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Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. Psalm 139:4.
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I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. Isaiah 46:10a.
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He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep." John 21:17b.
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For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 1 John 3:20.
Davo, as you know, the belief that God is exhaustively omniscient is a particular interpretation of certain scriptures (such as those above), and a commonly held position. (And yes, DaveB, I necessarily put qualifiers on “omniscient” in this discussion, to emphasize the traditional definition over increasingly popular amended definitions. Why can’t open theists be forthright and simply say they don’t believe God is omniscient?)
And as you know, an anthropomorphism is the attribution of human form or behavior to God. We see anthropomorphisms in Scripture, and yet the belief that God the Father is NOT a human being is universally held by believers.
A commonly proposed explanation that resolves this dilemma (of apparent contradictions in Scripture regarding the true nature of God) is that an infinite God is sometimes anthropomorphized in Scripture in order to make him more understandable to finite humans. (For example, see discussions about this position here, here, and here.)
In further support of this viewpoint on the use of anthropomorphisms, here are some relevant (and in our discussion, I think humorous) excerpts from “Approaching an Understanding of Omniscience from the Preschool Years to Early Adulthood,” by Jonathan D. Lane, Harvard University, et al (emphases mine):
Individuals worldwide believe in beings with extraordinary mental capacities. An omniscient, or all-knowing, God is embedded in the belief systems of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Armstrong, 1993); in Buddhism, which holds that Guatama Buddha achieved an ‘enlightened’ state in which he possessed extraordinary knowledge (Pyysiäinen, 2003); and in Hinduism, which holds that Vishnu is omniscient (Kumar, 1998). Not only are concepts of omniscient beings found in the most widespread religions, “omni” qualities, such as omniscience, are central to many individuals’ personal conceptualizations of a God (e.g.,Barrett, 1998; Noffke & McFadden, 2001; Spilka, Armatas, & Nussbaum, 1964).
Although such ideas are widely endorsed, they may be particularly difficult for us to fully cognitively represent because they do not accord with our everyday intuitions about human minds that are fallible, subject to ignorance and misperceptions. In the current studies we investigate how children and adults come to represent omniscient beings. These studies help reveal how we come to conceptualize counterintuitive ideas, and shed light on the ontogeny and flexibility of our everyday theory of mind.
…Theorists who advocate an “anthropomorphism” perspective propose that young children have particular difficulty understanding extraordinary mental capacities and tend to conceive of even extraordinary agents’ minds as human-like….
…These results suggest a developmental trajectory of understanding omniscience framed by anthropomorphic, instead of extraordinary, conceptions of knowledge. Young children first understand what it means to have expansive, yet ordinary knowledge—knowledge about the here-and-now that could be obtained by an ordinary human—then later understand what it means to have some extraordinary knowledge—including knowledge that ordinary humans cannot possess—and only much later do they exhibit some understanding of total omniscience.
…As for the epidemiology of these concepts, because anthropomorphic ideas are easily represented (Boyer, 1996; Guthrie, 2001), and because minimally counterintuitive ideas are attention-grabbing and memorable (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer, 2000) notions of human-like-yet-extraordinary minds are arguably easier to remember and transmit, potentially accounting for the ubiquity of these concepts among adults.