Does God Know the Past?

Last updated on: July 21, 2014 at 10:50 pm by William Hamblin

Does God Know the Past? 2014-07-21T22:50:03-07:00 William Hamblin

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The claims of some liberal LDS that God might choose to reveal “inspired fiction” in a historical guise to a prophet raises some interesting questions.

1- Does God know the past? Traditional theology generally asserts that God is omniscient, and therefore knows the past (among other things) with perfect knowledge. God’s unique knowledge of the past may be modeled in at least two ways. First, if God is immortal, he knows the past because he has both experienced and participated in it. Second, God may be a para-temporal being. That is, God’s being may exist simultaneously in what we temporal beings perceive as past, present and future. God knows the past because all times are present before God. God is everywhen.

2- Can God transmit accurate and authentic information about the past to humans? If God knows the past can he transmit this knowledge to others? This question is not meant to imply that God can reveal complete and inerrant information about the past–epistemologically humans are incapable of knowing anything in a complete and inerrant way. But minimally God should be able teach humans things about the past that are at some basic and fundamental level accurate and authentic. That is to say, God should be able teach humans things about the past that are at least as accurate and authentic as the things history professors can teach about the past. To argue that God cannot do so is, in essence, to reject the possibility of God communicating or revealing anything at all.

3- The question then becomes: If God knows the past, and can communicate accurate and authentic information about the past, why would God choose not to? Unless one wants to argue that God does not know the past, or cannot transmit accurate information about the past to humans, the only option for liberal LDS is to argue that God chooses to reveal inaccurate and inauthentic things about a fictional past in such a way that his prophet becomes convinced that what God is revealing is accurate and authentic about the real past, and that the prophet therefore presents these revelations as authentic history. If God had something important to reveal to Joseph Smith, he could have either revealed it in a non-historical context (like much of the D&C), or he could have revealed alternate accurate information about other things from the past–for example, additional teachings of Jesus or authentic lost letters of Paul. Instead, LDS ahistoricists would have us believe that not only did God reveal historical fiction to JS, but he did it in such a way that it convinced JS that it was authentic history. God apparently could not be bothered to tell his prophet, “Oh, by the way, all this Book of Mormon stuff is an allegory.”

The most important thing to remember here is that God didn’t have to reveal a fictional Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. He could have revealed whatever he wanted JS to know in an entirely different manner. The LDS ahistoricists’ argument is not a cogent theory of the Restoration; it is an ad hoc rationalization to justify the rejection of the historicity and authenticity of unique LDS scripture. The entire theory is utter nonsense.

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