The Attributes of God

3:3.1“God knows all things.” The di­vine mind is con­scious of, and con­ver­sant with, the thought of all cre­ation. His knowl­edge of events is uni­ver­sal and per­fect. The di­vine en­ti­ties go­ing out from him are a part of him; he who “bal­ances the clouds” is also “per­fect in knowl­edge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in ev­ery place.” Said your great teacher of the in­signif­i­cant spar­row, “One of them shall not fall to the ground with­out my Fa­ther’s knowl­edge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are num­bered.” “He tells the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.”

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

3:3.3God is pos­sessed of un­lim­ited power to know all things; his con­scious­ness is uni­ver­sal. His per­sonal cir­cuit en­com­passes all per­son­al­i­ties, and his knowl­edge of even the lowly crea­tures is sup­ple­mented in­di­rectly through the de­scend­ing se­ries of di­vine Sons and di­rectly through the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers. And fur­ther­more, the In­fi­nite Spirit is all the time ev­ery­where pres­ent.

3:3.4We are not wholly cer­tain as to whether or not God chooses to fore­know events of sin. But even if God should fore­know the free­will acts of his chil­dren, such fore­knowl­edge does not in the least ab­ro­gate their free­dom. One thing is cer­tain: God is never sub­jected to sur­prise.

3:3.5Om­nipo­tence does not im­ply the power to do the non­doable, the un­god­like act. Nei­ther does om­ni­science im­ply the know­ing of the un­know­able. But such state­ments can hardly be made com­pre­hen­si­ble to the fi­nite mind. The crea­ture can hardly un­der­stand the range and lim­i­ta­tions of the will of the Cre­ator.