Expert: Griff Ruby - 6/28/2006

Question
I read this on a website:

As far as God knowing which babies are going to die or which people are going to hell so why create them? It needs to be understood that God does not know nor choose the future. This is a very common misconception of what it means to be omnipresent (all knowing basically). It is the Church's stance that God is not constrained by the limits of linear time. Omnipresent--literally always present--implies that God is accessing all time presently. So, God isn't creating a being that he knows will go to hell, that would almost be an evil in itself. Instead, once created, God knows all that will happen. But not until created, for the uncreated have yet to exist for God to know.   

Is this true? Does God not know we are going to exist until we actually exist?

Thanks,Lisa

Answer
God knows all things, and He knows who will choose Hell and He does not refuse to create that person as they nevertheless serve some providential role in all of history as it is to unfold.
By the same token, though God foresaw that Adam and Eve would sin, yet He did not simply choose to make someone else, someone who would not sin, but He went ahead and made Adam and Eve knowing what they would do, and knowing what it would make Him have to do for their descendents on the Cross.
It is not wrong to grant a live conception of an embryo knowing what evil choices that embryo will make as a grown person, as a reality propped up with such numerous interventions would be a universe which is a mere fiction, a dead thing rather than something alive.
Choices are real and there is no getting around the fact that we are capable of making evil and self-destructive choices, and the evident fact that many do only goes to show that no such protection from creating such evil persons is in any way a fact.  And those who choose evil have no one to blame but themselves.  They knew what they were doing, and what the consequences were, and they didn't mind, so why should we mind when the calamity they worked towards finally come upon them?
Evil people create a lot of history, more often than good people create.  They create wars and starvation and famine and so many other things that make history something one can learn many lessons from.  For God permits the evil to exist as examples of what not to do.  May we learn from that example and be duly warned and instructed, for then it will have served its purpose in our own life.
But it cannot be said that "God does not know," for God knows all things, even the future.