Blackwell Reference Online

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P hilosophy of religion [from Latin omnis , all + sciens , present participle of scire , to know] One of the chief divine attributes , according to which God is all-knowing or has unlimited knowledge. This attribute gives rise to the paradox of God's omniscience , a perennial problem concerning freedom of the will. This paradox has two versions. The first concerns God's omniscience and human freedom. If every future thing happens exactly as God knows it will happen, how is there room for human freedom of the will? This version of the paradox has led philosophers to examine whether God's foreknow-ledge of a future human act implies that the human agent lacks control over the act or is not responsible for it. Another version of the paradox concerns God's omniscience and his own free will. If everything occurs according to complete divine foreknowledge, how can God exercise his own free will? Another problem concerning the scope of divine foreknow-ledge arises if God is held to have no sensory organs and to exist outside time. It is difficult to under-stand how God in these circumstances could have knowledge of material and temporal things. “Traditionally, God is said to be omniscient, to know all things.” Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism ... log in or subscribe to read full text