Not sure what Scriptures were used to suppose an 'unknowing' God, but I can think of two off-hand that support the opposite. One is Judas' fate (Jesus knew) and the other is Jesus' statement about the end of the world.
This is deeply fascinating! And you’ve provided some excellent arguments and theological clarifications. But how would you respond to the following?
Time, as we commonly experience it, flows—always forward, never back. We age, coffee cools, stars die. But what is it that gives time this one-way quality? Why does it feel like a river rather than a static dimension we might move through at will? The answer, in a word, is entropy.
Entropy, in thermodynamic terms, is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. More precisely, it is the number of microscopic configurations that correspond to a macroscopic state. A deck of shuffled cards has higher entropy than one perfectly ordered. A cooled cup of tea has more entropy than a freshly steeped one. And in every natural process—absent external interference—entropy tends to increase. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it gives time its arrow.
Why? Because the direction of increasing entropy is the direction of time. In the universe’s grand ledger, past and future are distinguished not by clocks, but by the difference in order. The past contains records—photographs, fossils, memories—because it began in an extraordinarily low-entropy state. The future contains none yet, because it hasn’t happened—and because it will be more disordered, more diffuse, more difficult to encode with the patterns we associate with memory and structure.
In short, entropy is what breaks the symmetry of time. At the level of fundamental physics—Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, even quantum equations—time works the same in both directions. But when entropy enters the picture, the illusion of reversible time collapses. A glass can fall and shatter, but it won’t unshatter. Smoke can rise from a cigarette, but not recondense into tobacco. These are not impossibilities because of physics, but because the probabilities are overwhelmingly stacked against them. Entropy makes some things more likely than others—and time follows that gradient.
Thus, to speak of time without entropy is to speak of motion without direction. Entropy is not a footnote to temporality; it is its engine. It is why clocks tick, why memories form, why everything flows downstream from a past that was once improbably ordered. The universe does not run down because it ages; it ages because it runs down.
Now consider a deeper implication.
If time, as we now understand it, is inextricably bound to entropy—if it cannot be meaningfully defined apart from the irreversible increase of disorder—then it follows that time itself is not a neutral container in which all things exist, but a contingent feature of the created order. It is a dimension whose very existence depends on the universe’s thermodynamic asymmetry.
God, if God is truly the Creator, must then precede time—not in a temporal sense, but ontologically. To say that God exists in time—experiencing one moment after another, even everlastingly—is to say that God is subject to entropy, bound by the very laws that define creaturely existence. But entropy is not a divine attribute; it is the sign of finitude, of contingency, of cosmic becoming.
To speak of God as existing “before” time or “outside” time may sound mythic or obscure, but it is the only coherent conclusion if we take the entropic character of time seriously. God cannot be said to dwell in temporality because time, as a measure of change and disorder, has no meaning apart from the physical universe God created. And that which is responsible for the order and unfolding of time cannot itself be swept up within it.
God, then, is not an everlasting being moving through moments. God is not simply older than the stars. God is the eternal—timelessly the source of all becoming, the wellspring of order, the ground from which entropy arises but to which it does not apply.
The arrow of time flies from the open hand of God—but God does not follow after it. Instead, God is “always already the case.”
It's fascinating to think about. It's also fascinating how uncomfortable this sort of thing makes sone people. But I think open theology is one of the best journeys through theodicy to address the problem of evil.
I think Frank Herbert's portrayal of prescience is closer to the actual reality of prescience than anything else I've ever seen. But I think you misconstrue the idea when you say Paul's (or more importantly Leto II's) prescience put him outside of time. There are plenty of places either can't see, and what they can see depends on when they are. Time is portrayed as having a landscape.
I get the sense this is how it works for Jesus, too. He can't predict everything with certainty, but he can see a spot on the horizon of possibility and lead us to it. He isn't just shrugging and saying cross your fingers, but he still has to account for unknowns.
