Bible Contradictions - giving the lie to omniscience

He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." (Gen 22:12)

Those three unfortunate, from the point of view of the fundamentalist Christian, words, "Now I know."

Some backstory:

The fundamentalist, or anyone really who believes that the Bible is the inerrant, literal word of God, begins with the premise that A: God exists, leading to B: surely he would have communicated with us, therefore C: the Bible is clearly that communication, so D: surely a creator would have the power to give us an inerrant communication in spite of human frailty.

Having established by such unassailable logic that the Bible is inerrant, it follows that it can have no real contradictions, and therefore any apparent contradictions must be explained away.

Well, here's a doozy.

The Bible describes a deity who is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows perfectly the hearts and minds of men.

The case of Abraham then. After God tests him, after Abraham passes God's test, God says to him, "Now I know..." As in, I didn't know before now. I may have thought, speculated, surmised, but I did not know. I had to test you in this horrible way in order to bring certainty to my mind.

And this is not the only example of such a contradiction. Here's another:

And the LORD said, "The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. "I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know." (Gen 18:20-21)

So, the Lord heard rumors, apparently, about what was going on in Sodom and its sinful sister city, Gomorrah. But he did not know for himself if these rumors were true. He had to "go down and see." If the rumors were false, he assures us, "I will know."

With Abraham, he had to test. With Sodom, he had to personally visit and investigate. Not very omniscient of him, is it?

The inerrant, no-contradictions-allowed crowd will explain all of these problematic passages thus: "Not as if there were any thing concerning which God is in doubt; but he is pleased thus to express himself after the manner of men" (Wesley).

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