The Only Wise God

The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

Craig

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2000
• eBook ISBN: 9781498276634
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Does God know our actions before we do them? And if so, do human beings truly have free will? Dr. Craig contends that both of these notions are compatible, showing how the Bible teaches divine foreknowledge of human free acts, and reveals two ways of "reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom".

PART 1

The Doctrine of Divine Foreknowledge

1

God’s Knowledge of the Present, Past, and Future

The LORD is a God of knowledge,” sings Hannah in praise to God (1 Sam. 2:3), and what a God of knowledge he is! Isaiah declares that “his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28), and the psalmist similarly proclaims that “his understanding is beyond measure” (Ps. 147:5). Both the prophet and the psalmist thereby indicate that the depth of God’s knowledge is inexhaustible and limitless. In the same way, the psalmist ponders the infinite extent of God’s knowledge, singing,

How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

When I awake, I am still with thee.

[Ps. 139:17–18]

No finite number can serve to enumerate what God knows; his knowledge is infinite. The sense of the final line of verse 18 is that it is impossible to come to the end of God’s knowledge. No matter how far the psalmist should count, even should he fall asleep wearied from his meditation, still, upon his awaking, the infinite expanse of God’s knowledge would stretch away before him.

God’s Knowledge of the Present

Taken in isolation, the assertions of the prophet and psalmist might be interpreted as religious hyperbole; but the Old and New Testaments consistently portray God as the one who knows everything, including all things present, past, and future. With regard to things present, nothing escapes the knowledge of God, who is often described as observing everything that goes on in his creation: “For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens” (Job 28:24). His knowledge ranges from the greatest to the most insignificant aspects of creation. On the one hand, he knows the number and nature of the stars (Ps. 147:4; Job 38:31–33; Isa. 40:26). On the other hand, Jesus taught that not a single sparrow dies without God’s knowledge and that the very hairs of our heads are numbered (Matt. 10:29–30).

But God does not merely observe what goes on in the created order; he understands it. God’s answer to Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38–41) is a magnificent description of God’s knowledge of the creation’s profoundest secrets. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” the Lord challenges Job, and then he proceeds to interrogate him concerning the wonders of the universe. Does Job understand the origin and expanse of the world, has he penetrated to the deepest recesses of the sea, does he know the laws that regulate the stars and the heavens, does he comprehend birth and death, does he have the intelligence to govern the magnificent animal kingdom? Job’s mouth is stopped; he can only answer, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). In contrast to human ignorance, God’s wisdom and understanding encompass the entire created order (Job 28:12–27).

God’s knowledge of creation includes knowledge of all human affairs:

The LORD looks down from heaven,

he sees all the sons of men;

from where he sits enthroned he looks forth

on all the inhabitants of the earth,

he who fashions the hearts of them all,

and observes all their deeds.

[Ps. 33:13–15]

The Scriptures repeatedly tell us that God’s eyes observe all the ways and acts of an individual (Job 24:23; 31:4; 34:21; Ps. 119:168; Jer. 16:17; 32:19; cf. Ps. 14:2; 2 Chron. 16:9).

God does not, however, observe merely our actions, but in one of the most startling affirmations of divine omniscience, we are told that God knows our very thoughts. One of Jeremiah’s characteristic emphases, for example, is that God discerns and weighs human hearts and minds:

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately corrupt;

who can understand it?

“I the LORD search the mind

and try the heart,

to give to every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his doings.”

[Jer. 17:9–10]

In the Hebrew idiom the heart denotes the center of the human personality in all its spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and ethical aspects. That God knows even this inner sanctum of human beings is a characteristic theme in Old Testament religion. The Lord says to Samuel, “The LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). David instructs Solomon that “the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every plan and thought” (1 Chron. 28:9). Solomon prays, “Render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men)” (1 Kings 8:39). Sins concealed in the heart separate us from God. Therefore, we are to pray,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

And see if there be any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting!

[Ps. 139:23–24; cf. Pss. 7:9; 94:11]1

Note that the metaphor of sight extends to God’s knowledge of human hearts and thoughts: God “seest the heart and the mind” and so judges us (Jer. 20:12). Even as nothing happening in the physical world escapes his notice, so no secret thought or inner motive remains unknown to him. As Jesus warned the self-righteous Pharisees, “God knows your hearts” (Luke 16:15).

The New Testament likewise insists on God’s knowledge of the heart (Acts 1:24; 15:8; Rom. 8:27; 1 Cor. 4:5; 1 John 3:19–20). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews splendidly summarizes the biblical conviction concerning God’s intimate knowledge of our inner thoughts:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. [Heb. 4:12–13]

Thus the minds of individuals as well as their actions lie naked before the all-knowing God.

