Divine Omniscience

Fundamental to any orthodox (i.e., biblically correct) doctrine of God is the affirmation of divine omniscience. This attribute means that God knows all things, and we find it taught in many places in Scripture. Isaiah 46:8–11, our passage for today’s study, ranks as one of the most important texts on the subject.

Isaiah 46:8–11 sets God’s knowledge in the context of the divine decree, His eternal plan that establishes whatsoever comes to pass. Through Isaiah, the Lord announces that He declares “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (v. 10). In other words, that which happens in history happens because He has declared or ordained that it will occur. He knows what will happen because He has established in advance what will happen.

Divine omniscience includes God’s knowledge of what He has ordained will happen as well as all the possibilities that He could ordain. Here theologians often distinguish between God’s necessary knowledge and His free knowledge. His necessary knowledge consists of absolutely every possibility that He could have ordained, declared, or decreed, whereas His free knowledge consists of that which He has actually ordained, declared, or decreed. Importantly, this distinction helps us understand that when we are thinking of God’s knowledge in either respect, we must maintain that His knowledge depends on nothing extrinsic to Himself. The Lord does not passively look into the future and see what His creatures will do. That would give us a being who in some sense learns from others, who relies on creation for at least some of His knowledge. But as noted above, God’s knowledge depends only on Himself and all the possibilities He could ordain and all that He has actually ordained. His understanding is not conditioned on anything in creation, and His knowledge is not based on His receiving of data outside Himself as our knowledge is. Thus, Westminster Confession of Faith 3.2 states, “Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”

Finally, God’s omniscience means that He also knows Himself fully and perfectly. As 1 Corinthians 2:11 explains, God knows all that is in Himself. We can be surprised to learn of talents that we did not know that we had or can respond in the heat of the moment in a way that we did not anticipate. This cannot be true of the Lord.