What God Knows

Harry Lee Poe's "What God Knows" (2005) examines the nature of divine omniscience within the Christian analytic tradition, offering a sustained philosophical defense of God's comprehensive knowledge while addressing contemporary challenges to this classical theistic attribute. The monograph engages particularly with questions surrounding prophecy and divine foreknowledge, positioning itself within debates that have intensified since the rise of open theism and process theology.

Poe employs rigorous analytic methodology to parse the logical implications of divine omniscience, examining how God's knowledge relates to temporal events, human freedom, and prophetic utterance. The work systematically addresses objections that divine foreknowledge undermines human agency, arguing instead for a compatibility between God's exhaustive knowledge and genuine creaturely freedom. Central to his argument is a nuanced account of how prophecy functions as a divine speech act that reveals God's knowledge without necessitating determinism.

The monograph engages critically with both classical theological sources and contemporary philosophical literature. Poe challenges reductionist accounts that would limit divine knowledge to preserve human autonomy, particularly targeting open theist positions that deny God's knowledge of future contingents. He argues that such limitations misconstrue both the nature of divine knowledge and the character of temporal reality. Through careful analysis of biblical prophetic texts alongside philosophical argumentation, Poe develops a model wherein God's knowledge encompasses all temporal states without collapsing the distinction between necessity and contingency.

Particularly significant is Poe's treatment of the epistemological dimensions of prophecy. He argues that prophetic knowledge serves not merely as prediction but as divine self-disclosure that shapes historical possibility. This approach allows him to maintain both the reliability of divine prophecy and the genuine openness of historical events, suggesting that God's knowledge includes not just what will occur but the entire modal structure of possibility and actuality.

The work makes an important contribution to analytic theology by demonstrating how traditional Christian claims about omniscience can withstand contemporary philosophical scrutiny. Poe's careful attention to logical precision while maintaining theological orthodoxy exemplifies the Christian analytic approach, showing how philosophical rigor can illuminate rather than diminish classical theistic commitments. His defense of robust divine omniscience provides resources for those seeking to maintain traditional theism against revisionist proposals while taking seriously legitimate philosophical concerns about freedom and temporality.