In Witness theology, God chooses to not know some, probably most, of the future. Therefore, he does not know everything that he could know. Among those who write about Witness theology this is probably well known. But what about the past or the present? Is God’s knowledge of these time periods exhaustive? According to Witness literature, no. More precisely he has chosen to forget some facts about the past and could fail to have a complete knowledge of the present, having at times elected to not know about certain things that were once in the present. This also means that he could fail to even learn some things about what becomes the past. While we suspect that even many Witnesses would find this surprising, we believe that upon further inspection they will see that this is what their literature teaches. And it fully accords with their doctrine of selective foreknowledge to suppose God could also be selective about what he knows about the past and present. Yet, for reasons we will explain toward the end of the essay, such notions are utterly wrong, even more so than their version of open theism.
In defense of their variant of open theism, the Witness theological encyclopedia Insight on the Scriptures says:
“In contrast with the theory of predestinarianism, a number of texts point to an examination by God of a situation then current and a decision made on the basis of such examination. . . . After wickedness developed at Sodom and Gomorrah, Jehovah advised Abraham of his decision to investigate (by means of his angels) to “see whether they act altogether according to the outcry over it that has come to me, and, if not, I can get to know it.” (Ge 18:20-22; 19:1)” (Vol. I p. 853)
If we interpret this passage with the Witnesses as meaning that there was something that God did not know, we would have to conclude that more than open theism is true. What God is said to “get to know” is at least the then present and recently past condition of Sodom and Gomorrah. Supposedly God did not know what had been going on in Sodom and Gomorrah or what those cities were now like, though he had heard reports concerning them.
Witness literature accepts this implication. God decides to investigate the matter since he did not already know everything there was to know about it. And this he does by sending angels on a fact-finding mission. “Could the all-seeing Jehovah not “get to know” the true condition of that region on his own? Certainly. But instead, Jehovah humbly gave those angels the assignment to investigate the situation and to visit Lot and his family in Sodom.” (Draw Close to Jehovah, p. 202; emphasis mine.) This shows that according to their theology God chose to come to know something about the state of Sodom and Gomorrah indirectly, through angelic report. Until this time he did not know what had been going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. God chose to not have exhaustive knowledge about what was then the present or near-past condition of those cities.
Yes, God is there described as “all-seeing”, which would seem to suggest that really God did know what was going on, the angelic mission notwithstanding. But if we follow that logic, we would have to reject the open theistic interpretation of the same passage advanced by Witness literature. We, indeed, should, but they do not. Moreover, they describe God as “all-knowing,” even “omniscient,” but by this they merely mean that “he can foresee whatever he wishes to foresee.” (May 15, 1986 Watchtower, p. 4; emphasis mine.) So, by describing God as “all-seeing” they seem to merely mean that he can know what is going on everywhere (and presumably that he usually does), but not that he necessarily knows everything that is happening everywhere. Hence, why the passage from Draw Close to Jehovah continues by affirming that, while he did not already know the condition of the region and yet could have found out on his own, he chose to come to know the true condition of that region by sending angels to report back to him.
The April 2011 Awake!, pp. 28-29, which also cites the example of God sending angels to investigate “a cry of complaint about Sodom and Gomorrah,” says, “The Bible therefore indicates that there is no need for Jehovah God literally to be everywhere. Through the operation of his holy spirit and through angelic forces, he is able to be fully aware of what is happening with regard to creation.” (Emphasis mine.) But for angelic forces to be a means of God becoming aware of something, then he cannot have already known it “through the operation of his holy spirit”. For if God already knew something, an angelic report at best might provide further, superfluous evidence of that thing to God, but it would not be the means by which God is “fully aware of what is happening with regard to” Sodom and Gomorrah. For that to be the case, God would have to have not utilized his holy spirit to know what had been going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. Then, not already knowing something, he might come to know it through his angelic forces. In other words, since God is said to have at least two ways of knowing what is going on “with regard to creation,” we see that Witness theology thinks that God’s can choose to refrain from utilizing his holy spirit to be aware of what is happening and opt instead to rely upon reports from angels.
