Divine Foreknowledge
Growing up as a Christian, in the Christian church, I was always taught that God knows everything. God knows the beginning and end, and everything in between. This is something that, until one starts asking tough questions, one usually accepts. My goal in writing this essay is not to change someone’s beliefs about God, or beliefs in God, but instead to challenge people to quote, un-quote, think outside the box. Consider the pros and cons of God knowing everything and also be open to other solutions. There are a few questions that need to be answered when one considers God’s knowledge. First, if God knows the future with absolute certainty, then, are we as humans truly free? Second, if God does not know the future with absolute certainty, then what does God know? And third, is there any biblical backing for God not knowing the future with absolute certainty?
The first question is an extremely difficult one to answer. Augustine and Calvin define God’s foreknowledge as "The future will happen a certain way, because God foreknows it. If God knows the future with absolute certainty, then are humans truly free? No, if God knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I will choose to do from now to eternity, then I am not truly free. That is not to say that what is happening is caused by God, because that is a totally different claim. But if God knows the future and God knows what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow, and God cannot be wrong, then I do not have the ability to choose other than, what God knows I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. Some use the argument, everyone is free and has had the choice, but the choice has already been made in God’s eyes, because God is eternal and outside of time. That is ho...
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...ies from the things that do not happen, as well as all the possibilities from the things that do. God knew me and what type of a person I would be, and God even knew everything that has happened in my life up to this point, and everything that will to me in the future. God did not know that the things in the past would happen for sure, and does not know what will happen in the future. Instead, God knew and knows them as possibilities. This is a difficult thing to grasp, but at the same time it gives God more knowledge because now God knows everything that will happen as well as everything that will not. But God has given us the ability to make each possibility a reality.
The God of possibility, one that can know all things and still provide freedom, that is my kind of God.
Citations
Boyd, Gregory A. The God of the Possible. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Books. 2000
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