AOG: OMNISCIENCE

Question 1

What is the meaning of omniscience?

Answer 1

God knows everything; there is nothing he cannot know. God has no false beliefs and cannot be mistaken.

Question 2

What do St Paul and Isaiah say about God? What approach is a solution to this?

Answer 2

Say that God has never learned.

Apophatic approach is the best solution.

Question 3

What does Kant state in opposition to God’s omniscience?

Answer 3

Without freedom there can be no moral choices so, if God’s omniscience determines our choices, then God cannot justifiably punish us when we do wrong.

Question 4

What does Flew state about God’s omniscience?

Answer 4

If God could foresee the consequences of an action, it ought to be possible to create free creatures who always choose to do right.

Question 5

What is the Apophatic Approach?

Answer 5

A form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation.

Question 6

What does Psalm 139 write?

Answer 6

“Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely.”

Question 7

How does the Bible support Calvin’s argument?

Answer 7

‘In love He predestinated us.” Ephesians.

Question 8

What is predestination as a part of Calvin’s argument?

Answer 8

Before creation God determined the fate of the universe throughout all of time and space.

Question 9

What does Calvin state about the ideas of reward and punishment?

Answer 9

“ordains eternal life for some and eternal damnation for others”.

Question 10

What is the issue for Boethius?

Answer 10

This future cannot change otherwise what God sees is just “fallible opinion”.

Question 11

Why do we have to be the author of our actions according to Boethius?

Answer 11

Because it would be pointless to reward and punish if our actions are not free/voluntary.

Question 12

How does Boethius justify God having full knowledge but humans also having free will?

Answer 12

In order for reward and punishment to make sense, God cannot have predetermined our actions.

Question 13

What is Boethius’ argument to the issue of freewill?

Answer 13

God is eternal.

Question 14

How does God’s eternity explain how God can be omniscient and humans have freewill?

Answer 14

God does not see past, present and future, but all of time together as the “eternal present”.

Question 15

What does God have according to Boethius?

Answer 15

A ‘bird eye’ - the whole of history is theocentric.

Question 16

How does Swinburne support the notion that God’s omniscience is limited to what is logically possible?

Answer 16

An omniscient being knows every true proposition but a future action isn’t ‘true’ or ‘false’ until it has happened.

Question 17

How do Vardy and Macquarie support the notion that God makes the deliberate decision to limit what he knows?

Answer 17

Explore the idea of self imposed limitations on omnipotence.

Question 18

What analogy does Schleiermacher give to support the idea that God is aware of all possible choices but we are free to decide which one to choose?

Answer 18

The analogy of the knowledge that close friends have of each others future behaviours = omniscience but still freewill.

Question 19

What does Augustine argue about God’s omniscience?

Answer 19

God simply knows our choices.

Question 20

What is one of the main philosophical problems related to divine foreknowledge?

Answer 20

How can humans still be held responsible for their actions? (links to Kant’s idea)

Question 21

What is the issue of divine foreknowledge related to Epicurus?

Answer 21

Does this make God responsible for our suffering? (link to inconsistent triad).

Question 22

How is Boethius limited in terms of the idea of ‘one glance’?

Answer 22

But even if God just sees events not on a timescale are we truly free?

Question 23

How does Boethius limit God in classical theism?

Answer 23

If God cannot see the future, even if it is logically impossible to see, does that take away God’s omniscience/omnipotence?