God’s Knowledge of the Past

If God so knows the present, it scarcely needs to be said that God also knows completely the past. He is eternal and created the universe by his wisdom (Ps. 90:2; Prov. 8:22–31). Since every moment of the past was once present and God knows all things happening in the present, the only way in which his knowledge of the past might be incomplete would be for him to forget something. But such a lapse of memory is foreign to the biblical God. One finds little reference to God’s memory in the Scriptures simply because the notion of his having known something but then forgotten it is inconceivable. True, he is said to remember no longer the sins of those who turn to him in repentance and faith (Isa. 43:25; Jer. 31:34), but this is clearly a reference to his forgiving sins, not to a literal extinguishing of memory on God’s part. Indeed, when the concepts of remembering and forgetting are used with respect to God, they usually have to do with the notion of God’s faithfulness to his people or covenant (Exod. 2:24; Deut. 4:31; Ps. 98:3) and the faithlessness of Israel to God (1 Sam. 12:9; Isa. 17:10; Jer. 2:32; Hos. 4:6). God remembers his people, though they consistently forget him. When prayers are offered that God remember some deed of the wicked and exact vengeance or remember some affliction and bring comfort, the petition is not that he merely retain some fact, but that he make and keep it an object of concern. It is in this sense that Jesus says that the fifth sparrow thrown in for the price of four is not forgotten before God (Luke 12:6).

Of course, to maintain something as an object of concern, one must remember it, and the Scriptures have no doubt about God’s mental capacity in this regard. Job says that God numbers all his steps (Job 31:4). The psalmist in affliction comforts himself by praying,

Thou hast kept count of my tossings;

put thou my tears in thy bottle!

Are they not in thy book?

[Ps. 56:8]

God has, as it were, a book of remembrance (Mal. 3:16) in which every tossing and tear of his afflicted servant is recorded. Of course, the language is poetical, but the Scriptures implicitly assume that just as God sees everything that happens, he remembers everything that has happened and every fact that he has known.

God’s Knowledge of the Future

The Importance of Divine Foreknowledge

Finally, it would seem, at least at face value, that God possesses complete knowledge of every future event. This aspect of divine omniscience seems to underlie the biblical scheme of history. For the biblical conception of history is not that of an unpredictably unfolding sequence of events plunging haphazardly without purpose or direction; rather God knows the future and directs the course of world history toward his foreseen ends.

I am God, and there is none like me,

declaring the end from the beginning

and from ancient times things not yet done,

saying, “My counsel shall stand,

and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

[Isa. 46:9–10]

Again Isaiah proclaims,

Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel

and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:

“I am the first and I am the last;

besides me there is no god.

Who is like me? Let him proclaim it,

let him declare and set it forth before me.

Who has announced from of old the things to come?

Let them tell us what is yet to be.

Fear not, nor be afraid;

have I not told you from of old and declared it?

And you are my witnesses!

Is there a God besides me?

There is no Rock; I know not any.”

[Isa. 44:6–8]

In the vision of the apostle John in the Book of Revelation, some of these same words are ascribed to the exalted Christ: “Fear not, I am the first and the last”; “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 1:17; 22:13). Biblical history is a salvation history, and Christ is the beginning, centerpiece, and culmination of that history. God’s salvific plan was not an afterthought necessitated by an unforeseen circumstance. Paul speaks of “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things,” “a plan for the fulness of time” according to “the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9; 1:10; 3:11; cf. 2 Tim. 1:9–10). Similarly, Peter states that Christ “was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20). God’s knowledge of the course of world history and his control over it to achieve his purposes seem fundamental to the biblical conception of history and are a source of comfort and assurance to the believer in times of distress.

Moreover, God’s knowledge of the future seems essential to the prophetic pattern that underlies the biblical scheme of history. The test of the true prophet was success in foretelling the future: “When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the LORD has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22). The history of Israel was punctuated with prophets who foretold events in both the immediate and distant future, and it was the conviction of the New Testament writers that the coming and work of Jesus had been prophesied. God foretold to Abraham the four-hundred-year captivity and the exodus of the Hebrew people (Gen. 15:13–14). Joseph claimed from God the power to interpret dreams which presaged the future (Gen. 40:8). He was able to predict Pharaoh’s restoration of his chief butler and his execution of his chief baker, as well as the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine that Egypt would experience. God told Moses that after their deliverance from Egypt his people would forsake him and worship foreign deities, so that God would visit his wrath upon them (Deut. 31:16–17).

During the days of the divided kingdom, an unnamed prophet from Judah predicted the birth of King Josiah and his destruction of pagan religious practices in Israel, and he gave as a sign of his authenticity the prediction that the altar would soon be destroyed (1 Kings 13:2–3). When this same prophet disobeyed God, his own imminent death was prophesied by another prophet, and before he could return to Judah he was attacked and killed by a lion (1 Kings 13:20–24). Elisha prophesied the death of the king of Syria, as well as the terrible reign of his successor (2 Kings 8:7–15). Amos and Hosea prophesied the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel foretold the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian captivity, and the restoration of Israel, as well as the doom of Assyria, Babylon, and many lesser nations. Daniel predicted the three successive empires to follow the Babylonian Empire (Dan. 2:36–43) and the course of world hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1. The Doctrine of Divine Foreknowledge
• Part 2. The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom
• Part 3. The Basis of Divine Foreknowledge
• Epilogue
• Index