As God’s omnipotence means there is no power or authority that exists anywhere at any time or any place that is not resident in Him and/or derived from Him. So, too, the omniscience of God means precisely the same in connection with knowledge. There is nothing known, or to be known, by any or all entities in any or all locals that is not known by God in the fullest manner. Omniscience is a compound word from Latin origins: “omni” means “all”, and “science” means “to know”. Thus, “omniscience” means “all-knowing”. God, being infinite, knows all that is knowable at any and all times, in any and all venues. The knowledge known and possessed by this omniscient God is intuitive. That means He knows because He knows, not because He has learned.
The omniscient God never learned anything, for “to learn” means to acquire knowledge not known before. Clearly unthinkable for the omniscient Deity. Omniscience means there is no knowledge, no information of which He is not fully aware at no time and in no place. Omniscience requires as much awareness of all that is future as well as what is past or present. Omniscience means God need not await an event to occur before He knows it altogether.
Of late, a notion has circulated among Christians called “open-theism”. It postulates that God is dependent upon the future unfolding before He can know it. Even God, say the Open-Theists, is subject to being surprised. So, if one embraces open-theism, it is inescapable to reach any other conclusion than that of charging God with a finite kind of ignorance as to what the future will bring. In this, the omniscient God must forfeit His credentials of being an all-knowing God. He simply would not be. If open-theism is correct, God must then await the decisions of men and nations to know what is occurring, the same as us mere mortals.
Well, really now, we always thought there were decided advantages to being the Deity. One of the most pronounced is the ability to call things that are not as though they are, plus knowing the end from the beginning and vice versa. Are all things naked and open before Him with Whom we have to do? Or are they hidden from God and cannot be known by Him until they occur? In order for the Deity to be infinite, there must not be information or knowledge that escapes Him. An ignorant Deity, even a partially ignorant Deity, is not worthy of our worship.
The psalmist understood the reality of God’s omniscience in the 139th, “O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me; Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up. Thou dost understand my thought from afar; Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all.” The psalmist expressed it as for what it meant; God is indeed omniscient.
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