Open Theists have coined the phrase "dynamic omniscience" to name the way God is all-knowing.  Influenced by process theology, we appreciate the phrase because it names so much of what we, too, want to affirm.  Along with Open Theists we affirm that the future is open, even for God.  We want to add three more words to the mix: evolving, loving, and hopeful. 

These words do not compete with or contradict what Open Theists affirm.  Rather, to our minds, they amplify what is implied by the word dynamic.  For us, to say that omniscience is dynamic it to say that it is evolving, loving, and hopeful, and for that very reason beautiful. 

Appreciating "dynamic omniscience" is not simply about recognizing limits to divine knowledge, it is about appreciating the beauty of God's way of knowing.  As we see things, divine Knowing is a knowing that is empathic and not simply proposition; a knowing that shares in the sufferings and joys of all living beings.  It is a knowing that evolves through time, because new events are added to the very mind of God that did not exist as actual events until they became actual.  This means that even God can be surprised.  It is a knowing that includes within it a divine awareness of what is truly possible for human beings: namely that they can live with a sense of wisdom, compassion, and creativity, respectful of themselves and the dignity of others.  It is a knowing that includes a subjective aim on God's part -- a hope -- that humans will in fact realize their potential, even as so often they fall short of it. 

​Our short note below is meant to unpack these ideas a bit.  One of us, Farhan Shah, is a Muslim philosopher living in Norway; the other, Jay McDaniel, is a Christian theologian living in the United States.  We work together.

-- Farhan Shah and Jay McDaniel
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More Essays by Farhan Shah in Open Horizons

   
Dynamic Omniscience and Human Freedom

Farhan Shah and Jay McDaniel

For process theologians God knows all that is actual and all that is possible. God is all-knowing.  With regard to the future, the future is knowable as possible, but not as actual until it is actual. As soon as it is actual, God knows it.  God is omniscient.

Decision

The future becomes 'actual' when actualized through the decisions of human beings and other creatures.  The addition of the phrase 'other creatures' is very important.  Often we might think that humans are the only creatures on Earth or in the wider universe that make deisions, but process theologians offer an alternative view, partly based on the ideas of quantum mechanics.  They believe that other animals and living cells and even the momentary quanta within the depths of atoms make decisions, albeit not necessarily in a conscious way. 

In process theology the word 'decision' refers to the activity on the part of a given entity of responding to what influences it in the situation at hand.  This response involves cutting off certain possibilities for responding while at the same time actualizing others.  While the influences from the past may determine much of what is decided, there always remains an element of spontaneity, which in human life we call freedom.  In the inorganic world this spontaneity is seen in the indeterminacy of events at the submicroscopic level: the quantum level.  In the organic world (living cells, other animals) this spontaneity is seen in the ways they respond to their environments while seeking to survive with satisfaction in the immediacy of the moment.  Decision is the very essence of actuality, human or more-than-human.  It is also the essence of God's actuality. 

The Primordial Decision
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At the heart of God's own life is a timeless activity of 'deciding' to call the universe into forms of order and novelty that form what we call the universe.  It is also a decision to love, to care for, the universe thus called.  This is the God who was revealed in the Qur'an and in the wisdom of all the prophets - including Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him; Prophet Moses. peace be upon him; and Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him.   A prophet helps us understand the primordial creativity and imageless transcendence of an ultimate Awe and Beauty beyond our imaginations, and to recognize that this Awe and Beauty, without our even asking, loves and cares for us and for the entire universe.

We experience this ultimate Awe and Beauty in an inwardly felt calling which process theologians call the "initial aim."  All creatures experiencing the calling in some way.  The calling is within them as a lure to survive with satisfaction relative to the situation at hand; a call to life.   For humans it is a calling toward optimal self-realization in relation to others, and to help build communities that are are just, sustainable, and joyful for all involved.

The Call to Goodness

Existentially, it is also a call to moral goodness: that is, to compassion, courage, respect, hospitality, forgiveness. and kindness.  As we learn from the Qur'an, the Bible, and from life experience, God lures or beckons or calls humans to actualize possibilities for these very traits in our daily and corporate live.   And as we also learn from the Qur'an, the Bible, and life experience, we humans may not choose these divinely-preferred possibilities.  We may choose evil over good, destruction over constructive, violence over peace. 

We fall short of the calling to be vicegerents, ambassadors, for God's love on earth.  We fall short of the calling to be good muslims, good people, who have surrendered their lives to a wider Life in whose life the universe lives and moves and has its being.  In contrast to other creatures, who obey the will of God much more easily, we sin.  Even as the other creatures carry capacities for spontaneity, they do not need or seek the guidance of prophets.   They are, as the Islamic tradition puts it, involuntary muslims.  We humans, by contrast, must be voluntary muslims, given our high degree of freedom.   

God cannot and does not choose for us.  In the words of Muhammad Iqbal: "my pleasures, pains, and desires are exclusively mine, forming a part and parcel of my private ego alone. My feelings, hates and loves, judgements and resolutions, are exclusively mine. God Himself cannot feel, judge, and choose for me when more than one course of action are open to me."

The Open Future

This means that for God at any given moment in human history, the future is open.  That is, it is filled with possibilities which God knows, but not yet filled with the outcomes of our self-determing decisions, because we have not yet made them.  God's calling us presupposes the idea that we may, or may not, respond to the calling.

This emphasis on divine calling rebuffs the idea that God has preplanned the world and the lives of human beings down to each detail, while at the same time honoring the obvious order of the universe.  On the one hand God did choose to call a universe into existence that has order and we human beings are born into it. The order includes the chemistry of the universe, as instantiated among other places in our bodies and also the most general laws of the universe: the laws of gravity and electromagnetism.  We are born into an order we did not ourselves choose.  We could not be or become without this order.  And yet we find ourselves free or self-determining amid this given order.   A recognition of order itself must be balanced by a recognition of freedom. 

How might this balance be achieved?  Certainly it must avoid the idea that the social circumstances into which we were born are utterly definitive of our destinities.  Some people wrongly see God's action in the world on the analogy of chess game.  From their point of view we are born into a world with already existing kings, queens, knights, rooks, bishops, and pawns.  We have no freedom to determine our destinies.  We are born into a closed world with a closed future.  We are mere puppets.   

Omniscience without Predestination

A process understanding of omniscience rejects this idea.  It rejects predestination, offering the alternative image of a creative universe with an open future, embraced by an all-knowing God who works with the universe, and with human beings on our planet, to bring about optimal circumstances.  ​

An open future is a future what has not yet been decided, not even by God.  It is filled with possibilities for good or evil, for construction or destruction, for violence or peace, for joy or for tragedy.  

For us humans, these optimal circumstances include individual self-realization, where, in community with others, we realize our own capacities for reflection, imagination, pleasure, justice, and joy.  And these circumstances include community well-being itself, such that the very communities we help build are good for all, respectful of human dignity and also the dignity of other creatures and the earth itself.    

Back, then, to the question.  Does God know everything?  Our answer is "yes."  God knows all that can be known.  God knows all that is possible for us, and God knows which possibilities we might best actualize for our sakes and for the world's sake.  God calls prophets to help us discern these possibilities.  God offers guidance through holy books.  God seeks our well-being and that of all living beings. 

God also knows that we ourselves, not God, can make the decisions for what it best.  If our hearts are to be surrendered to the will of the holy, it is we ourselves who must make the decisions, and even God must wait and see what we decide, hoping we choose what is best for us.   

This primordial hope is itself a form of wisdom.  It is the wisdom of knowing what is "open" in the open future.  This hope, on God's part, is the beauty of divine omniscience.