CONTRADICTIONS: How Can God Know Everything If He Didn’t Know Something?

There are multiple references in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible that describe God as being all-knowing, or omniscient. He knows everything about everybody all the time and is never less than all-knowing.

For example in the Old Testament, Psalm 44:21 tells us that God “knows the secrets of the heart,” and Proverbs 15:3 claims that God’s eyes “are in every place.” In the same vein, Psalm 147:5 makes clear that God’s “understanding is beyond measure.”

The New Testament continues this theme. I John 3:20 says “God knows everything,” while Hebrews 4:13 says “no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” Those verses are just a few of the many that make clear God doesn’t miss a thing.

My particular favorite verses on the absolute sovereign knowledge of God are Psalm 139: 1:16, in which we are told that:

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.

“You search out my path and my lying down,and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high; I cannot attain it.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

“For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

But critics point to verses like 18:21 where the Lord declares concerning Sodom and Gomorrah that He “will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”

Critics also cite Job 38:4 where God asks Job “where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” And there is Genesis 22:12 where, just as Abraham raises his knife to sacrifice Isaac, God tells him to stop because “now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

If God knows everything, the critics ask, why did He have to wait and see if Abraham would sacrifice Isaac, wouldn’t He already know that? And why would He ask Job such a question if He knows everything, including Job’s whereabouts at any point in his life?

About Sodom and Gomorrah

And why would God say He needed to go down to Sodom and Gomorrah to check out the veracity of the reports He had previously received about the incredibly sinful conduct of the people who lived there? Why was He getting reports in the first place? Wouldn’t He already know?

The critics appear to be posing probing questions, based on the obvious meaning of the verses. But, as Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press and author of the three-volume “The Anvil Rings” points out, “they are assuming that all questions are asked solely for the purpose of obtaining information. Common sense should tell us, however, that questions often are asked for other reasons.”

Put otherwise, the posing of a question is not always to obtain information that is lacking for the questioner. For example, Lyons continues, “what father, having seen his son dent a car door, has not asked him ‘ who did that?’ Obviously, the father not ask the question to obtain information but rather to see if the son would admit to something the father knew all along.”

More specifically, we learn from the full passage of Genesis 22:1-19 that as soon as God instructed Abraham not to harm his only son, a ram appeared nearby tangled in the brush. That demonstrated to Abraham that God would always provide a way.

God knew Abraham would do as He commanded but in order to preserve Isaac to continue the Abrahamic line, God had to provide an alternative sacrifice, which He did with the ram in the brush. Thus, Abraham named the place “God Will Provide.”

There are also rhetorical questions that are posed in order to make an important related point. God asking Job where he was when He made the world was not asked because God didn’t know, but rather to remind Job that a lot of things happened before he was ever on the scene.