What, LeRon Shults asks, is \u201cknowledge\u201d like for God and for us \u2014 that is, after the turn to relationality? His answer is very important for each of us. What God knows cannot be reduced to cognition, or to knowledge of objects and propositions and ideas, as we know \u2014 say \u2014 how the grass grows or what kinds of birds begin to feed at our feeders when the weather heads south. Here\u2019s what Shults contends God\u2019s knowledge is: What, LeRon Shults asks, is \u201cknowledge\u201d like for God and for us \u2014 that is, after the turn to relationality? His answer is very important for each of us. What God knows cannot be reduced to cognition, or to knowledge of objects and propositions and ideas, as we know \u2014 say \u2014 how the grass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476,337],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nDoes God know \u201cabout\u201d us or is God\u2019s knowledge an intimate, faithful, knowing \u201cof\u201d us? Does the distinction matter. Much in every way. The former leads us back to the modernist God whose mind is beyond ours; the latter to being known and to the capacity of then knowing God and others.
\nGod\u2019s knowledge is omniscient faithfulness<\/em>. God\u2019s knowing \u201cembraces all things\u201d (207). God\u2019s faithful ominscience is an intimate knowing. Faith and knowledge are not opposites; they are bindings of one to another.
\nShults provides a way out of the Arminian-Calvinist debate about foreknowledge: if God\u2019s knowledge is omniscient faithfulness, then it is not that God knows \u201cabout\u201d us in our decision making, but that God\u2019s knowing of us enables us to know God. Election, then, is God\u2019s making of us into a being-coming-into-being through relationship with and to God. It is being known to, by and in God. Foreknowledge, in other words, is more than cognition; God\u2019s election on the basis of foreknowledge is to be chosen to become who we are by being known to and by God. (I\u2019m trying to come to terms with \u201comniscient faithfulness\u201d as God\u2019s knowledge.)
\n\u201cGod\u2019s pro-gnosis, then, [is] an acknowledging embrace of human creatures, calling them to a new life of knowing and being known in the Spirit of Christ\u201d (224).
\nKnowledge, then, must be conceived of in a Hebraic (yada<\/em>) way rather than a scientific way.
\nOur knowledge of God, our naming of God with words, is to learn to be named in faithful communion with God. It is to be named and it evokes a longing to name and to be named.
\nThe teleological argument, then, is to acknowledge and participate in the divine intention that evokes noetic desire on our part to be known and to know.
\nHere is one of Shults\u2019 favorite expressions: \u201cthe omniscient faithfulness of the trinitarian God of the Bible is the origin, condition, and goal of the noetic<\/em> desire of creatures.\u201d Our yearning to know, our noetic desire, is the Spirit-induced drive to participate intimately in the trinitarian \u201cknowing\u201d of the Father, Son, and Spirit.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"