7.7.24 Foreknowledge of God (Continued)
Dr. Stephen Isaac continues his teaching in the Epistles of the Apostle Peter. He digs deeper into the biblical meaning of the foreknowledge of God and how it impacts the lives of men.
Many biblical worldview theologians advise that the sovereign foreknowledge of God destroys the biblical principles of human freedom (free will) and personal responsibility. So, they wrongly respond to their critics that God does not know future events either with certainty or to their completion.
Think about that for a moment – does that not sound like a God with limitations?
Unfortunately, in present-day, the theological arguments regarding the foreknowledge of God continue to deconstruct and digress only to become even more unreliable and sketchy. For example, some modern theologians and influencers have conceived of God as growing and developing along with nature and man (kind of like a Discovery Channel). That argument leads only one place – “man ascends to be more like God, and God descends to become more like man.” This ideology of man does not match the Word of God.
John 8:23-29
“Jesus said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins.” 25 So they said to Him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. 26 I have much to say about you and much to judge, but He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from Him.” 27 They did not understand that He had been speaking to them about the Father. 28 So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught Me. 29 And He who sent Me is with Me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” ESV
There is no sovereignty or omniscience to this kind of man-made God, He is at the beck and call and the authority and appetite of man. This is of course heresy, and is currently being taught in certain evangelical circles, which is another absurd example of the arrogance of men. In response I would propose a biblical apologetic (argument) of which I am certain God was revealing Himself through His Word to my seeking soul.
I) For God to be Sovereign (and He is) He must have full knowledge of all things. His knowledge cannot be limited, selective or preferential. He must also have knowledge of both good and evil, and with that knowledge He does plan and purpose us according to His will – to love us beyond all measure and limit. Yet, His love for us would be flawed, and indeed limited, if it could not or would not permit us the choice of our own will – to love Him, or not to love Him. God does not use His knowledge of what we will choose to make His plans for us and to establish His purposes in us – according to His will. He does not wait to see, learn, or know anything from us. God, instead, uses His Knowledge of all things about us to establish His Kingdom (Thy Kingdom Come) and for His will to be done (on earth as it is in Heaven). His will is to bring (reconcile) us back to Him – to redeem us from where we have been, and to claim us as His own. We have always been His choice – He however, has not always been ours. So, in His great love, He does not use His knowledge of all things us to override the heart, soul, strength and mind of our will to choose loving Him.
Ephesians 1:3-10
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, 6 to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, 8 which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.” ESV
II) God the Creator of all things in His all-knowing Sovereignty is in the unique and singular position of never having to learn. Because He is omniscient (all-knowing), He by His Spirit and His Word, is forever teaching, loving, guiding, and revealing – not to learn who we are, but but to lead us to become who He has planned and purposed for us to become. Not to discover but to disciple. He is the teacher, not the student. He does not need to find out the why of all things – He is WHY. He knows the WHO, the WHERE, the WHAT, the HOW, and the MEANING of it all.
Yes, He hears us, and listens to our cries and calls out to Him. Yes, He hears and listens to our contrition and prayerful pleas. He also hears and listens when we worship Him – He inhabits our praise, and all the honor, glory, and adoration due to Him. He is a present help in a time of trouble. The prophet Isaiah foretold… “Surely He borne our grief and carried our sorrows.”
However, we must be clear, He does so because He loves us – as a father loves his children; He listens because we are His people and He cares for us. It is certainly not because He is learning to love or care for us, and certainly not because He is like a mere mortal discovering oneself over time, cultivation, and human experience. He responds to our faith and faithfulness because He made covenant sacrifice for us through Christ Jesus. He listens because He promised do so, and He responds solely because of who He is. It is important that we understand that any initiative from God toward us IS according to His will, which is in determined unity with His plans and purposes. The Creator is not researching, experimenting, or learning about us – He is Creating the image of His Son in us.”
