Can God Learn?
The word omniscience, is not a word of the Bible. In fact, that word is not, strictly speaking, a biblical term. It means to see or know all things, and has been a theological doctrine based on supposed biblical evidence.
But is this true? If you know everything, and there's nothing that you do NOT know, then are you able to learn? Can God obtain knowledge that He doesn't have?
If so, then I would argue that God has 2 things that He is incapable of: He cannot sin, for that would disqualify Him from the position of being God. He also, based on any belief that he is omniscient, would be unable to learn. Can God teach Himself? Impossible! If He can, then it would imply that there is something He does not know, and therefore he would cease to be omniscient, or all-knowing.
Because God is supposedly all-knowing, why does he get angry? There are many instances in scripture where it says that "the anger of the Lord burned against them". What would make Him angry? He is all-knowing. He knew that we would sin and disobey Him before we were born. Before the creation of the world. He's not surprised, if He's omniscient. We get angry when our expectations are not met. For instance, if I expect my friend to give me a high-five, and instead they smack me in the face, that would probably make me angry. I was expecting one thing and I got something different. That's a surprise. But God is not surprised, because He knows everything. So if that is the case, is there anything we can do wrong that would NOT meet God's expectations? After all, He knew we'd do it anyways.
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I agree with the statement that God could not learn because he does not need to learn because he knows everything. I believe God gets angry to help us realize our own sin and we have done. He knows when we are going to disobey, and he lets us know when we should try harder next time. If God were to not get angry, we wouldn't know right from wrong very well because we wouldn't have any examples of God getting angry in the Bible. God does expect us to act accordingly to what he has commanded us to, but he lets us know when we didn't try as hard as we could, so we learn from our mistakes, and in the long run, we are more capable of knowing what God views as right and wrong.
ReplyDeleteIts important to realize that God knows all. And you put that in clearly enough. I think, though, that if God didn't act against us when we did something wrong, he wouldn't be very just. Even though God knows when we meet his expectations and when we don't, doesn't mean he shouldn't care. Your post felt like God shouldn't care because he knew it would happen anyways.
ReplyDeleteThats what I thought about it. I also agree with what Sebastian said; that God gets angry at us to make us realize our own sin to get us to repent and turn 180 degrees from our sin.
To Phantom: There is a differance between having expectations and knowing an outcome, for example, a parent epects a child to do what is right, but they know the child will slip up. Even though God knows we are going to sin, He can still be angry at us. Anger doesn't only occur when something unexpected occurs, but also when something undesired occurs, even though (again I'll use a parental example) parents know that theor kid is going to mess up, they get upset because their child messed up, causing separation. I'd have liked to see more scriptual support.
ReplyDeleteTo Isaak and Sebastion: I don't think that God to make us realize what we have done was wrong, I think it's more of a way to give us a reason not to sin. Why don't we want to sin, because it makes God angry and sad.
i was just reading this devtional thing at church and it said that this one time in jerimiah God was surprised, which was surprising...
ReplyDeleteJeremiah 32:35
35 They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech, though I never commanded, nor did it enter my mind, that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin.
so if anyone wants to clear that up....
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteI love the points that you made! They really made me think. However, yes God already does know what we are going to do. Yet He in a sense still gives us the choice to sin, so therefore He gets angry at our choice to sin. (just my thoughts)
~Alyssa~
I agree with your views but it makes me wonder why it is so important to realize this. as humans who cannot possibly concive alot about a perfect all-knowing creator then why do we try. yes i would agree that God cannot learn. we are imperfect and therefor have to learn. but it all comes down to trying to umderstand God more then we understand anything else which is impossible. we can learn more about ourselves then we can ever about our creator. anywho, those are just some of my thoughts....
ReplyDeletehmmm. so thought provoking!
ReplyDeleteMy grandpa was a pastor and he gave a classic sermon on the four things God does not know. God does not know a person he does not love, a sin he doesn't hate, any other way to deal with the problem of sin except Jesus Christ, and any other way to get the word out except you and me. Just a thought. . .
Can you give me some scriptural backup?
I think that God's anger is an outpouring of how much he loves us. He knows what we are doing will hurt us, and even if he knows what we'll choose, it still hurts him deeply because sin is a rebellion against God.
Hmm. bekah- interesting. . . I have no idea. I'd love to dig into the original text and see what it originally meant.
Good thoughts Holly.
Quentin, I agree with you in that we can never fully understand things like this until we reach heaven, so its not worth getting into a big fight over it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't dig in and think hard, and study. Don't forget that most of our beliefs are based on faith and won't be fully confirmed until eternity. But we still need to look at what we do know and try and build our faith out of scripture and the Holy Spirit's leading.
There were some good points and the comments were interesting too. You know that someone cares about you when they are angry with the bad choices you have made. If they didn't care about you they wouldn't get angry. So in a way, I think that God's anger at our sin and the bad choices we have made demonstrates how much he cares for us. He hates our sin and that we choose to disobey. Even though he knows what we are going to do, it doesn't change his feelings. If you knew someone was going to do something horrible to you, you would still be mad at them once they did it. You wouldn't be like oh its okay that you did that to me because I already knew you were going to do it. Anyway, even though thinking about this hurts our brains and we will never fully comprehend it all, it is still important that we know what we believe and why (1 Peter 3:15). Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts! And Great Job everyone who commented.
ReplyDeleteI think our sin makes God upset. He knows what we are going to do before we do it, and because we are not perfect, He knows that we are going to sin. But i still think that it saddens Him. No matter how our sin effects Him, His emotions and reasons are all because of His love for us. He has a purpose and so do we. We are to serve Him.
ReplyDeleteI think that God gets upset with us because we keep turning away from him. If your son were to turn away from you numerous times by doing something you said not to do you would be angry too.
ReplyDeleteI agree that God cannot teach himself anything because he already knows everything that has happened, is happening, and is going to happen.
If we are faced with a choice, ultimately God knows the outcome, but He also knows what would happen if you had chosen differently. It's kinda hard to grasp but we technically have a choice, because God knows both outcomes. Why would He bother to know the other outcome if it wasn't possible in the first place?
ReplyDelete