Not sure what Scriptures were used to suppose an 'unknowing' God, but I can think of two off-hand that support the opposite. One is Judas' fate (Jesus knew) and the other is Jesus' statement about the end of the world.
This is deeply fascinating! And you’ve provided some excellent arguments and theological clarifications. But how would you respond to the following?
Time, as we commonly experience it, flows—always forward, never back. We age, coffee cools, stars die. But what is it that gives time this one-way quality? Why does it feel like a river rather than a static dimension we might move through at will? The answer, in a word, is entropy.
Entropy, in thermodynamic terms, is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. More precisely, it is the number of microscopic configurations that correspond to a macroscopic state. A deck of shuffled cards has higher entropy than one perfectly ordered. A cooled cup of tea has more entropy than a freshly steeped one. And in every natural process—absent external interference—entropy tends to increase. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it gives time its arrow.
Why? Because the direction of increasing entropy is the direction of time. In the universe’s grand ledger, past and future are distinguished not by clocks, but by the difference in order. The past contains records—photographs, fossils, memories—because it began in an extraordinarily low-entropy state. The future contains none yet, because it hasn’t happened—and because it will be more disordered, more diffuse, more difficult to encode with the patterns we associate with memory and structure.
In short, entropy is what breaks the symmetry of time. At the level of fundamental physics—Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, even quantum equations—time works the same in both directions. But when entropy enters the picture, the illusion of reversible time collapses. A glass can fall and shatter, but it won’t unshatter. Smoke can rise from a cigarette, but not recondense into tobacco. These are not impossibilities because of physics, but because the probabilities are overwhelmingly stacked against them. Entropy makes some things more likely than others—and time follows that gradient.
Thus, to speak of time without entropy is to speak of motion without direction. Entropy is not a footnote to temporality; it is its engine. It is why clocks tick, why memories form, why everything flows downstream from a past that was once improbably ordered. The universe does not run down because it ages; it ages because it runs down.
Now consider a deeper implication.
If time, as we now understand it, is inextricably bound to entropy—if it cannot be meaningfully defined apart from the irreversible increase of disorder—then it follows that time itself is not a neutral container in which all things exist, but a contingent feature of the created order. It is a dimension whose very existence depends on the universe’s thermodynamic asymmetry.
God, if God is truly the Creator, must then precede time—not in a temporal sense, but ontologically. To say that God exists in time—experiencing one moment after another, even everlastingly—is to say that God is subject to entropy, bound by the very laws that define creaturely existence. But entropy is not a divine attribute; it is the sign of finitude, of contingency, of cosmic becoming.
To speak of God as existing “before” time or “outside” time may sound mythic or obscure, but it is the only coherent conclusion if we take the entropic character of time seriously. God cannot be said to dwell in temporality because time, as a measure of change and disorder, has no meaning apart from the physical universe God created. And that which is responsible for the order and unfolding of time cannot itself be swept up within it.
God, then, is not an everlasting being moving through moments. God is not simply older than the stars. God is the eternal—timelessly the source of all becoming, the wellspring of order, the ground from which entropy arises but to which it does not apply.
The arrow of time flies from the open hand of God—but God does not follow after it. Instead, God is “always already the case.”
What do you think?
I think I need think about this fascinating perspective! Thank you for sharing it!
It's fascinating to think about. It's also fascinating how uncomfortable this sort of thing makes sone people. But I think open theology is one of the best journeys through theodicy to address the problem of evil.
I think Frank Herbert's portrayal of prescience is closer to the actual reality of prescience than anything else I've ever seen. But I think you misconstrue the idea when you say Paul's (or more importantly Leto II's) prescience put him outside of time. There are plenty of places either can't see, and what they can see depends on when they are. Time is portrayed as having a landscape.
I get the sense this is how it works for Jesus, too. He can't predict everything with certainty, but he can see a spot on the horizon of possibility and lead us to it. He isn't just shrugging and saying cross your fingers, but he still has to account for unknowns.
That's a good point!