Featured What is your definition of foreknowledge and...

Before I answer your question, in light of Jesus' claim that sin is necessary, was Adam's sin necessary? Was God's knowledge of Adam's specific sin a certainty before he sinned?

 

Perhaps.

OK, if you want an indisputable example of foreknowledge, then look at Nathanael in John 1.

Jhn 1:45 Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
48 Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
49 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.
50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.
51 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Note these statements;

Jesus SAW Nathanael COMING to him

Jesus said, Behold an Israelite indeed (true Jew, child of faith)

Nathanael said, Whence KNOWEST thou me? (foreknowledge, for whom he did foreknow)

Jesus said, BEFORE (foreknowledge) Philip called thee (for whom he did foreknow, them did he also did predestine and call) I SAW THEE (foreknowledge).

Now, this is important, was Nathanael a believer in Christ at this time? NO. He did not yet know who the Messiah was. However, as soon as Jesus told Nathanael he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him, Nathanael THEN believed.

But Jesus had called Nathanael a true Israelite before Nathanael believed. This is foreknowledge, this is Jesus knowing who would believe before they actually believed.

Take it or leave it.

 

God made a promise before the foundation of the world (creation) for redemption of sin, I would think it undeniable that He knew there would be sin. Can/do you think otherwise?

Do you have children? If so, did you know before they were born that they would sin? Are you the "cause" of their sin?

Neither.

Don't think it that much of a mystery that God "CAN" do everything He says He "WILL" do and does in "TRUTH" and does so according to his Nature. He is God! Can I explain in every detail of how He does it (has that kind of depth to His knowledge), no, not exactly. I exist, can I explain exactly how I exist, no, but I can tell you that God creating me is not so much of a mystery because I know the truth that I am truly here and thinking about it. I am what I am and God is Who He is; He has His knid of knowledge and I have mine. Any appeal to what I cannot fully explain would never go against the "true" Nature of God to force fit doctrines into a soteriological view, that's how.

I would have to think pretty highly of myself to say it is a mystery that "I" can not explain the knowledge of God well enough for all His Words and His Nature to be true.

 

When I say that sin is necessary, I do not mean that Adam (or anyone) has to sin. What I mean is that when you give any person free will, it is impossible to exclude the possibility of sin.

If God gives a man free will (which the scriptures say he does)...

Lev 1:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.
3 If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD.

... then by necessity God must give that man the power to choose evil if he so desires. It cannot be avoided.

You cannot have free will without the possibility of sin.

The only way to have free will without the possibility of sin is for God to kill every man before he has a chance to sin. This is not a very practical solution if God wants fellowship with men.

Did God give Adam free will? Yes. Does this by necessity provide for the possibility of sin? YES. How can sin be avoided? It can't unless you kill the man before he can sin.

Did God know Adam would sin? YES. Did God will for Adam to sin? NO. But God could not prevent it unless he killed Adam and Eve before they had a chance to sin.

But here is the Catch 22, the wages of sin is death. If God killed a man before he sins, it would be unjust. Can't be done.

Do you understand now?

 

In order to be saved we should do as Christ say's not my will but His will be done. To turn away from our own will and turn to His will. To die to self and be raised again through Jesus Christ.

John 6:38
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.

Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

6 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[Or be rendered powerless] that we should no longer be slaves to sin — 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

I cannot disagree with those who have been chosen before the foundation of the world. There is no one who seeks God so there had to be first fruit, a remnant a chosen by God to spread the message and God is including with them those who heard the Gospel of their salvation having believed. This had to be done through man's free agency being responsible for there own self.

I believe in Christ we were chosen before the foundation of the world and not any of us is worthy to be chosen by God apart from Him, apart from Christ we are fit for destruction. Only life is in Christ. I am not going to disagree with those being included with them during time.

God has the end result of His work through what He has made to reveal Himself and knows all who are saved in Christ.

 

Calvinists must misrepresent the views of others to shift discussion away from their sloppy bible study. The way the Greek words are used in scripture shows the meaning as knowledge gained or formulated in the past and being used in the present. Therefore when we are saved, we are foreknown, because God planned on saving people before He created anyone, therefore everyone saved is foreknown, and they are saved according to His purpose and plan, so they are saved according to His foreknowledge.

I do not use double-talk. God does not use a magic crystal ball to look at the future from outside of time and therefore know what will happen in the future. I wish I could tell you where that theology came from, but that has been determined to be "inappropriate."

I have presented what scripture teaches, and others have presented the theology of man.

There will be no actual discussion of the meaning of the two Greek words, as they appear in the text, because my view would be validated. So, instead, my view is misrepresented and strawman arguments abound about things that have no actual support in scripture, but lots in the writings of men.

 

Some questions, if I may.

When we speak of foreknowledge and foreseen faith, are we talking about the same thing? Don't think so. Foreknowing in the scriptures always speaks of whom, not what.

If God elected me on the basis of foreseen faith, how is it that I did not elect myself?

Acts 2:23 notes that Jesus was delivered up by God's determinate counsel and foreknowledge. Isn't it clear that God knew the events surrounding Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion, and knew who would perpetrate those events because he had determined them to be that way? Otherwise, determinate counsel has no meaning.

