Bible
Study
Chapter
3 God’s Eternal Decrees, sec. 3.2: God’s
knowledge of the future: When and How
does God NOT know the future?
By:
Moses Flores
Chapter 3
of the
The existence of God’s decrees is stated positively in section one of the third chapter by saying that God has decreed all things. Section two, however, deal with the idea of how God decreed all things by stating a negation, or on what basis God has not decreed whatsoever comes to pass. The Westminster Confession does this by explicitly rejecting a common view of God’s foreknowledge, which is known as the “prescient view of foreknowledge”.
Commonly understood, the prescient view of foreknowledge is essentially that God knows the future and all that will come to pass because He has “foreseen” it all happen. That is, God has already experienced the future and, thus, He knows what will happen because He has already been in it.
The Westminster Confession explicitly rejects this view of God’s foreknowledge, which is usually posited by Arminian theology. There are several difficulties with this view of God as well as Scriptural reasons to reject it. Among them are arguments from God’s independence of creation (aseity/self-sufficiency) and myriads of explicit Scriptures that teach that God does not gain knowledge of any sorts from His own creation. Let’s explore.
Arguments from God’s self-sufficiency
Let us recall some descriptions about God from a previous chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith:
“God has all life, glory, goodness, and blessedness in and of himself. He alone is all sufficient in and unto himself, nor does he need any of his creations or derives any glory from them…His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and does not depend on any created being, so that to him nothing is conditional or uncertain…” (WCF 2.2)
This section brings to light the complete self-sufficiency of God which is to say that God relies on nothing for His being, nature or character. God is who He is without any condition. One way to understand this is to say that we are who we are because we have experiences that have shaped our personality, we have air to breathe so we can live, we have the bodies that we have because of how we have treated them, etc… God, on the other hand, can merely say, “I Am,” and stop. This is how God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14); the self-sufficient God. One can see why the Jews wanted to kill Christ and accused Him of blasphemy for also claim to be the self-sufficient God who revealed Himself to Moses (John 8:58). Here was a claim to equality with the God the Father and nothing less.
The self-sufficiency of God is brought out in several scripture passages. For instance, in Paul’s sermon on Mar’s Hill, before a crowd of very religious and philosophically minded people, Paul proclaims to them the one true God whom they have not known. He says to them about God,
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things…” (Acts 17:24-25)
Paul certainly distinguishes between the ideas of God that the philosophical audience had (pantheistic) by showing God’s independence from His creation. Since God gives existence to all things, God is not depending on the creation for anything at all. How could him who gives life to all, indeed the source of life, also need life for himself? Such a being would not be God if He were dependent on something for His being.
What about God’s knowledge? What do the Scriptures say about God’s knowledge? Is He dependent on the creatures to know what he knows about them? The Scriptures are very clear that God’s knowledge, which is part of His being, is also self-sufficient. For instance, in Job 21:22, Job asks the rhetorical question,
“Can anyone teach God knowledge, since He judges those on high?”
The obvious answer here is that God does not “learn” from His creation. Since God’s knowledge is perfect and infinite, what is there that God needs to know? Thus, with perfect knowledge come perfect judgments from on high that Job speaks of here. In context, this adds to Job’s already perplexing problem since this must mean that what happened to Job happened according to the just judgment of God based on perfect knowledge that God alone possesses from Himself. Perplexing indeed!
Another passage of Scripture that brings out God’s self-sufficiency concerning His knowledge comes from the lips of the prophet Isaiah 40:12-17:
“Who has measured the waters in the hallow of His hand,
Measured heaven with a span
And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure?
Weighed the mountains in scales
And the hills in a balance?
Who
has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or
as His counselor taught Him?
With
whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
And
taught Him the path of justice?
Who
taught Him knowledge,
And
showed Him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales;
Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.
And
Nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering.
All nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.”
Isaiah reveals to us that no creature offers counsel to the Spirit of the LORD or directs his ways. No one teaches to him what justice is or has ever taught Him knowledge. God is completely independent of the creature in regards to His knowledge.
But if God is completely independent from creation concerning knowledge, where does God’s knowledge come from? The only answer that we are left with is that God’s knowledge of all things – past, present and future from our perspective – comes from Himself. To use an illustration, let us suppose that God is like an engineer who has built a certain machine. Does the engineer’s knowledge of his own machine come after studying what he has built or does it come from himself in that he designed the machine and in a sense, decreed its operation? Obviously, we would say the latter.
God has from all eternity decreed how creation would be. God would be the divine plagiarist were he to simply let creation determine itself in freedom from him and then claim responsibility for that knowledge as His when He had nothing to do with bringing it about. God knows all things about His creation, rather, because He has decreed how His creation should be. God’s knowledge of all things is grounded in the decree of God. It is grounded in God being God even in the realm of knowledge.
Also, in Romans 11:33-36, after teaching on the doctrine of election and predestination, Paul sums up with a doxology to God that is very revealing about God’s knowledge and nature. He says,
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! ‘For how has known the mind of the LORD, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
Remember this is the doxology Paul offers after teaching the doctrine of election, especially concerning the Jews. He reminds us about God’s perfections in all of this regarding God’s riches, wisdom and knowledge and how unfathomable they are. He also brings out God’s self-sufficiency regarding his knowledge. Then Paul notes something that can easily be overlooked. He says that “from God” and “through God” and “to God” are all things. What does this mean? John Murray, said this:
“He is the source of all things in that they have proceeded from Him; He is the creator. He is the agent through whom all things subsist and are directed to their proper end. And he is the last end to whose glory all things will redound.[1]”
In particular regards to God’s knowledge, it is “of Him,” which is to say that it proceeds only from Himself. He does not learn from, or depend on the creation for his knowledge.
