Omnipotence need not entail omniscience

Abstract

Jn much of the Christian theological tradition "omnipotence" in God has been assumed to involve "omniscience," that is, fore-ordination and even predestination. There are many reasons for this, but as a matter of fact, at least in the Protestant tradition, few of these come from the New Testament documents. It would be too complex, and actually unnecessary, to ask why each individual theologian opted to bind the world so closely to God (and God to the world). Our need is only to explore whether asserting God's unlimited power, i.e., not limited by anything outside divinity itself, requires us to tie this to omniscience, to God's complete knowledge of all events, past and future. In recent eras some (e.g., process theologians) have limited God's power in order to allow greater freedom to human beings so that their self-determination is not controlled by divine power. In a time of quite general agreement to stress and to offer the maximum amount of human freedom possible, such theological effort is admirable. However, the price that has been paid is to restrict God's power to save. The problem is that the divine salvific offer in the life and work of Jesus has been central to Christianity since its beginning. Of course, at the time God's power was being restricted, human power, particularly scientific, was growing, so that perhaps for a century it seemed that the future needed no divine assistance in order to