I have harped-on about the problem of regarding God's omniscience as necessary and definitive, and what malign effects this assumption has for Christians.
I was thinking more on this matter, when it struck me with forcible conviction that omniscience is part of an assumption that reality is ultimately "static" - by which I mean that if God is to know everything (past, present, future), then divine creation must be completed and unchanging in an ultimate sense.
The omniscience of God is a really bad idea for Christians - if not for strict monotheists such as Jews and Muslims; and insofar as omniscience is taken seriously and rigorously; it pushes Christianity (both in its deep theory and in societal practice) towards a pure monotheism by which freedom/agency, and creation/ development are foreknown and bounded.
Indeed, it seems logically to collapse towards a Hinduism or Buddhism that regards this experienced world of change, time, apparent freedom, apparent creation - as maya, illusion; not really-real.
And this world of illusion is very difficult to square with faith in a God that is Good and loving to us each as persons.
Why would such a God, that is omniscient, create a fake-world inhabited with deluded creatures?
The omniscience of God is a really bad idea for Christians -- incoherence of theology is always a bad thing, especially when that incoherence is so up-front and obvious, yet denied and obfuscated by incomprehensible/nonsensical abstractions.
Omniscience isn't explicitly stated in the Bible, quite the reverse! And is starkly contradicted by the eye-witness narrative and teachings of Fourth Gospel, and most of the other reported Biblical accounts of Jesus.
It makes me wonder what Good reasons (there are plenty of bad ones) could exist why so many orthodox Christian intellectuals, for so many centuries, have absolutely insisted-upon such a monstrous doctrine - such a gratuitous stumbling block to faith in Jesus Christ?
3 comments:
"Omniscience isn't explicitly stated in the Bible, quite the reverse! And is starkly contradicted by the eye-witness narrative and teachings of Fourth Gospel, and most of the other reported Biblical accounts of Jesus."
Although none of the behavior in the book implies omnipotence, the word "almighty" is used in many translations. I think this causes many to believe in omnipotence, but I also suspect that translators chose that word because they believed in it.
I disagree with the choice of word. A better choice would be "all-ruler".
God almighty is used where the Hebrew "El Shaddai" was, and where the Greek "pantocrator" was.
The meaning of "Shaddai" is disputed and uncertain, but the meaning of "pantocrator" is not.
Pan- means all, and crator means ruler: All-ruler.
To be fair, kratos means might, and crator is related to that word, as in "power exerter", because rulers have power over their subjects, but the word crator was used to mean ruler, both before the bible was translated like in the word "autokrator" (self-ruler) and after it was translated, like in "sebastocrator" (venerable ruler).
Even though the creator god was considered to rule not only over humans as subjects, but over nature itself as well, I still think even with this meaning, that all-ruler is better, especially considering that he doesn't act like he's almighty in the writings.
I am not Christian, I haven't finished the whole book yet, and I'm not a historian, but can you honestly say that omnipotence makes sense and is is implied when you read the bible?
Dear Bruce,
Is the following comment acceptable? I think it meets your criteria, the only problem, I think, being that it’s too long. [It was almost much longer.]
Comment on Charlton
I think you're quite right in challenging the assumption that traditional attributes of God *as usually understood these days* will always be entirely consistent. But the first attempt at a solution surely ought to be examining the way these attributes are in fact understood these days, and seeing whether this is identical with, or even close to, the way their originators or earlier users understood them.
You, and some readers will I'm sure be familiar that this is a dangerous enterprise: when technical terms are being developed, they may have had radically different meanings with different authors. I can' remember now who it is, but I am sure that I remember at least one Greek Father used technical Trinitarian terms that would lead him to say (using the words as we would use them today): "There are three natures in one person in God: anything else is gross heresy. Nevertheless he is regarded as a leading figure in the development of an orthodox understanding of the Trinity in the Godhead: we just say, "He used the relevant developing technical words in almost exactly the opposite way from the way that was ultimately (and not long after) agreed on".
I am reminded of the comment of the late and great and good Professor Anscombe, that a necessary mark of good philosophical (and, I suppose, theological style) is that, if the printer should happen to omit or to interpolate the word in your text, in a syntactically appropriate place, it should cause only momentary confusion to the reader What's he saying? Surely not! Oh, I see now, that word "not" is a printing error" (or "the printer has made a hash of it and missed out the word "not"), Wise words.
But to come to my point: people, even infidels, have sometimes used the argument "Well, God knows everything, so he must know that P": P being a rather doubtful proposition which he (or she) wants to put over on you in opposition to your well-based objections. Well, no, that's fallacious, the notion of omniscience doesn't work like that.
"God is omniscient" means "God knows everything that there is to be known". This is pretty basic: we could, if we like, compare the notion of omnipotence (for which I much prefer a translation rather like that which is given by Hagel, the person who comments above me). I prefer "one who has power over all things", but I think that's a difference of detail only, though I may be wrong.
[I did like: but that made my remarks much too long, and drew attention away from Dr Charlton's main interest in God's knowledge, not God's power. I will be able to post my thoughts on God's almighty power at another time, in another place, if anyone is interested.]
Now compare omniscience. I've said that "God is omniscient" means "God knows everything that there is to be known". What this means is that for any declarative sentence S – i.e., not a question or a command – we can whether it expresses a proposition, say P, which is meaningful and truth apt – that is, capable of being true or false – then God knows (not that-P but) whether-P. Or, if you like to spin it out more, for any such proposition P, God knows whether P is true or not.
This means, in practice, the following rule: we can’t decide what there is to be known, on the alleged grounds that an omniscient God would know it. We have to find out whether there is anything there to be known – that is, does the sentence under evaluation meet the criteria just expounded? If it does, then we can be sure that God knows it; if not, we have no reason to claim that God knows it.
@Chris - From my POV; I don't think the problem is really to do with defining the scope of omniscience - but instead trying to understand why people started asserting and discussing God's omniscience in the first place. Why people found it necessary to define God in terms of "omniscience" (and then to discuss what exactly that meant).
That is a generic issue for strict monotheists - which Christianity (apparently) inherited - and which led to further difficulties and complications in discussing the divinity of Jesus ("Christology" disputes).
At bottom line, I am disturbed and repelled by the way in which something that seems very straightforward (and easily described and explained) in the Fourth Gospel - because so complex, difficult, abstract, and negative when in the hands of Christian early theologians - presumably beginning with Paul, whose attempts at explanation (e.g. in Romans) are extraordinarily difficult.
How could something apparently so clear and simple to start with - end up so difficult that the church was repeatedly riven by them, and the answers have never been solidly established?
That's the background for my discussion of omniscience here. I see it as having the nature of a unnecessary and self-inflicted Problem.
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