Omniscience.  We’ll also touch on Omnisapience.

Omniscience is all-knowing.  God has all knowledge ~ He is Omniscient. 

Let’s parse it out.

1. God’s knowledge is unlimited ….because He is unlimited, not bound by anything, least of all knowledge!
2. His knowledge is complete ~ He never learns anything new or acquires new knowledge.
3. His knowledge encompasses His awareness of all things, His comprehension of all things in the future, past and the present. 
4. The future, as well as the past and the present are completely known by Him.

As the Reformation Study Bible says, His omniscience comes out of His omnipotence!  Well, as we’ve seen through all these posts, there isn’t one attribute of God that doesn’t co-exist with the others.  So, God knows all things, because He created all things, and He wills all and is sovereign over all and controls all.  “It is impossible for God to know all without controlling all, and it is impossible for God to control all without knowing all.  Like all attributes of God, they are codependent, two necessary parts of the whole.”

1 John 3:20: “If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.”

Isaiah, in chapter 40, writes about the Sovereign Lord’s power, about how He loves His people, and then he launches into questions like those God asks of Job.  He asks questions about God’s power, about what He’s done in the history of the world.   And then we get to verse 13 and 14:

“Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as His counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten Him, and who taught Him the right way? Who was it that taught Him knowledge, or showed Him the path of understanding?”  

Of course, the loud, resounding answer is:  No one. 

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 11, he breaks out in the famous Doxology that extols God’s omniscience! And omnipotence. 

“Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths are beyond tracing out!  Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Herman Bavinck in Reformed Dogmatics tells us that nothing, absolutely nothing is outside the scope of God’s knowledge.  After all, He is Creator and Sustainer.  Divine self-consciousness has no limitation.  “Being and knowing coincide in God.”

Just as with omnipotence, God’s knowledge is absolute. He is eternally and forever aware of all things at all times and in all places. There is no limit to what He knows and nothing He needs to learn, He has a perfect, full, complete knowledge of all things past, present and future. 

                Psalm 94: 9 – 11:

                “Does He who fashioned the ear not hear? Does He who formed the eye not see? Does He

                who disciplines nations not punish? Does He who teaches mankind lack knowledge? The Lord

                knows all human plans; He knows that they are futile.”

Mark Jones in his book “God Is” specifically speaks to the connection between God’s omniscience and His Omnisapience.   His knowledge is directly linked to His infinite wisdom and understanding of all things – He is God all wise.  They can’t be separated either, one informs the other.  And thus, the all-knowing God always does what is best as the all wise God!  What a comfort for us as believers!  Just as God is everywhere present and everywhere powerful, He only does what is wise and good by His all-knowing attribute! 

As I touched on in my previous post on God’s omnipresence, God sees all things in His “eternal instant”, aka:  all at once! The past, present and future – God sees and knows all.  Actually, we shouldn’t speak of God knowing the past and the future, because in reality – those times do not exist for Him!  Only for us finite beings.

Jones quotes Stephen Charnock: “God knows all other things, whether they be possible, past, present, or future; whether they be things that He can do, but will never do, or whether they be things that He hath done, but are not now; things that are now in being, or things that are not now existing, that lie in the womb of their proper and immediate causes. If His understanding be infinite, he then knows all things whatsoever that can be known, else His understanding would have bounds, and what hath limits is not infinite, but finite.” 

Yes, this means that God has knowledge of even theoretical possible worlds, or every possible outcome of every possible situation.  Bavinck also gives us this to consider ~ since God surpasses all time – He is above and beyond it – can anything be future to God?  “Whatever is past and future to us is immediately present in His sight, however the times roll on, with Him it is always present.”

Matthew Barrett in his book “None Greater” also talks about God’s total and complete omniscience when he tells us that everything from all time IS present to God ~ our “future” is present, the past is present.  There is no “before” or “future” with God!  He knows everything timelessly, eternally. 

