Researched by the Ignaria Editorial Team · Published 2026-04-23
Scripture frames the question from both sides: the wicked ask 'How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?' while Isaiah, Job, and the Psalms affirm that no act, thought, or future escapes divine awareness. Chrysostom addresses the harder case of Christ's questions in the Gospels, arguing they accommodate human understanding without implying true ignorance in the Son who shares the Father's perfect insight. Boethius provides the philosophical resolution: all time is eternally present to God, so things 'necessary from his standpoint' remain 'free from the bonds of necessity' in themselves — resolving the foreknowledge-and-free-will problem without limiting omniscience. Aquinas extends this to cover evil, contingents, and non-existents: God knows them all simultaneously, without defect, since his knowledge is the cause of things rather than derived from them. Jonathan Edwards sharpens the stakes: if God lacks foreknowledge of future volitions, every biblical prophecy concerning Cyrus, Daniel, or David was made 'without knowledge,' and providence collapses. The tradition's verdict is unanimous, though the contested question of how exhaustive foreknowledge relates to human freedom divides Calvinist, Arminian, and open theist positions.
What the primary sources show
"The things which to God are present without doubt exist, but some of them come from the necessity of things, others from the power of the agent... they are free from the bonds of necessity."
"God does not know the infinite or infinite things, as if He enumerated part after part; since He knows all things simultaneously, and not successively... there is nothing to prevent Him from knowing infinite things."