Introduction
Omniscience is the state of having full or maximum knowledge and is regarded as an essential feature of an entirely perfect being. Many philosophers have considered this trait to be possessed and attributed by a divine-like God who is believed to have the necessary knowledge, complete knowledge, tenseless knowledge, and sound knowledge. Many Christians are of the view if God has this complete knowledge, then he is aware of everything every time, he can see the future and ways things will happen without having much to think of anything particularly to know and understand all there is to know about.
Philosophical Understanding of Omniscience
To philosophers like St. Augustine, God is regarded as perfect, benevolent, and good which makes it impossible to make him responsible for suffering and sin (Ibáñez, et.al. 171). He makes two separate arguments to resolve this falsified notion. The first is that God is never responsible for the actions that we take under our own free will. He even goes as far as to compare people’s willingness to do immoral acts to a rock’s choice to fall to the ground.
He states that God is fully responsible for giving people free will however the sin the people do out of the acquired free will is out of necessity but it does not necessarily depict that the possession of free will shall result in sin. Therefore, according to Augustine’s understanding, the possession of free will could lead to sin but in no way does it come close to implicating God (Ibáñez, et.al. 171).
The second argument Augustine makes is that God’s knowledge of all the actions that people will partake in during their entire life cannot make him responsible for humankind’s evildoings. Augustine argues that if a person knows that someone else will act in a certain way in the future beforehand, then the foreknowledge cannot influence or force the person to act in a certain way (Ibáñez et.al. 167). It does not matter whether God knows or does not know people’s chances of sinning, a person’s behavior is determined by the outcome.
Boethius supports this notion believing that God is not essentially in our timeline but all of the timelines from an eternal perspective. Therefore, he believed he is a timeless God with the ability to view our future (Charlotte 5). He understood that God has the full knowledge of our counterfactuals (people’s decisions and outcomes) but believed that he did not have control of the choices people make and that people have free will. He argues that if God has the foreknowledge of people’s outcomes, then he cannot punish and reward fairly. Therefore, God can allow the existence of people’s free will, and hence, give them the right to punish and reward justly.
In Boethius’ sense, it is logical for God to give people a simple necessity to become immoral and sinful to justify the fairness in God punishing and rewarding the unethical doings fairly. However, this would permit free will leaving God with limited or middle knowledge – knowing all people’s probable future events but not definite. On the other hand, according to Augustine, people have free will and can become immoral even with God’s foreknowledge; however, they are given a choice to follow the divine to be forgiven and have eternal life in heaven without having to suffer in hell.
Many questions are raised by Boethius’s theory of God having middle knowledge including what determines the conditionals of free will. Having an answer to this will help to understand how God is justified in his understanding of freedom subjectivity. Molinists claim that God understands the future through extrapolating it in line with the facts of freedom to which are casually true (Justice 45). However, these freedom facts are not extrapolated from anything as they are only known through one of God’s non-probable faculties to which one is still unknown.
They cannot be understood through testimony, memories, perceptions, or kinetic awareness and this creates the concept of introspection as the final choice. Still, it remains a mystery of what God can know regarding himself which can yield enough proof of what we can do freely in case we are put in particular situations. Therefore, the Molinists will need to postulate some unknown facts through which God understands the freedom facts (Justice 26). Nonetheless, this account began as a deductive model that turns out to be inconceivable and mystifying in the end.
Philosophical Issues and Difficulties
One common challenge that many philosophers have about God being omniscient is concerning human free will and God’s foreknowledge. To Christians, God is all-knowing meaning that he knows what is happening now and what will happen in the future. However, this might be contradictory for some theists. Some believe that God is indeed omniscient but has no knowledge or limited understanding of what will occur in the future. To most Christians, God knows us before we were even formed in the womb and knows the actions and decisions we will take as we progress in life. This has created some issues for philosophers who question how anyone has free will yet God eternally knows about all the actions that each person will perform from birth.
For instance, suppose that Mary chooses to drink fruit juice instead of taking Lemon tea in the morning on the 10th of January 2021 at precisely 8:15 a.m. Using the omniscience argument this means that God knew this action before it came to be. Also, it would mean that God’s knowledge is factual as Mary would have done exactly how God had predicted it proving that Mary has no free will. However, in case Mary chose to do otherwise like taking ice cream instead of what God had planned for her to take fruit juice, then this would show that Mary has free will and God’s knowledge is be based on false beliefs which are impossible considering he is omniscient.
