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Defenders: Doctrine of God: Attributes of God (Part 13): Systematic Study of God’s Omniscience
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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig today the Doctrine
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of God, Part 13.
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For more information and resources from Dr.
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Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been talking about the scriptural data concerning God's omniscience or his attribute of being all knowing. And as a result of the question time last week, I realized that I had omitted an important part of the scriptural data concerning divine omniscience. And so I want to add that and read a couple of passages that are pertinent to it. So this would be, if you will, a fifth point under the scriptural data. And that is that God knows what would happen under different circumstances. God not only knows everything that is happening, everything that has happened and will happen, but he also knows even what would happen under different circumstances. And one of the classic passages illustrates reading this is found in 1st Samuel, chapter 23, verses 1 to 8, 1st Samuel, chapter 23 and verses 1 to 8. And this is the story of David at Keilah. Now they told David, behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors. Therefore David inquired of the Lord, shall I go and attack these Philistines? And the Lord said to David, go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah. But David's men said to him, behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then, if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines? Then David inquired of the Lord again, and the Lord answered him, arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand. And David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines, and brought away their cattle and made a great slaughter among them. So David delivered the inhabitants of Keilah. When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech, fled to David to Keilah, he came down with an ephod in his hand, and this is a sort of divining device to inquire of the Lord. Now it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah. And Saul said, God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars. And Saul summoned all the people to war to go down to Keilah to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting evil against him, and he said to Abiathar the priest, bring the ephod here. Then said David, o Lord, the God of Israel, thy servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah to destroy the City on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down as thy servant has heard, O Lord, the God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the Lord said, he will come down. Then said David, will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, they will surrender you. Then David and his men, who were about 600, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. So what the ephod said did not in fact come to pass. Saul did not come down to Keilah, and so the men of Keilah did not surrender David over to Saul. The ephod was probably a device that yielded either just a yes or no answer, and so answered in such a way that it told David what would happen if David were to remain in the city. If he were to remain there, then Saul would come down. And if he were to come down and attack the city, the men of Keilah would surrender David over to Saul. So this is an example of where God knew not only what will happen, namely, Saul will not come down, but he knew what would happen under different circumstances. Now, in a case like this, the conditions or the circumstances did not eventuate, so that the subjunctive conditional that is involved here, if David were to remain at Keilah, Saul would come down, has a false antecedent. David did not remain at Keilah. So these types of subjunctive conditionals are often called counterfactuals. A counterfactual is a subjunctive conditional statement with a false antecedent, like, if I were you, I would apply to study at Kennesaw State, or something like that. I'm not you, but if I were you, that's what I would do. That's a counterfactual statement. Now, unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, we native English speakers don't have a very good handle on the subjunctive mood, and we often misstate it or speak ungrammatically. Very often people will use the simple singular past tense. If I was you, then I would do this, and that's completely incorrect. If I was you meant that if at some time in the past I was you, then this is what I would do. Or if I said, if I was rich, I would buy a Mercedes. That means, if at some time in the past I was once rich, then I would buy a Mercedes. That's not what's meant. Rather, the correct use of the subjunctive mood is involves the use of the word were. If I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes. If I were you, I would study at Kennesaw State. So the easiest way to remember how to use these subjunctive conditionals would be in the if clause. Say, if it were the case that, then it would be the case that something else. So that's the easiest way to express these. If it were the case that something, then it would be the case that something else. So if it were the case that I were you, then it would be the case that I would study at KSU or something of that sort. However, not all of these subjunctive conditionals have false antecedents. Sometimes the antecedent might turn out to be true. So let's look for an example of this in the New Testament in John 21:6. John 21:6. And this is the story of the miraculous catch of fish, where the disciples had fished all night and had caught nothing. And then Jesus comes to them, and in verse 6 of John 21, he said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat, and. And you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in for the quantity of fish. What did Jesus know here? He knew that if they were to cast the net on the right side of the boat, then they would have a great catch. And so he tells them, do it. Cast it on the right side, and you will get a great catch. Because he knew if they were to do that, then they would catch these fish. And in this case they obeyed his command. So it's not a counterfactual. It turns out that the antecedent of this is true. If you were to cast the net on the right side of the boat, then you would catch the fish. They do cast it on the right side of the boat, and they do catch the fish. So here you would have a subjunctive conditional that isn't a counterfactual, strictly speaking, because it has a true antecedent. And. And sometimes we call these deliberative conditionals. Not counterfactual conditionals, but deliberative conditionals, because we often use these in decision making. For example, if I were to pull out into traffic now, I would make it. Or if I were to ask the boss for a raise, he would tear my head off. We use these kinds of subjunctive conditionals in deliberation about what to do, and sometimes they may then have true antecedents if we think that the consequence would be good if I were to quit smoking, my breath would smell better, and so I decide to quit smoking and the antecedent then is true. So the point is that there are these true subjunctive conditionals, and Scripture gives examples of where God evidently knows the truth of these and he knew what would happen under these different circumstances. And so that needs to be included in the scriptural data concerning God's being all knowing. However, we in the end understand it well. With that in mind, now we want to turn to a systematic summary of this data concerning God's omniscience in the Scriptures and the attribute of God's omniscience is one of the most discussed and most fascinating of all of the various attributes of God. Omniscience is usually defined in terms of truth. That is to say, for any true statement or any true proposition, God believes and knows that proposition, and he doesn't believe any false propositions. So for any true statement or proposition, God believes and knows that proposition, but he doesn't believe any false propositions. So we could say this, that for any proposition P, God knows that P. And then you can fill in whatever you want for that proposition P. That Obama is the President of the United States, that Bryant Wright preached this morning at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church that this tree has fake green leaves on it. Any proposition you want to fill in for P, God knows that P and does not believe not P. For any true proposition P, God knows that P and does not believe, not P. In other words, omniscience means that God knows only in all truths. He knows all the truths there are, and he doesn't believe any falsehoods. God knows only and all truths. That's the way omniscience is usually defined. And so God knows all past, present and future tense truths. Even before the foundations of the world, before he created the world, God foreknew the motion of every subatomic particle that would occur in the history of the universe. He knew your very thoughts before you think them. He knows our free choices before we make them. He even knew what we would do under different circumstances than the ones that we will be in. So for any true proposition, God knows that proposition and does not believe the negation of it. Any question about the definition of what omniscience is before we unfold it further? Omniscience is just the property of knowing only and all truths. Yes, Comment over here.
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Believe is faith, right?
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Not in this context. I'm glad you mentioned that. When we talk about belief in this context, we mean just having a Certain attitude toward a proposition. So, for example, I believe that I'm Bill Craig, I believe that I'm in this room, I believe that I'm married to Jan. And none of those things is by faith. Believing something in this context just means affirming it or asserting it. So to believe a proposition P is to accept P or affirm or assert P. And that's often confused because the word belief for some people is synonymous with having faith. And that's not the way it's being used here. Good clarification. Okay, so God then is omniscient. He knows all truths. He doesn't believe any falsehoods. This would be an incredible enough attribute for God to possess. But even omniscience does not exhaust the scope and the excellence of God's knowledge. For philosophers have noted that there's a different kind of knowledge than just propositional knowledge. In addition to knowledge of true propositions, there is also a kind of knowledge which is non propositional in nature. Let me try to illustrate this as best I can. Suppose I'm visiting Canada and I am chased up a tree by a ferocious moose. And while I'm in the tree hanging on for dear life, I say to you, go and tell Jane that I've been treed by a moose. Now what do you do? You run up to Jan and do you say to her, I've been treed by a moose? No, you would say Bill has been treed by a moose. You would communicate to her the information that I wanted you to communicate by using different words than I used. I told you to tell her that I've been treed by a moose. And. But you go and say to her, bill has been treed by a moose. In other words, the proposition that you are expressing is the same one that I was expressing. But we use different words. We use different words to give the same information content. When I say I've been treed by a moose, I express the same proposition that you do when you say Bill has been treed by by a moose. And so we both have the same propositional knowledge in this case, namely that Bill Craig has been treed by a moose. And yet our knowledge isn't perfectly the same. There's a difference here. Why? Well, look at the way we react to it. I react to that knowledge by hanging on for dear life in the tree. But you react to that knowledge by running to tell Jan about it. You don't hold on for dear life because you don't believe that you are Bill Craig. You are somebody else. So we have different responses to what we know and that shows that what we know is not exactly the same. In both of these cases, we also have a different self knowledge in addition to the propositional knowledge that that we share. We have the same propositional knowledge, but our self knowledge is different. And this self knowledge is essential to timely action in the world. For example, it's not enough for me to believe the proposition Bill Craig is hungry in order to be motivated to get something to eat. For suppose I've been in a car accident and I'm lying in the hospital bed with temporary amnesia so that I don't know that I'm Bill Craig. If someone were to tell me Bill Craig is hungry, that wouldn't do anything to motivate me to ask for something to eat. What I need to have is the self knowledge. Either that I am Bill Craig or that I am hungry and then I will ask for something to eat. So this self knowledge, though it's non propositional, is vital to getting along in the world and being able to act in a timely way. It is absolutely essential. So if someone or even something, say a supercomputer, had all of the propositional knowledge in the world so that it counted as omniscient because it knew only in all the truths there are, it still couldn't decide to take any sort of timely action because it wouldn't have any self knowledge. And so if God is to be a self, a person, he is more than omniscient. In addition to all of the propositional knowledge that he possesses, he also has appropriate self knowledge. He knows I am God and that is a perfection. He doesn't know I am Ronald Reagan or I am Napoleon. That would be an imperfection indeed, because he's not Ronald Reagan or Napoleon. But it is a perfection for him to have appropriate self knowledge of who he is, that I am God. So God's cognitive excellence exceeds even omniscience. He is more than omniscient, as incredible as that sounds, because he not only knows all truth, but he also has appropriate self knowledge as well. Any comment or discussion about that point? Yes, Cindy has a comment here.
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D
Is it true that we also, through him have some of that in that we, we have self knowledge, particularly in light of other animals and so forth that we have, I guess through God's image can use that same sort of knowledge base that now human beings have?
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That's absolutely right. Nobody else in the world has the knowledge. I am Cindy Fox. You are the only person in the world that has that self knowledge because you alone are that person. And you're right, Cindy, in saying that this differentiates us from animals. As far as we know, all the evidence indicates that animals are not selves, that they do not have this sort of self knowledge. This has profound implications for the problem of animal pain and suffering. Because even though animals like zebras, when they're attacked by a lion, suffer pain, they don't have the knowledge I am in pain. And that I think has really profound implications for God's permitting animal suffering. They don't suffer in the way that we do because they don't have this self knowledge that I am in pain.
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It seems to me to be part of the characteristics of the soul.
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Of what?
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The soul?
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Yes, exactly. And I think you're right in saying this is a reflection of the image of God that we ourselves, we are persons in this special way.
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Yes, Steve, this self concept brings to mind the scripture of for now we see through a glass, darkly within clearly, and we will know ourselves as we are known.
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And so we don't really have self
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awareness to the degree we're supposed to. And the longer we walk with the Lord, the more we do.
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Yeah, I think that's a little different than what I'm talking about here, Steve. I would call what you just described self understanding, and that is true. We don't understand ourselves very well. Sometimes we're puzzled by why we do the things we do. We don't understand our motivations and our weaknesses and so forth. I would call that self understanding. But this kind of self knowledge is something that you have just in virtue of being able to say, I think that. And that's unique to each one of you that you have that kind of first person perspective. Dr. Bob, Bill, it seems to me
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like this is more of a case
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of that first definition being inadequate. If you're going to truly use omni for all. Well, it's demonstrably inadequate if you base
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it only on this propositional situation because
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self knowledge is not included.
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So that can't be all.
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Let me respond to that, Bob. This is a good point. This would mean that there's knowledge in addition to propositional knowledge. And you might say, well, then omni ought to include all of that too. If you say that though, then I think that omniscient omniscience becomes incoherent because then God would have to know and believe that he is Ronald Reagan. Right. Because there is that self knowledge. Reagan had it. Or the knowledge that he is Napoleon. Napoleon had that knowledge So I don't think we want to say that omniscience means that you have to have all knowledge, whether propositional or self knowledge. I think to be a perfection, it would be to have appropriate self knowledge, namely he knows that he himself is God, and it would be an imperfection for him to think that he's Napoleon or Ronald Reagan. And so for that reason, I think most theologians would be reluctant to say that in order to be omniscient, you have to have all self knowledge in addition to all propositional knowledge. Bob?
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Bill, I may have misunderstood, but the example you gave of the possible computer that would have all propositional knowledge but lack the knowledge of self, why would it be unable, with artificial intelligence for that computer not to be able to be given self as part of its, as part of its original programming, to
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be looked at self? Yeah, I'm not making a judgment about that. I'm just asking you to imagine a device that knew all true propositions, was programmed to have all those, but it did not have self knowledge. I'm simply saying such a thing doesn't have maximum cognitive excellence. Now, whether or not you could program a robot to have a self awareness, I'm not qualified to say, but I'm just asking you to think about this illustration to motivate the idea that God's cognitive excellence exceeds even propositional omniscience. Yes, Bruce?
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Well, it seems like the middle ground on this is that God knows what it's like to be Ronald Reagan or Napoleon. And I'm thinking of Dallas Willard's statement, no physical entity defines its own existence. So we can't, Napoleon or Ronald Reagan couldn't determine in advance that they were going to be who they were rather than a stone or a drop of water or what have you.
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Well, now, let's be, I mean, it's metaphysically impossible, I think, that Ronald Reagan could have been a stone or a drop of water because he is essentially a person. It's possible for him not to exist, but I would think it's that a person's being a person is essential to him, and it would be impossible for Reagan to have been a stone.
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Oh, I agree, but Ronald Reagan couldn't say in advance, I'm going to be. I'm going to arrange these molecules to be Ronald Reagan and living.
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Right, right. And I think that I want to speak to the more important point I think that you're making, and that is that God knew what it was like to be Ronald Reagan. And, and I would say that is propositional knowledge. You see, he knew to be like Ronald Reagan is to be courageous, congenial, outgoing, and optimistic. Right. That's what it's like partially to be Ronald Reagan. And that's propositional truth. And God knew all of that, but he did not believe that he himself is Ronald Reagan, which is what Reagan believed and knew.
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Yes, Keshe, it seems like the part of cognitive excellence that would not be mastered by the computer that knew all propositional truth would be like in your bill, as treed by a moose. Example would be the ability to reason. So, for example, if you said that to me, I would immediately figure out that the most important thing to you is not that Jan knows that you were treated by a moose, but to solve the problem of being treated by a moose, I'd pull out my rifle, kill the moose, and maybe not even go tell Jan, but I would take care of the problem. And that wouldn't have anything to do with the propositional truth of the statement, I've been treed by a moose. So it seems like that's the part of God that we're. They say the reason people do better than computers at playing chess is because we can eliminate the things that are absurd, where the computer has to analyze every possible move. And so it seems like it's this. That part of his cognitive excellence would be the ability to reason that he's imparted on us and not to cats or dogs or whatever.
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Yeah, all right. I don't want you to be misled by my example into rabbit trails. That I didn't mean first to go down. I think you're quite right. I don't think machines can even add. When you think about it, when your little pocket calculator, you put 2 plus 3 equals 5, that machine doesn't know how to add those numbers. It's just a program that exhibits these digital patterns on the screen. So I think you're right about that, but that wasn't the point that I'm wanting to make here. Let me go on and say one other thing, because even now, even yet with propositional knowledge and self knowledge, the excellence of God's knowledge is still not exhausted. Because what's also important here is the way in which one acquires one's knowledge. Suppose there were two beings, and each one had all propositional knowledge, and each one had appropriate self knowledge for himself. But suppose that the second one acquired his knowledge only because the first being told him everything that he knew, and that the first being just had this knowledge innately. Clearly, I think the second Being would not be as intellectually excellent as the first being because he didn't know any of these things innately. He knew them only because the other being told him everything he knew in an innate way. And in the same way, as we've seen from Scripture, God doesn't learn anything from anybody. Nobody has instructed the Lord or taught him anything. But I would say that God simply knows all truth innately and therefore is maximally excellent intellectually. And this is again I think just a stunning conclusion to think God's intellectual excellence outstrips even what it is to be an omniscient being. It does so in that he has this self knowledge and then also in the way he does not acquire his knowledge from others, but simply has it himself shows or gives an insight into how God how great God's intellectual excellence is. And I remember when I first realized this in studying the doctrine of omniscience, it just floored me because I never imagined that any person or being could be smarter than omniscient. It seemed to me that omniscient was as high as you can get. And yet when you think about it, God's cognitive excellence, his greatness with respect to his intellectual attributes and exceeds even omniscience, which ought to issue in praise and adoration and wonder of the person God is. Any comment about that second point then, about acquisition of knowledge? Let's have Tom first and then Tawan.
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So are you saying that each person's self knowledge is gained from other people's understanding of him?
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Are you asking if God's self knowledge.
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No, I'm saying that each person's self
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knowledge, each person's self knowledge.
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How do we have our self knowledge? Oh, is that, you know there?
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I think that one has self knowledge simply as Cindy said, in virtue of being a person. A person has a first person perspective, the things it knows and does and so can say. I think that it is part of what it means to be a person to have this capacity of self awareness.
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Right.
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So it would be intrinsic to perception.
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So if a person after he was born.
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Right. I don't mean to. That's why I said the capacity. I do think that a developing fetus is a person even though it may not yet have come to self awareness, but it has as a person it has this capacity to be self aware, to have a first person perspective.
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So it's possible that this capacity never developed to his complete.
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It's possible for what
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that means. It's possible that his this capacity of self knowledge could not have been developed completely.
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Right? Right. I think of a person in a coma who is comatose, that's still a person. You're not at liberty to just kill that individual.
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But he would not.
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Even though they're not self aware at that point, they may not be self conscious at that point, but as a person they have this intrinsic capacity to be self aware, to have a first person perspective on things. Kate, let's see what Taewon wanted to contribute.
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D
I think God give each of us self knowledge through the relationship that we have with him. As David said, I was formed in my mother's womb and it is too wonderful for me to know all these things. And that relationship a lot of times are replaced by idolatry. So the self knowledge are distorted because we take a person or a statement or something in place of God to form that self knowledge. So I think if our relationship with God is normalized, we all have, as the prophets know what they are to do and what their roles are. All those self knowledge are given by God. That's why we chosen and we were predestined.
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B
All right, I won't comment on the part about predestination, but I think that the Protestant reformers agree with the idea that the effect of sin upon us is, as Luther said, that we are curved in upon ourselves. And rather than being oriented toward God and seeking his good and his righteousness, we seek our own and we are bent in upon our own selves. And that is part of the curse and the consequence of sin, it seems to me. Well, I hope that I've expanded a bit your view of God's cognitive excellence. What we'll do next week is look at two problems which arise as a result of God's omniscience. The first will be the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human freedom. How can we be genuinely free to do other than as God infallibly foreknows we will do? And then secondly, if we are genuinely free, how can God foreknow that? How can he foreknow what we will do if at the time when it comes, we are completely free to do or to not do that action? Those will be two questions we'll take up next week. In closing today I want to read a benediction from 1st Thessalonians. Let's bow our heads. May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful and he will do it. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ be with you. Amen.
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The copyright for the content of this program is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.