I think we’ve got omniscience wrong. Yes, it certainly means all knowing. And yes, certainly God knows all things. It’s important to affirm as well that His knowledge overlaps with our knowledge. When we say 2+2=4 we are agreeing with Him, not saying something different from Him when He says 2+2=4. With all of these caveats in place we can begin to explore how we get omniscience wrong.
His thoughts are not our thoughts not because He can imagine a square circle or 2+2 equaling 5, but because the source of His knowledge and the source of ours are fundamentally different. Our knowledge, our understanding of the world flows out of our taking it in via our senses. We see, hear, taste, touch, smell what is out there and learn about what is out there. Reality is outside of us, and our minds, our knowing, is bowing before the reality that is external to us.
It would be quite a feat, worthy of our utmost praise, if God were able to take in the whole of reality. He would astound us if He knew not only what the rose in my vase smells like, but every rose, every daffodil, every cow, even every mountain goat that’s never crossed paths with a human. What if He knew the breadth and depth and height of every hair, even those on the backs of every fly? What if every sub-sub-sub atomic particle in every galaxy was pinpointed on the divine gps? That would not get at what God’s omniscience is all about.
The difference between His knowing and ours is that His knowing is right side in, ours inside out. We look at the reality outside of us and add to our minds knowledge. God knows, and reality happens. When we know, our minds match reality. When He knows reality matches His mind. Indeed it flows out of His mind. As Plato stumbled upon like a blinded squirrel tripping over the mother of all acorns, reality is the shadow, and the mind of God the reality.
I began to grasp this when I was in college. At a small Bible study my professor asked- “RC, what would happen if God were to say, ‘RC, you are a car’?” “Well,” I explained, “since the whole of the universe stands on His truth, His lie would cause the universe to collapse in on itself.” “Nice try,” he said, “but that’s not what I’m looking for.” “OK, I suppose that if God told a lie He’d stand against Himself, would instantly cease to be. The universe would freeze forever.” “RC, if God were to say, ‘RC, you are a car’ you would sprout wheels. Your nose would become a steering wheel, your chest an engine.”
God’s word is to reality what Midas’ touch was to gold. Whatever God speaks comes to pass unstoppably and immediately. When God called Adam to name the animals He called him to take something concrete, a hippo, and make something abstract out of it, the word, hippo. Adam reflected his Maker’s glory, copying Him. But just as the mirror flips perspective, the difference is that our Lord took the abstract word, hippo, and made the concrete reality. Adam names, moving thing to idea; God speaks, moving from idea to thing.
Which puts some perspective on the glorious truth that our Redeemer, our Savior, God the Son is called by John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Word,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:1-5).
John is here more stuttering than rambling. That is, first, there is a connection between being deity and being the Word. It is because God is self-existence, eternal, not dependent, contingent or derived, that all other things are creatures, dependent, contingent and derived. It is His eternal power and Godhead, remember, that we suppress in our fallen nature (Romans 1) but God is true and every man a liar. Word-ness, in short, and God-ness, are one and the same thing.
Second, because Word communicates, we should expect a plurality of persons in the Godhead. Words exist to communicate; communication requires a speaker and a hearer. Thus the Word was not just God, but the Word was with God.
Third, it is not just because He was at the beginning that all things were made, but because He is the Word. John is here, of course, echoing the language of Moses in Genesis 1, where God spoke the universe into existence. He is not called the Word because He made the world, rather He spoke the world because He is the Word. Reality awaits His command. He speaks and it is so. Light, the earth, indeed galaxies beyond number were not built, arranged, but spoken. He made it all. If it is made, He spoke it. If He did not speak it, it is not.
In Him was life. The whole of the creation stands by the word of His power. He sustains us, and all that is around us. It is because He is the Word that in Him we live and move and have our being. The Beatles, having claimed to be bigger than Jesus, told us to let it be. But Jesus, who is bigger than the Beatles, keeps us, and the Beatles, but telling reality to let there be. Let there be light, and there was light. Let there be paper and puppies and popsicles, and there was paper and puppies and popsicles, all because He is the Word.
Jesus is the Logos. He is the creator of all reality. He is all power. He is the ordering principle, the logic that drives out the chaos. He is the one who spoke us first into life, and then again into life anew by His Spirit, the very breathe of His Word. He is the Alpha and the Omega, not just the beginning and end of history, but the beginning and end of all speech. He spoke the light, and it was, and in the end, we will all bow. The Lord will be in His Holy Temple, and all the earth will be silent before Him (Habakkuk 2:20).
We are called to be a people of the Word. We not only do not heed the clamor of the world, but we will not buy the lie that we can separate the Word from His Word. We know all of God’s Word is the Word, that the verbum Dei is the vox Dei, the Word of God is the voice of God. We are students of the Word, believers of the Word, rejoicers in the Word, defenders of the Word, defined by the Word.
The world sees the world as the product of the world, a self-governing, self-sustaining machine. It’s good that we would stand against the claims of Darwin that the universe made itself, to affirm it as the handiwork of the Word. But it is better to remember that He also sustains it, moment-by-moment, one miracle after another. His mercies are not just fresh each day, but each moment, as He continues to sing, “Let there be.” May we, with the stars of heaven answer back, “Amen and amen.”
Our King has no need to muster His forces to go into battle. He need not place this regiment here and that battalion over there. We do not fight to secure the victory, but to display the glory. He speaks and it is so. He has spoken already this glorious truth, that He has already overcome the world. Let us therefore be of good cheer. His kingdom is forever. The grass withers. The flower fades. But the Word of our Lord endures forever.