In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author asserts, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13 ). Nothing is hidden from God’s knowledge. He knows all. He sees all. Every dark, hidden thought or intention of our hearts is laid open and bare before him. And he is the just Judge to whom all will give account (cf. Rom. 2:16).
This powerful affirmation of God’s omniscience arrests our hearts in humble awe and reverence for our all-knowing God. As believers covered by the blood of Christ, we may approach our God and Savior both in joy and boldness to know him and to delight in him. But we must still approach him with godly fear, knowing he is God and we are not. As we contemplate God’s attribute of omniscience in this article, we will strain to know more of the God who already knows us and all things entirely and without exception. And, importantly, we will see the dangers of the critical deviation from this doctrine in Open Theism.
God’s Knowledge
When contemplating God’s knowledge, we need to first remember that his knowledge is not a distinct faculty of his nature like it is with us. God is simple. This means that God is not composed of parts or components of any sort. God’s attributes are not distinct from each other in God, as if God’s essence or nature was composed of all his perfections. When Scripture speaks of these divine attributes as distinct, we should recognize that God is accommodating his language about himself to our frail understandings. These attributes are not actually distinct in God but are all ways for us to speak of and understand the one, undivided essence.1
1. For more on the doctrine of divine simplicity, see James E. Dolezal, All That is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017).
When it comes to God’s omniscience, we may consider it in two ways: 1) the mode of God’s knowledge and 2) the object of God’s knowledge.2 The “mode” of God’s knowledge speaks of how God knows. The “object” of God’s knowledge speaks of what he knows.
2. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1994), 1:207.
The Mode of God’s Knowledge
In his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, theologian Francis Turretin (1623–1687) rightly discusses four ways we may speak of how God knows: perfectly, undividedly, distinctly, and immutably.3 First, God’s knows perfectly. He does not piece together information like we do, moving from particular things to universal ideas in observation. Because of divine simplicity, “to be [or exist] and to understand are the same with God.”4 He does not derive any of his knowledge from the creation. Rather, God is entirely independent from creation and self-sufficient, and creation derives its being from him.5 Thus, God knows all things perfectly and entirely for “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). Creation contributes nothing to God’s knowledge, but God knows all perfectly because he is the perfect, self-sufficient God.
3. Turretin, Institutes, 1:207.
4. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 1:676.
5. For more here on God’s aseity, or his total self-sufficiency, see especially Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:675–677.
Second, God knows undividedly or intuitively. God does not know discursively like we do. That is to say, we often arrive at conclusions by reasoning; we weigh evidence, we reason through information, and then we arrive at a conclusion. But God never has to do this; he knows everything intuitively. Once again, as God’s essence is undivided and simple and as “he wills all things by one act of his will, so he knows all things by one act of his understanding.”6 He doesn’t know by making logical deductions or from observing cause and effect. Rather, as the true God, the great I AM, he knows all things all at once without change or growth.
6. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:677.
Third, God knows distinctly, that is, he knows each thing individually. God knows the greatest mysteries of the unseen cosmos and also each sparrow and each hair on every head (Matt. 10:29–30). Nothing is too great, too small, too precise, or too broad for his infinite knowledge.7
7. See Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:683–684.
Fourth, God knows immutably. God’s knowledge is without any change, as Turretin argues, “because with him there is no shadow of change, and as he himself remaining immovable gives motion to all, so he sees the various turns and changes of things by an immutable cognition.”8 There is no before-and-after in God’s knowledge. He does not increase in knowledge nor does his understanding change or fluctuate in any way. We on the other hand do change in knowledge. We can gain knowledge and we can forget it. We learn new things from others and observe new things around us. This is not so with God. He is unchanging in his knowledge of all things.
8. Turretin, Institutes, 1:207.
So, when responding to the question “How does God know,” we should affirm that he knows all things perfectly and completely. He knows “distinctly,” thoroughly being acquainted with the greatest things to the least things. And he knows immutably, never varying or changing in his knowledge. Having considered separately how God knows, let us look at what God knows.
The Objects of God’s Knowledge
Because all that exists is either God or those things that he has freely willed to create, God perfectly knows himself and all his creation, that is, “all things extrinsic to him, whether possible or future.”9 God’s complete knowledge of himself pervades the Scriptures. The fact that the perfect, self-sufficient, self-existent I AM has revealed himself to finite creatures necessarily implies such complete self-knowledge.10 The Son knows the Father, and the Father knows the Son (Matt. 11:27), and the Holy Spirit “searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). The Triune God completely knows and thus delights in his own perfections.
