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Showing posts with label Open Theism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Theism. Show all posts

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Re-Thinking God: How Much Does God Really Know?


Webster: Having infinite awareness, understanding and insight and possessing universal and complete knowledge.

If there is an area that I have changed the most in my understanding of God it is God's Omniscience. The question that dogged me the most was always one involving the problem of evil. If God knew absolutely that evil would result from his creating the world and that because of it people would absolutely go to hell for their sin, why did he create the world in the first place? Because of this absolute knowledge God becomes absolutely responsible for evil existing.

One thing that started to change in me, as I read through scripture to escape my agnostic pit, was my understanding of HOW God knows things. It is not just about WHAT God knows, but HOW he knows it because of the way he created the world.

As you look through the backlog of my posts you will find many labeled 'Open Theism' and I now make it no secret that I am an open theist. I see no other way to avoid the charge that God caused evil unless He only knew evil as a possibility and not a certainty.

There is a lot of things I could say here, and to get a full understanding of where I am coming from, reading every article I have written on open theism starting with The ABC's of Open Theism and then all the rest in any order will give you a good start. There are a few specifics to mention here:

1. God knows the past and present absolutely.
2. God knows the future both absolutely and propositionaly (both what will be for certain and what is possible)
3. There are some things that God does not know: any sin He has forgiven.

For me the definition has changed: God knows everything that is knowable and He knows it in the way it is knowable.

Next: God's Omnipresence