I keep thinking about this statement that John Piper posted three days ago:
God never does only one thing. In everything he does he is doing thousands of things. Of these we know perhaps half a dozen.
Andy Naselli
Thoughts on Theology
I keep thinking about this statement that John Piper posted three days ago:
God never does only one thing. In everything he does he is doing thousands of things. Of these we know perhaps half a dozen.
Very true, but would that make God non-perspectival or omni-perspectival?
That’s probably a better way to put it. I merely meant that God is not limited by a perspective. I think I’ve heard D. A. Carson say something like this dozens of times:
There are only two kinds of perspectivalists: those who admit it and those who don’t. The only non-perspectivalist is God because he is not burdened with a mere perspective.
Andy, I have a question. Going back to Frame’s own explanation of God’s omniperspectivalism since the fly on the wall is not actually there, can God really know what a non-existent fly would see if it ever existed ? I know it’s going back to a famous debate, and I do not want to walk too close to open-theism but is this what omniperspectivalism really is (funny challenging the author of the theory itself!) or should we rather understand omniperspectivalism as God capable of seeing only actual perspectives?
I ask you in the hope of youn offering me a trusted and educated answer. Thank you!
Dear Sergiu, you are asking some very good questions, and I’m not sure this is the best venue to answer them adequately. My short answer is the useful definition of the omniscience of God that I learned as a child: God knows all things—actual and possible.
But I’m afraid we’re getting side-tracked from the reason I highlighted John Piper’s Tweet in the first place. I posted it because it provoked me to meditate on God’s sweeping sovereignty over all things in a fresh light: we see and discern so little of God’s plan in any particular action, and it makes God look big in our eyes when we remember that he is accomplishing thousands of his purposes in any particular action.