9. Turretin, Institutes, 1:207.
10. Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966), 82.
God also knows whatever is external to himself—that is, whatever is not God and thus created. Regardless of whether something is potential or actual, God knows it. God’s knowledge of whatever is possible for him to create or do has been rightly called by some theologians God’s “knowledge of simple intelligence.”11 Charnock accurately states that as God’s “power is infinite and can create innumerable worlds and creatures, so is his knowledge infinite, in knowing innumerable things possible to his power.”12 Entailed in God’s knowledge of things only possible is the biblical descriptions of things that could happen or might happen but do not. A good example of this is when God warns David that the inhabitants of Keilah would betray him to Saul if he remained with them (1 Sam. 23:10–12; cf. Matt. 11:21).13 However, this was not what God had willed or decreed, so it was never actualized. But because God knows all that will be based on his decree and all that could be had he decreed it, he knew that the inhabitants of Keilah would have handed David over if he remained with them.
11. See Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 1:726.
12. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:627–628.
13. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:628.
This brings us to God’s knowledge of what he has decreed to create and do, his “knowledge of vision,” as it has been called.14 God sees and knows what is to come—all of creation and the events in it—because he has decreed it. He is the God “who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11), who “is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases” (Ps. 115:3). It is by the decree of God that “things pass from a state of possibility to a state of futurition (in which he sees them as it were determined and certainly future).”15 He decreed to create the world, to create time and space, to create man, angels, and animals. Further, because “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36), this decree to create the world necessarily involved God’s purpose either to directly cause or to permit all that he desired to occur in this creation.16 Thus, he intimately knows all that was, is, and will be because he decreed it all (e.g., Isa. 41:21–29; 46:8–11; 49:2–5; Ps. 33:10–11; Dan. 4:35) Nothing is hidden from his sight.
14. See Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:726.
15. Turretin, Institutes, 1:210.
16. See Turretin, Institutes, 1:210.
God’s omniscience should cause his children to simultaneously tremble and take great comfort. We tremble because of the majesty of the holy, infinite God who sees the secrets of every heart (Heb. 4:13), who knows the words of our mouths before we utter them (Ps. 139:4), and who has ordained all things in his wisdom and power (Rom. 11:33–36; Eph. 1:11). Yet we take comfort and rejoice because we know that “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). The holy God foreknew all our sin and all our rebellion. Yet despite this, he lovingly gave his Son who willingly offered himself up in our place. God knows us and all things perfectly, yet in his grace, he chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us for glory (Eph. 1:4). In his perfect knowledge, wisdom, and love, he is working all things together for our good, for our conformity to Christ (Rom. 8:28–29).
The schemes of Satan, wicked rulers, and any who set themselves against Christ and his people will not ultimately prevail. “He who sits in heaven laughs; the Lord holds them in derision,” because the Lord Christ will “break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps. 2:4, 9). He sees. He knows. And he will come with justice. What a holy, majestic God we serve!
The Open Theist Objection
In the history of the church, several objections to this sort of understanding of God’s absolute omniscience and its relationship to the divine decrees have arisen. Space will not permit me to address all these, but I will briefly examine one view which has arisen in more recent times: Open Theism.17
17. For more on Open Theism and other positions on God’s omniscience, see Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 1:631–645.
Like Arminianism, Open Theism is founded upon libertarian free will: the idea that God created human beings with a will that is entirely undetermined by anything or anyone outside the person willing. This view necessarily excludes the sovereign will of God from decreeing all things and thus denies that God knows all future contingences because he decreed them.
Open Theists go beyond Arminians and emphasize two things: 1) God is “temporal, working with us in time (at least since creation)” or, alternatively, they say that God is “everlasting through time rather than timelessly eternal.” 2) God’s commitment to the libertarian free will of his creatures necessitated that he “chose to create a universe in which the future is not entirely knowable since it is contingent [dependent] upon our choices.”18 In other words, for Open Theists, God is like a skilled chess player; he ” knows the past and present with exhaustive definite knowledge and knows the future as partly definite (closed) and partly indefinite (open).”19 They argue that the future wherein creatures have exercised their libertarian free will has not actually happened yet, and thus, there is nothing definitive about the future for God to know. Though they would say that God is never caught off guard due to his “foresight” and “wisdom” wherein he “omnicompetently” brings his purposes to pass, they affirm that God only knows what is possible in the future, and not future events themselves.20