Hebrews 4:12-13
“For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. ESV
III) According God’s own will His sovereign knowledge of us is entirely a compliment to the plan and purpose of our free or permissive will. It is compatible because God is Sovereign. It is not a contradiction because God is Sovereign. Both are true – God has full foreknowledge of all things and God has permitted our free will to choose Him. Very much paradoxical, very much the divine sovereignty of God. Throughout the history of philosophy almost all philosophers have argued whether God’s infallible foreknowledge predetermines what humans think and do in the future. In answering this question, I want to assure you – those who claim that the infallible foreknowledge of God and the freewill of humankind are incompatible are wrong. If they were correct in their belief, it would mean that God uses His infallible and unmistakeable foreknowledge to predetermine all future events, including all human reasoning and actions. God would then be responsible for planning and purposing all the evil, horrendous choices and actions of mankind. This is impossible for two reasons:
First) Simply because it does not reconcile with WHO GOD IS and His perfect will for His Creation.
Second) This would characterize and implicate the knowledge and power of God as the author of evil – God is good, evil He is not.
The far too obvious argument against this position and premise is that God can only know those events which have already taken place. The result of course being that the future remains open and uncertain for God as well as for man. That too, is a problem – a limited God is not a Sovereign God? Yet, that is where arguments like that end up – God is not Sovereign. It is difficult for me to take viewpoints such as this seriously – in fact I won’t.
Conclusion on the Foreknowledge of God
Those who accept the existence of an all knowing – all powerful God, He is a sovereign deity who infallibly (without error) foreknows the entire future can trust God and His foreknowledge to fulfill purpose and plan according to His will in their lives. On the other hand, there are human beings who of course do not accept God as all knowing and all powerful, and have a psychological and emotive feeling in which they believe that they are completely free. The idea that there is a God with knowledge and power capable of predetermining their thinking, choices, and actions evokes a rebellion and anger, and often-times a vengeful obsession within them. They will deny the existence of that kind of God, and yet still display anger, rebellion, disgust and disdain over the very being they have said does not exist.
According to critics of a compatibility between the foreknowledge of God and free will of mankind; all events, including human deeds, are absolutely predetermined by God’s foreknowledge and will. We human beings only think we can have our own thoughts and carry out our own actions voluntarily. They argue, if God foreknows how we will act in the future, then every man and woman must think and act precisely in the way that God foresaw us – simply because the divine knowledge of God does not make mistakes and is unchangeable. Therefore, if we act according to the pre-determinations of God, then there is no voluntary choice in our actions – resulting in God using His foreknowledge of what we will do in the future to pre-set, override, and determine our will. This belief is the active definition of what is called “fatalism.” In short, for fatalists (all events are pre-determined), God’s foreknowledge and will is a necessity to determining who we are, and what we will do with the choices we have been given. Although this sounds to be on some levels a reasonable theory, there are flaws in light of the reality of God’s love for mankind – His love for us is complete and without condition or limit. His love for us is complete and without limit only because He permits us the will to choose our love for Him. Augustine says, “God unerringly foreknows everything, including our future acts, so the problem here is whether His divine knowledge pre-determines our actions and decisions in the future.”
The answer to the dilemma of foreknowledge and free will is found in only one place. It is the question of a “thousand ages.” Is it God who is all powerful and all knowing, or it is man who is all powerful and all knowing? The answer is inseparably tethered to our knowledge and understanding of Who God is and far, far less in understanding who we are. It is God and we know it. He is entirely and mysteriously Sovereign and unlimited in all His ways for us.
So, if Augustine were here today, he would say to us… we should not speak about the freedom to do simply as we want to do, but rather, we speak only of the freedom of our will to choose as we wish to choose – that freedom can come only from God.
When we use the concept of “something being within our power,” we mean simply “being able to choose what we will.” Therefore, there are very few things that are in our own power, but our will is one of them; for in the moment we wish to do something the “will” is there and we discover it within ourselves. At which point we contend that we may use our free will to choose the will of God above the will of our own. Even if we do not achieve what we will, we cannot say that we do not have the power to will. We may only think “we will” but in fact we do not achieve whatever we wish, for our success in attaining what we wish depends not only on our will, but also on other factors that are wholly beyond our control. That is why as Christians we are taught scripturally (Jesus) to pray – “not my will, but your will (God’s) be done; on earth as it is in heaven.” There would be no need to pray in the way Jesus asked us to pray if indeed we had no free will.
So we can see that our will itself would be our own as long as it remains in our power or control, therefore, “it is not necessary to deny that God has foreknowledge of all things while at the same time our will is our own”; in other words, God’s foreknowledge of what lies ahead into the future does not override and determine our will. Despite all of these arguments, Augustine concludes: “we shall exercise our wills in the future because He has foreknowledge that we shall do so.” It might even be more clearly said, “God has foreknowledge that we will exercise our own will in the future, because He has allowed to do so.” A “permissive will”. In this particular example, God’s foreknowledge is consistent with our will, but His foreknowledge is not the cause of our choices.