The angelic mission to discover what was then presently going on in Sodom and Gomorrah would not have been able to find out everything whatsoever about what had been happening in those towns. Some facts of varying degrees of importance would simply have been lost to time if God was not always beholding everything that was happening in those cities.[1] Angels would not be able to discover literally everything that was happening in those cities, only one of which they visited anyway. So even though their literature says that God came to find out the true condition of the region, it is hard to see how they can mean this in an absolutely exhaustive way, even if it supposedly sufficed for God’s subsequent decision to destroy those cities along with Admah and Zeboiim.
Further evidence that Witness theology teaches that God has selective knowledge of the past is found in their doctrine of the resurrection. God is said to literally wipe out from his knowledge many highly important facts about those whom he dooms to eternal nonexistence. These are facts about their personality, memories, powers of recognition, and the like. In other words God forgets their life patterns, which otherwise would be part of his knowledge of the past.
The July 15, 1951 Watchtower, p. 446 affirms that God will forget those whom he will not resurrect. “Only those whose existence Jehovah retains in his memory will be resurrected.” But those “slain by him at the battle of Armageddon” (and we could generalize to all those who suffer the second death of irrevocable annihilation) “will not be retained in his memory for a resurrection.” Here “memory” clearly refers to one of God’s mental faculties, not, say, his acting favorably on behalf of someone. The February 15, 1954 Watchtower, p. 118 espouses the same view. “God does not purpose to retain in his memory all who have died, without exception. As he purposely remembers some, he also can and does deliberately forget others.”
The May 1, 1954 Watchtower, p. 281 may at first glance appear to reject a literal interpretation of the claim that God forgets some portion of his knowledge of the wicked, since when it says that the wicked are forgotten by God it puts “forgotten” in quotation marks: “They are “forgotten” by God.” But since the rest of the sentence elaborates what this being “forgotten” means without the use of any quotation marks (“blotted out from his memory”), it seems clear that the use of the quotation marks is meant to emphasize the bleak prospect of such wicked persons. The passages cited (Proverbs 10:7; 11:7; Obadaiah 16) also indicate that the writer of this article considered such wicked persons to be literally forgotten by God, since at least one of these passages (Proverbs 10:7) is also cited in the February 15, 1954 Watchtower article, where that idea is clearly taught.
The February 1, 1964 Watchtower, p. 93, which cites Proverbs 10:7 at least twice, also affirms a literal forgetting of the utterly wicked. “The willfully wicked may be gone forever, gone and forgotten, but, because of Jehovah’s powerful memory, faithful men like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “are all living from his standpoint.”” “Who are in his memory? None of the willfully wicked nor any who incurred family or community condemnation because of being associated with the wicked. All such God forgets.” “The memory of such a person is not retained by God.” Here “memory” also clearly refers to a faculty that God possesses by which he stores knowledge. This can be seen from how it is described as “powerful,” that is, able to remember unimaginably vast quantities of information, even an endless amount of information. Yet, some people are excluded from his memory. Hence in forgetting them, God chooses to forget certain facts about the past.
This is not to say that Witness theology never uses forgetting or not remembering in an extended sense, that is, to mean something other than a literal removal of something from memory. They speak about God forgetting or of his not remembering sins in such a manner. God can literally remember that one committed certain sins, but a pardoned man will not have their sins “remembered against him.” That is, God “will not thereafter act against the individual because of those sins, such as by accusing or punishing him.” (July 1, 2012 Watchtower, p. 18) But this is not the proper explanation of God forgetting the wicked at least in the quotations considered above, nor in those to be provided below. In these quotations God’s memory is clearly that faculty by means of which he can retain and recall knowledge. Removal from his memory is not merely God’s resolving to not act favorably toward a person by resurrecting him. It is literally forgetting at least enough about such a person so as to render such a resurrection impossible.[2]
Nor is this merely an old idea that Witness literature used to espouse but dropped at some point. There are several more recent references to some persons no longer being retained in God’s memory. The November 15, 1999 Watchtower, p. 17 says of the elderly man approaching the grave. “It will be his home forever if he has failed to bear his Creator in mind and has pursued such a wicked course that God does not remember him in the resurrection.” Admittedly, “remember him in the resurrection” may sound like it merely means God’s will not act favorably toward such a person by resurrecting him, perhaps because we have a verb being used (remember) instead of a noun (memory). However, this expression is perfectly suitable to express the same meaning as is expressed in those articles from the 50s and 60s quoted above. Indeed, it is very similar to the expression used in “Questions From Readers” from the same May 1, 1954 Watchtower that we quoted earlier. There we find the claim that “it is doubtful that Jehovah would remember” (also a verb) “anyone who has dedicated his life to” him and who has “sanely take[n] his life in suicide, or deliberately murdere[d] another person.” (p. 285) So it is entirely reasonable to read the 1999 statement in the same light. And unless we are given positive reason to think that the doctrine has changed on this point, we suggest that we should generally regard older statements as still indicative of Witness theology, particularly when they are at least consistent with more recent statements.
