What Does It Mean To Say That God Is Omniscient? Flashcards
Most understand the omniscience of God to mean that God knows ? Yet it also means that God has no false beliefs and can’t be mistaken.
Everything.
If God’s omniscient, His knowledge includes things that are unavailable to the ? mind.
Human.
When attributed to God, ? is also closely linked with the idea of wisdom. If God does something that action is the best action and is done at the right time.
Omniscience.
Significant for theology’s the question of ? God knows in advance all the moral decisions that people’s make in their lives. If he does know these decisions then it raises the issue of whether people have any real freedom of ?
Whether.
Choice.
God’s certain knowledge that something will happen might “?” the event and make it unchangeable.
Fix.
In Christianity, Judaism and ?, it’s believed people have free choices about what they do, meaning they can be held responsible for their choices. Islam stresses this earthly life’s a testing, judged by Allah. Christianity’s the same.
Islam.
? ? drew the analogy of the knowledge that close friends have of each other’s future behaviour to conclude that God could be omniscient while still allowing people to act freely: “we estimate the intimacy between two persons by the foreknowledge one has of the actions of the other”. Does our knowledge of each other’s future choices mean in some way that we’re restricting each other’s freedom of choice?
Friedrich Schleiermacher.
For ?, this is incompatible with God’s knowledge of our actions. His knowledge doesn’t force or affect what we choose to do, and therefore we can still be held morally responsible and still make genuinely free choices.
Schleiermacher.
The problems with his ideas are that God’s knowledge’s said to be ? God can’t be wrong as he never makes mistakes and he can know the future.
Fallible.
If our freedom to act morally were only ?, there’d be serious implications. We wouldn’t be able to be held morally responsible for our actions as we wouldn’t’ve been able to behave in any other way.
Apparent.
? argued that without freedom there can be no moral choices. We have to have genuine options available to us to choose between, not just an illusion that we’re making a free choice.
Kant.
If God’s ? determines our choices, God can’t justifiably punish us when we do wrong or reward us when we do good.
Omniscience.
The problem for our moral freedom becomes acute when belief in God’s ? is coupled with belief that God intends and creates every individual life with his plans. God could’ve chosen to make us differently, or he could’ve chosen not to make us at all. Perhaps God can be held responsible for all kinds of evil, including so-called ? ?
Omniscience.
Moral-evil.
Perhaps God knows from the beginning of time which of us will’be faith and which’ll doubt or ?
Disbelieve.
If God has no clue what we’ll do, this implies a less than all-powerful God, suggesting that God can be surprised or make choices that turn out to have been ? God’s capabilities seem to be limited.
Unwise.