 

Do you have a job? Did you choose to go in and fill out an application originally? Did you have to meet certain qualifications to get the job?

But who decided whether you would get the job, you, or your employer?

 

πρὀγνωσις (prognosis), foreknowledge, means "to know beforehand." Calvinists and Arminians both believe this. The Tyndale Bible Dictionary does a good job of presenting the two dominant theological views of foreknowledge:

As a Calvinist I believe foreknowledge is inexorably linked to foreordination. This belief is not only exegetically sound but also logical. The exegetical case has has been made by those better than me over the span of many centuries. The logic is based on the nature of God. God is omniscient and sovereign. It logically follows that He orders the course of human events while at the same time allowing human beings to function freely within His order. This, of course, is from the Calvinist understanding of Scripture.

 

How can a person be responsible if God determines that you sin? Let's say before the foundation of the world God determined you would rob a bank on May 29, 2012. Do you have any choice in the matter? No. You are going to rob this bank tomorrow and that is all there is to it. Oh, you will argue you are responsible because you wanted to rob the bank, but if God determined before you were born that you would commit this robbery, you have no choice but to desire to rob this bank.

It's total nonsense. You cannot be free and every thing you do to the tiniest detail determined by God at the same time. That is a contradiction, especially in your view of foreknowledge, that says God has determined what you will do before you are even born.

There is nothing logical about this at all, it is a direct contradiction and cannot possibly be true.

 

I don't quite understand the analogy with election, foreknowledge, etc. Would you explain further?

I don't think the employer would foreknow that I was qualified until I showed that I was. If I qualified, then he hired me on my merits, didn't he?

 

Before an employer posts a job in the Want Ads, they already know what they are looking for. You must meet certain qualifications.

In the same way, salvation is not unconditional. Only those who believe in Jesus Christ will be saved. That is a condition or qualification.

Just because you apply for the job and have the qualifications, it is the employer who makes the decision whether he will hire you or not.

In the same way, God has determined before the foundation of the world who will be saved, and they will be saved by trusting in his Son.

When you trust in Jesus, it is like applying for the job. But it is God who always determined who would be saved, not you.

So, my argument is not so much about foreknowledge, but rather showing that because you chose Christ does not mean you determined you would be saved. God determined that before you were born, just as the employer determined who they would hire before they ever placed a Want Ad.

The only difference is that an employer will not hire every person who appliies that meets the required qualifications, but God has promised to save all who believe in Jesus.

Now, the Calvinist will say God did not elect any person upon foreseen faith. I disagree, I believe this is exactly who God elected.

 

Pink states: The fact is that "foreknowledge" is never used in Scripture in connection with events or actions; instead, it always has reference to persons. It is persons God is said to "foreknow," not the actions of those persons.

Dagg states: Moreover, the objects of this divine foreknowledge are the persons of the elect, and not their faith or good works. . . . From a state of condemnation, God, according to His purpose in election, delivers some by His renewing grace,

It seems to me that some people are confusing the omniscience of God, His infinite knowledge, with His knowing those persons whom He choses to salvation in Jesus Christ.

 

That is plain dumb. How can you personally know a person and not know about their faith? How can you not know about their good (or bad) works?

Do you know if your wife has faith? Do you know her works? Do you know if your children have faith or not? Do you know their works?

Dumb.

 

I see the false Calvinist assertion that foreknow/foreknowledge are never used of things but only of people has been hoisted twice, but no reference to the scriptures that supposedly support this fiction.

But anyone who reads Acts 2:23 knows God knew all about Christ's crucification, an event that occurred according to God's foreknowledge.

Then we have 1 Peter 1:2 where God chooses people according to His foreknowledge, which again refers to an action being carried out according to a plan of action.

Then we have 2 Peter 3:17 where we have folks being armed with a foreknown warning.

Even in Acts 26:5 it not so much the Jews had known Paul, but rather had known something about Paul, what sort of person He was, i.e. faithful.

Therefore Pink's assertion is false and reflects sloppy bible study.

 

Regarding your statement, "OK, if you want an indisputable example of foreknowledge, then look at Nathanael in John 1.": Your attempt to prove foreknowledge seems to fail in that the text describes nothing about foreknowledge. However, the text does describe Jesus' complete knowledge of history and the present. By the time of Jesus and Nathanael's conversation, the event that transpired under the fig tree had occurred in the past, of which Jesus had complete knowledge.

It seems clear and abvious from the text that something of personal significance happened under the fig tree. Just what we don't know but we can see that a reasonable person such as Nathanael was incredibly moved by Jesus having knowledge of it, indicating that Nathanael expected no one unknown to himself would have knowledge of what transpired under the tree. Jesus' knowledge of something intimately secret so moved Nathaniel, who had 'no guile' and no reason to fabricate false emotions, that he immediately proclaimed Him as the Son of God. Nathanael's reaction is astounding.

