The Supposed Contradiction of God's Omniscience

Commenting on my post on God’s omniscience, Godlessons objects that the doctrine of the omniscience of God contains paradoxes. (I’m thinking that he—or she, but I’m betting on he—means contradiction rather than paradox.)

In order for God to be omniscient, he can’t not know something. This means that not only would he know all possible futures, he would know the future that was going to happen as well, which means there is no other possible future.

How can I resist? Here’s my response:

You are equivocating on the term possible futures. When you use possible futures in the way you first use it, the term means something like “all the things God has the power and knowledge to accomplish—events God could have planned to occur had he desired.” They are possible in that sense—God has the ability to bring them to pass if he wanted to. They are conditional possibilities: They are possible, had God willed them. In this sense of the term, there are innumerable possible futures and God knows them all. 

In your second use of the term possible futures, you are refering to “the one conditional future which can actually come to be because God has planned for it to be.” This category contains the one conditional possible future for which the condition is met by God’s decision to bring this future into existence. In this category, we’re talking about actual possibilities, not conditional ones. There’s only one actually possible future, and God knows it because he decided it.

God's Goodness

This is another redone and reposted old post.

The term goodness in relation to the character of God can be used in two ways. Some who write on God’s attributes use it to describe the uprightness of God—his moral purity. (I’ve already done a piece on this aspect of God’s character and I called it God’s righteousness.) More commonly, however, this term is used to describe God’s benevolent nature—his generosity. This is the way I’m going to use the word goodness in this series of posts on God’s attributes.

God is by nature a giving God. He gives to his creation and sustains it out of his goodness. He provides all that is needed for everything he has made.

The Lord is good to all,
and has compassion on all he has made.
The Lord supports all who fall,
and lifts up all who are bent over….
Everything looks to you in anticipation,
and you provide them with food on a regular basis.
You open your hand,
and fill every living thing with the food they desire.
(Psalm 145:9,10,15,16 NET)

It gives God pleasure to treat his creatures benevolently. Psalm 104 tells us that God’s provision for human beings and his other creatures comes because God finds “pleasure in the living things he has made (v. 31).”

Our good God is the source of everything that is good:

All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change. (James 1:17 NET)

Every blessing we have and every benefit that exists comes from the heavenly Father. All that sustains us and gives us true joy is given by God. Even when we receive good things through the benevolent acts of others, we are receiving from God’s goodness, for no one can give except from what they have already received as a good gift from the Father.

God’s love, mercy, and grace have their source in God’s goodness. Sometimes those words are even used  synonymously with his general benevolence. In scripture, for instance, God’s providence for both “the evil and the good” is tied to his love in Matthew 5:44. However, these terms are often used specifically for God’s benevolence as it relates to the gift of redemption, and I plan to consider each of them separately later in this series on God’s attributes.

That God is unchangeably good doesn’t mean that every person receives equally from his goodness. Some receive more good gifts than others, and that doesn’t negate God’s goodness. The parable in Matthew 20 suggests that as long as God does no one wrong, he can be more generous to some than others while remaining true to his goodness:

“Am I not permitted to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15 NET)

The truest picture of God’s goodness can be seen when this aspect of his nature is viewed in relationship to his other perfections. God is benevolent, but he is also just, and because he is just, he is never benevolent in a way that overlooks sin:

The Lord , the Lord the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6,7 NET)

Out of his goodness, he is long-suffering toward sinners, slow to be harsh toward our sin, but in the end, our sin must be dealt with and God’s severity expressed against it.

God’s goodness toward those who belong to him has a benevolent purpose that goes beyond providing for their well-being in this temporal world. His generous intent is designed to save them from his just harshness toward sin.

Or do you have contempt for the wealth of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, and yet do not know that God’s kindness leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4 NET)

God’s kindness is working something of eternal consequence within his own. His kindness is intended to lead to repentance—to turn people from their sin to faith in the good God.

Those without an attitude of repentance show contempt for God’s goodness and for God himself, leading directly to “wrath…in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed! (Romans 2:5 NET).” Considering God’s goodness alongside his wrath against sin should bring sinners to God with an open hand of true repentant faith.