There are other post-1964 statements, too. Consider what the May 1, 2005 Watchtower, p. 15 says. “By here referring to Judas as “the son of destruction,” Jesus indicated that when Judas died, there was no hope of a return for him. He did not live on in God’s memory.” Here “live on in God’s memory” indicates that God literally forgot Judas. But in case anyone were to object that another meaning could be assigned to the expression since it is perfectly possible for God to literally retain Judas’ life pattern in his memory while resolving never to resurrect him, we will show beyond all doubt that Witness literature continued to speak of God literally not retaining some persons in his memory, that is, actually forgetting them. We will show that the “memory” that Witness literature talks about a person either being retained in or not being included in is God’s mental faculty whereby he can store and recall all of his knowledge.
There are numerous statements in their literature that show only those in God’s memory will be resurrected. Simply reading these shows that “memory” is to be understood of a mental faculty, not as only indicating a favorable disposition to act beneficially toward someone. Here are just a few such quotations:
1. “As Jesus later promised, the day will come when all those who are in God’s memory will hear Christ’s voice and come out of the grave. (2017 Watchtower: Public Edition No. 1, p. 13; emphasis added.)
2. “Jesus assured us that the dead in God’s memory will rise.” (December 2017 Watchtower: Study Edition, p. 21)
3. “Concerning the dead one who are in God’s memory, Jesus said: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out.”” (September 1, 2015 Watchtower, p. 15)
4. “The dead in God’s memory will have the opportunity to live forever.” (May 15, 2008 Watchtower, p. 12)
5. “The Bible teaches that the dead who are in God’s memory will be resurrected.” (January 15, 2007 Watchtower, p. 24)
6. “According to this promise, those in the memorial tombs – those who are in Jehovah’s memory – will be resurrected.” (March 15, 2006 Watchtower, p. 5)
7. “In addition, the dead who are in God’s memory will be raised to life with the prospect of never having to die again.” (April 15, 2005 Watchtower, p. 5)
8. “Those in God’s memory will be resurrected and will enjoy perfect health.” (November 15, 2003 Watchtower, p. 6)
9. “Although no longer presently existing in any form, millions of dead ones who are in Jehovah God’s memory will be resurrected, or brought back to life, in a restored earthly paradise.” (July 15, 2002 Watchtower, p. 7)
10. “Those who died in faith remain in God’s memory, and he will resurrect them.” (August 1, 2001 Watchtower, p. 32)
11. “All the dead who are in God’s memory will be released from Hades, or Sheol, mankind’s common grave.” (April 1, 1999 Watchtower, p. 18)
12. “Thus, during Jehovah’s great thousand-year Judgment Day, all those in God’s memory will be resurrected.” (February 15, 1995 Watchtower, p. 12)
13. “What joy will exist when funerals are supplanted by resurrections of those in God’s memory!” (March 15, 1992 Watchtower, p. 6)
14. “Those whom God will bring back in the resurrection are in his memory.” (April 1, 1990 Watchtower, p. 10)
15. “Dead loved ones in God’s memory will experience a resurrection!” (November 1, 1982 Watchtower, p. 11)
16. “Even the dead in God’s memory will get their promised resurrection.” (January 1, 1963 Watchtower, p. 6)
17. “By resurrection multitudes that have gone into the common grave of mankind and have been retained in God’s memory will return to human life.” (February 1, 1960 Watchtower, p. 68)
It is most natural to read their reference to God’s memory as meaning his mental faculty whereby he can keep and recall all the information he wishes to retain, including information about a human person’s own memories, knowledge, and powers of perception. In case this was not sufficiently clear, we can see that this is the case by explaining why God’s mental faculty of memory is integral to the resurrection according to Witness theology. “To bring someone back to life, God has to know everything about that one, including what he looked like, his inherited and acquired traits, and his complete memory! (Mark 10:27) God’s memory of that one [who is to be resurrected] does not fade even after thousands of years.”[3] (June 1, 2009 Watchtower, p. 30) It is clear what it means for someone to remain in God’s memory (to have his own memories, knowledge, and the like retained by God) and what it means for him to not be retained therein (to have such things literally forgotten by God).