In summary, we must reject any theological persuasions that God gains knowledge from watching His creation unfold. Rather, God has knowledge of His creation because He has decreed His creation to be how it is. God is comparable, in this sense to any designer who has knowledge of their product because they are the ones who made it how it is. God knows all things because He has decreed all things.
Foreknowledge
But what of foreknowledge? Doesn’t the Bible teach that God has foreknowledge and even that He has decreed certain things based on foreknowledge? These are certainly important questions to ask, and we should ask of the Scriptures what they mean when they use the words “foreknow” and “foreknowledge”.
First, the words “foreknow” and “foreknowledge” are used a total of 4 times in the New Testament. Two times it is used as a verb ( Romans 8:29; 11:2) and the other two usages are nouns (Acts 2:23; I Peter 1:2). In each case, we must note the object of God’s “pre-knowing” – they are persons or the person Jesus Christ. We should note that God is not “foreknowing” decisions or future acts. Scripture does not use the word in such a sense at all. God is “pre-knowing” people.
In what sense does God “know” these people? Is it a mere cognitive recognition of their existence? Such an understanding would seem rather obvious from the nature of God since God knows all things. The key to understanding “foreknow” is to understand the usage of the verb “to know” as it is used at times in the Bible.
The verb “to know” does not always mean a mere mental assent of knowledge, or facts. At times, it involves choosing to enter into intimate and personal relationship with a person or persons and knowing a person through that relationship. For instance, in Genesis 18:19, in the NKJV version, we hear God say about Abraham,
“For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring Abraham what He has spoken to him.”
Hebrew word
translated as “known” here is the word yadah
which gives the sense of being “chosen in love”. Thus, other translations like the NIV, NASB
and ESV use the word “chosen” rather than “known” to convey the idea of a
selective love of God. Another example
of this is in Amos 3:2. Here, the
prophet speaking for God says to
“You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (NKJV, EXV)
Obviously,
the passage does not mean that God only had cognitive knowledge of the existence
of
In the New Testament, the word that carries the equivalent meaning of the Hebrew word yadah is ginosko. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus says,
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
Now let us ask, what is the basis of the condemnation here for these who cried “Lord, Lord”, who held to a form of Godliness but lacked the true life? Many people are used to saying that it is because these were hypocrites, but the text says nothing of the sort. Apparently, these sincerely believed that Jesus was their Lord and they did many things for Him and under His authority. But the basis of the condemnation is not from their part here. Rather, Jesus says, “I never knew you.” Now, surely, Jesus – the second member of the all knowing Trinity – is not attributing to Himself ignorance of these people. That is, He is not saying, “well I can’t save you because I didn’t know of you.” Rather, Jesus is saying that He had not chosen to enter into a relationship with these people. He is not saying that these people are being condemned for not knowing God, but for God, especially Christ, not knowing them.
Clearly, there is a meaning of “know” that we must take into account when we ask what “foreknow” means in the Bible. When we understand what it means to “know” in the sense of words used in their original and historical context, we should understand what the word “foreknow” means. It means to pre-love, or to fore love. Thus, when God foreknows people in the Bible, the simple meaning is that God has a chosen to enter into a personal and loving relationship with that person before the actual event that reveals the love. In other words, God’s love to us in the present is not some present action that God has decided to do but something that has already been determined, indeed decreed, by God from all eternity. It is God’s eternal love.
God’s decrees and
Foreknowledge
In summary, “foreknowledge” in the Bible is not to be understood by its modern and more philosophical understanding of precognition, or what is called the prescient view of God’s foreknowledge. Foreknowledge, in the Bible, has nothing to do with such an understanding.
We have seen that God’s choice cannot be based on anything from the creatures which would include “free will” choices because then God is gaining his knowledge from the creatures, which Scripture clearly says is something God does not do. If He did, God would not be the God of all since knowledge would be something that came from outside of Himself.
How should we live with this knowledge? We should know that since God decrees all thing not on the basis of anything “foreseen” from the creatures, we can know that it was an all loving, all wise, all gracious and just God who is running this world and everything in it. What would life be like if we had to know that due to autonomous freedom in the creatures, anything could happen in the world that could disrupt God’s plans for good? To know that at any moment, God’s decretive will could not be done surely does not bring any type of Christian comfort at all. But thanks be to God it is not so. God has decreed all things and because He has, we can truly say that we have a God and not a mere idol. The prophet Isaiah spoke against the false idols in such a way saying,
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel,
And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
‘I am the First and I am the Last;
Besides Me there is no God.
And who can proclaim as I do?
Then let him declare it and set it in order for Me,
Since I appointed the ancient people.
And the things that are coming and shall come,
Let them show these to them.
Do not fear, nor be afraid;
Have I not told you form that time and declared it?
You are My witnesses.
Is there a God besides Me?
Indeed there is no other Rock;
I know not one.’” (Isaiah 44:6-8)
Our God is God. He alone has decreed all things and thus guarantees the certainty of events, the things that are coming and shall come to pass. This is the true God. All who proclaim a God who does not decree but leaves autonomy to the creature are not God at all, but merely idols and are not to be feared.
This teaching on God’s decrees is a hard one indeed and should not be taken lightly. We must be careful not to insert our human constructs of knowledge on to God as well. God doesn’t know the same way that we know. We know “after the fact”. God, on the other hand, knows because He decrees it to be so. Such a being alone is worthy of our worship, praise and adoration.
[1] Murray, John, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2, Eerdman’s Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1965, 107-108