Welcome to Gaia! ::

Thought I coud add thast edit onto the end of my post before anyone replied.

16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

Man, y'all sound smart!
For the most part, I am content to know that there are certain things I will never be able to understand completely - in some ways this is one of them. I believe God is all-knowing, and I even believe He has a plan for us - I don't believe that this means we are predestined or forced into anything.

A mother (typically) knows her child very well, and will know that he or she will chose candy over asparagus just about any given time - that doesn't mean she is making the choice for her child. That is a very limited example but it is one way of getting a glimpse at how it's possible for God to know what we will do before we do it. At the same time, I want to be clear that God's knowledge of us is not based on some acquired experience through life which allows Him to be able to predict our behaviors (as is essentially how human's work) - it is much deeper than that. He knows us, in a way we cannot begin to comprehend.

I am reading a book that makes an interesting statement about God allowing evil to exist so that we are able to make a real choice, and it is because He loves us that He does it that way - He loves us completely and wants us to choose and love Him in return, of our own will. I think it is an interesting and surprisingly simple explanation of the issue of free will. At the same time, the author makes his belief that God is all knowing very clear - He is just waiting (in as much as a time-less being waits for anything) for us to come to Him, rather than force us. This is something I think I knew well before, but the book has been a good reminder.

That would be closer to omniscient ... well, technically, it would be a form of clairvoyance or remote viewing, but let's not muddy the waters with ESP.

Still, we've got one incident where Jesus displayed knowledge not normally available (the woman at the well), one where He was able to see an incident too far away for normal sight, and one where He might have been demonstrating a lack of knowledge, or might have been asking a rhetorical question.

One theory I've heard is that, while human, Jesus did not have the infinite knowledge, but that He was given knowledge by the Holy Spirit as He needed it.

I think it safe to say, whatever we come up with to explain this, we're going to be a bit off somewhere. God knows how He worked it, so that's enough. As Tryan said, there's some things we'll just never understand; that doesn't make them any less real.

Ah yes, that theory also makes sense. And you're right, none of us will be 100% right. Though what Eykos has said makes sense, too. I do believe God exists outside of time:



This tells us that time doesn't mean anything to God, which tells us He lives outside it. And if God lives outside time, there is no line of "this happened, then that, then that." Everything merely is. Which means that what Eykos has said applies not only to the past and present, but also to the future: because God exists outside time, there is no real lineage of time, just that it exists. Therefore, God not only knows us enough to know what our choice will be, but it has happened, is happening, and will happen.

This brings us back to the Calvinistic mindset: is everything we do predestined? The answer is no. In effect, it has already happened (in God's eyes) before it even happened (to us), and therefore God knows what we will do and say in advance. But make no mistake, this does not detract from the fact that God knows us enough to predict our actions. God just happens to already know what your decision is.

I really hope this makes sense...