That “all those in God’s memory” means all those whose life patterns (complete psychological profiles) God stores in his mind by his mental faculty whereby he can store and recall whatever he wishes to retain knowledge of is perfectly clear when we consider what the June 15, 1994 Watchtower, p. 4 says. God’s “awesome, unlimited memory", also called his “perfect memory”, enables him to store “the personality . . . of any dead human he chooses to remember.” And this is how he is able to resurrect someone, by placing in their resurrection body “the memory and personality of the one whom he remembers.” God stores most persons’ life patterns (“memory and personality”) in his own memory. This is what it means for someone to be in “God’s memory.” And only such persons will be resurrected. Hence, if one is not in his memory (and so will not be resurrected) it means that God no longer stores information about their life pattern in his mind. In other words, God has forgotten something about the past, namely, certain facts about such individuals.
Compare how the January 1, 1979 Watchtower, p. 7 describes the resurrection. “So the dead, too, in God’s ‘memory bank’ (far more marvelous than that of any man-made computer) will be brought back to life and given the opportunity of living forever in a righteous environment, on a paradise earth.” By calling it his “memory bank” and thereby likening it to computer storage, this quotation makes it obvious that by God’s memory, that one can either be retained in or removed from, Witness theology refers to God’s informating storing mental faculty. Hence to be removed from it means to be literally forgotten. Thus, in saying that some people will not be retained in it they mean that God will forget certain facts about the past.
“Memorial tombs” is how the New World Translation renders the Greek word μνημείοις (John 5:28). The phrase is said to “reminds us of the importance of God’s memory in the resurrection.” (April 1, 1990 Watchtower, p. 10) That importance, as we described above, is that God has to retain certain information about you (such as your personality and memories) in order to resurrect you. “Resurrection or re-creation actually depends upon God’s memory of the life pattern of humankind.” (April 15, 1973 Watchtower, p. 249) That is why Witness literature cites God’s amazing feat of remembering all of the names he gave to the countless billions of stars as one reason to believe that God can remember your life pattern and thus will resurrect you. (December 1, 2012 Watchtower, p. 20) All of this requires understanding God’s memory (and by extension “memorial tombs”) to refer to God’s information storage and recalling mental faculty. Hence, to not be in the memorial tombs means that God does not remember such important information about you, which means, says Witness theology, that you cannot be resurrected.
Clearly, therefore, Witness literature affirms that God has forgotten some facts about the past and on at least on one occasion has chosen to not know everything there was to know about the present. But perhaps a Witness will assert that God can learn everything that happened in the past, even if he had chosen to remain unaware of it when it was then present, and could for the same reason relearn all the details about the wicked that he forgot. After all, they say that he could learn about the future, which does not yet exist, anything whatsoever he wished. So why would it be any different with respect to those gaps in God’s knowledge about the past? Their publications do say the following. “Furthermore, Jehovah can use his holy spirit to perceive what is happening anywhere and at any time. Thus, 2 Chronicles 16:9 states: “As regards Jehovah, his eyes are roving about through all the earth to show his strength in behalf of those whose heart is complete toward him.”” (April 2011 Awake!, pp. 28-29; emphasis mine.) “Through his holy spirit, God can perceive and do anything, anywhere, at any time, without being present in person.” (Bible Questions Answered, No. 123; emphasis mine.) Such statements seem to suggest that God can now learn or relearn anything he wished to know about any period of time, including the past.
