Sab,
How are you defining omniscient? I looked up the meaning and Webster's defines it as:
Where in the Bible does it say God is omniscient?
by sabastious 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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MarcusScriptus
Why can’t God be omniscient? There are limits to God? Is everything that can be known about a Being that is supposed to be greater than us spelled out in the Bible?
What if it goes beyond human reasoning? If God is everything God is supposed to be, why do we post the limit of what we believe about God at the extent of our limited reasoning?
Also, we should take notice that the Watchtower view of God, that the Almighty possesses a spiritual “body” is not a belief of Christianity or Judaism. That is an invention of JW theology. The word “body” in Scripture, for those who like everything defined by the Bible, is limited to what is “corporeal.” The Watchtower’s reasoning of the “spiritual body” from the writings of Paul is not the view of Jews or Christians outside of restorative Adventist-based evangelist bodies and Mormonism.
If there is such a Person as God, why is his knowledge limited to what we can understand from what is presented to us in Scripture? Who is to say that even the description of omniscience does God’s knowledge justice? What if that doesn’t even hold a candle to what the Creator knows?
Of course if we belong to a religion that rejoices in triumphalism and waters down religion to a scholastic exercise that is basically nothing more than holding up a mirror to Gnosticism, claiming only those with the enlightenment they provide have it right and can be “saved,” you can’t argue or open the minds of those who claim they can’t be taught anything more about God, they what they have learned and what they believe is the full extent of it all. What a pity for those who have all of God stored up in the brains, for all the accurate knowledge of everything that can be known of God—even if their conclusions are that he doesn’t exist—dies with them.
A God that can be stored in someone’s brain can’t be omniscient, so I guess they’re right after all.
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Heaven
Is everything that can be known about a Being that is supposed to be greater than us spelled out in the Bible?
There is so much that isn't spelled out in the Bible that it just ain't funny and actually quite disturbing when so many consider it the inerrant word of God.
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cyberjesus
Marcus Scriptus I salute you
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sabastious
I guess we are knee deep in semantics.
I don't think we are... yet. It's a simple question really. Does the Bible explicitly state that God is omniscient (for people who want to know what I mean, I mean the dictionary definition)?
If so, where?
If not, why not?
-Sab
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MarcusScriptus
No, the Bible does not state God omniscience in explicit terms. The Bible is not a creed or a catechism. Though it does have some exegesis of its own, it doesn’t deal in technical theology; it deals in revelation.
The Bible mentions nothing about a lot of things Christians take for granted, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses. Where are the Scriptures authorizing religious ministers to officiate contracts of matrimony? Where does it say people have to appear before a religious elder or member of the clergy to be wed before God? Witnesses and well as Christendom all do it without any authorization or even hint in Scripture that such a practice was done in Biblical times.
I could go on and on with things like funerals, burying people in the ground, beginning and ending religious services with hymns or songs, etc. Nothing explicit or even a hint of anything on some of these subjects so “it has to come from the Bible” folks take for granted.
By the way, regarding the Bible being “inerrant” but not having certain things explained in explicit theological terminology doesn’t mean the Bible has erred. It never claims to be “exhaustive,” which is what it would be if it was the begin all and end all. It is “comprehensive,” but since it was meant to be read and understood by the religious communities that developed it, one cannot expect to understand it fully if one ignores what these religious communities believed in totality. Even Jesus said he was the Truth, the Way, and the Life. He never said a book was.
A space alien living on another planet can’t truly grasp the news articles of the New York Times, no matter how intelligent he is if he believes that all that can be learned about human life is contained within its pages only. And a Jehovah's Witness can't truly grasp the meaning of the Bible if he believes that all that should make up religion is found between its covers because Christianity is not a religion based on a book. It's a religion based on a Person.