Need help with seemingly contradictory inferences with an all powerful, all knowing God.?

Question

Conventional wisdom is that God is all powerful. If so, can problems exist that God is incapable of solving, and is that consistent with the first assumption? Examples of problems would be of the kind:
"Create a problem that is so difficult that God cannot solve it" or "Can God create an entity that can defeat/corrupt Him?".

Similarly, an all knowing God knows now that my great-great-grandson to be born in the 22nd century is going to be an unbeliever or a believer. In either case is little Johnnie's fate predetermined? ie., is my ability to give myself to God thwarted by the fact that he knew if I will or wont a million years ago?

How does one reconcile these, in layman's terms with an infinitely powerful, all-knowing, fair, loving, and just God?

Answer 1

Then there must be no god.... unbelievable!

Answer 2

The conventional wisdom that you are referring about is only the assumption that people understood about God. Christians has their own definition of God solely based on the Bible. And the Bible says, God indeed has His own limitation. First He cannot interfere with the free will of Man. Second, it is impossible for Him to lie. Indeed he has own limitation. It is only the assumption of other people that fuels the confusion and misunderstanding.
While in my own opinion, God is too smart indeed
He will never create a problem that He cannot solve.
One example is regarding an entity He cannot defeat. Before He created the Angels, he already created Hell, that in case the Angels rebel against Him. They will be put there. And they did. Satan was surprised, He didn't know it. He know he is immortal and cannot die. But God made a safety net.
You see He was way too smart for us to understand.

Answer 3

"How does one reconcile these, in layman's terms with an infinitely powerful, all-knowing, fair, loving, and just God?" With that statement, you just answered your' own question. That is a perfect description of Almighty God. The problem that so much tragedy and heartache are in this world is due to the entrance of sin into the world. Read Genesis-if you haven't already-and you can see that this is the case. Sin is simply willful disobedience to Gods moral law. That's why Jesus Christ came, died, and rose again-to be the sufficient payment for the penalty of sin, which is spiritual death, and to give those who would receive that offering on his(or her) behalf spiritual, eternal life.

Answer 4

I have been pondering this same thing for many years and my conclusion is that God is indeed all powerful and all knowing and he will eventually save every person ever conceived. He simply would not send us here if he could not save some of us. He allowed sin to enter the world for a purpose and he knows how to fix this situation, through Jesus, the savior of the whole world. I don't believe he blindly sends us to earth and hope that we will get saved. He is too wise to let even one person slip away for him forever.
In Matthew 18:12 Jesus was talking about us all when he said a shepherd will leave his 99 sheep to look for the one lost sheep and will not return until he found that one lost sheep. I do believe in hell and that people go there but I think they can all get out by simply calling on God. I think people can stay there as long as they don't call out to him. Because of Jesus's sacrifice anyone who ends up there can escape and go home to Heaven.

Answer 5

I really don't think you can. OK, so in the first case, you could probably get round it by saying that although God could do such a thing, the paradox is never realised, because he never would. Bit of a cheat, but it's a bit like the kind of logic that's often used to solve paradoxes in physics (like Maxwell's Demon).

But I really don't see how you can reconcile God knowing everything with any sort of free will (that black box even non-religious people seem so attached to, yet have never thought to open).

Answer 6

Yes, God knows if the child would be saved or not in their lifetime. Is it predetermined? You might say that depending on how you see it. You are given the free will to do as you desire, God just looked ahead and saw what you would do, nothing is forced. Just because He knows what you will do and what will happen doesn't mean He causes it to happen, think of it like watching a tivo. You can pause, rewind, and fast forward anything recorded on the machine, He just looked ahead and saw it, the choices are still yours to make until then. You've already made all of your choices, you just don't understand why, is one way to put it.

He is fair in that the choice is your own, He is loving in that He lets you make that choice of your own free will and accepts you regardless of your previous sins if you come to Him. He is all knowing in that He already knows your troubles and what lies ahead of you, and being able to provide exactly what you need during those times is how powerful He is. He is just in that His promises will never be forsaken, and any who call upon Him will be saved and shown mercy, their transgressions will be no longer remembered.

Answer 7

The notion that God is all powerful in any sense is inherently self contradictory. God is however, powerful to accomplish all his purposes. There are things God cannot do, lie for example.

God's foreknowledge does not imply pre-destination. Just because you know your friend will jump off a bridge doesn't mean you did it or that your friend HAD to do it. Your friend still did it and is responsible for the consequences.

Answer 8

God exists outside of space-time, and so he sees all things in His eternal Present, whether those things are past, present, or future. In essence, anything which is has extension not only in space, but in time, and God simply sees things with this extra dimension. It is not that God "peers through the mists" for his knowledge of the future, simply that all times are "present" to God. As the argument goes, his seeing the future does not reduce our free will any more than your seeing the present determines the actions of others in the present.

Answer 9

I to have wrestled with the predetermined idea. I have studied many others who have or are studying the same idea. If reincarnation is available and I have found references to it in other works about the Bible, then this gives the predetermined amount of humans created the chance to try again and again to get it right. But Jesus is coming soon and there are still so many people who are atheists or non-believers who were raised in Christian households.

Answer 10

THANK U 4 THE HELP! :)