We think that it may be over-reading of such quotations to say that God could learn what he has chosen to remain unaware of when it was once present or to relearn that which he chose to forget. If I say that I can fight and beat you anywhere and at any time, I do not mean that once today is past I can go back in time and fight you in what has become the past. What I mean is that when it is today, I can beat you; when it becomes tomorrow, I can beat you; and so on indefinitely. Likewise, it seems natural to read the claim that “God can perceive and do anything, anywhere, at any time, without being present in person” to mean that God’s ability to perceive all that is presently happening is something he had yesterday when yesterday was present, has today, and will have tomorrow when tomorrow is present. To read it otherwise would seem to commit Witness theology to the claim that in the present God can alter the past, which is surely absurd. At the very least, we would suggest that such statements do not require us to suppose that their theology means to teach that God can peer into the past to learn about it.
If it was the case that Witness theology ascribed to God this power, there would be no reason for their literature to be so keen on the idea that God forgets the life patterns of the damned. Supposedly he does this to make it impossible for them to ever come back to life. But if it were a trivial operation for God to relearn their life patterns, then it can never be impossible for God to resurrect someone. So there is no reason for him to forget the life pattern in the first place. Of course, even if he could never relearn their life patterns, there is not really any good reason to forget them, since God’s unconditional resolution to never resurrect them would suffice to keep them non-existent. But perhaps a Witness would say that it is just part of the punishment of the wicked that, whether or not God could relearn someone’s life pattern, he actually forgets it. But then they owe us a coherent account of how someone who is already non-existent can suffer further punishment; in other words, why should forgetting the wicked even count as punishment in the first place if they no longer exist? And they ought to explain how non-existence (i.e., death) as such can be the full ultimate punishment for sin if there is some further aspect to the punishment of the damned, namely, being forgotten by God. These are two reasons why we suggest that Witness theology cannot claim that erasing their life patterns from his memory is part of the punishment of the damned. Hence, God could have no good reason to forget them. The best that Witness theology could say is that it would then become impossible for God to resurrect them even if, per the impossible, he changed his mind. While this is not a very good reason, it would presuppose that God could not relearn their life patterns, which would require him to be unable to learn or relearn those things he does not know about the past. In other words, that God is said to forget the life patterns of the wicked makes the most sense (to the extent it makes any sense) on the idea that God cannot again come to know their life patterns.
Now this is not our main reason why we think that Witness theology either does not or cannot coherently claim that God could learn or relearn what he does not know about the past. We turn to that now. Without delving too much into the complexities and inconsistencies of the Witness view of free will, foreknowledge, and the already knowable future,[4] we will say a few things that will set up our main critique of the suggestion that within Witness theology God could come to learn things about the past that he chose to never have learned in the first place or which he had chosen to forget. In brief, while Witness literature may have recently walked back their attempts to explain how God could know the future, we believe that historically they have espoused at least three explanations for how God could know the future. And these three seem to be the best that someone in their position could come up with. First, God merely intuits the future. Maybe it is something like Plato’s god looking at the forms in some platonic heaven. He just can see propositions about the future and somehow know if they are true or not. Second, God infers what will happen in the future as a chess grandmaster might predict how the rest of the game will proceed or as a meteorologist might predict the weather. Third, since God can unilaterally determine something will take place, he can thereby know that it will happen. Whether it is God’s knowing too much of the future or knowing it in wrong ways or by some combination of these options, there is sometimes a risk to creaturely freedom, even though the future is apparently already alethetically settled (i.e., propositions about the future are already true now) and is knowable by God. So, God refrains from knowing some, evidently most of, the future. We would also suggest that Witness theology is committed to presentism, the view that only the present is real whereas the past is longer real and the future is not yet real.
Of these three methods of foreknowledge, only the first two could possibly be applicable to past facts that God never learned or which he chose to forget. The third cannot be, since if God forgot any facts that knew by determining them in the first place, he would have to have forgotten his determining them as well. And, of course, if he knew something because he himself had determined it, then we are not talking about God never learning facts in the first place. And it makes no sense to suppose that, once it has happened and is now past, whether or not God had previously determined it to be the case, he can retroactively determine something and thereby mysteriously come to know it either for the first time or for a second time. So the third method of foreknowledge cannot be used by God to know the past.
