PREDESTINATION AND FOREKNOWLEDGE What are they?

Predestination that God decides [some] things in advance Strictly speaking Predestination is usually applied to Gods decisions concerning people. Providence refers to Gods decisions and control over events Foreknowledge that God knows [some] things in advance So when we think about predestination and foreknowledge we are thinking about God, about what God does and what God knows. But predestination and foreknowledge refer (in part, at least) to Gods acting in and knowing about this world. So in thinking about predestination and foreknowledge we are thinking about what God does and knows in relation to us. For many Christians it is this second aspect that touches them. It is in Scripture that they read about God working in history to save people, about God speaking about the future and deciding what will happen. Gods decisions and His knowledge impact on our salvation. There are practical implications, not only for understanding how God works in our lives, but for how we understand our relationship with God. But Scripture does not tell us everything we want or need to know. Does God know what we are going to do in the future? Do we have free will or not? Looking for answers to these questions leads us back to thinking about God. Do the answers make sense? What is God like? How does God relate to the world? What about Gods character? Now, it may be that the questions of how predestination and foreknowledge relate to our lives are more urgent and more practical, but we cannot answer them without thinking about God Himself. WHATS THE PROBLEM? What is God like? The problem is, again, that God is, by definition, not within our grasp. He is not like us and we cannot fully know or understand Him. The Bible tells us enough for us to have a relationship with God, but it does not explain everything about Him. We have to build on what we do know to give us clues about what we dont yet know. A positive example might be our understanding of who God is. Islam sees Allah as personal, but utterly singular. Christians, in contrast, believe in one God but believe God exists as three persons, as a Trinity. The Church came to this belief because of the incarnation of Jesus and the witness of Scripture. The Bible does not use the word Trinity or give a technical definition. But the Church has thought long and hard about the implications of what the Bible says and the doctrine of the Trinity is the best answer that expands on the Bible but fits with what the Bible says. Although some Christians are suspicious of anything that goes beyond the Bible and some are suspicious of the Trinity as a result, the reality is we all have to live in a world very different from the world of the Bible. We all have to find ways to apply the Bible to our situation. Just as we can see the doctrine of the Trinity beginning to emerge in the New Testament, so too, we can see the Churchs debate about Predestination and Foreknowledge begins in the pages of the New Testament. Indeed, the New Testament is dealing with questions that began in the Hebrew Scriptures and the story of Israel:- Why did God choose Israel? How does Israels sin affect Gods plan? Is God faithful? These are the questions that arise in the Hebrew Scriptures and which Paul addresses in Romans 9-11, for example. By the way, this must be kept in mind when we read verses that speak of predestination in terms of personal, individual, salvation. Although the doctrine of the Trinity is in accordance with Scripture there is a sense in which it is,

