John Cogan

Growing up as a Christian, in the Christian church, I was always taught that God knows everything. God knows the beginning and end, and everything in between. This is something that, until one starts asking tough questions, one usually accepts. My goal in writing this essay is not to change someone’s beliefs about God, or beliefs in God, but instead to challenge people to quote, un-quote, think outside the box. Consider the pros and cons of God knowing everything and also be open to other solutions. There are a few questions that need to be answered when one considers God’s knowledge. First, if God knows the future with absolute certainty, then, are we as humans truly free? Second, if God does not know the future with absolute certainty, then what does God know? And third, is there any biblical backing for God not knowing the future with absolute certainty?

The first question is an extremely difficult one to answer. Augustine and Calvin define God’s foreknowledge as "The future will happen a certain way, because God foreknows it. If God knows the future with absolute certainty, then are humans truly free? No, if God knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I will choose to do from now to eternity, then I am not truly free. That is not to say that what is happening is caused by God, because that is a totally different claim. But if God knows the future and God knows what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow, and God cannot be wrong, then I do not have the ability to choose other than, what God knows I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. Some use the argument, everyone is free and has had the choice, but the choice has already been made in God’s eyes, because God is eternal and outside of time. That is how God knows what will be chosen. If one comes to that conclusion, then that means that at one time we were free. But right now, at this point in time, the decisions I am making have already been made, so I am no longer free.

I want to live my life as though I am free and making decisions day to day. The theory I have just put forth had my freedom at one time, made all my decisions and now I am just living it out. I will find out what happens. It is sort of like designing my own personal roller coaster. I had a time when I got to decide where I would turn, and where I would rise, and where I would drop, but now I have jumped in the seat and am just along for the ride.

Think of it in these terms, in order for anyone or anything to know something for certain is to say that that something is a fact, and the only way for a fact to be a fact is for it to have already occrued, which leads us back into the roller coaster. So, if we as humans are truly free, then that means that we are free right now to choose one way or the other, soup or sandwich, live sinfully or righteously. I do not want this essay to become one arguing for freedom, so at this point we will concede that humans are truly free in our day to day lives. That leads us into our next section.

If humans are truly free, and God does not know the future with absolute certainty, then what does God know? Christians over the years have taken comfort in God knowing what will happen to them, what their future is. So should they just throw that all out the window and say God does not know the future with certainty so God know nothing. No way. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and God is always with us, presently helping us and working in our lives to help us through each day.

The second question that I raised was, if God does not know everything, than what does God know? This is something that I have been struggling with for some time, how can I take comfort in God if he doesn’t know what is going to happen to me. Gregory A. Boyd states, "Trusting in God to make a difference in our future only makes sense if the future is open and for God partly open." This means that what is to come has not been decided and we can work with God to change the path that we are heading down right now. The theory that I would like to propose is a theory very close to that of Boyd’s, it is one that difficult to accept, but again put forth the challenge to encounter this with an open mind. God does not know what I am going to choose from now until eternity. However, God instead knows every single possibility I will encounter. God knows every possible choice that I could make from here until eternity. God knows the choices that I will face and because, as I stated above, God know me better than I know myself, God can make incredibly accurate predictions as far as what I will choose. God’s predictions may never be wrong, but they could be; there needs to be the possibility of God being wrong, not in a bad sense but instead in the sense that God does not know for sure. This leaves us the freedom to choose right and to choose wrong, to decide between soup and sandwich. God still has plans for us, but now we pick up more responsibility and we need to partner up with God on this road of life. We need to give God our hopes, dreams and desires to God. Then pray and listen to what God is telling us and finally take that step of faith and take action in what we believe God is asking of us.

The third question is an extremely important one. Is this theory biblically based or is it just based in human intuition? There are many things in the Bible that support the theory that God is the God of possibilities. God had a great plan and gave humans freedom. We messed up and now God is ever presently changing God’s plan depending on our situations. That does not mean that God’s plan is weaker than it was before, but instead that God does not say "oh well, they messed up, I’ll move on to a different project."

There are many biblical passages that talk about God changing God’s mind. Now, is God really changing his mind an if so would not that mean that God did not know exactly what was going to happen? God may have thought there would be one outcome, which was the best at the time, but when the humans did something other than what God expected, God decided to have mercy. One example of this would be with the story of Jonah. God has Jonah go to Nineveh and in chapter 3:4, "On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.’" What happened next is not what one would have thought. The Ninevites prayed and fasted, and because of this God did not destroy them. Was God just bluffing, was God just making idle threats? No, God does not make idle threats. If God did, then maybe eternal damnation is just a threat. Did God know all along that they would repent from their evil ways? No. It says in 3:10 "When God saw what they did and how they had turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction that he had threatened." It says, "when God saw", which would lead me to believe that God had not "seen" yet, which would point to it not being a fact. And if something is not a fact, then it cannot be known with absolute certainty.

Now, what about passages like "I knew you before you were in your mother’s womb." How could that be possible for God to know if God did not know that my parents would be married? And how would God know if God did not know when my parents would have sex, or if they would even have sex at all. Well, the theory is that God knows all the possible situations from the beginning of time until the end of time, and that includes all the possibilities from the things that do not happen, as well as all the possibilities from the things that do. God knew me and what type of a person I would be, and God even knew everything that has happened in my life up to this point, and everything that will to me in the future. God did not know that the things in the past would happen for sure, and does not know what will happen in the future. Instead, God knew and knows them as possibilities. This is a difficult thing to grasp, but at the same time it gives God more knowledge because now God knows everything that will happen as well as everything that will not. But God has given us the ability to make each possibility a reality.

The God of possibility, one that can know all things and still provide freedom, that is my kind of God.

Citations

Boyd, Gregory A. The God of the Possible. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Books. 2000