Foreknowledge Is Not Predestination

If I were a telepath like Charles Xavier, I could bring someone to a restaurant and, reading my companion's thoughts, know what he or she plans on choosing to eat.  Now, the fact that I knew that my friend would order a particular meal does not mean that I caused that decision--I merely knew about it in advance.  I did not somehow negate the free will of my friend by choosing a meal for him or her in advance and leaving my friend with only the illusion of free will.

If some people understood that this is how God's foreknowledge works, I think much needless theological controversy would be quelled.  It is crucial, after all, for people to know the distinction between foreknowledge and predestination.  Foreknowledge is just knowledge of what will happen in the future, while predestination is causally determining something to unavoidably happen in the future.  An immense difference between the two exists--the two are in no way synonymous!

In Milton's Paradise Lost, this fact is highlighted extensively and very logically.  The purpose of the poem stated at beginning is to justify the ways of God to man, and a significant way that this objective is carried out is by continually emphasizing the fact that human sin is a result of misuse of free will and that God's foreknowledge of the Fall does not mean he caused it.  All throughout the poem these two facts are illuminated.  And it is not just Paradise Lost, but the Bible that promotes this position.

To help demonstrate the difference between predestination and foreknowledge, let me demonstrate the inevitable logical results if God had predestined certain things instead of foreknowing them.  Allow me to show several verses:


John 3:16--"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

2 Peter 3:9--"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

1 Timothy 2:3-4--"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth."


These verses emphasize the desired universality of salvation--that is, God does not only want some people to be saved.  But the belief that God appoints some people to salvation and others to damnation by himself and himself alone contradicts the clear meaning of these verses.  In fact, if God predestines the salvation of everyone in the sense of denying them free will in the choice of salvation, then 1) God does not have a free, mutual relationship with Christians and 2) God is the sole obstacle between the unsaved and salvation.  This would even make God responsible for at least certain evil actions of human beings, for rebellion against God is a sin and only through salvation in Christ do we come out of a state of ontological rebellion (Ephesians 2:1-5) into a restorative relationship with God.  It would also signify that God will punish and ultimately annihilate people in hell [1] for a choice that they could never make.

Also, the fact that God is outside of time allows him to grant humans knowledge about the future through what we call prophecy.  Here is one prophesy in the Bible about the fall of Babylon:


Isaiah 13:15-16--"Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword.  Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished."


If God merely foreknew these actions and yet allows humans to make their evil choices of their own volition--because God cannot seek a free and loving relationship with humans if he also forces them to act in certain ways--then these passages are examples of God's foreknowledge.  However, if God predestined these events, that means that he caused, for instance, rape, something that in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 he prescribed the death penalty for and called a grievous sin equal in depravity to murder.  Do you see the difference?  Whether or not God predestines such events or has foreknowledge of them makes a huge difference as to his own nature and character!

I hope that readers understand why it is so crucial to distinguish between foreknowledge and predestination and why God is a distinctly different deity depending on which he operates with.  The ramifications of saying that God "predestines" someone's salvation or an act of evil are not minor, nor can hyper-Calvinists simply dismiss them.  Foreknowledge is not synonymous with predestination--and much is at stake depending on which one is true.  Thankfully, God foreknows without interrupting the free volition he imbued into humans, merely observing the future from his atemporal perspective.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-annihilationism.html