As I mentioned before, God’s omniscience and omnipotence go together – absolutely nothing falls outside His scope – His view – His control.  And when Scripture says God is Lord over all things, it also means over evil – the greatest threat to His Kingdom.   Several stories in the Old Testament display that Satan himself cannot lift a finger without God’s permission!  He can’t touch anyone or anything without God’s say so.   The story of Job is probably the greatest example of this.  Satan can only do what God lets Him do.   Thus, God’s sovereignty is exhaustive, precise, far-reaching and comprehensive! There is no limit to His presence, power, or knowledge.  What a God we serve! 

A discussion about God’s omniscience isn’t complete without addressing the issue of God’s foreknowledge.  The question has been asked that if God knows all that can be known, how can the actions of his creatures, specifically humans, be free?  The answer to this is not to deny God’s omniscience.  If He doesn’t have all knowledge of all things, then he would be like us – ignorant – lacking knowledge, which of course would mean that He would cease to be God.  So that’s not a possibility.  Reformed theologians have always insisted that God is omniscient.  So, what about foreknowledge?

“Foreknowledge” is making distinctions in God’s knowledge and of time.  Bavinck says Augustine taught that God knows what will happen because He has decreed that it will happen, and it must happen.  “We affirm both free will and omniscience as an article of faith without professing fully to understand it. Our wills have as much freedom as God wants us to have.”   Jones says, “Regarding His knowledge of things future, we speak of prescience or foreknowledge, even if His eternality makes he use of these terms technically improper. Still, we can say that He has foreknowledge insofar as He knows the future, because He has ordained it.”

Finally, let’s look at how God’s omniscience is seen in Jesus Christ. 

Jones talks about how we would have no knowledge of God apart from Christ.  And the knowledge Christ had was given to Him by the Father. 

Luke 10: 21-22: “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.’ “   

Christ makes knowledge of God possible because he knew God and revealed the Father to us!   Thus, Jesus was able to know the thoughts of man’s hearts, hidden facts in people’s lives, and future events.  As a human being ~ in that humiliation, as he grew up, Jesus had to completely and constantly depend on the Father teaching him all that he needed to know.  He had to grow in knowledge and wisdom and stature.  (Luke 2: 40, 52).

And today, the knowledge that Christ possesses in His glorified humanity is utterly beyond our comprehension! 

Barrett addresses God’s wisdom – His Omnisapience. It is also everywhere in creation, and in redemption.  The same Wisdom that created the cosmos is at work in the salvation of those created in the Image of God, especially in its fulfillment in Christ.  And of course, we must confess that the wisdom of God’s omnipotent, omniscient plan is very different from ours.  When God’s wisdom is displayed in Christ, the New Testament authors can’t help but break out in doxology!  (Romans 16:27, 1 Tim 1:17, Jude 25, Rev 5:12)

What about us little humans in the face of a BIG God? “To believe that God is too transcendent, too infinite, to know or care about us here on planet earth is to limit God. An omniscient God must have numbered the hairs on our heads.”  (Katherin Rogers, “Perfect Being Theology” as quoted by Matthew Barrett in “None Greater”, pp 205).

In her essay on God’s Omniscience, Kelly Minter talks about God’s knowledge of our life’s path.  She points out that even (or especially) in a season of time where everything is beyond our reason and understanding ~ when we feel like we have NO IDEA where we are or where we’re going, remember what Job says in 23:10 “Yet He knows the way I have taken.”   The omniscient God is wholly and completely familiar with the way we take – and not only that, but completely in His control because He ordained it to be so.  He is a God that holds all surpassing knowledge ~ and THIS GOD is LOVE, seen in His Son Jesus who has saved us.  My life with all its twists and turns is not a mystery to Him.  Your life is not a mystery to Him. There are no surprises, no confusion.  No unexpected twists and turns to Him.  “His perfect knowledge is leading you even where your knowledge fails. Above all, God’s omniscience of our way means we are never lost from Him.”

May you feel the awesome, comforting truth of God’s omniscience in your life today!