nevertheless, something wholly new. It troubles the Jews and is deeply offensive to Muslims because it suggests God is no longer One. In contrast, thinking about what God is like and how God relates to the world is something which did not begin with the Church. Nor were these questions limited to Israel. Thinking about these questions is part and parcel of what it means to believe in a God or gods. So when the Church began to think about these things in the light of Christ it did so in a world which already had its own ideas about God. The Church is in the world not only to think about God but to speak about Him to others. The fact that people already had their own vision of God, their own ideas, presented an opportunity and a challenge. An opportunity: because there is some common basis from which to begin. Explaining what God has done or what God is like is potentially easier than having to begin by explaining what a god is. If a blind person asked what colour is the wind? what would you say? Or imagine describing a rainbow to a blind person. A challenge: because the person thinks they already know what God is like, their ideas will influence how they hear and understand what you say. Islam is, again, a good example. Muslims find Son of God language offensive but because they think it means God had sex with Mary to produce a Son. This makes it almost impossible to talk about Jesus as Son or God as Trinity. Because we live 2000 years later, we no longer recognise that the Gospel presented just this sort of offence to non-Christians. Jews, Romans and Greeks found the idea of a crucified God shocking and offensive. Jews, because death on a cross represents a curse; Romans, because crucifixion was an obscenity, designed to humiliate the victim; and Greeks, because the idea of God acting in history was unbelievable. For centuries, Greek philosophers had studied Maths, Geometry and Logic. These studies showed them perfection, whereas the world around was full of imperfection. They decided that the gods were not real, because they behaved in ways which were unworthy of gods. Which God anyway? Plato argued that the true God would be absolutely perfect. He would be beyond decay and change. He would be totally happy and would be totally apathetic, that is totally without emotions, and totally unconcerned with the world or with humans. To the Greek mind, emotions were violent and unstable, the very opposite of perfection. As a result, Plato argued that this world was not created by God, but by a lesser god called the demiurge. This lesser god was imperfect and created a world of imperfection and evil. All earthly reality is an inferior copy of perfect reality in the mind of the True God. Now, can you see the problem that faced the Church? On the one hand, this God is very similar to the God of the Bible. This God is omniscient, all-knowing, and omnipotent, all powerful. This God is not limited in time or space, infinite and eternal. It is easy to see how this fits with the Biblical description. On the other hand, the Biblical God is the creator of the world and there is evil and imperfection in the world. Some people, inside and outside the Church, said that the Old Testament God who made the world was actually the demiurge, while the God who sent Jesus was the higher, true, God. Understandably, the Church did not want to accept that! It would mean that there were two gods in the Bible and that matter itself was evil. So, the Church began to argue that the Creator of the Bible was actually the perfect God. This meant that they had to show how the God of the Bible can be identical with a God who is utterly unchanging and utterly beyond human emotions. The problem was to show how such a God could relate to this world at all. This God is also all-powerful and all-knowing. This meant that the ideas of predestination and foreknowledge became increasingly important. We dont have time to go through Church History, but what I want to do is just to outline some of the ways in which the Church understood Gods relationship to the world and how that relates to Gods knowledge of and control of reality. This can get quite technical, but I will try to keep it as simple as possible.

The Classical or Eternalist View A perfect God cannot experience Change. He exists eternally and experiences all of His life at once knowing life in bits, as we do, is imperfect because we only know the present and have memories of a fading past. God knows everything that can be known and knows it all together. God is all powerful and does whatever He wills. He controls everything eternally. He relates to our world from beyond time. He knows and controls everything at the same moment. Although God cannot do evil He willingly permits evil to exist. Therefore: Predestination means that God eternally wills everything that happens. God wills to save some by His Grace, since others are lost because of their sins, it must be that God does not choose to save them.. Foreknowledge is really Gods knowledge of all that He wills, of all that exists. Since God is outside time, there is really no Pre-destination, no Fore-knowledge. God decides eternally what will happen in time. We experience a succession of events at different times, we know time as past, present and future, but each event that occurs is willed by God eternally. God does nothing in direct response to events. God wills eternally that certain things will happen within our spacetime. We experience God as responding to us, we also experience God as changing His mind. In reality, God does not change, but He wills that we have different experiences of Him. Scripture describes God as if He changes, but that is for our benefit. This view, or something like it, was the mainstream view for much of Church History. It was initially developed by Augustine, but linked with John Calvin and his followers. The Instant Symphony It presents a very detached and almost static view of God. All of Gods knowing is simultaneous with all of His willing. In a sense God knows everything all at once and decides everything at once. Some see this happening before creation, so that God creates the world and everything follows on, like a watchmaker winding a clock or a snooker player potting all the balls from the break. Others argue, that God cannot do anything before creation as God does not exist in time. So God creates the world from eternity. The world did not really begin, but it only exists because of God. If God takes His power away the creation disappears like a computer program disappears when the power is switched off. There are problems with the classic view. Every moment is present for God, but not for us. Imagine trying to understand music when you hear every note at the same instant. If God knows everything His knowledge is totally different to ours. But if God is totally different then how can we say that God knows what we know? At this point, there are some extremely technical discussions about whether or not God can understand time from our point of view or not. As I dont understand them fully, I wont try to explain them. More practically, there is the problem of how God relates to us personally. The Bible says that God responds, that God hears and that God even changes His mind. The verses that say this vastly outnumber the verses that speak about predestination or foreknowledge or Gods control over all things. Those who hold the classic view argue that this language is picture language. God speaks like this so we can understand Him. So God says He has changed His mind, but He hasnt really. Psalm 90 speaks of God having wings, but nobody thinks God is a Chicken! Now, most Christians recognise that some language is poetic and not literal. But even poetic language is meant to tell us something. God doesnt have wings, but He does care for us as a mother bird cares for her young. In the same way, if God tells us He is angry

