OpenTheo

How Can God Not Know What He’s Chosen Not to Know?

#STRask — Stand to Reason
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How Can God Not Know What He’s Chosen Not to Know?

June 5, 2023
#STRask
#STRaskStand to Reason

Questions about whether the view that Jesus didn’t know the time of his return because he limited his omniscience is the same as Open Theism, when Jesus became aware he was the Son of God, and whether Jesus wants to be “served.” 

* Is the view that Jesus didn’t know the time of his return because he limited his omniscience the same as Open Theism? How can God not know what he’s chosen not to know?

* When did Jesus become aware he was the Son of God?

* You really believe Jesus wants to be “served”? 

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Transcript

[music] Welcome to the #STRask podcast with Amy Hall and Greg Koukl. Hello, Greg. Hi, Amy.
Okay, the first question today comes from Brian Burke. Isn't the view that Jesus, as fully God, chose to limit one of his divine attributes? I'm Nisha.
I'm not, I'm pausing just to think about the question here.
I'm not familiar with this particular
wrinkle of Open Theism that he mentioned. But I will just say, in a certain sense, theoretically, in light of what he said, can you just read that line again? Isn't that? Isn't the view that Jesus chose to limit one of his divine attributes? Omniscience? Just like Open Theism's self-limitation view of God's omniscience? Well, it's not my sense at all from what Open Theism that I've read or talked to, that God's omniscience is self-limited, first of all. All right? And that's not even coherent to me.
Okay? How does God know everything, but he keeps himself from knowing everything? That doesn't make any sense to me.
And in any event, the incarnation is very unique circumstance. And the, I think this is a difficult issue to kind of unwrap.
And maybe you have more intelligent things to say about this that I do.
But the Calcidonian formula is one person to nature's. Okay, not two separate wills, either.
That was a problem that came up later, that was rejected. And it's, but it's one person. And that would be the person, the second, the divine second person of the Trinity.
Okay, that's the person who then took on a human nature.
And I think it's hard to figure out what the dynamics of the relationship is between the divine nature and the human nature in Christ. And it's been discussed for a long, long time.
That the divine nature doesn't allow the human nature to know some things. Okay. Is odd.
And it's hard to calculate that out. Here's what we do know. And also think of Jesus as a child.
Are we wanting to affirm that the infant Jesus or the two year old or the three year old or the six year old or the 10 year old Jesus had omniscience that was fully aware of omniscience of everything that was happening? I mean, that's what would be necessary if we were not going to, if we were going to affirm that the omniscience of the divine nature was completely accessible to the human nature because we don't know how that distinction could be made. Well, that means it wasn't just Matthew 24, he would know his the day or hour at that time. I think he knows it now.
But he was he's answering a question right then. I do not now know the day or the hour. Okay.
And he didn't say I'll never know.
I don't think he's sitting up there in the show waiting for the father to say, okay, go, you know, return. But in any event, it wouldn't be just at that that one thing.
It would be a whole host of things that he would have access to every piece of knowledge for his entire human existence.
So from the minute he's conceived and all through his childhood, he would display omniscience. I mean, it's an all or nothing kind of thing.
It seems to me either he's limited in some measure or he's not limited at all.
And I think it's a fair question. If he is limited, then how is it that divine nature does not translate into the the omniscience into the human nature? This I can't answer.
But what I can answer is this Jesus did not at that time know the day or the hour. And the word became flesh and the word was the creator of everything that ever created. So we have this amalgam of a divine nature and a human nature.
And we know that's true from scripture. And we also know that he didn't know some things in his earthly body at that time. And all we could do is speculate as to how that works and its speculation.
That's all we can say.
However, it's not the same. It seems to me as the open theist because first of all the claim that I just heard that apparently some open theist hold is that that God has kept what I however, put kept himself from being omniscient about certain things.
And maybe they're the the free will acts of human beings in the future because
that in some way will impair their ability to act freely and which is is not a sound line of reasoning. Knowing that something is going to happen doesn't cause it to happen period. You could you could have complete and robust sense of free will and God will know what that free will will choose to do.
And it doesn't cause the free will it is going to happen. Of course, the way it's going to happen. God knows that.
But it is now it's doesn't cause it to happen.
The causal relationship is the the act is first, even though it's not first in time. It's first in causal relationship to God knowing it's because the act will be performed freely in the future.
That God knows in his omniscience that is going to take place and if people don't get that, it's okay. The point is knowing something doesn't make it happen. It's made to happen by the agent who does it.
So this should not be a problem for that is solved by open theism.
However, if a person says God chooses not to be omniscient and I have never heard that from open theists, if that's one angle, they want to go. I don't even think that makes any sense.
And that's not my understanding of their view. My understanding has always been that they say God knows everything, but the future is not a thing because the future hasn't happened. Therefore, God doesn't know what will happen.