18. John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 15.
19. Sanders, The God Who Risks, 15.
20. Sanders, The God Who Risks, 206.
However, this dangerous view must be rejected for two reasons. First, Open Theism fails to do justice to the biblical passages which present God as sovereignly ordaining and thus knowing all that comes to pass. In Isaiah 41:21–29, Yahweh explicitly mocks the false gods of the nations because they cannot “tell us the former things” or “declare to us the things to come” (Isa. 41:22; cf. Isa. 41:23). As an example of how he does do this, Yahweh tells how he stirred up “one from the north” who “shall trample on rulers as on mortar” (Isa. 41:25). As seen in this passage and myriads of others, God not only knows what is going to happen, but he knows it because he has decreed it—including the acts of morally responsible creatures whose actions are involved in bringing about of what God has planned (e.g., Gen. 37:5–11; 50:15–21; Isa. 40–48; Matt. 26:24; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28).
Second, Open Theism destroys the perfection of God. As Stephen Charnock correctly states, “If God did not know all future things, he would be mutable in his knowledge.”21 Every decision of the myriads of free creatures, every surprising turn of events would add something to God and his understanding. God would be changeable or mutable. God would continuously gain knowledge from his creatures, only knowing the future as possibilities. Further, he would never end in gaining knowledge and never arrive at perfection of knowledge since his free creatures will continue to exist. Any relative perfection in his understanding would be gained from creatures—a blasphemous notion indeed!22 Nor will it do to claim that God’s perfection is preserved because he sovereignly chose to give up his ability to know the future by creating free creatures whose decision cannot be known ahead of time.23 The perfection of the self-sufficient God is not retained but rather is abandoned by the idea that the divine nature can become mutable, making God dependent upon the creatures for knowledge.
21. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:651.
22. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:651–652.
23. See Sanders, The God Who Risks, 206.
The God of Open Theism is not the great “I AM,” the self-existing, self-sufficient, unchanging God who declares “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose'” (Isa. 46:10). God cannot hinder or give up part of his own essential attribute of knowledge, because if he could, then God is not all that he is all the time and there must be some potentiality in him to become or to change, thus implying a true lack of perfection.24 To conceive of a god that departs so decisively from the Bible’s portrait of Deity is idolatry. This is not a matter genuine Christians can agree to disagree on. To embrace the heresy of Open Theism and reject a fundamental article of the Christian faith believed by all Christians everywhere at all times puts one outside the faith once for all delivered to the saints. But those who are in Christ worship the I AM, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17).
24. Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:644. Even in the incarnation of Christ, the Son did not give up his divine attribute of omniscience or any other divine attribute for that matter. The Son did not cease to be all that God is when he became incarnate. Rather, without changing his divine nature, he added to himself a human nature with all the natural limitations pertaining to it. This is the doctrine of the hypostatic union.
Space will not permit for a defense of the compatibility of God’s determining foreknowledge with genuine human responsibility for the exercise of their will. That job has been excellently done by others.25 However, I will conclude with a biblically accurate presentation of this truth is seen in the Second London Baptist Confession (1689):
God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established; in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.26
25. For an accessible introduction, see Scott Christensen, “What is Free Will?” Tabletalk, October 2025. For more in-depth treatments, see e.g., Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:1081–1105; Scott Christensen, What About Evil: A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2020); Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018).
26. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), 3.1.
Conclusion
The omniscience of God is a glorious truth essential to the Christian faith and too wonderful to be substituted for cheap imitations. When viewed rightly by the believer, God’s omniscience is also one of the most humbling and comforting truths to ponder. The inexhaustible, complete, and pervasive knowledge of God lays us low in the dust when we consider that God knows all our sin in all the hidden recesses of our hearts. Those angry outbursts, that self-exalting attitude, that critical spirit—the righteous Lord knows it all and so much more, much more than we do. But if we are his, he gave his Son for us knowing all this, and he calls us now to be holy as he is holy.
All the heartache, pain, confusion we often face in this life—the Lord knows it all. He knows our griefs, our frustrations, our hopes, and our fears. So lay it all before him in prayer. He knows it all anyway, but he invites you to lay your burdens on his mighty shoulders. Only an all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good God is strong enough to see us through. And see us through he will. May the omniscience of our holy and loving God stir us to joy, reverence, and obedience!
