DOES GOD ALREADY
KNOW EVERYTHING THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN?
A Reformed (Calvinist) scholar wrote: “The Scriptures clearly teach that
long before we pray, God already knows everything and that He has already determined
what He is going to do.”
It’s true that God is omniscient and absolutely sovereign over all things.
To think that we can give God new information or convince Him to do something
that He hasn’t thought of is the height of arrogance. But if we’re
not careful, we’ll abuse these wondrous truths about God by never pouring
our hearts out to Him in prayer.
As one of my grandchildren once prayed: ‘God, you already know everything.
So, just take care of it all.’”
Personally, I can find no fault in the logic of that child. Reformed theology
is Christian fatalism. The scholar says “The Scriptures teach that long
before we pray” (he means, from all eternity, before we were born, before
the heavens and earth were created) “God already knows everything and
has already determined what He is going to do.”
I don’t believe the Scriptures teach this. What the Scriptures teach is
that God doesn’t change; but His plans are not always fixed. The future
is flexible depending on our freewill choices. There are a number of examples
in the Bible of God obviously changing His plans.
In some matters God has purposed and revealed that something will happen. He
has absolutely predestined or foreordained that this will be done. In such cases,
He knows it will be done. Why does He know this? Does He know because He looks
into the future and sees it happening? No. He knows it because He is faithful
to do what He promises. And not only is He faithful, but He is able to do it.
He’s going to be around in a hundred or a thousand or ten-thousand years
to bring it to pass.
“For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like
Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that
are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My
pleasure,’ “ (Isa. 46: 9-10).
What most non-Reformed folks cannot seem to grasp is that their theology of
God’s absolute foreknowledge is as fatalistic and unscriptural as the
Calvinistic theology of absolute predestination. If, as the grandchild said,
“God already knows everything” and as the scholar said, “He
has already determined what He will do” then, it makes perfect sense to
say, “Just take care of it all.”
By Ken Green
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