Finally, human beings can choose one particular action from among various alternatives. As Augustine concludes, the power to will is not taken from us as the result of God’s foreknowledge. In fact, Abrahamic religions necessarily support the idea of the compatibility between divine knowledge and human free will. If we did not have free will, if we have no choice but to think and to act in a certain way, then why would God judge us? This would be meaningless. Furthermore, His divine foreknowledge certifies our will because His timeless foreknowledge is consistent with our will in a future time, therefore there is no incompatibility between God’s foreknowledge and our free will.
Because of the clear biblical teaching regarding God’s foreknowledge, evangelical theologians have generally held that God has complete knowledge of all future events. There is a further distinction, however. The followers of Calvin insist that God knows all events precisely because He sovereignly determines what is to happen in human history right down to the tiniest detail. Here foreknowledge is closely tied to, if not identified with, foreordination. At the same time, most Calvinistic theologians assert that human beings are nonetheless responsible for their choices—not victims of a blind fate. It is also generally held that God is not the author of sin. Rather, sin is the result of the rebellion of angels and men against a holy and righteous God.
Evangelicals in the Arminian tradition, on the other hand, distinguish foreknowledge from foreordination of events. While the plan of salvation of the world and human history in broad outline are predetermined by God, it is argued that individual response to God is not so predetermined. Hence God can foreknow an event without directly decreeing that event to take place.
The Love of God and His Foreknowledge
While evangelical Christians differ in their descriptions of the relationship between the eternal all knowing God and the events of human history, it should be kept in mind that the Word of God – The Bible, teaches both God’s foreknowledge of all things and the responsibility and accountability of humans for their choices. God knows all that lies ahead. His Word tells us that His plans and purposes will be established and that His Kingdom will come and His WILL be done. He chooses us and allows us to decide if we will choose Him – because He loves us. In this sense, we can see that in His love for us He has chosen to use His foreknowledge to exercise His will over all that is to come except for our will to love and to choose Him – and yet He knows…
Inductive Conclusions
- We know that words have meaning.
- We know that to best understand the full meaning of a word we must have more than a “google search” or Wikipedia definition. We must have the what-how-why-where-when usage for that word – context.
- We also know that the meaning of words can vary and change over a range of time, culture, language, and belief – semantic range.
From that we can see that we cannot get the complete context for a given word without the semantic range helping to establish the users intent and understanding for usage of that word. If we apply rational and realistic reason of such a process to the Word of God (as it is written in the Scriptures and the text of the Bible) – we have either a huge challenge or an great opportunity before us. We need the working of the Holy Spirit in this process.
To clarify – The Holy Spirit is not there to give us historical, linguistic/literary, and biblical context for the 785,000 words in Scripture. The Holy Spirit will not tell us how to interpret the over 600 Levitical laws of the Old Testament, how many miracles Jesus performed, or give us the answer to the “day and the hour” of the return of Yeshua the Savior. However, the Holy Spirit reveals to us an understanding that the Bible is God’s Word – Christ is the Word made flesh, and as Christian believers we can and should love His Word. We should believe and trust His Word. We should absolutely build our faith upon His Word, and then each day, by that same faith, live our lives according to His Word. By this we mean in the Spirit and by faith, and most certainly both ethically and morally. You and I can pray and ask God to help us understand His Word, but the reality is that WE are called to seek the knowledge and wisdom of His Word. We are also instructed to study the Word in order that we will not lack confidence and understanding of Scripture. We do not want to embarrass ourselves and the Kingdom of God by our ignorance and lack of knowledge and understanding of the Word of truth.
Hosea 4:6
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to Me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
The process that I have described for finding meaning and intent to Scripture must be understood and considered by all to some level or degree. However, for those who have undertaken the calling or responsibility to tell, teach, explain, or communicate to others what the Word of God means and how to righteously use and relate it to their lives, this process is mandatory and mandated by the very Word they claim to know and love. If you love it, you will be drawn by the Spirit to know it. When you finally begin to know it, you will fall more deeply in love with it.
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