Yet neither can Witness theology coherently appeal to the other methods to explain how God could learn or relearn facts about the past, for the same reasons that these accounts fail to explain foreknowledge within their theology in the first place. Let us suppose that Witness theology holds that every possible proposition exists somewhere, either in God’s mind or in some abstract platonic heaven. In either case, conceivably God could contemplate any proposition he wished, such as: Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo. But how could he, simply by considering the content of the proposition itself, know whether it is true or false? The proposition would be just as meaningful if it were false. Nothing about what the proposition means indicates whether or not it is true. To suppose that God simply has an intuitive sense of what is true or false independently of his providence or his will is at least ad hoc and not credible.
We say “independently of his providence or will” because their theology holds that God does not, in fact, determine most of the future. Things can come as a surprise to him. Hence, most true propositions about the future (and then the present and then the past) are true apart from God’s often dormant providence.[5] And since we are particularly concerned with whether the God of Witness theology could come to know facts about the past, it is clear that they cannot appeal to God’s providence to explain his ability to relearn past facts, since such an explanation would just amount to the third method of foreknowledge (since such facts were once in the future), which we already dismissed as inapplicable to the past.
And since Witness theology holds that the present is all that exists, it cannot say that God simply looks at past moments in time, since those no longer exist to be looked at. But even if it held that all moments of time are equally real, as long as it says that God himself exists in time, it is hard to see how they can say that God in the present phase of his life can simply peer into the past to acquire or reacquire knowledge about it. So that does not seem to be a credible avenue for explaining how God could learn or relearn past facts – or come to know the future, either.
The idea that God can infallibly know the future or the past in the same way a chess grandmaster might predict how a game would unfold or a meteorologist might predict next week’s weather is absurd. The past and present and future are not related to each other by physical or logical necessity. So the best he could get would be mere probabilities that diminished in significance as he extended his time horizon further into the past or future. To suppose otherwise would lead to a kind of necessitarianism that would include even God himself, something no Witness would want to do.
Therefore, God cannot learn or relearn any information about the past that he does not know. Thus Witness theology either does not claim that God has such an ability or it cannot coherently claim that God has this ability. Of course, even if they did or could coherently claim that God could learn or relearn facts about the past, that in no way ameliorates the absolutely insane claim that God can choose – and, in fact, on occasion has chosen – to recklessly not be completely aware of the present. The claim that God can be ignorant of the present and at least once has actually chosen to be ignorant of the present puts into doubt his providential care of the world even more so than the denial of his exhaustive foreknowledge does.
The sinner may be closer to the truth than he hoped when he said, “God has forgotten; He has hidden His face; He will never see it.” (Psalm 10:11) Recall what is entailed by claiming that God actually had to learn what Sodom and Gomorrah were really like and chose to do so by means of angels instead of doing so by his spirit. It requires us to imagine that God did not already know what was going on in Sodom and its neighboring cities for some period of time prior to sending the angels. But if that was the case, how many crimes did God not take note of? Yes, he (somehow) heard some outcries against the city, but how many prayers of the afflicted within those cities did he not hear because he had recklessly chosen to turn his otherwise all-seeing gaze away from that region? How could he provide true and continuous protection to Lot if he remained ignorant of what was going on in that city? How could he have been sure that there would be no threats against Lot during the time that he looked away? If he was really ignorant of what was going on in that city, there were at least a good many things that he did not know about it. How did he even know Lot would be alive when the angels arrived?
The impious suggestion that God ever chooses (and, as far as we know, could be choosing right now) to be ignorant about some of what is happening in the present undermines confidence in the providence of God. It cuts against Scripture’s clear teaching: “Behold, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4) And it would mean that it is possible, God willing, to escape God’s Spirit. (Psalm 139:7) That God sent an angelic mission to the city cannot ameliorate these concerns, since there was a time period where, supposedly, he remained greatly and inexplicably ignorant of what was happening in those cities. So even if the angels could learn every last detail about what had been happening, which we have earlier said is not credible, it would not make up for the fact that there was a time when God shut his eyes to such things.
