, foundations and norms to exercise the SAME kind of logical processes. What God has revealed SHOULD NO LONGER BE A MYSTERY! Otherwise, the Great Revealer has FAILED in His revelation.  All we need to do is properly synthesize Scripture to find out that there are little or no contradictions at all in both minor and major passages.

Many preachers quote from Isaiah 46:9-11 saying God knows "the end from the beginning" and this is actually a grave MIS-quote. The Bible says God DECLARES the end from the beginning. This continues to support our contention that God knows and guarantees ONLY THAT which He has declared or pre-ordained, and it is a huge hermeneutic mistake to conclude that God pre-ordained everything in detail. In fact, the passage in context talks EXCLUSIVELY about WHAT God has purposed and NOT that God has purposed everything in detail. Yes, God pre-ordained the laws of gravity, but it does not mean he pre-ordained specific people to jump or fall from the Golden Gate Bridge to their deaths including the exact time to the last second. That is preposterous to a God who created man in his image with free-will, NOT ROBOTS under His great puppet theatre.  He is The Good Shepherd, not the Great Puppeteer! He risks not having everything under specific minute control precisely because He is NOT an INSECURE God (Only insecure husbands want so much control over the wife's activities! Imagine what they would be if they had TOTAL control????)

In  Psalm 139:16 where David fondly declares:

 "Your eyes saw my unformed substance; 
in your book were written, every one of them, 
 the days that were formed for me, 
 when as yet there was none of them."

Proponents of specific predestination could argue EUREKA, here it is!!! And yet these same people will refuse to recognize that David was indeed one of the greatest theologians of the Bible. What a paradox, indeed.

Fortunately, sound hermeneutic principles would bring us back to safe harbor:

1. This is the ONLY place in Scripture where such a proposition hinting on specific predestination is mentioned almost without qualification. Hence, this has to be interpreted in the light of the rest of Scripture which has clearer propositions.
2. This is POETRY, people of God! I am the first to recognize David the psalmist as a really great theologian but one has to recognize that he is a poet, a psalmist who just happened to know God personally and actually talked with Him, walked with Him, dealt with Him as like an ordinary personal relationship. He uses the emotional imagery that poetry can bring to emphasize God's loving and fond relationship with Him. Hence our focus on words is meant to generate a feeling and not a theology!
3. You want to talk about the Book of Life? Go to the book of Revelations and you will see that there is not even the smallest hint that the Book of Life was written before "the foundation of the world" so to speak. In fact, books in any context are ordinarily written to record past events and not future events.  Revelation was written to record the PAST event of John's vision.
4. So there is more ambiguity and confusion in deriving the far-fetched conclusions that classical theologians have derived on specific predestination.

Finally, when confronted with the facts of God relenting that He created man, God relenting in destroying Nineveh, God changing His mind on Hezekiah's illness, Moses arguing with God not to destroy Israel TWICE where Moses' reasoning ACTUALLY prevailed on God's wrath, one has to admit that the Great Communicator of Scripture says what He means and means what He says.  Othewise, He has TOTALLY LOST His reputation as a communicator at all!

Nail on the Coffin Logic:
Which is a better interpretation of these passages? Let's call a spade, a SPADE!!!

1. God actually knows every detail of the future but simply pretends not to when He displays anger, shows His wrath or shows surprise, or changes His mind as in Hezekiah, therefore making Him no less than a HYPOCRITE
2. God actually was playing around with Moses and making Him win the argument making Him a thoroughly INSINCERE God who is just playing Moses
3. God actually knew that Job and Abraham would pass their greatest tests, but just wanted to make them know (since He already knows) making Him the great SADIST deriving pleasure at the discomforts of His people.
4. OR, God REALLY, HONESTLY and SINCERELY DID NOT KNOW these FUTURE outcomes, because God CHOSE NOT TO, desiring to be involved in adventure with us and showing us His victory over everything even with HIS HANDS TIED BEHIND HIS BACK!!!

Now, let us address the argument that this view makes God less sovereign. 

In response to that allegation, I would emphatically insist that this view makes God even more sovereign than traditionally believed. Which God is more powerful? A God who needs all His powers in order to control everything possible, OR, a God who does NOT NEED ALL His powers to achieve victory in any imaginable circumstance you throw at Him? Obviously, it is the latter concept of God that presents Him with His "hands tied behind His back" that portrays Him to be more than doubly powerful than the traditional view has portrayed for centuries! MOST fortunately, that is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as clearly portrayed by the Bible!

CHECKMATE: Your move?