Paul Poulton looks at God's omniscience

Paul Poulton

I have a friend named Peter who is a Jehovah's Witness. He's a fellow musician and comes round my house and we have a jam session on our guitars. It never takes too long before he starts talking about his religion. I get the feeling he is trying to convert me. By some coincidence he happens to have several books with him to answer my protestations. But I also have a few books that I can turn to and quickly nip upstairs and come back into the living room armed with a few tomes that will support my position. This monthly scenario went on for several years and the pile of books we both carried under our arms got bigger. In fact when we delicately put the books down, our arms naturally went back to the position they were in when we were carrying the books, we looked like Wild West gunslingers, which we were except our six shooters were books. One day he bought a posse of several Jehovah's Witness elders round my house, they were the big guns and they were all armed with plenty of ammunition (books). It got to the stage with Peter and I that the person with the biggest pile of books felt like he had the psychological advantage over the other. Then something happened, and that something was the internet. Suddenly we had the ability to look up quotes, facts and figures of all sorts without the need for large books, and we both did this from our own computers in our own homes. We didn't see so much of each other anymore something I was a little sad about.

It is always stimulating talking to Peter and not the theological walk in the park I thought it would be when we first started talking. English philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon said 'knowledge is power', and he should know as he also became Attorney General and Lord Chancellor.

I was performing in a venue recently and got talking to a guy at the bar about album covers; we disagreed on the cover of one album from a few years ago. I said it was one picture he said it was another. Someone else at the bar was listening to this friendly dispute and quickly looked it up on their iPhone and put a swift end to the argument. I was right, (but that's not important right now). What our present state of affairs enables us to do is get knowledge quickly; something that has always been a little elusive to us human beings, but is now closer to hand.

One reason some people struggle to believe in God is his omniscience; how can God know everything? How can he know the whereabouts of every single molecule in the universe? Even Jesus didn't claim to know everything, something my friend Peter liked to remind me of. Wouldn't God need a brain the size of a planet to know what every person is doing at any given moment? But therein lies the stumbling block, the grey matter, our brains. It's a fairly hard thing for us to retain a lot of precise information in our brains as anyone who is revising for an exam will know. Clever people often end up with the best jobs and so they should; those of us who are not so clever need the clever people to put their knowledge to good use for our own well being. But even brainy people only know so much, they can only recall a limited amount of information. God doesn't have that handicap; he doesn't have to process knowledge through a brain.

I get a small inkling of what it must be like for God when I'm in someone's kitchen, which I often am when I'm on tour and my accommodation is some kind person's house. When I go downstairs in the morning to the strange kitchen I always struggle to find basic utensils for making breakfast and a cup of tea. What normally takes three minutes can take 10 or more and I invariably end up thinking, if only I was in my own kitchen. I know where the teaspoons are in my own kitchen; I know where the bread is kept and how to operate the microwave. I recently said to Viv, in whose house I was staying, 'Where are the teabags? I've looked but can't see them.' Viv replied, 'Oh, they are in the tin marked "Coffee"'. We laughed as I said, 'Of course they are, how could I be so silly?' But when I am in my own kitchen, I'm at home; I'm like Jamie Oliver quickly assembling tasty snacks. I know how to do this because I put the cups, cutlery and culinary items there in the first place. We are told that the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. The universe, every atom of it, is a bit like God's kitchen, he knows where everything is in it. In one way it's no more amazing than you knowing where everything is in your kitchen. Everything that is seen was made by him who is unseen. God put everything in the universe where it should be and he knows where everything is. It's not remarkable for God. We can sum it up in the phrase, 'he is aware'. It's as simple as that.

Furthermore it's not strange to find that Jesus sometimes admitted to not knowing something. The reason is simple. Jesus had a brain, or as the Bible puts it, 'The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us'. Fleshy creatures like us process thoughts in our brains; it's part of being human. On one occasion Jesus said, 'Only the Father knows'. Taking on a body with a brain meant that Jesus lay down the omniscience he had before he lived on earth. Theologians have a name for this, it's called Kenosis which means 'to empty'. Jesus emptied himself of the three attributes God alone possesses, omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. Jesus was God, but God manifest in the flesh. For God to be flesh meant some things had to go, some of the facilities of God had to be laid down or we wouldn't be able to call Jesus a human.