Saint Augustine opposes this theory too by claiming that God is the natural creator of free will just like the free will he gave to Eve and Adam and also to every other person. He believes that we have natural freedom will that exists in our souls despite God having foreknowledge about future occurrences. Similarly, John Calvin states that we have free will and we have full capability to act voluntarily and not through the compulsion set upon us by God (Brierley 7). In his sense, we have a choice that is rather self-determined and that our decisions and outcomes emerge from our own voluntary decision which the individual will later be judged upon in the afterlife.
Another rather compelling challenge that free will versus foreknowledge brings up is that many philosophers believe that God is responsible for the existence of evil since people do not have free will. Some philosophers claim that if God knows every action that a person is going to take beforehand including committing a social ill like murder, then this makes him blameable and guilty for people’s sins. If God gave us the right to free will and we utilize it to do evil deeds and God knows beforehand that this would occur, then he is fully responsible for all evil. Some philosophers like Manichaean supported that God is very much implicated in evil.
He not only believed that God had pure omnipotent power, but he also believed that humankind is the by-products of the battle that he and his eternal evil son – Lucifer – have in regards to the potential and extent of his power.
Christian Beliefs on Omniscience
Christians find the questions revolving around free will and God’s foreknowledge as questioning the existence of God. Many philosophers and theists perceive free will as something simple if not defensible. Christians that hold the belief that God’s foreknowledge does not have any hold on our free will and is not the root of any evil do, have a strong argument. Christians through the bible believe that God understands the future and knows how people will turn out even before we are born. For Christians, God does not have to reason out everything or learn new things gradually as he already knows everything that has happened and that will happen (Fazli).
The concept of omniscience in the Christianity world contends that God has perfect knowledge and wisdom and knows how to use and apply knowledge perfectly. The evidence required to prove that perceptions and beliefs that God has limited knowledge or does not have any knowledge to predict our future are limited and need more research.
Theists believe in the existence of God but question whether God knows everything including our future. The theory of theists is much contradictory to that of Christians as it appears as if God does not know the future. First of all, the theists think that there is no future to have adequate knowledge about. The theists deny the existence of the future whether on an expanding universe perception of time or a presentist perception of time (Fazli). Only the present is what exists or maybe the past and present. This belief is radical as it forces one to reject a common belief of Bivalence to which any proposition is determined as either true or false.
They acknowledge that there are some religious and philosophical beliefs regarding the future but reject them because there is a lack of sufficient evidence to make the notion true. However, this does not also necessarily mean that they are false as there is not any opposing state of affairs that renders the propositions falsified. The proof of the true value is yet to be proven but present evidence is currently lacking. Therefore, to persuasively consider the theist viewpoint, one will have to defend the perspective that the future does not completely exist. There could be abstract facts in the future that establish various propositions regarding the future as true even though the future does not exist.
In general, among the greatest contentious debates concerning human nature is the query of free will, including the total of choices we make by ourselves every day without being controlled by an omniscient God. Many Christians often claim that we have in some sense a free will to do as we choose and later be judged for our actions in the afterlife. But to many philosophers, Molinists and theists believe that if God can predict our future actions and decisions from the moment we are born, then we have no free will and we live only by his will and compulsion. It has been a contentious debate fraught with the entanglement of personal identity, misunderstandings, and emotions.
The Christian view that God understands our future may be true because of the nature of God’s power and the supremacy of his existence. Also, there is no tangible proof from philosophers that shows that God is not all-knowing.
Conclusion
In summary, free will and divine sovereignty are topics that have been covered widely by various scholars. Christians are of the view that God is all-knowing and can be able to see what we are doing every time. This idea helps influence the way Christians approach how they carry out their day-to-day activities. Philosophers have come forward with compelling arguments that seek to discredit the idea that God is all-knowing. However, the theories have not proven substantially that humans are affected by God’s ability to know everything. Christians believe that they are partly in control of their free will because they can do anything on earth as judgment day exists to separate between the good and the bad.
Works Cited
Brierly, Justin. “Why both Atheists and Christians need to Believe in Free Will.” Premier Christianity, 2018. Web.
Ibáñez, Agustín, et al. “Freeing Free Will: A Neuroscientific Perspective.” DOING SCIENCE: In the Light of Philosophy. 2017. 161-176.
Charlotte, Vardy. “Boethius Proved that God’s Omniscience is Compatible with Human Free Will.” Divinity Philosophy, 2017. Web.
Fazli, H. Abdul. “Christian Theologians and Philosopher’s View of Omniscience and Human Freedom.” (2019).
Justice, Nathan. “Arminianism and Molinism on Divine Foreknowledge.” Senior Honors Theses, vol. 647, 2017, pp. 1-67. Web.