Is God Omniscient?

J. Hathaway

- 11 minutes read - 2235 words

Omniscience is not used in the Bible or Latter-day scripture. This leaves humanity guessing as to whether God agrees with the word He has never used in His revelations. All Christian religions have taken the concept into their vocabulary; However, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done little to dogmatize the definition of omniscience. Let’s look at the history of omniscience and how various Christian denominations define it.

Omniscience origins

Around 500 A.D. [Boethius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius#:~:text=Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius%2C commonly,declared himself King of Italy.) formalized the premise of a timeless God to explain His ability to know all things in the future and for His children to have the freedom to choose. His key argument to God’s future omniscience is that God has no future. He does not exist in any finite moment in time. God lives in the eternal ‘now’, which encompasses the past, present, and future. He proposed that God’s eternality made the future part of His ‘now’ which allows him to know all things because God ‘sees’ all of existence immediately in one eternal moment.1. Boethius built his ideas from Augustine’s similar arguments in The Confessions (354–430).2

Thomas Aquinas arrived at a very similar position in the Summa Theologica (1264)2. It would be over 1000 years until the first known use of omniscience would occur in 1598. The word builds from the Latin omnis “all” and scientia “knowledge”.3 In 1660 Obadiah Sedgwick explicitly connects omniscience with Boethius' definition of God’s knowledge

God is an Omniscient God; he knows all things whatsoever, and all persons, and all conditions, and all the hearts, and all the counsels, and thoughts, and words, and ways of all men, at all times, and in all places, and that most clearly and perfectly by his own infinite light; he knows all that is past, and all that is present, and all that is future, and all that is possible.

All of these men were trying to resolve the dilemma of fixed future foreknowledge and free-will. They wanted both to be true, and in seeking a solution to this dilemma, they pushed God far into timeless abstraction and seeming unknowability.2

Dictionaries

Now that we have the word omniscience in our vocabulary let’s look at various modern English definitions.

  • Merriam-Webster: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
  • Merriam-Webster 1828: The quality of knowing all things at once; universal knowledge; knowledge unbounded or infinite.
  • Collins: If you describe someone as omniscient, you mean they know or seem to know everything.
  • Cambridge: having or seeming to have unlimited knowledge
  • Urban: One having total knowledge
  • Bible.org: It’s spelled omni-science. So, it does mean God knows everything there is to know about science. But, it’s more than that. Our word “science” comes from an old Latin word that means “to know” or “knowing.” So, when we talk about God’s omniscience, we are saying that God is “all knowing.” That means that God knows everything there is to know.

I hope you see in all of the definitions that they are not trying to tackle the conflict of omniscience and free-will. All of the definitions seem to say, ‘omniscience is the infinite, total, and unlimited knowledge, awareness, and understanding of everything knowable.'

Denominations

Except for Open Theism and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all denominations require timelessness to solve omniscience and free-will.

Evangelical

When Christians say God is omniscient, they mean that God knows all things — the past, present, and future. God is the source of all knowledge. God also knows all the potentialities of any situation. God knows every person’s thoughts — even before they think it. A.W. Tozer wrote in The Pursuit of God, “He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events.” [Christianty.com]

Presbyterian

God is an Omniscient God; he knows all things whatsoever, and all persons, and all conditions, and all the hearts, and all the counsels, and thoughts, and words, and ways of all men, at all times, and in all places, and that most clearly and perfectly by his own infinite light; he knows all that is past, and all that is present, and all that is future, and all that is possible. [Obadiah Sedgwick, 1660]

Catholic

There always will be a mystery as to how God, who is infinite and beyond time and space, and thereby knows past, present and future at once, interacts with us, poor human beings, who are limited by time and space, and do not know the future. God’s foreknowledge interacting with our free will is a mystery. Nevertheless, foreknowledge does not entail predestination; foreknowledge does not predetermine events.[Catholic Herald]

Open Theism

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy hosted by the University of Tennessee has a detailed history of Omniscience and Divine Foreknowledge. Section 4 - Divine Foreknowledge is worth the read.

Open Theists are strongly committed to the idea that humans have libertarian freedom. However Open Theists are skeptical that God has the kind of comprehensive knowledge that traditional christianity claims. Open Theists will give up the idea that God exhaustively knows the future or will argue that even if God knows the future, his certainty of the future is not strong enough to cause problems for human freedom. Open Theists think that God is in time and that there are at least some tensed and non-tensed statements that God does not know with absolute certainty. At a minimum, Open Theism is the doctrine that the future has not yet been fully decided, it is “open” to what is not yet completely known by God or anyone else.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Omniscience has only been used 14 times in General Conference. Most use the word to describe God’s knowledge without any exposition on what omniscience entails. President Russell M. Nelson gets the closest to a definition of omniscience in his April 2002 Conference address titled; How Firm Our Foundation. The reference is included in a lengthy footnote.

Compared with the omniscience of our Creator, we know relatively little about dinosaurs or the details of the Creation, for example. But this we do know: “Verily I say unto you, in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things—things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof—things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven” (D&C 101:32–34; see also D&C 121:29–32).

His reference is explicitly discussing the past, so it is not clear if he intended to leave out God’s knowledge of the future on purpose. I have broken the additional references to omniscience into three groups. The most direct quotes on omniscience come from BYU publications. David Paulsen’s is the most balanced. McConkie and Maxwell have the strongest Boethian views on God’s knowledge. Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff have the most influential open future views.