And there is even more good news of God’s goodness toward his own: Every single life circumstance works toward a good end in the lives of those who love him. For those who love God, even life’s difficulties are good gifts serving a benevolent purpose, for they are remaking them into people who are like Christ. (Romans 8:28-29)

How can that not make us thankful to our good Father? He is the source of everything good that we have, and he gives to us because he is good, not because we have a right to what we are given. And  since every single circumstance is a good gift—an undeserved good gift—for those who belong to him, God’s people should be the kind of people who give thanks to him in all circumstances.

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his loyal love,
and for the amazing things he has done for people!
For he has satisfied those who thirst,
and those who hunger he has filled with food.
(Psalm 107:8,9)

God's Truthfulness

Another repost of an old attributes of God post.

The Lord is the only true God. 
He is the living God and the everlasting King. 
(Jeremiah 10:10 NET)

Our God is the only true God. He is not a false god or an imaginary god, but the one real God who is everlastingly alive and ruling over all that is.

He is rock solid reality: constantly there and constantly active. Our God is so rock solidly real that his rock solid reality extends to the words he speaks. He created everything that exists by commanding it to be. Everything that exists, except for the true God himself, came to be because he called it into existence from nothingness (Hebrews 11:3). And all that continues to exist remains only because God sustains it by his continued command (Hebrews 1:3). Everything we see, smell, hear, touch, taste—everything material, everything tangible—is here for us to know because God himself and his spoken word are absolutely true.

But there’s more: What is yet to be will happen because God will speak it into being: 

For I am God, and there is no other; 
{I am} God, and there is no one like Me, 
Declaring the end from the beginning, 
And from ancient times things which have not been done, 
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, 
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; 
Calling a bird of prey from the east, 
The man of My purpose from a far country. 
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. 
(Isaiah 46:9-11)

Everything that is and everything that will be derives its existence from the true word of the true God. He is the intangible reality upholding our tangible reality. He is the One more real than what is material, for the material derives its reality from him. He is the true and real unseen being behind all that is seen. 

That God is true means that there is nothing more that he ought to be or will come to be. He is always, ever, fully and completely everything that he is and should be. He is the absolute Absolute. 

God is true, so everything he reveals about himself corresponds to what he really is. We can be certain of some things about God because we can trust what he tells us. Because God is true, he can be known by us—not completely known, but truly known.

And knowing this one true and real God is the key to everything, for knowing him is the source of eternal life itself.

Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent. (John 17:3 NET)

We can know the only true God because he declares himself to us through creation, through his written word, and through his Son. 

The absolute truthfulness of God’s communication extends to the laws or commands he gives us. What they demand of us corresponds exactly to what a human being ought to be, and from them we learn the truth of what we were made to be. 

What’s more, God’s promises and warnings are completely reliable because what he says will be always comes to be. God is true, so he can be trusted; God is faithful because he is true. Our hope is a certain hope because “he who has promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23).” Proverbs 30:5 tells us that “every word of God is purified”, and because of the purity of his words, “he is like a shield for those who take refuge in him.” The security that can be found in God is there because his word is true. 

Those of us who have come to know him—who are his people—need to be real and true because our heavenly Father is real and true. If we are being remade into the image of the one true God, then we need to call a spade a spade, and where better to start than with ourselves and our own lives? Hypocrisy is everywhere condemned in scripture because it is the opposite of what God is. Those who belong to him are called to be sincere and genuine.

Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with its practices and have been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it. (Colossians 3:9,10 NET)

God’s people are truthful people, for they are being made into the image of the one who created them by his spoken word—by “calling them out of darkness and into his marvelous light.” 

And those who belong to him will indeed become people of the truth, because he who calls “is trustworthy, and he will in fact do this”; that is, he will make them “completely holy” and “entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:24 NET).” It’s a promise from the only true God, who declares the end from the beginning, who speaks truth and brings it to pass. It’s a promise that is rock-solid reality we can rest in.