Attributes of God by Charnock (Available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Continue Chapter 8 (A discourse upon God's knowledge) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'III. The third thing is, How God knows all things?' (Yes, a long reading but the short one last week makes up for it).
This week we read Charnock's second main point about God's knowledge which is a lengthy reading showing what God knows.
Firstly we are taught that God knows himself for if he did not he would not be:
(i) perfect;
(ii) blessed;
(iii) able to create from nothing;
(iv) able to govern anything.
Secondly Charnock affirms that God knows all other things, whether they be possible, past, present or future. These are then dealt with in turn.
Concerning the things possible, God must know all things possible because:
(i) man knows things that are possible to him, though he will never effect them;
(ii) God knowing his own power, knows whatsoever is in his power to effect;
(iii) he knew those things which he has created before they were created.
Then after quickly demonstrating that God knows all things past, Charnock moves onto the fact that God knows all things present including:
(i) all creatures from the highest to the lowest;
(ii) all the actions of creatures;
(iii) all the thoughts of creatures;
(iv) all the evils and sins of creatures.
As for all things future, God must know them because:
(i) everything which is the object of God's knowledge without himself was once only future;
(ii) of the predictions of future things in the Bible;
(iii) some future things are known by men;
(iv) God knows his own decrees and will;
(v) if God did not know all future things, he would be mutable in his knowledge;
(vi) he knows all future contingencies.
Charnock gave us a good statement of the usual Reformed understanding: 'But what if the foreknowledge of God, and the liberty of the will, cannot be fully reconciled by man? shall we therefore deny a perfection in God to support a liberty in ourselves? Shall we rather fasten ignorance upon God, and accuse him of blindness, to maintain our liberty ? That God does foreknow every thing, and yet that there is liberty in the rational creature, are both certain ; but how fully to reconcile them may surmount the understanding of man. Some truths the disciples were not capable of bearing in the days of Christ; and several truths our understandings cannot reach as long as the world does last; yet in the mean time we must, on the one hand, take heed of conceiving God ignorant, and, on the other hand, of imagining the creature necessitated; the one will render God imperfect, and the other will seem to render him unjust, in punishing man for that sin which he could not avoid, but was brought into by a fatal necessity. God is sufficient to render a reason of his own proceedings, and clear up all at the day of judgment; it is a part of man's curiosity, since the fall, to be prying into God's secrets, things too high for him; whereby he singes his own wings, and confounds his own understanding. It is a cursed affectation that runs in the blood of Adam's posterity, to know as God, though our first father smarted and ruined his posterity in that attempt: the ways and knowledge of God are as much 'above our thoughts and conceptions as the heavens are above the earth,' Isa. Iv. 9, and so sublime, that we cannot comprehend them in their true and just greatness; his designs are so mysterious, and the ways of his conduct so profound, that it is not possible to dive into them. The force of our understandings is below his infinite wisdom, and therefore we should adore him with an humble astonishment, and cry out with the apostle, 'Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!' Rom. xi. 33. Whenever we meet with depths that we cannot fathom, let us remember that he is God, and we his creatures; and not be guilty of so great extravagance as to think that a subject can pierce into all the secrets of a prince, or a work understand all the operations of the artificer. Let us only resolve not to fasten any thing on God that is unworthy of the perfection of his nature, and dishonourable to the glory of his majesty; nor imagine, that we can ever step out of the rank of creatures to the glory, of the Deity, to understand fully every thing in his nature.'
Lengthy quote, but every word is worth including.
There are some things about God that are no go zones. And this is one of them.
Continue Chapter 8
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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