BYU and BYU Studies Scholars

David Paulsen: OMNISCIENCE. Latter-day Saints differ among themselves in their understanding of the nature of God’s knowledge. Some have thought that God increases endlessly in knowledge as well as in glory and dominion. Others hold to the more traditional view that God’s knowledge, including the foreknowledge of future free contingencies, is complete. Despite these differing views, there is accord on two fundamental issues: (1) God’s foreknowledge does not causally determine human choices, and (2) this knowledge, like God’s power, is maximally efficacious. No event occurs that he has not anticipated or has not taken into account in his planning. [Encylcopedia of Mormonism]

Richard R. Hopkins: What does the Bible say about how God knows the future? The answer is suggested in Isaiah 46: 10-11. In those verses, God declares the end from the beginning, saying, “I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed [NASB: planned] it, I will also do it.” This passage suggests that God knows the future because, through his infinite knowledge, he has planned it, and through his infinite power, he will bring it to pass. What he promises for the future will be fulfilled. He has the power to do it, he has planned it, and he will do it. This is not the kind of prescience classical theists attribute to God, but it is the nature of God’s knowledge of the future reflected in the Bible. It essentially says that God knows the future because he knows all things in the past and present and has all wisdom and all power. [BYU Studies review of Books]

Craig Ostler: Thus God can ensure ultimate victory and the realization of all of his purposes not because of his omniscience, but because of his almighty power. These features of God’s knowledge ensure that God knows all possibilities and future events which are now certain given causal implications (propositions 1 and 2). This view also allows for free choices among genuinely open alternatives (propositions 2 and 4). These provisions suggest that God knows all possible avenues of choices (propositions 2 and 5) and, coupled with God’s maximal power, entail that God’s plans and declarations of future events will be realized (propositions 3 and 5). Thus a complete picture of God’s providence is possible even though God does not have infallible and complete foreknowledge. FARMS Book Review

McConkie and Maxwell

Maxwell: For God, the past, the present, and the future are one. In fact, in modern scriptures the Lord has even defined truth as a time-spanning “Knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24.) Truth is, indeed, time spanning, for “truth abideth and hath no end.” (D&C 88:66) [Neal A. Maxwell, Plain and Precious Things, p. 59]

Maxwell: Does God already know the outcome of that through which I am passing? Yes! And He has taken that outcome, foreknown to Him, into account along with all other outcomes. In the Prophet Joseph Smith’s words, God “has made ample provision,” so that the purposes in His plan of salvation will be achieved—including our part within that plan, if we are faithful. [Lord Increase our Faith, Pg. 40]

McConkie: Heresy one: There are those who say that God is progressing in knowledge and is learning new truths. This is false—utterly, totally, and completely. There is not one sliver of truth in it. It grows out of a wholly twisted and incorrect view of the King Follett Sermon and of what is meant by eternal progression. … God is not a student. He is not a laboratory technician. He is not postulating new theories on the basis of past experiences. He has indeed graduated to that state of exaltation that consists of knowing all things and having all power.

Early Prophets

Brigham Young: the God that I serve is progressing [in knowledge and power] eternally, and so are his children: they will increase to all eternity [Journal of Discourses 11:286]

Wilford Woodruff: If there was a point where man in his progression could not proceed any further, the very idea would throw a gloom over every intelligent and reflecting mind. God himself is increasing and progressing in knowledge, power, and dominion, and will do so, worlds without end. [Journal of Discourses 6:120]

Conclusion

After finishing graduate school, I attended a scientific meeting in Washington, D.C., with 20 other scientists to start a decade-long collaboration on improving the industry’s state in detecting buried unexploded ordinance. I was the youngest person in the room, and I was awestruck at the deliberations. I thought I knew what was going on, and I felt the team making progress. About 2 hours into the meeting, someone asked what another scientist in the room meant when they used the word anomaly, which was interesting because we had been throwing that word around a lot before the question was asked. After hearing the scientist’s answer, many in the room realized that we had multiple different definitions, depending on our schooling, of the word and that we had been talking over each other most of the first two hours.

We should understand what words mean within our denominations and between our faiths. If we don’t, we can talk over each other or even agree to beliefs that we don’t, in fact, believe. Omniscience is an extra-Biblical term that is created and defined by philosophers and early Christian fathers. Generally, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not spend time reading and understanding the use and history of the word omniscience. We often use the term to speak of God’s greatness and perfections without bringing along all the baggage described above.

When Openness Theologians or those that hold to a contingent future for God and man share their belief that God lives in time with us, many instantly feel that their God’s greatness and perfections are being defamed. The conversation often becomes quite difficult. I believe that God is the Most Moved Mover and that He creates the future with His children.

God is omniscient. He has infinite, total, and unlimited knowledge, awareness, and understanding of all knowable4 things.

  1. https://iep.utm.edu/omnisci/ ↩︎

  2. https://divinityphilosophy.net/2017/10/20/boethius-proved-that-gods-omniscience-is-compatible-with-human-free-will-discuss-40/ ↩︎

  3. https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/omniscient ↩︎

  4. The use of the word knowable is important. We need not debated God’s omniscience. However, we should ponder what thinks are knowable. ↩︎

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