Not because he's limited in his knowledge, but because those things are not knowable because they don't exist. Well, yeah, let me qualify that too. God can know what he has sovereignly chosen to do in the future.
Okay. If he's made a decision that in the future, he's going to do it. He knows it not because he knows the future, but he knows what he is going to do in the future.
And he also could know certain consequences of causation, not agency, but of event causation, dominoes falling because he sees the dominoes falling and he knows how the laws of nature that he's established are going to work. And so these dominoes are going to eventuate in a certain way. Okay.
Humans can do the same thing too. It's called the scientific method, experimental repeatability. The real bugaboo, though, is free will actions of people in the future.
And if the idea is if he knows them, that's what's not knowable, I guess.
Because if he knows them, that somehow impairs freedom. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, that that is more of my understanding.
I like you, Greg. I have not heard them say that God limits his omniscience. So I agree.
I'm not sure what that would mean. Maybe there are. I mean, obviously there could be people I don't know about, but I think that's a misunderstanding.
But it certainly, it certainly, there must be some sense in which there is a limitation of the omniscience of the natural of the human nature in Jesus. It can't be the divine nature. That would be incoherent.
The divine nature cannot cease being what it's being by a matter of choice. God can't cease to be all powerful.
I'm just going to be all powerful for a couple of years, something like that.
These are all inherent to his nature. But it can be that there is some kind of...
that the human nature doesn't have access to that. And in the human nature, in the mind of Jesus, the human nature, there has been a choice of God, I guess, or something that keeps that knowledge from being available to him.
It's something because we know it was not available to him and we know he's God. The thing that makes these kinds of questions really hard to answer is that we're talking about an entirely unique situation. The incarnation is unique.
The Trinity is unique. And so when we're trying to understand it and we're trying to compare it to things we see in life, there's nothing to compare it to. And that makes it hard for us to understand.
And so I think at some point, all we can do is what you said, Greg. We look at what the text says.
It says he did not know the day or hour, and it also says he's the word become flesh.
And so we can speculate about how that works. We might not understand it completely ever until maybe God will explain it to us in the future.
And I don't think it's a contradiction either because conceivably there's a way this could happen.
We just don't know. We are not saying Jesus knew everything, but he didn't know everything.
If we mean know everything in the same sense in both phrases.
So it's not a contradiction. Excuse me, it's not a contradiction, but it is an anomaly. I wouldn't even say it's an antimony because that's where something that appears to be contradictory is not apparently.
I think it's just a mystery and I don't know how that whole works. And maybe some other people have worked this out more carefully, but I don't think there's any refuge here in this understanding of Jesus, this doctrine. There's no refuge for open theism at all.
So I just want to mention a couple passages that speak to this that we should keep in mind as we're trying to think through it. And one of them is, of course, Philippians 2, which talks about the incarnation. And it says that Jesus emptied himself taking the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men.
And so if he's a man, if he's truly a man, then there will be things he doesn't know. I mean, that does seem possible. And then one other verse.
And also he can't lift like houses because he's omnipotent. He's not going to be able to, don't worry, I'll just roll that stone away myself. Or I'll just lift this camel.
He was truly living as a man. And in Luke 2, 52, it says, and Jesus kept increasing, this is about his childhood, and Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. So he was learning, like you mentioned, Greg, as a baby, it wasn't that Jesus knew everything.
He actually had to learn as a human being, as every human being has to learn.
So we have those kind of touch points for this topic. So he had to learn his multiplication tables too.
Yes. I don't know if they did that back then, but maybe they should.
Figure something out.
No, it was harder then because they had to do it in Roman numerals.
Okay. So here's a related question from Rusty.
A question came up in a church class. When did Jesus become aware that he was the son of God? The teacher argued it was at his baptism. Others argued he was already
aware when he was 12, debating with the teachers of the temple.
How could Jesus not know he was the son of God?
Well, this is related, obviously, as you pointed out. And I think this is another one of those mysterious things. Bill Craig has talked about this quite a bit.
Jesus' self-awareness and of his own, of all kinds of things. And this is not possible to answer in a definitive way for the reasons we've been discussing. It does seem at 12 that he had a clear picture of this.
So it's not it is baptism.
For one, he remembered John objects to baptizing him. I need to be baptized by you, not the other way around, John the Baptist says.
And Jesus said, "Allow this, so all righteousness, whatever he said, can take place."
So it seems to me, Jesus already had a very robust understanding of his mission at that time. He didn't just discover, "Oh, I'm the son of God. Oh, what's the dove-flying? Oh, I hear that voice.
Oh, that's me, really? Behold."
