Sermon held on august 1st
1993 in Apeldoorn.
Subject: Gods foreknowledge.
For us it is of great importance
to have the right image of God. In this sermon I will enter more deeply into a subject
that we treated in our Biblestudygroup. And that is Gods foreknowledge. This is
a subject many theologians have written about and there are many different
doctrines that are determined by how people think about this subject. You can
think of the dilemma of Gods foreknowledge and human responsibility and of the
doctrine of predestination. But also the doctrine of ‘total redemption for
everyone’ has a connection to this subject. Or the opinion people have about
Gods plan for our lives.
Although all these doctrines are
different, they all have the same starting point, being Gods total
foreknowledge.
The doctrine of predestination
tells that God knows everything before it happens and also that He determines
everything. So already before the creation He knew that mankind would sin and
also before the creation He determined who would be chosen to be saved by the
blood of Jesus Christ and take part in eternal life. The fact that this does
not agree with the thought that man has a freewill was just considered to be a
mystery while others (Luther) denied the freewill of man.
A rabbi, Akiba wrote about 2000
years ago the following paradox:
Everything
is foreseen but yet freedom remains.
And recently a Dutch rabbi wrote
about it in “Christians for Israel” the following:
With
this paradox of human freewill and the godly predestination in mind it may be
clear that thinking and faith are two separate experiences that have their own
laws and structures. Man can think about his faith, but faith will not always
correspond with logic.
I think it is questionable
whether this is really a paradox. It might just as well be a real contradiction
in stead of a seeming contradiction. But here I do not want to treat the
subject of human responsibility more
deeply.
Gods responsibility.
Deut.22:8 "When
you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not
bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if any one fall from it.
Another great problem is the
question whether God is responsible for sin when He foreknew everything and
also rules everything. This problem is put aside by most Christians as being a
mystery that cannot be understood by men.
But opposite to this viewpoint
is the doctrine of total redemption. People who have taken this standpoint
believe that God foreknows everything and they draw the logical conclusion that
God is also responsible for everything that happens in the world. They believe
that God brought sin into the world in order to create the opportunity for
Himself to show his love, forgiveness and grace in order to make his honour and
glory even greater than possible in a world without sin. This sounds more
logical than the theory of predestination in combination with freewill. Again I
will not enter more deeply into this subject but save it for another time.
I think that before going into
the subject more deeply we first have to ask the question whether God has total
foreknowledge in the meaning of knowing everything before it happens.
What have people written and thought
about it?
Roger Liebi writes about it in
his book“ Erfüllte Prophetie":
"His name means as much as ‘the
Eternal’ or ‘The Unchangeable’. He is not subject to the changes of past,
present or future times. Therefore,
in His total foreknowledge and omniscience
He can tell us the future events by means of His prophets without
failure. The steering hand of God in history is one aspect of world events, the
responsibility of men is another aspect. We cannot understand the relation
between these two aspects.”
C.S.Lewis writes about it the
following in his book "Beyond Personality" :
"it
is almost certain that God is outside of temporality. His life consists of a
sequence of moments”.
"there
is even another difficulty that we have to face when we believe that God is in time. Everyone who in whatever way
believes in God, believes that He knows what you and I will do tomorrow. But when He knows beforehand that I will do
this or that, how can I be free to do something else?”
"because
for you to morrow is not yet there, but for Him it is"
"It
is a Christian view that in no way is contradictory with our Christian belief. However we cannot find these things in the
Bible or the confessions or the church.
This last thing makes us wrinkle
our eyebrows. Not finding these things
in the confessions is not a disaster but also not finding them in the Bible
sets us thinking. Because then we can ask the question where we can find this
thought that everyone believes according to Lewis.
Is it perhaps a matter of
logical thinking and of a complicated argumentation with bible verses as a
basis? Or is it perhaps a matter of feeling?
Feeling:
Let us start with the feeling.
Someone told me once that God is not God for him when He does not foreknow
everything. That sounds beautiful, but it only means that he made for himself
an image of God in which a God that is not omniscient does not fit. Whether
this corresponds with the truth is obviously not important. In every case this
sort of argument does not impress me.
LOGIC:
Something else is an eventual
deduction of an omniscient God based on Bible verses. Lewis obviously could not
find them. But may be he did not search carefully enough. Indeed some authors
mention some verses that should show the omniscience of God. I want to mention
a few of them. Not mentioning them all is because many come to the same thing.
Most of them I found in a very interesting book of Dr. Friesen with the title: Decision
making and the will of God.
The following verses are
mentioned because they should show that God has a sovereign will and that all
things that happen in universe are determined by God. When all things are
determined by God then He obviously also knows these things beforehand. Let us
look at these verses critically.
Daniel 4:35 and he does according to his will
in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay
his hand or say to him, "What doest thou?"
This verse tells us about the great
power of God by which He can do whatever He wants to do. He is the highest
authority. However this does not mean that there are no things that God
sometimes lets take their own course. In Acts14:16 is written: " In past generations he allowed all
the nations to walk in their own ways; "
For the events that God
definitely wants to take place He Him selves takes care that they indeed occur
as He wants. But there are many things for which this is not the case. When God
wants to give man a great freedom, then that is also something that happens.
Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand
of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it wherever he will. "
Here the same comment is valid.
God can lead the hart of the king wherever He wants, but that does not mean
that this constantly happens. Here too, the subject is the power of God to intervene and to fulfil his plan.
Revelation 4:11 "Worthy art thou, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honour and power, for thou didst create all things, and by
thy will they existed and were created."
Indeed, the world was created
because that was what God wanted. But that does not mean that everything that
further happened in that creation was also wanted by God. The opposite is true.
Later on god regretted to have created men. Why? Because men had corrupted the
earth against the will of God. (Gen
6:5-7)
Epheze 1:11 In him, according to the purpose of him who
accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will,
Here I read that everything that
God does is in accordance to his will. Did you expect something else? Of course
there is no contradiction between Gods will and His actions. But the subject
here is what God Himself does in his plan for the salvation of the world and
this does not say anything about what we
do. So it absolutely does not tell us that there are no events that fall apart
from Gods plan or that there is not quite a freedom within the plans of God.
Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but the
decision is wholly from the LORD.
When we cast lots in a certain
situation where we can expect an answer from God, than it is God who determines
what is going to happen, but this does not mean that we should cast the lot in
every situation where we have to make a choice. That would simplify the making
of decisions to much I think.
A verse that is very often
mentioned in this context is psalm 139:16
Thy
eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
At first sight this seems to be
a very strong verse. However, the translation is not correct. A better
translation would be:
Thy
eyes saw my unformed substance;
in thy book everything was written
that was formed in those days,
when as yet there was still nothing of it.
This draws back on the words
immediately preceding this verse and
there the subject is the body that is formed in the mothers womb. So, not the
days were formed as the RSV says, but the body.
The only place in the Dutch
translation of the Bible where we can find the word omniscient is in 1 Samuel
2:3 but the English translation already does not have this word, so I shall not
go into this verse.
All verses mentioned here fore
do not at all prove that God has total foreknowledge. So it is not that strange
that Lewis could not find it in the Bible.
There are some other verses that
are often mentioned in connection with the doctrine of predestination but I do
not want to treat them now because I want to save them for another time (e.g.
Eph.1:4, Rom.8:29)
Not having found verses that
plead for Gods omniscience it seems a good idea to see whether there are verses
that plead against it. In fact one verse would be enough. But I want to mention
some verses.
Gen. 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great
in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually.
And
the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his
heart.
Gen.22:12 He said, "Do not lay your
hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing
you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
The word "now" would
have no meaning if God knew already a long time ago what would happen. It tells
us that He came to know it because He saw it!
Deut. 8:2 And you shall remember all
the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness,
that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether
you would keep his commandments, or not.
Why would God test the people
when He already knew the answer? This would be without sense or it would mean
that God pretends to be serious while He is not. In that case we could not
trust any verse of the Bible anymore. When the Bible tells us that it is Gods
purpose to find out something we must accept that whether it suits our
presuppositions or not.
Psalm 78:59 " When God
heard, he was full of wrath, and he utterly rejected Israel. "
Jeremiah 32:35 "They built the high places of Baal
in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to
Molech, though I did not command them, nor
did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause
Judah to sin.
Obviously things happen that
were not in Gods mind.
Exodus 3: 4, 9, 16. Here we see
that God acts as a living God who looks at and listens to men and not as a God
who does not need to look because he already knows everything beforehand.
And just one other verse:
Isaiah 5:1-7 (please read it
completely)
verse 4: "What
more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked
for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
Well, I think that in this way I
have given sufficiently proof for the thought that God does not know everything
beforehand.
But what does this mean for us?
Does the thought of a God who
does not foreknow everything make Him smaller?
I think not. In the first place,
the greatness of God does not depend on our thoughts. In the second place I
think that the greatness and power of God much better come forth when He can
fulfil his plan despite the great freedom He has given to men. Despite this
flexibility He comes to His goal.
It also means that we have a
living God. Wouldn’t a God who foreknows everything be a God who does not think
anymore? And wouldn’t that mean a dead God?
It also means that we can have a
relation with God. Imagine having a father who responds to everything you tell
him with: " I knew it already a
long time ago". Would you ever tell him anything? And what to think of a
father who planned every detail of your life? Would you appreciate that? A
living relationship would be impossible because God would not at all be
interested in us.
Have you ever wondered what the
meaning of prayer would be when God foreknows everything?
It also means that it is no
problem at all when man has a free will. The possibility is just there.
It also means that a voluntary
love of man for his Creator is possible.
It also means that God is not
responsible for sin but that sin came into the world by man, into a world that
was created perfect.
Jogchum Reitsma
books:
1. Decision making & the
will of God.
Auteur: Garry Friesen
Uitgever: Multnomah Press
ISBN:
0-930014-47-2
2. Erfüllte Prophetie
Auteur:
Roger Liebi
3. De Beeldhouwer en zijn beeld
Auteur: C.S. Lewis
Uitgever: Ten Have/Baarn
ISBN: 90 259
4117 6