God isn’t human, but God and we have the same image, so we share a lot. One such essential thing is life. God is alive and so He must be active; He cannot sit still. One wonders what He will be doing after all the affairs of this universe are wrapped up. Will he sit around absorbing praises or will He embark on another project? Maybe with a role for us.

(Michael needs to come in with part 2 before we get ourselves into more trouble.)

God commands, it is right.

Also, God isn’t human. Didn’t you know that.

Also, never underestimate the power of the rhetorical question.

Jason: ”My view is that God knows all true propositions, and consequently by a process of elimination knows which propositions are false.’

Does that sound like a computer? A computer doesn’t really ‘know’ anything; it simply has a store of propositions that it can compare with any proposition that it encounters. Knowing in a human sense implies the ability to determine true or false by using experience and rational processes. Further, knowledge of right and wrong is a different kind of thing from knowledge of true and false. It doesn’t seem to make sense to speak of omniscience concerning moral issues.

Regarding the point in Job, if God sometimes assumes a role in which He pretends not to know, how would Satan know what God really knows? Satan, not being omniscient, has to find out from experience just like the rest of us.

My view is that God knows all true propositions, and consequently by a process of elimination knows which propositions are false.

God presents as an evidence that would justify Israel’s allegiance to him, that he (unlike other gods) pronounces what will be from ages past. For example the naming of Josiah and Cyrus and describing their works hundreds of years in advance of their births.

From a scientific view time began with the universe, and whatever brought the universe into being would itself be timeless. A timeless being would be aware of all time simultaneously allowing exhaustive knowledge of the future as well as the past (although without needing to control that ‘future’) because that future would be – to that timeless observer – exactly the same as the past.

From the timeless viewpoint the Calvin/Armenian debate is essentially meaningless.

In places such as telling Abraham that he was going to see if Sodom’s evil was as great as reported God was initiating the dialogue that would see Lot spared. At the Tower of Babel, there is an element of mockery in the people claiming to build a tower to the heavens and God turning round and saying ‘let us go down and see what they are engaged in’.

Rayner, the dialogue between God and Satan does not indicate any shortage of knowledge on God’s part. Indeed, the general tone is that God knew that Job would be justified at the end of his trials. It does lead to questions about why Satan would pit himself against God’s foreknowledge; but then Satan is the accuser, perhaps that’s just his job. It may be that Satan doesn’t believe in God’s foreknowledge either.

One of the qualities that God doesn’t need to possess in order to be God is the desire to regularly interfere in human affairs. That said he would have to possess the ability to do so. No one who believes in God can reject the possibility of miracles.

Interesting that God’s spy network of angels includes Satan the accuser, as we see in the story of Job.

Anyway—God’s essence may be just an idea that we have created. We see around us things of various quality—good better best, smart smarter smartest, strong stronger strongest, etc.—and we carry that way of thinking to its ultimate point. In theory God must be the ultimate and therefore any quality He possesses is in the ultimate degree. We think nothing can be moderate with Him, only pure and perfect; otherwise, there is room for something else to be greater.

That way of thinking may be our human way of thinking, for we see many times in scripture where God seems to be caught in the same dilemmas and restrictions that we are. In the course of doing good, He also causes evil. He repents of previous actions. He demands our perfect righteousness yet tolerates widespread unrighteousness.

“I declare the end from the beginning” does not actually amount to omniscience, whereas “I will go down and see if they have done altogether according to the outcry against them, and if not, then I will know”

It seems to me, and I may be wrong, if you look at this statement other than in accommodating language one would have to believe God is down here everywhere and always in order for Him to know anything about His creation. To de-void God of omniscient would take away His sovereignty. How would God know fully and without a doubt He is sovereign? In fact how would He even know for sure He’s God? How could He trust his “spy network of angles” without being omniscient?

Yes it is true Jesus says in Matt. 24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone”. How can the Father know if He doesn’t know the end from the beginning? Does He constantly need to come down and check things out first to know if it’s time or is Jesus statement also a statement of the Father’s omniscient’s? God is not a corporeal being with physical eyes to see and ears to hear. One might assume from some of the statements to this blog He is. I don’t know how someone could read Isa. 46, especially 46:10 and not come away with an omniscient God; unless maybe they believe Isaiah was a false prophet.

Any way,……….that’s my two cents.

I believe in the language of accommodation, but it puts us on a slippery slope indeed by allowing us to interpret in a way that’s convenient for us.

It would seem that God’s powers must be greatly beyond ours, yet one wouldn’t need to be absolutely omniscient or omnipotent to originate this finite universe or manage it. However, I expect this series is about Biblical theology, that is, what does the Bible say about God, and is not concerned with what secular philosophy may contribute.

Clearly Rey has never heard of the language of accommodation…

Lisa, God knowing everything we need and his own plans certainly does not amount to knowing everything. Those are but subsets of literal everything.

“If God is not absolutely omniscient, how can he ever judge mankind with absolute fairness?” (Phil McCheddar)

Exhaustive knowledge of the past, but not the future. And even here, as the incidents of the Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorra show (“the LORD came down to see the city and the tower” Gen 11:5 and “let us go down and see if they have done altogether according to the outcry against them” Gen 18:21) God must rely on an extensive spy network of angels whom he knows he can trust because he initially took to independently verifying their accounts Himself as in these two stories.

If I am a heretic for suggesting this, then so is He Himself for suggesting it in his own inspired book of Genesis, I say anticipating the objection.

I appreciate the undertaking of this series. A scholar in the Stone-Campbell tradition (where I find myself) recently echoed the same comment you just made: we have a woefully insufficient doctrine of God. My ears perked up. Now they’ve perked up again when you’ve asserted the same deficiency. As a brand-new seminary student, it would be greatly helpful for you to list some bibliography references you’ve encountered as you proceed along the series.