DOCTRINE: The Knowledge of God

THE FOLLOWING POST IS A CONCEPTUAL WORK-IN-PROGRESS ...

If God, with reference to His omniscience, foreknows the potential of every thought, word, feeling, and deed, does He need to specifically know the ending (i.e., outcome) of each in order to retain fully His divine sovereignty over the affairs of man? Since He is surprised by nothing, the answer would seem to be no!

I would suggest the knowledge of a "potential" thing (for an infinite and omniscient being) is axiomatically the same thing as knowledge of the outcome itself.

God's providential and permissive wills (actually one coin, two sides), as we understand them orthodoxly, are unmolested with this view. It seems to me (on the surface) this view is not a variation of Open Theism, a doctrine I strongly reject.

He knew Adam's potential to sin in the Garden; He permitted him the free will to do so. God also knew the potential of the Tower of Babel; He providentially intervened to moderate the future of mankind.

I sense in my spirit, insisting on His exhaustive foreknowledge of every outcome diminishes or qualifies His infinite nature and His divine attributes, not to mention the damage done to His power to create, without flaw, a natural order perfect with respect to Himself and not man.

COMMENTS ARE WELCOMED ...

Christianity, Doctrine, Religion, Theology