or He is sad, or He has changed His mind, He must intend for us to learn something. We know that God is not a temperamental person who has moods, but if God says He changes His mind and we say God does not change His mind we arent explaining the language but simply contradicting it. The classic view wants to say both that God has to use this language for us to understand Him, but if we take it seriously we actually misunderstand God and that we can understand that God is eternal and does not change. It seems contradictory to say God speaks to us in simple language because we cannot understand His reality and then to say, but actually Gods reality is like this. The reply is that God appears to be different at different times so He can teach us and test us. God told King Hezekiah he would die. Then Hezekiah prays and God tells Him he will live for another 15 years. God appears to change His mind. But God really wants Hezekiah to pray to Him, He wills that the King will live if he prays. Hezekiah does not have to believe that God does change, only that this is part of a bigger picture God may be testing Him and so it is worth praying. The earlier announcement of imminent death was the means of ensuring that Hezekiah would pray. But, if Gods purpose is fixed, there is not really any if, God knows what Hezekiah will do. To Hezekiah, the whole thing is terrifying, but to God the warning and the prayer are simply the moves God uses to do what He planned in any case. We can also imagine that the belief that God does not change could kick in when Isaiah announces the Kings imminent death. God has said it, there is no point in praying, since God does not change His mind. Of course, if we believe that Hezekiah has free will then it is possible that God gives the King a genuine warning, but in the hope that he will turn to God. If he does, God will heal him, if not the warning stands. The warning and the prayer are meant to teach Hezekiah, but Hezekiahs freedom is real and the suffering is arises because of the real possibility of death. One final problem with the Classic or Eternal view is the fact that there can be no change. As a result, the universe does not really have a beginning. This seems to contradict Scripture. But even more odd is the argument that since God cannot change, the Son of God must always be incarnate in Jesus. That is, the incarnation is a fact of eternity, not in the sense that Jesus has returned to heaven as an incarnate human, but in the sense that He is always incarnate. This seems to contradict the Scripture that says the Messiah was conceived and born at a certain time. For Mary there was a time before the incarnation. The Bible certainly makes it clear that the Word was with the Father in the beginning and throughout all preceding history. So, how can Jesus have His human nature before it is conceived? It leads to the idea that Jesus was fully incarnate the moment before His own conception. For Jesus to be incarnate always His body would have to exist for all eternity and would have to be beyond all change. Now if God knows everything He knows all at the same time, it is theoretically possible to say that the Son of God knows eternally everything about His incarnation. But the Bible seems to speak of the incarnation as a process. Philippians 2:5-11 speaks of Jesus becoming a human and then dying and rising and returning to God. This cannot be speaking in picture language about the human Jesus only, since it speaks of Him being in very nature God in verse 6. ANOTHER LOOK Is God really like that? The classic view dominated Christian thinking for about a 1000 years. It was a major influence on many of the Reformers, such as John Calvin and Martin Luther. However, it was not universally held. Many objected to it on the grounds that Gods choice seemed to be arbitrary and had little or nothing to do with

faith or the Cross of Jesus. As a result a number of views arose in opposition. They agreed with the classic view of God, that He is all powerful and all knowing, but they disagreed about the relationship between Gods will and His knowledge. In the classic view God knows everything because He wills everything. He knows what He has decided. Instead, it was argued God acts because He knows what will happen. There are two basic models. Simple Foreknowledge God knows everything that will happen. God does not cause everything. Thus, people are really free. God is all powerful and acts in accordance with His perfect Knowledge. Therefore foreknowledge is real knowledge of the future. Predestination means that He knows who will believe and wills to save them. The second model is more complicated. Middle knowledge God knows all that could happen, in every possible world, before He decides to create. God knows all that would happen, in any possible world. That is, God knows what I would do if I were not disabled, what Tevye would do if he was a rich man. God chooses the world that will fulfil His plans. God knows everything that will happen, in the world that He decides to make. Gods foreknowledge is real knowledge of the future. Predestination is God choosing the world and circumstances that will lead people to act as He wishes. Since God knows what you will do in every situation He simply puts you into the situation that will lead you to choose to obey Him. We dont have time to look at these in detail. The simple foreknowledge model seems to say that reality is not simply created by God. It has an independent existence. God sees what exists and what will really happen. So people are not predestined by Gods choice. God sees what they freely choose and chooses to save them. But the question is: is God really free? How much choice does God have in creating the world, since He sees and acts on what will happen? It as if God sees His whole life mapped out and simply has to follow it. God is not really free to choose differently. God knows the actual future and cannot change it. Also, if the future is fixed, are we really free. God sees what we will do, not what we might do. The middle knowledge view seems to open things up. But this is only on the surface. God has the freedom to choose any possible world that will fulfil His intentions, but He also knows everything that could happen in every possible world and everything that will happen in the real world. This means that the future of the created world is fixed for God. And so, it is fixed for us. If people really are free, then knowing what they would do in all circumstances is not identical with what they will do. God is entirely consistent, we are not. Secondly, it suggests that God knows who would reject Him and yet He chooses to create them. Why not make a world where people only choose for God? In order to understand the next view there are some things we need to know. Some people try to challenge faith in God by saying things like Can God make a Rock so heavy He cant lift it? Or An all powerful being should be able to create another being more powerful still, but that would be a paradox, therefore an all powerful being cannot exist. The problem with these criticisms, is that they

are difficult to answer because they actually are nonsense. God can do anything that is possible to do, He can part the Sea, heal the sick and raise the dead, but God cannot do something that makes no sense. God cannot make a four-sided triangle or make 2+2=5. These are logically impossible. It is part of the definition of a triangle that it can only have 3 sides. 2+2 is another way of saying 4. If God could create another being greater than Himself He would literally contradict Himself, He would deny His own definition. Being all powerful is part of who God is. That does not mean that God cannot choose to limit His power, e.g.; in order to relate to us. In the same way, God can know all there is to know, but God cannot know something that is logically impossible to know. The Open View God is all powerful and can do whatever He wills. But God limits His power in order that we might have a real relationship with Him. God knows everything that can be known. God knows what is real, the past and the present. He can anticipate the future, but cannot fully know what does not yet exist. God is all-wise, that is God is Intelligent, He can think and plan. Gods foreknowledge is based on knowing what He intends to do and knowing how to do it in the light of His perfect knowledge of reality. Predestination is Gods ability to carry out His plan in any circumstances. Since the future is open, we are truly free, God is also free to act in the world. He is truly responsive and wants a real relationship with us. This view appears to take seriously everything that the Bible says about God relating to human beings. It says that we can take the language of the Bible seriously when it describes God loving and feeling sorrow and anger. God is not a human being and so is not exactly like us. But the message of these stories is true, God really does love us and really does respond. God may be using baby language, but He means what He says. However, this view has been severely criticised. It is a relatively modern idea, at least in terms of formal philosophy and theology. Although, in reality, I suspect it comes closest to the beliefs of most ordinary Christians throughout history. Because it says that we are truly free and the future is open and unknown it becomes difficult to understand how God can say anything about the future. When we read Biblical prophecies we find that they are not general predictions about the future, God is not fortune telling. They tell us what God is going to do. However, they do not just describe Gods actions, but they describe people and events in detail. Now, most prophecies do not have precise dates, so perhaps, God is not being as specific as we might think. God will do this or that when He finds the right people and when the time is right. But, is that enough? God sometimes speaks of specific events and people and places in great detail. Often these are conditional, that is, if you do this, this will happen, but sometimes they seem to state what will happen to someone. To take a positive example, Zechariah prophesies about his son, John the Baptist, but how could God be sure that the baby John would grow up to be the forerunner for Jesus? Perhaps Zechariah and Elizabeth were the last on a long list, perhaps Mary was the 57th woman that Gabriel was sent to, but it does not seem likely.

PREDESTINATION AND FOREKNOWLEDGE What difference does it make? By now some of you may be wondering why you bothered to come. Perhaps you were predestined to be here! In this second part I want to focus on what Predestination means for the Christian. I am focusing on that rather than foreknowledge because it can cause the most problems. Many Christians want to believe that they are free and that God is genuinely relating to them and yet they find comfort in the idea that God knows everything that happens and is in control of their circumstances. However, the idea that God has decided from all eternity whom He is going to save has caused great distress to many. Of course, if you believe you are one of the elect, one of the chosen, it may be of great comfort. But the thought that you might be one of those already rejected by God is deeply distressing. I want to attempt to look at some Bible verses to see what they have to tell us. As we have said, the Bible does not give us all the information we need to argue for one model or another, if it did we would all agree. But the basic practical issue boils down to whether God has limited the number of those who will be saved or not. Does Paul really mean it when he says God wants all people to be saved[1 Timothy 2:4] Or Peter when he said God is patientnot wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.? [2 Peter 3:9] These verses pose a challenge to the classic view that God has limited the elect. Counter arguments are: God wants to save all the people He has actually chosen, not all people everywhere. So all does not mean all. Yet, when Paul says according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his will [Ephesians 1:11] the eternalist insists that all means absolutely all. They explain 2 Peter by saying that while God does not want anyone to Perish and wishes everyone would repent He actually wills that only those He has chosen will be saved. For the open view there is no problem here. Ephesians means that God works to a purpose and everything that God does is for that purpose. It does not mean that every thing is controlled by God. Equally, if people are really free, then God knows that they are free to reject Him as well as to accept Him. God really wants people to be saved and really does not want anyone to perish. But, Salvation is not just about forgiving sins. It is about setting people free and God will not force people to be free. Up to now, we have been letting the classic view control the argument. For Augustine and Calvin Gods Foreknowledge and Predestination are about how God saves and who gets saved. But there is another way of looking at the issue. Perhaps, predestination is not about who gets saved at all. Read Ephesians 1: 3-6. When we hear this we think of God choosing who is going to become His child, who is going to be saved. But that is not what it says. We are chosen, in Christ, Christ is the Chosen One, the Messiah, and Gods choice of Jesus is nothing to do with Jesus going to heaven or hell. God has chosen us, in Christ, to share in His chosenness, to share in His inheritance. This idea would make perfect sense to a Roman or Greek. In Roman culture adoption was a ritual whereby the child was legally acknowledged by his father. It was a coming of age, a time when the child became an adult and could enter into his inheritance even though his father was still alive. Paul even uses the same language to speak of our resurrection as the adoption of our bodies. That is, the time when our bodies become fully what they were intended to be. If you skip on to verses 13-14 you see Paul speaking about this inheritance. This fits in with the idea that we are not merely to be saved, but to grow into Christlikeness. If we re-read 11-13 we see Paul is not speaking generally, but of a we and a you. The Ephesians believed because of Paul. Paul was chosen not just to be blessed but for the sake of others. We find the roots of this understanding of predestination deep in the Hebrew Scripture. In Genesis 12 23

see Gods call of Abraham:

2 I

will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. a

3I

will bless those who bless you, and all peoples on earth

and whoever curses you I will curse; will be blessed through you. And in Exodus 19 we read: Although the whole earth is mine,
6youc will

be for me

a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God chose Abraham to bless him, but the ultimate goal is that all peoples will be blessed through Abraham, that is, because of Jesus Christ. We find the same thought in Exodus 19. Priests act as gobetweens, as mediators between God and people. If the whole nation is a kingdom of priests they must act as mediators between God and some other people. They are there to be a witness to the rest of the world. This principle runs through Scripture. God chooses people for a purpose within His purpose. God chose Moses to bring the people out of Egypt. Poor Moses did not even get into the Promised Land. Jesus chose the 12 to be His Apostles, sent to spread the message, just as He was sent by the Father. The classic debates were all about what God did at the beginning of creation, His secret decisions and His choice of those who would be saved. But the focus in Scripture is on what God is working towards, what God has in mind for us in the end. This makes sense. When you read a letter you know you will not understand it if you only read the first line, you need to see where it is going. God has chosen to let us be part of His plan which is to bring us to be like Jesus Christ who will reconcile all things to God, through His blood shed on the Cross.