The interpretation that you've given of the acount of Nathanael under the fig tree seems more like an application than a valid interpretation. There is no reason to think that Nathanael understood Jesus as saying, "BEFORE (foreknowledge) Philip called thee (for whom he did foreknow, them did he also did predestine and call) I SAW THEE (foreknowledge)." And to come to such a conclusion seem to be eisegesis rather than exegesis.

 

I agree.

Yes, I completely agree. :thumbsup: You are talking my language now ;-) 'possibility'.

I do understand and understood as such prior to your post. What I would propose is that God knew, before Adam was created, that the very scenario that actually occurred in which Adam ate the fruit was a possibility, along with a myriad of other possibilities. God also knew the probability of this very scenario in which Adam found himself as well as all of the probabilities of all possible scenarios. What that means is that this particular scenario did not have to come to pass because God did not know it as a certainty with zero chance of something else happening. The simple foreknowledge view would render the chance of some other scenario actually occurring to zero. In fact, the simple foreknowledge view would render any event to occur otherwise completely impossible. (Now that is a Catch 22 if there ever was one.) This is why, to me, simple foreknowledge coupled with the idea of free will is illogical.

I agree. Benjamin asks a similar question so I will address it in my reply to him. As I understand his views Benjamin does not believe in simple foreknowledge so it seems his take on an explanation may differ from both of ours in some aspects. I appreciate your input.

 

You are correct, and so the impact of my comment is somewhat muted, I agree. See below for more...

See below...

I agree God can and does everything he has determined to do. (I like your tip of the hat to Descartes!) I agree also that the truth of 'His Words' and 'His Nature' is completely independent of our ability or inability to explain such.

Now to address this:

Benjamin, Winman, I agree that the idea of free will requires the possibility of sin. I also would be willing to concede for sake of argument that since He intended for the earth to be populated with many humans that He, at least from a macro perspective, knew with a certainty that eventually sin would occur. Looking at this from the very first recorded scenario of an encounter with the potential of choosing sin I don't believe that the specific choice actually made was inevitable. Neither Adam nor Eve had to sin. It was a choice. I think the important thing to consider is that it was not a rational choice. Considering all that God had done for them there was no rational reason for them to choose to disobey. The choice of sin is irrational. God foreknew Adam's choice as a possibility. God knew a plethora of other possibilities as well but as time proceeded the amount of possibilities decreased until finally there was only two possibilities to choose from (to eat the fruit or not). As the possibilities decreased the probabilities for those remaining increased. Still, when there were only two possibilities available, I believe that the choice Adam made was not probable, since it was not rational.

I see God's foreknowledge, at least in the case above, to be like the way that we can 'accurately predict the general behavior of a group of quantum particles' but not the exact behavior of any individual particle. I don't think that we can know the probabilities of all behaviors of individual quantum but I think God can and does. I propose that God 'knows' the free actions of His free creatures much the same way and this is the way that God determined the world to be. So, this world is one in which God chose to play by the rules of the game, so to speak. He chose to endow creatures with free will.

So, simple foreknowledge requires that, before creating Adam, God knew as a certainty, in an exhaustive manner, without the possibility of Adam behaving differently, that His first creation would sin at the first chance and that happening only in the meticulously exact way that it actually happened. This seems absolutely inescapable for the Simple Foreknowledge view. My view describes that God indeed foreknew of the act that finally transpired but foreknew it only as an improbable event and also that it was just one many various scenarios with varying probabilities. Regardless, both views support the idea that God was prepared for the choice Adam would make.

To me, while still upholding the integrity of scripture my view does seem to make a difference in how we could answer an antagonist who proposed that God is 'culpable' for sin compared to the Simple Foreknowledge view.

As an advance into the subject I would mention the following but would prefer to discuss more thoroughly in a separate thread: I would say that we can choose to solidify our character such that the Holy Spirit will not provide us alternatives any longer. I would say that we can solidify our character (for the bad or the good) such that even percieved options are not really available to us due to our own stubbornness and pride or commitment and devotion. I think this factors into the notion of God's foreknowledge and can explain events related to Pharaoh, Judas, Peter's denial and even Abraham on Mount Moriah.

 

You don't have to agree, but I believe this passage shows Jesus knew Nathanael's heart before his brother called him. When Nathanael approached, Jesus called him an "Israelite indeed". See Rom 2:28-29.

Rom 2:28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

A true Jew is one who is one inwardly, one who has faith. His praise is from God. Note how Jesus complimented and praised Nathanael.

Note how Nathanael was surprised and asked Jesus "Whence KNOWEST thou me?". Nathanael was under the impression that somehow Jesus knew him beforehand, though he could not recall ever meeting Jesus.

Jesus then answered that BEFORE Nathanael was CALLED, he SAW Nathanael and this is how he KNEW him. This is exactly what Rom 8:29-30 says.

This is the very foreknowledge the scriptures describe, Jesus knew Nathanael's heart and faith before they ever met.

After hearing this, then Nathanael actually believed on Jesus.

You may not see foreknowledge here, but I clearly do. Examine the terms used and how they fit scripture concerning God foreknowing a person and calling them in Romans 8.


Believe what you wish.