No, I think she here. And I think that is evidenced by his comment when he's 12 years old, and his parents find him there in the temple. But doing my father's work, incidentally, Tom Gilson, who wrote the book "Too Good to Be True," excellent work and really explores this in some incredible aspects of Jesus' life.
I think Tom is the one who said, "Jesus never says our Father." He tells the disciples to pray that way, but he never talks about the Father in relationship to him as if he's part of a group that shares the same relationship that he has. He says, "My Father," I'm about my Father's business, and he uses that language a number of times in the Gospels. And that, I think, that does distinguish a unique understanding that he has regarding the relationship he has with the Father.
If this is my Father, then I am his Son. So clearly, at that point, he has a sense of being the Son of the Father, and in that role, having a very specific responsibility, which he was fulfilling in some measure, even at 12 years old, and mystifying everybody with his knowledge. It wasn't because he was really good at Torah in synagogue.
I don't think that. Oh, he's a class A student as he's growing up, and he's got to study Torah.
And then he really did a great job, and now he's just flashing his capabilities there before the big shots over in the temple.
He had insight that others don't have. And just like later, he spoke from his own authority. He was doing that even at 12 years old.
So he must have had a very rich sense of his nature by that time and his role and who he was by that time. All right, Greg, here's another question about Jesus. This one comes from Frederick.
Reading about Jesus, you really believe he wants to be, quote, served.
But do I really believe he wants to be served? Yeah. Yes.
Okay, so now, of course, the question becomes, what does Frederick understand service to mean? Okay. And does he need to be waited on, et cetera, et cetera. Well, in this earthly life, it is not, you know, Jesus took the role of the bond servant like you pointed out in Philippians chapter three.
And even into the point of death and up, even in the upper room discourse, there is washing the disciples feet as an example of hold on. We ought to be with one regarding or towards one another. There's a different circumstance.
No, now we are, as Paul says, we are slaves to Christ.
Do loss. Okay, we are servants to Christ.
You could translate it either way. Do loss.
John MacArthur is very insistent on translating its slave.
But nevertheless, this is what the whole concept of servanthood entails.
Do loss slave servant to Christ? Yes. To do what? Well, not to serve as human needs.
Obviously, he doesn't have human needs in that same sense, but to serve him in the capacity that is appropriate.
For him as the king of the kingdom, you know, so just like a soldier would serve a sovereign or a people in the court would serve or an ambassador would serve a sovereign. We are serving our sovereign in ways appropriate to the task ahead of us.
I'm not sure why that's controversial.
Well, I wonder if, of course, it depends on how I said it depends on how you define serve because clearly we get everything we have from God. We're not adding anything to him.
So the, so the Bible uses the language in two different ways and he, it talks about, it uses the imagery of servants to God to Jesus.
And it also talks about Jesus coming to serve and not to be served because in that sense, it's talking about how he provides us with everything. He provides us with our salvation, with our life, you know, all things hold together in him.
Everything comes from him.
The Old Testament talks about how God owns everything. So it's not a set.
We can give him anything.
Right. It also is the same thing in the area.
I guess, X 17. He's not needy. He doesn't need anything.
And so in that sense, of course, we're not, we're not serving him in that sense.
We're not adding anything that he needs. He is providing everything to us.
But when you use the terms of being a follower and being someone who does his bidding and who, who wants to please him and who is, is acting out in his place as our role in the world, all of those things are, we're in the service to him. And of course, the Bible says we're either serving sin or righteousness. We're either a slave to God or we're a slave to sin.
It's one or the other.
Right. And so in that sense, not that we're adding anything to God, but as we're acting as his representative and doing his work in the world, that's the sense in which we serve.
Yeah. And it's because he is the king of the kingdom. Kings have servants that serve him in all kinds of capacities.
And some of those are in physical needs. You know, they prepare this, that the other food, whatever, servants do that.
But others are emissaries.
Others are over work projects that that he has ordained and selected individuals to be responsible for. So the concept of servitude is a very, very broad one with regards to God.
And again, I'm not sure what's behind Frederick's question.
I was waiting for more, actually.
So, well, hopefully we covered what his issue was. We're not going to offer him our nerves.
Yes, right. In most, for most people, they have servants because a service provide for their needs. Yeah.
Whereas when we are serving God, we're usually providing for other people.
We're usually acting as his representative for the sake of others. And that's how we serve him, not by giving him something, but by acting the way he's called us to act.
Well, that's it, Greg. Wow. For today.
Three questions about Jesus. Brian Rusty and Frederick. Thank you so much for your questions.
If you have a question, send it on Twitter with the hashtag #STRAsk or you can go to our website and just look at the top of our homepage at STR.org.
And you'll find a podcast page for hashtag #STRAsk. There you'll find a link. You can send us your question.
Keep it short and we will consider it for the podcast.
This is Amy Hall and Greg Cocle for Stand to Reason.
[MUSIC]

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