As was hinted at by our choice to describe God’s self-imposed ignorance as inexplicable, we also believe that to imagine that God would remain ignorant about the past or present is irrational. Supposedly, he has a reason to be ignorant about most of the future, even though, in final analysis, that rationale utterly breaks down. But it is at least something. But we cannot ever imagine the supremely rational God would ever not know what is happening in the present or what has happened in the past. He can neither derive any advantage for himself nor for creatures from remaining or becoming ignorant. Therefore, it is irrational, not something that an all-wise God would ever do. In other words, by supposing that God does, in fact, decide to remain ignorant about some of the past and what was once the present, Witness theology further insults God’s rationality, even more than they do by denying his exhaustive foreknowledge and meticulous providence.
We would further suggest that God forgetting also raises frankly disturbing questions about God. What are the limits of God’s ability to forget? Presumably there are some things that he might not ever decide to forget (assuming he is perfectly rational, at least), but in principle why could he not forget more and more things until he has little if any knowledge left? Is there a non-arbitrary limit to what God could forget, assuming he wished to forget? We do not see how there could be if we admit that he could forget something. It is absurd to suppose that God could forget, for instance, that he is the Creator; but, in principle is there a reason to think that God could not (not not merely would not) forget something of this importance?
Moreover, it seems that they would have us believe that thinking, even in God, is a bodily process, dependent upon underlying bodily activity and structures that either cause or are identical with memory, thinking, and awareness. We intend to touch upon this topic in a future essay, so we will not say so much about it here. But we wish to raise the question of what it would mean for the supposedly bodily God to forget something. Does it mean that parts of God where those memories are stored are obliterated, degraded, and removed? If so, what does it mean for the claim that God is incorruptible, beyond all decay, to say that parts of him can be damaged, or removed in order to facilitate, for instance, the forgetting of the life patterns of the wicked?
Maybe Witness theology will have a way to explain away or dodge these disturbing questions. If so, all the better for it. Though, we feel that this doctrine of theirs shows that they do not truly conceive of Jehovah as the true God. Nevertheless, the chief issues we have with the Witness teaching that God can either fail to know the present and thus never learn something in the first place or forget that which he once knew about the past do not depend on the points raised in the previous two paragraphs. Their bizarre ideas make God out to be irrational and reckless. And if they would also say that God cannot learn or relearn the facts about the past that he does not presently know, it makes God out to be less than all powerful and all knowing.
[1] Some of these facts would be trivial, such as the arrangement of particles that make up the wall or how many bricks were in the buildings. Others would relate to thoughts and motives that the sinners in those cities had, which God could not have already known since he was said to have purposely remained ignorant of the condition of that region until he heard back from the angels whom he sent there. The latter facts would be relevant to God’s providence and his role as Judge of the universe. Yet, both facts are those which God, given his nature, must know.
[2] For reasons we will go into in another essay, we would suggest that Witness theology cannot coherently say that it is ever impossible for God to not be able to resurrect someone, even if he has forgotten their life pattern. But for the purposes of this essay we will grant that once God forgets someone it is impossible for him to resurrect that person.
[3] That the appearance of the deceased is mentioned as a part of what God must know in order to resurrect a person is strange. According to their theology the anointed, who are raised as spirit beings, will not look like what they did when they were humans. Hence, appearance cannot be part of what makes someone the person that he is. Their theology cannot appeal to it at all to explain personal identity (the numerical sameness of a person over time and through change). They usually do not. Though, their literature says that God will make those whom he will resurrect as humans, that is, most people, rise in bodies that look similar to those that died. Yet this is said to be done in order to enable easy identification of the resurrected. But it plays no part in what makes them to be numerically the same persons as those who had died. Compare the March 1, 1996 Watchtower, p. 6, which omits appearance altogether: “To bring someone back to life, he has to know everything about that one – including his or her inherited traits and complete memory. Only then could that individual be restored with the same identity.” We suspect that the statement from the June 1, 2009 Watchtower is just a poorly worded description of the following idea. A person’s life pattern (memory, personality, knowledge, and the like) must be remembered by God for him to be able to implant it in a newly made living human body and thereby re-create the selfsame person who died. Further to enable other resurrected humans to easily recognize this person, God also will also remember what they looked like and other such superficial traits so as to be able to make this new body look like the old one.
[4] We have only published part of our still incomplete essay about the Witness doctrine of foreknowledge. We hope to return to the topic at some point in the future.
