The Nature Of God's Foreknowledge

People often look to divine interaction for guidance in life; those of religious faith pray and find comfort in a higher power having their best interest. People of faith often rely on their God or other divine subject of worship when making life choices and believe they make the best choice when considering the impact it will have on their faith. Their fate is in the hands of their God and their choices through life determine the outcome God has chosen for them. However, it is also believed that a higher power can predetermine one’s future and the decisions they make in life are all part of a fixed plan they have no control over. Fate has been interpreted differently throughout literature and while there is no clear interpretation of its intention,

Knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is a gift from God. Knowledge is God, God is a someone, not a something. Full knowledge concerning God can’t be explained.

A defining characteristic of humanity is our unparalleled ability to reason, to see the world in new ways and to reinvent it within our minds. Yet, a human mind without knowledge, one ignorant to the workings of its surroundings, is limited in what it can achieve, and changed in how it will act. In humankind’s creation stories portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and the Popol Vuh, the gods utilize human ignorance in difference ways. I will argue that while ignorance is used as a tool by the gods to guarantee human worship and thus their own existence in the Popol Vuh, the god of the Hebrew Bible concedes that total ignorance is detrimental to the advancement of the human race and uses it rather as a tool to advance humanity’s own success.

Philosophy has been a subject with many views, and has been a topic of many scientists and philosophers for thousands of years. One of the vital concepts in philosophy is the idea of God and what kind of being he is. Christians believe that God is an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. If God is an omniscient, all knowing being, to what extent does his knowledge reach? If God is an all knowing being, does he know everything a person will do every day for the rest of their life? And if he does know everything, do people truly have free will? There are four major views on divine foreknowledge that attempt to explain the extent to which God’s knowledge of the future reaches; Open Theism, Simple Foreknowledge, Molinism, and Calvinism. These four views are explained throughout the book “Divine Foreknowledge” written by Gregory A. Boyd- Open Theism, David Hunt- Simple Foreknowledge, William Lane Craig- Molinism, and Paul Helm- Calvinism.

Walsh and Middleton (1984) in their research indicate that, a number of people acquire their worldview genetically. Moreover, others acquire their worldview from the people they interact with regularly, such as their family along with friends, together with the media as well as life’s experiences. Even though, a few followers of Christ affirm strongly to have developed their worldview direct from the Holy Scriptures; that is debatable. Most likely, they have determined with certainty to interpret scriptures with a worldview. In this way, even whatever they find in scripture shapes what they prognosticate.

Within Christian theology, the concept of Predestination can be defined as ‘the doctrine that God has foreordained all things, especially that God has elected certain souls to eternal salvation.’ (Mifflin, 2011) After studying accounts of Predestination from St Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther and John Calvin, it can be specified that I am not convinced by the concept of Predestination. I have formed my answer on the grounds that the concept of Predestination raises too many issues for it to be plausible, for example it questions our free will, moral responsibility and the nature of God. Furthermore, arguments against the concept of Predestination from schools of thought such as the Arminians and Laudinism seem far more convincing to myself.

This book highlights God’s will and its role in the course of history as well as its interaction in our daily lives. Few mentors in my Christian sphere would feel comfortable affirming that it is possible to live outside of God’s will. The majority of individuals that have helped establish my worldview focus on God’s will as absolute with my free will choices allowing me to follow along in accordance with His will. Hart’s perspective calls into question my previously unchallenged stance on God’s will and its role in the progression of my life. This argument by Hart has not completely convinced me to alter my belief in this area; it has presented a new approach that has the potential to correct erroneous thinking on my part. The active process that Christ will perform in “making all things new” (Revelation 21:5) seems to support a current world out of tune with the will of God in all areas. Christ will complete the process of revitalizing our current, sin-infested world. It will be made new either by my previously conceived idea of Christ unifying and purifying all aspects of this world into one final product, or by Christ declaring previous parts of history abominable and purifying this world through deconstruction and

First, Calvin speaks to those with the thirst for knowledge so characteristic of the times, saying that their curiosity, “. . .can by no stops be refrained from wandering into forbidden compasses, and climbing up on high; which, if it may, will leave to God no secret which it will not search and turn over” (Calvin 683). Here, the author is warning against man’s attempts to discover the secrets that God has seen fit to keep hidden. In other words, Calvin is telling his peers that even though the concept of predestination is mysterious and confusing, seeking to understand more than what God has provided in the Bible would be a defiant act against the judgement God has made about what man is and is not fit to know. He all but pleads with the intellectuals of his day to be satisfied with the limited knowledge of predestination that scripture affords rather than be so bold as to try to supersede God’s will. On the other hand, to those who are so afraid of the concept as to refuse to speak of it, Calvin delivers a different sort of admonishment. Of these sorts of men Calvin warns,

This acts refers Theophilus. Theophilus is the name or honorary title of the person to whom the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are addressed. It means God-loving in Greek.

Philosopher Epicurus once said, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.” A human’s natural instinct is to be inquisitive, a feature of both John Milton and Countee Cullen that sowed the seeds of their respective poems, “On His Blindness” and “Yet Do I Marvel,” based on deep personal convictions. Although these poets are separated by large gaps in time, they are molded together in God’s sovereign right to do as He pleases. However, they are separated by their individual struggles as well as the different tones.

Many contemporary philosophers have affirmed that knowing involves believing truly. And the idea that God's attributes (including omniscience/foreknowledge) are essentially connected to His nature, together with the idea that an omniscient being would hold no false beliefs and would hold beliefs about the outcome of human actions in advance of their performance, are taken as obvious candidates for inclusion in a finished Christian

Middle Knowledge is God’s knowledge of what a free will being would do in any particular situation, including counterfactuals (knowledge of what the free will being would have done if he is in a different situation, a contrary-to-fact circumstance). It contains the range of possible things that would happen given certain circumstances (thus, it is limited and does not include all possibilities).

A question that has perplexed humans through the ages is if we have the ability to reach God. The witness of Scripture and leading theologians attest that individuals have a limited knowledge of God through general revelation in the natural world. General revelation can provide valid knowledge that there is a God, which aids in the acceptance of special revelation.

Theologians offer different views about the future of humanity. In particular, Jurgen Moltmann offers an eschatology that relates hope and faith with God’s future. In “Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology” (1967) and Hope and History, Moltmann explains how we should live in hope as we anticipate God’s future. He considers that despite the sufferings we bear in the present world, our hope and faith will be our guide in living life according to the will of God.

This paper will approach each aspect of God Divine decrees, from a biblical standpoint and His plan of salvation. The working of God’s plan includes three periods in time: