Does God Know the Future? Epistemic Concerns and Rational Fideism

From the Appendix of Epistemics of Divine Reality (2007, 2009), pp. 197-199.

Divine foreknowledge refers to God’s possession of the knowledge of future. The problem is whether God’s omniscience entails that He actually knows our future free actions. Rational fideism sees that the paradox is because of the distinct lines of rational and empirical epistemics by which theologians approach the issue. For instance, Norman Geisler in the rationalist way, and appealing to transcendence and infinity, argues that “An infinite, eternal God knows what we know but not in the way we know it. As an eternal being, God knows eternally.’ This kind of an approach, however, bears no meaning for an empiricist, since it refers to a non-empirical way of knowing. On the other hand, in the empirical way, Gregory A. Boyd has argued that God does not foreknow future free actions because there is ‘nothing definite there for God to know’. In other words, knowledge entails a subject-object relation. However, since future free actions do not exist at the present, there is no reason to suppose that God’s not knowing them implies He is not omniscient. He can only know what is really existent and future actions do not exist in relation to the present. This view, obviously, is a purely empirical approach to the problem. Thus, the problem of divine foreknowledge is a result of a clash of methodological perspectives: rational and empirical.

One way of solving this problem would be by asking whether knowledge is, in dimension, rational or empirical. If it is rational, then it must be in non-conflict with unity, transcendence, infinity, necessity, and immutability. However, if it is empirical, then it must be in non-conflict with plurality, immanence, finitude, contingency, and mutation. In the rational picture of God, knowledge is never thought as acquired, which assumes mutation. God doesn’t come to know. Knowledge is static and devoid of subject-object relation; which also means that there needn’t be anything definite there for God to know – He doesn’t come to know in a subject-object relation but as unity. Knowledge, thus, is static and uniform not dynamic and plural. In that sense, ‘foreknowledge’ is with reference to us, humans, and not with reference to the divine perspective. Devoid of the Revelation of God as a distinct reality from this-worldly-reality, however, this rationality of ultimate reality can mean that the Divine has no phenomenal knowledge (or delusion).

It may be noted from the discussion on the rationalist non-dualism that omniscience is not an attribute applicable to the non-dual Self in whom all subject-object distinctions cease; consequently, the delusive influence of phenomenal knowledge is obliterated. From that point of view, then, logically the Absolute can know nothing phenomenal. However, this non-dualistic nature of the non-dual cannot be applied to the Christian notion of the Godhead which, by grace of revelation, has been able to see the divine as triune. Revelation has shown that the Godhead is transcended to and not synonymous with this-worldly-reality. And so, phenomena need not be assumed as an illusion. Thus, as transcending phenomenal reality and yet being the hypostasis of it (of all spatio-temporal existence), it is not irrational to suppose that for God, all knowledge is coterminous. For instance, He doesn’t need to read a book page by page to know its contents: the knowledge of its contents are coterminous to Him.

In the empirical picture, however, knowledge is acquired. God does come to know. Knowledge is dynamic subject-object relation. The researcher believes that the statement ‘God saw that it was good’ (Genesis 1: 10) must be seen in the empirical perspective and not in the rational perspective. Does this mean that God cannot foreknow? Obviously not, for the rational dimension is uniform with knowledge. Then in what way is divine foreknowledge to be understood? How can God know and still come to know? The answer is that God knows in the non-temporal sense (as the transcendent hypostasis of temporality) and comes to know in the temporal sense (as immanent to temporality).

But, it may be argued that time does not exist apart from events; then in what sense can God be the ground of temporality and of the temporal events in a way that the events are coterminous to Him, even before the events come to be? The answer is that since all events, including free actions, are contingent upon the necessary being of God, and the being of God is essentially a unity (spatio-temporal divisibility being inapplicable to it); therefore, at least rationally speaking, contingent reality is never accidental to God. They are only accidental empirically speaking. Thus, from the contingent viewpoint of human reality, all events in the world are accidental. From the viewpoint of divine reality, all events in the world are not accidental. Does this mean that humans do not have freewill? Obviously, not. For contingency doesn’t imply determinism. And of course, in the statement that ‘God knows world-events, including human free actions, as coterminous,’ it is implied that God knows it not as something He determines to be but something as it is, i.e., coterminous. The rational part of the argument may this far suffice.

However, the empirical part of the argument cannot be ignored. God is not just beyond the world but also within the world. Revelation tells us that He is not just immutable but also dynamic. He creates, destroys, informs, interferes, and saves. The biblical God is not the unconcerned, inactive homogenous reality ‘out there.’ He is a God with whom men have talked, walked, and had relations. This God is a person; a tri-personality. He listens to the cries of the poor and answers out of the whirlwind. He is the God of silence and the God of thunder. He is the God of human experience. He knows all things; yet seeks the true worshippers. He rejoices and gets grieved. Obviously, He is the God of paradoxes; but in Him, all paradoxes turn to ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’, into ‘worship’ and ‘adoration’. Because, in His rationality and relationality does one find order and harmony for the human heart, a heart that is torn between the eternal and the temporal, a heart that can only find rest and solace in the arms of the eternal and yet personal and living God.

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See Time Theories and the Limits of Reason