What If?

"Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (Matthew 11:21).

Back in Sunday school at Faith Baptist Church in Wauseon, Ohio, I learned that God was omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere), and omniscient (having all knowledge). So I've known for a very long time that God possesses all knowledge, and I've believed that truth with all my heart. God knows everything--an easily communicated truth.

And somewhere along the line--probably in a writing class somewhere--I learned of a logical fallacy called the hypothesis contrary to fact. It is illogical to try to build an argument on a contingency, on what might have been. So we can't argue logically about what might have happened if the administration of Virginia Tech had a better system of alerting students that a killer was on the loose--we just don't know. And we're tempted to do that on a smaller scale in our own lives. Maybe that accident wouldn't have happened if... Maybe I'd be in a better place financially if... But we can never really know.

And you're thinking, She's talking about logic, but what do her first and second paragraphs--and that Scripture passage--have to do with anything? I was introduced to a fascinating concept at the Philadelphia Conference that I still find myself thinking about over a week later. It was raised during Donald Carson's address from Matthew 11 on The Revealed Word, and it was almost an aside as he discussed the verses in this chapter.

In Matthew 11:21, Jesus brings up something that never actually happened--a hypothesis contrary to fact. If Tyre and Sidon had seen the mighty works that had been performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida, the citizens of those cities would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus isn't just performing an interesting mental exercise here like we often play in history class: "If America hadn't joined the Allies in World War II, Germany would have conquered Europe and..." Jesus--because He is God, who is omniscient--could actually say with certainty what Tyre and Sidon would have, in fact, done. There is no contingent knowledge, no hypothesis contrary to fact, with God!

So while I've always believed that my God has all knowledge, I now have a broader understanding of what "all knowledge" means. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!(Romans 11:33).