Tag: omniscience

Does God Know What’s Happening In Genesis?

How do we read these texts? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes in the book of Genesis, it seems like God doesn’t know what’s going on. Now some of you might be thinking I’m referring to the creation passage and using that in this debate. No. I am not. I am instead referring to passages where God asks some questions or indicates He needs to investigate a matter.

Let’s start with Genesis 3. God comes walking through the garden at one point asking Adam where he is. While some might question if God knows the future, right now, this is asking if God even knows the present. Did God know where Adam was? Absolutely. He knew what had happened already. So why ask the question?

It’s asked to give Adam a chance to respond properly. As we know from the text, he didn’t. He played the blame game and blamed God and Eve both. Eve did the same thing and blamed the serpent. Unfortunately for the serpent, he had no one else to pass the buck to. God doesn’t buy any of it and punishes all of them.

Why phrase it this way? God is being presented in a way that we can understand. We will see this more when we get to impassibility. This is the language used especially in the Psalms when God is described as a rock, a shield, a hen over her young, or being told to wake up and bring about judgment. It’s not as if the Psalmist thought God was literally sleeping.

Another place to go to is Genesis 11. In this, the people decide to build a tower to the heavens. The problem with this is the flood came and the people were told to go throughout the Earth and fill it. Instead, they say they will stay in one place so that they can avoid another flood. God says “Let us go down and see what is going on.”

Why say this? It’s actually meant to be sarcasm. Here the people are trying to build something to reach to the heavens and God is in the heavens and saying “I think I see some tiny smidgen of something down there. Let’s go see what this thing is.” Consider it like Goliath talking smack to David about how insignificant an attacker he was. The text is speaking in mocking language of what God is doing to the people.

Finally, when Abraham barters with God, God seems to reason within Himself what He should do. Of course, this would mean that God would be ignorant of something. This again is not just the future, but the present. It is also God asking what the right thing to do is, which would mean God has a moral requirement and that laws of morality are above Him.

What is the purpose of this text then? It is to show Abraham as a mediator. After all, mediating is somewhat important in the Bible. Yes. God really does heed what men say. How that works will be something talked about later on. God is in charge of this deal the whole time. He sets the standards. Once a limit is reached, God says no more.

He also already does know what’s going on. It’s not as if God literally has to go and investigate. (And for what it’s worth, God is never seen going through the towns.) God is acting in a way we can relate to.

Now immediately, the objection pops up of, “But you’re not taking the text literally!” I am taking it literally in the sense that I think this is what the author intended. I am not taking it literalistically in the sense of reading it as a wooden text much like I don’t read in Deuteronomy of God being a consuming fire and think that He’s a giant cosmic bunsen burner.

All this sets us up for another such occurrence in Genesis in a passage with a lot of debate about it so we will save that for next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Answering Vox Day On The Trinity

Does Matthew 24:36 refute the Trinity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A reader sent me this piece from Vox Day wanting to get my input on it. Vox is a smart guy and has written going after the new atheists, though it was a book I never got around to reading. Yet here, the argument really isn’t the best. It’s one of the common arguments used against the Trinity.

Go to Matthew 24:36 and Jesus doesn’t know the day or the hour of His second coming. (My Preterist self wants to be clear it’s not about His return. That’s something else.) Not only do we have to explain the Son, but what about the Holy Spirit. Why isn’t He listed?

There are two options here. The Son is a simple case I think. The Son took on a sort of kenotic emptying as in Philippians 2. This was not an emptying of His deity. It was an emptying I think of the prerogative to use His divine attributes apart from His mission. It wasn’t necessary that the Son know the time of the events. All He had to say was it would be within this generation.

This has been the traditional understanding for quite some time and let me state that to argue against the Trinity is to argue against the wisdom of the major traditions of Christianity for thousands of years. Of course, there are some passages that are hard to understand, but there are far far more that are harder to understand otherwise. I don’t expect Vox to go and do a full look at every passage. It’s appropriate to bring up one concern at times.

Yet this doesn’t answer about the Holy Spirit. Shouldn’t the Holy Spirit know the date of the second coming? For this, there are two answers.

The first is that the Spirit submits to the Father and to the Son so there could be some limitations that the Spirit takes on as well when the Son goes on His mission. This isn’t because of the Spirit taking on humanity, but the Spirit working in tandem with the Son in the same kind of way. The Spirit would not be revealed this.

Another is to look at a passage like 1 Cor. 2:11. No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. This would mean that the Holy Spirit would be included in the identity of the Father. We could also ask if God the Father would be ignorant of something since in Rev. 19 the Son of Man comes riding a white horse with a name no one knows save Jesus Himself.

Vox would not likely have a problem with this since he does not accept divine omniscience. I do. Still, while it might not be that either of my interpretations can be proven to be the right one, they are both I think viable interpretations of the text and better in line with what has been taught throughout the church. If someone wants to go against a doctrine all three branches of Christianity agree on, I think the burden is highly on them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters