God’s foreknowledge is contingent on our free will choices. I…

44 comments

1. Charlie Wagner says:

   March 26, 2020 at 6:48 am

   What does scripture say?

   Reply
2. Greg Barolet says:

   March 26, 2020 at 7:24 am

   Bad start Arthur.. God’s knowledge is not contingent. Foreordination is first. That’s why He knows before. Because He made it decided.

   Reply
3. Michael-Jona Anastasiou says:

   March 26, 2020 at 7:32 am

   Its Molinism. In short a papist false teaching that looses sight of the fact that no unforseen merit would jusify us nor give cause for His election to redeem us.

   Reply
4. Jordan Bourke says:

   March 26, 2020 at 7:49 am

   God is sovereign whether you like it or not. Don’t be foolish and make an idol.

   The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
   Proverbs 1:7 ESV

   At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my Lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
   Daniel 4:34‭-‬37 ESV

   Reply
5. Caleb Keaton says:

   March 26, 2020 at 8:53 am

   Arthur, this argument is not rooted in scripture. This way of thinking would be in line with the idea that God has left us.

   Reply
6. John Marquis says:

   March 26, 2020 at 9:12 am

   Many dont know the difference between foreknowledge and predestination!

   Reply
7. Daniel Marvin says:

   March 26, 2020 at 9:19 am

   Creation is time bound, the Creator is not. “fore knowledge” and other references to God relative to our experience of time are accommodations of our limitations, not actual limitations on the Creator.

   Reply
8. Billy Detzel says:

   March 26, 2020 at 9:49 am

   That’s Open Theism and it’s heresy.

   Reply
9. Missy Pasquinelli Hinze says:

   March 26, 2020 at 9:51 am

   No

   Reply
10. Robert Pearce says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:07 am

    I’d say if you’re going to post an opinion, you should include the scripture to back it up instead of trying to be “edgy” and see what others think of it. That is as far as I’ll participate without having your position substantiated with scripture.

    Reply
11. Robbey Keith Whitley says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:58 am

    So Gods foreknowledge is dependent on our choices? Got it!! You don’t accept Gods sovereignty because it interferes with your own.

    Reply
12. Matt Kramm says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:59 am

    Reply
13. James Steve Mazuran says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:16 am

    Arthur, how does anything we do influence God’s foreknowledge? That would suggest we can change His knowledge according to our actions? Weird

    Reply
14. James Steve Mazuran says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:19 am

    The no freewill idea, also takes away any possible accident. And I do believe in horrible accidents. Or else all evil is now attributted to Gods hand also..

    Reply
15. James Steve Mazuran says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:19 am

    Rather than a happenstance of sin.

    Reply
16. Jesse Johnson says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:30 am

    Should be interesting

    Reply
17. Frankie Casa de Lobos says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:38 am

    It never has anything to do with us . All Grace . I’m glam I have nothing to do with my salvation, I’d just mess it up .

    Reply
18. Ruth Gibbs says:

    March 26, 2020 at 1:41 pm

    Not even sure what the question or your answers mean – I think you are saying – Arthur that God can be taken by surprise by our decisions and He has a future mapped out that responds to unexpected events …despite God being all knowing – Genesis 6:6, 13 & 8:21 gave me pause for thought also 2chronicles 16:9 is a feast for me – but it seems we can change the story?

    Reply
19. Patrick Boren says:

    March 26, 2020 at 2:39 pm

    Well if you already knew who was going to win the Kentucky Derby, wouldn’t you put your money on the winner? It is not like God doesn’t want everyone to win, He does, but even though He already knows He still tries everything short of forcing a person to believe.

    Reply
20. Paul Gray says:

    March 26, 2020 at 3:11 pm

    Free will is contingent on Gods will . He will have his way , our free will has its limits.

    Reply
21. Arthur Adam Haglund says:

    March 26, 2020 at 3:29 pm

    I am loving the thought-free and thought-less comments. It shows that not one of you even took time to contemplate the meaning of the post, nor how it could be correct. Not a single thought other than condemn something you did not consider.

    VERY NICE!

    Reply
22. Arthur Adam Haglund says:

    March 26, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    Now, please stop being sectarians for a moment and consider what a Christian wishes to relate for your consideration.

    1. I am NOT talking about God learning anything.
    2. I am not talking about Open Theism. I disagree with that doctrine because it holds the Calvinistic concept that God absolutely controls all that he knows.

    Here is the presentation:

    Yesterday, I did not kill anyone. This is a fact; it did not happen.
    Before God created anything, he knew the future exhaustively.

    Everybody following, so far?

    God’s exhaustive knowledge included the knowledge that I would not kill anyone, yesterday.

    God DID NOT KNOW that I WOULD kill anyone yesterday.
    God did not know that I DID kill anyone, yesterday.

    God was prohibited knowing either of those things by the fact that I did not do it. I COULD HAVE, but we are not talking about would’ve, could’ve or should’ve.

    God’s foreknowledge is limited to what will be.

    Some conclude that this necessarily means that God MUST have ordained, or caused or predetermined what I did yesterday.

    That is but one possibility. This line of reasoning limits God to only knowing what he himself causes. It does, indeed, agree with open theism that if he did not cause it, ordain it, predetermine it, he cannot know it.

    MY God is greater than that limited God. MY God knows all things exhaustively. Unlearning and not causing.

    But what is true is that he cannot know what will not happen as knowing it will happen. his foreknowledge is limited to what will occur.

    The idea that God must ordain, determine or cause is because humans think that they need to try to understand HOW this infinite and infinitely greater being does things. that we can know the mechanism of how God functions.

    HOW does God know the future without causing it in some way?

    I do not know. Just as I can not know how Ex Nihilo creation occurred. It makes no sense, but neither does eternal and eternally inert atomic mass existing and then exploding to create the universe.

    I am not charged with knowing, no one can actually know, thus no one could know if he is right or if another is right. Is it arrogant and prideful conjecture at best.

    So, Since God IS limited to knowing what is real, for falsehoods are not knowledge, and are unreal, AND we are free creatures, made in his image, (The list of consequences of the fall are listed and no mention of the loss of freedom exists. We are the servants to what we yield ourselves, this is voluntary) and as such are free in our ability to will and choose within our power.

    And God is limited in knowing only what we will choose. Thus he remains not contingent, but his knowledge is contingent.

    And, yes our freedom is contingent upon God’s having made us free.

    Reply
23. Wade Crowdis says:

    March 26, 2020 at 5:52 pm

    God Almighty and His
    Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus
    Is Omnipresent and
    His knowledge
    HAS NO BOUNDS,
    Please stop being
    Heretics!!!

    Reply
24. Randy Adcock says:

    March 26, 2020 at 6:31 pm

    There are so many fallacies in this line of thinking, I don’t know where to start. I’ll go to the beginning. Literally, let’s look at Genesis. You say that God “knows but does not cause.” You speak of ex-nihilo creation as if it simply occurred, with no Creator. God “created” the universe ex-nihilo. I’m sure you agree.

    With that said, God is the First Cause. He has caused all things. Without God as cause there can be no affect at all. There can be only nothing. Even “nothing” would not exist. To say that God knows but does not cause, is heresy, plain and simple.

    God causes throughout the pages of my Bible. I don’t know what you are reading, but it cannot be God’s Word.

    As to your idea of God’s foreknowledge being limited to only what must occur. This is the same sad argument that Arminians unwittingly are fooled by. “God looked down the corridors of time, saw what was going to happen and called the end from the beginning.” As if God is some sort of psychic or seer.

    Well, it is here that I use your same objection to Calvinism, when you ask why God created evil. Well? If God knew all things before He created anything, why did He not He create it in a way where nobody goes to hell and nobody suffers and no little children are raped and tortured? God’s ways higher than our ways? Yeah. Why couldn’t God have kept the serpent out of the Garden? Why couldn’t God have put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on top of an unclimbable mountain? Free Will? That’s a copout. God knew, remember?

    I have an answer. God knows what He is doing. There is nothing outside of His control. God is sovereign over His creation and will do what He wills among the inhabitants of man. Everything is happening exactly the way He ordained it. He is not disappointed or worried. He is way ahead of the game and has a purpose for everything under the sun.

    Reply
25. James Rollins says:

    March 26, 2020 at 7:28 pm

    Peter preaching on Pentecost: “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Acts 2:23. The WORST event in human history determined by the plan of God. That’s Scripture. Here is some logic: If God was mainly concerned about bringing His plan of salvation to man, then ALL things up to that point were predetermined to bring that about (if all things are interconnected in human history, which they ARE a priori). So, when Jesus prays in John 17:11 “..keep them in your name, which you have given me (the elect), that they may be one, even as we are one.” I logically conclude that the REST of history of Jesus is primarily based on God gathering and preserving His elect just as He brought about the Savior. My point is this: God is sovereign over all history b/c #1 all of Scripture acknowledges this and #2 b/c it follows necessarily from these verses. If God can use the worst evil of the death of Christ as the MAJOR plan in history of the Holy Divinity, then we don’t have to be afraid of God being sovereign over evil but not morally responsible. Like you said, its true but I don’t understand it. As far as free will, Scriptures knows of 2 instances: Adam and Christ. Being sold in sin precludes the ability to choose oneself out of sin..thus the langue “sold in sin”, “slaves of sin”. Free will after the fall is an imagination dispelled by a submissive reading of Scripture. God predetermining all things is easy for God because he knew what the 1st “free agent” would do, He knew what the rest of “robots to sin” would do, and He knew how to reprogram those robots by the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit. I don’t see the problem with God’s ABSOLUTE sovereignty?

    Reply
26. Daniel Marvin says:

    March 26, 2020 at 7:58 pm

    I see no conflict between God’s absolute omniscience including the moral agency of mankind (free will if you like). Even the results of a truly random number generator are already known to God. Not because he predestined the results, but because all of time is an open book to the Creator of time… He is not bound by time as we are…

    Reply
27. Randy Steinke says:

    March 26, 2020 at 9:24 pm

    I think I agree maybe….
    Great rant though!
    I expect nothing less from you

    Reply
28. John Eksted says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:01 pm

    God’s foreknowledge is contingent on nothing. his foreknowledge is not the same as Him knowing the end from the beginning. It says “whom he foreknew He predestined” In the sense the author is talking about he foreknows everyone. That would mean no one is lost all are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. all would be called, all would be justified and all would be glorified! That is plainly not what the scriptures teach. His has foreknowledge of what every single person is going to do. So, everyone is going to be saved? Nooo!!

    Reply
29. Bonnie Jean Gage says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:09 pm

    So, let me ask, because I’m rusty, but does this have to do with the three different types of knowledge that are described as “natural knowledge” (i.e. all necessary knowledge–the laws of logic, mathematics, etc.), “middle knowledge” (i.e. what every possible creature would do in all possible circumstances), “free knowledge” (i.e refers to the actual world that God freely chose to create)? William Lane Craig discusses this in his book, “The Only Wise God” I believe. So, in other words, there are three different kinds of knowledge which God has: 1) knowledge of necessary truths that exist in the mind of God (i.e. the laws of logic), 2) knowledge of possible truths which could have been true IF God had chosen to make them true (I could have been born to a missionary family, a non-christian family, or some other kind of family: God knew all the possibilities that would have been true had he chosen them to be true for my life), 3) knowledge of truths that correspond to the actual world that God chose to create. Craig says it SO much better than I could, but I think the idea is that God’s knowledge is perfect and all encompassing.

    My question is then, are you saying that God’s knowledge depends on our free will? As in, if we chose differently then God would have to know something different than what he does? Or, on the contrary, are you saying that God chose the world that he did KNOWING that we would make certain free choices in this actual world, and this is the world that accomplishes his perfect will, therefore he chose this world with that perfect knowledge in mind?

    If we believe that God is outside of time, then why could he not know all of the above also outside of time? Just because WE must experience something happening before we can experience knowledge of it does not mean God must do the same (e.g. I won’t know that I am going to drop my glass of water in ten minutes, but God does), right? God is bigger than us. For instance, just because a virgin birth is impossible for us mere humans, does not mean there is anything logically impossible about it from God’s perspective.

    Anyway, I’ve read a lot on Molinism (though it’s been a while) and I thought it was a really great way to reconcile both God’s sovereignty and our free will, without sacrificing one for the other. I know human freedom is not the main discussion here. That being said, I do think free will is important to this discussion as well, since the absence of it leads us to determinism, which takes away the grounding for moral accountability, which would seem to make God the author of sin, which is problematic to say the least….

    Well this is a lot to think about! Thanks for the food for thought guys! I know I’m going to be mulling this over for the rest of the night! It’s a bit like a mental tongue twister I think, lol.

    Reply
30. James A. Henson says:

    March 26, 2020 at 10:40 pm

    Arthur, for my benefit, what are you attempting to prove?

    Reply
31. Ke-zia D. Callanta says:

    March 26, 2020 at 11:21 pm

    Post suggests man can somehow restrict God. That somehow, we can influence Him. That makes man higher than God then. I think not. His ways are not ours, His thoughts not ours. If we were to understand his ways now, as meager men as we are, we’d probably die or go nuts. Even Isaiah fell just by seeing Him!

    Reply
32. Tiffany L. Jessup says:

    March 27, 2020 at 12:24 am

    Just…. no

    Reply
33. Toni Armstrong says:

    March 27, 2020 at 2:07 am

    God knows who will accept him and who won’t. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t call the person who will ultimately reject him because his judgement is in righteousness. He can’t say to someone at judgement day be gone I never knew you if that person hadn’t received the same information given to a person who accept him and is saved. Same as he doesn’t tell us the day or the hour of his return because he wants us at all times to be ready and not just willing to turn to him one second before his return. He has given us everything we need that pertains to life eteral. He gives us all the chance to obey and it’s our choice whether we do or not.

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34. Aaron Paul Carruth says:

    March 27, 2020 at 6:25 am

    I love opinions! Lol

    Reply
35. John Maya Sr. says:

    March 27, 2020 at 7:25 am

    All of creation, the stars, galaxies and the sun must say “yes”. We are the only creation that can say “no”. We are the “wild card.” God’s will will be accomplished even using one wild card. All things are preordained and work out according to His purpose….. which includes one wild card. Us. He’s in control of everything including taking into account our freewill moral choices. Ie, God has preordained and is in control of everything including allowing us moral freewill within His perfect plan.

    Reply
36. Mong Santiago says:

    March 27, 2020 at 8:39 am

    Arthur Adam Haglund I would say it’s a great idea, though it would be best if you start with the Scripture to back it up. Check this passage out:

    Now David knew that Saul was plotting evil against him; so he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod here.” Then David said, “O Lord God of Israel, Your servant has heard for certain that Saul is seeking to come to Keilah to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down just as Your servant has heard? O Lord God of Israel, I pray, tell Your servant.” And the Lord said, “He will come down.” Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When it was told Saul that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the pursuit.
    1 Samuel 23:9‭-‬13 NASB

    This passage tells us that not only that God knows what “can” and “will” happen, He also knows what “would” happen at any given circumstances. If you dig deeper into this, you would realize that man’s free will / responsibility / culpability is compatible with God’s sovereignty/providence. You would also now be able to affirm Calvinistic statements about God’s sovereignty/providence while rejecting the absurd implications (eg. Evil originated from God, man is being held accountable for not doing what he’s incapable of doing, etc.) of Calvinism

    Reply
37. Luis Lopez says:

    March 27, 2020 at 10:11 am

    You have a unclear view on who GOD really is. You have a limited GOD.
    I don’t. My GOD KNOWS ALL THINGS hence GOD means Omniscient. Obviously in your world view He isn’t.

    Reply
38. Nedson K. Banda says:

    March 27, 2020 at 1:30 pm

    To accept God’s sovereignty do not require too much reasoning. This doctrine( Decrees of God ) is revealed in the Bible. What a create should do is to believe and accept.
    Romans 9 : 14 – 29.
    May we be enabled to submit to His revealed Will.

    Reply
39. Paul Gray says:

    March 27, 2020 at 3:07 pm

    I accept His sovereignty but I don’t believe he pre ordained what color shirt I would grab this morning. We are to love God and each other this requires free will. Where exactly that stops and Gods sovereignty intervenes is entirely up to Him. He calls us friends not puppets. When God foretells what someone will do it is because he knows there nature. Like judas I believe he was one of many Jesus could have chosen because Jesus knew his heart. He knew like many today that judas would stab Him in the back for money.

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40. Arthur Adam Haglund says:

    March 27, 2020 at 8:50 pm

    Reply
41. Paul Vargas says:

    March 27, 2020 at 9:16 pm

    Arthur Adam Haglund, I have an honest question for you..

    What is the benefit of knowing your idea?
    How will it strengthen our faith?
    What would happen if I don’t believe? What is its effect in the whole Christian beliefs?

    Reply
42. James A. Henson says:

    March 27, 2020 at 9:23 pm

    God’s foreknowledge is not contingent on anything!

    Reply
43. Paul Vargas says:

    March 28, 2020 at 2:34 am

    this thread has 341 comments and I don’t see anything that can make this conversation fruitful and edifying. hence, comments will be disabled

    Reply
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