Inferring predestination from foreknowledge

[fralo4truth]

Hi all,

I have a question in regards to predestination. I often read in Calvinistic works where the absolute predestination of all things is inferred from the fact that God foreknows all. I run across certain statements such as:

"If God foreknows it, then it follows that He must have decreed it."

I certainly believe the Bible to teach that God has decreed all, but am wondering what is the exact line of reasoning employed when it is inferred from foreknowledge. How does it necessarily follow that foreknowledge must presuppose ordaining?

Is it from the simple fact that if it were not this way, then God's foreknowledge would be based on some "first cause" apart from himself; namely, MAN or some other FORCE/ENTITY?

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

[NB3K]

Martin Luther does an excellent job on this topic in his book The Bondage of the Will.

 

[py3ak]

This is a topic that touches on some points that are not frequently discussed, and you can put it in various ways. What is the connection between foreknowledge and predestination? Well, simply put, it is impossible to know what is false. One can know that something is false - but that is also knowledge of a truth. So for God to know something, it must be true: with regard to historical matters, that means they must be actual, something that has or will occur. But what distinguishes a possibility from an actuality? What distinguishes what might happen from what does happen? It is the decree, the foreordination, of God. So to say that God foreknows something necessarily implies that he decreed it: had he not decreed it, it would have been impossible to know it as true, as a genuinely actualized possibility.

Another way is to say that God knows all things through himself. He knows them, not as we do, by studying the thing, but through his own essence. Theologians have distinguished the knowledge of simple intelligence (in which God knows his all-sufficiency, and so knows everything that he can do) from the knowledge of vision (in which God knows his efficiency, and so he knows everything that he will do). God knows all possibilities, including any thing that could come to pass under any supposed condition - he knows, by the knowledge of simple intelligence, counterfactual hypotheticals (like what would have happened if David remained in Keilah). But the knowledge of vision relates to what occurs, to what God actually brings about. God knows what would have happened; he also knows that it would never happen, because David would ask advice and flee Keilah upon that advice. And God knows the difference between what could happen and what does or will happen; how could he not, when that difference lies totally in his own decree? So when you take foreknowledge to be related to the knowledge of vision (as it should be), you can see that God's foreknowledge is not merely a predictive faculty: God knows what will happen because God knows what he has decreed to take place. And that is why you can argue from foreknowledge to predestination.

 

[J. Dean]

Martin Luther does an excellent job on this topic in his book The Bondage of the Will.

I second this. He rips apart Erasmus' rather schizophrenic understanding of "free-will."

Plus, the fact that the words "chosen" and "predestined" are used in the Scriptures along with "foreknew" tells us that there is more to it than God simply passively receiving knowledge about the future.

 

[earl40]

Hi all,


Is it from the simple fact that if it were not this way, then God's foreknowledge would be based on some "first cause" apart from himself; namely, MAN or some other FORCE/ENTITY?

Appreciate your thoughts.

I enjoy your thought. Anytime we think God is contingent on anything other than Himself we are in error.

 

[fralo4truth]

Martin Luther does an excellent job on this topic in his book The Bondage of the Will.

I second this. He rips apart Erasmus' rather schizophrenic understanding of "free-will."

But...but...

Dave Hunt said he could poke holes all through Luther's work!

 

[toddpedlar]

I've never liked this kind of inferential reasoning that we play with.

Predestination is inferred not from an argument about foreknowledge, but from such verses as Ephesians 1:4-5 and Acts 4:28, wherein it is not only implied that God predestinates and fore-ordains, but it plainly says so.

 

[fralo4truth]

Here's a great quote from Zanchius on this matter, in harmony with all that we have said:

"Again, we cannot suppose Him to have foreknown anything which He had not previously decreed, without setting up a series of causes, extra Deum, and making the Diety dependent for a great part of the knowledge He has upon the will and works of His creatures, and upon a combination of circumstances exterior to Himself. Therefore, His determinate plan, counsel and purpose (i.e. His own predestination of causes and effects) is the only basis of His foreknowlege, which foreknowledge could neither be certain nor independent but as founded on His own antecedent decree."