Scripture explicitly teaches that God has foreknowledge of future events, employing a specialist vocabulary to refer to such knowledge. The New Testament introduces a whole family of words associated with God’s knowledge of the future, such as “foreknow” (προγινώσκω), “foreknowledge” (πρόγνωσις), “foresee” (προοράω), “foreordain” (προορίζω), and “foretell” (προμαρτύρομαι).[1] The first underlying affirmation is the witness behind biblical history.
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).[2]
God testifies to his control of history, which He brings about, not by unknown happenstance, but by His accomplishment. God does not view the course of natural and human history and then make his plans accordingly. Paul speaks of “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things,” “a plan for the fullness 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).[3] Second, God’s knowledge of the future is essential to the prophetic pattern. The test of a true prophet was: “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 biblical view of history and prophecy thus seems to necessitate a God who knows not only the present and past but also the future.[4] Isaiah proclaims the necessity of God’s foreknowledge as being the deciding test to determine the true God from false gods.
“Present your case,” the Lord says.
“Bring forward your strong arguments,”
The King of Jacob says.
Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place;
As for the former events, declare what they were,
That we may consider them and know their outcome.
Or announce to us what is coming;
Declare the things that are going to come afterward,
That we may know that you are gods;
Indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together.
Behold, you are of no account,
And your work amounts to nothing;
He who chooses you is an abomination (Isa. 41.21-24).
Stephen Charnock comments on this passage in his book The Existence and Attributes of God:
Such a foreknowledge of things to come is here ascribed to God by God himself, as a distinction of him from all false gods. Such a knowledge that, if any could prove that they were possessors of, He would acknowledge them as gods as well as himself: “that we may know that you are gods.” He puts his Deity to stand or fall upon this account, and this should be the point, which should decide the controversy whether he or the heathen idols were the true God. The dispute is managed by this medium: he that knows things to come is God; I know things to come, ergo I am God: the idols know not things to come, therefore they are not gods. God submits the being of his Deity to this trial. If God knows things to come no more than the heathen idols, which were either devils or men, he would be, in his own account, no more a God than devils or men… It cannot be understood of future things in their causes, when the effects necessarily arise from such causes, as light from the sun and heat from the fire. Many of these men know; more of them, angels and devils know; if God, therefore, had not a higher and farther knowledge than this, he would not by this be proved to be God, any more than angels and devils, who know necessary effects in their causes. The devils, indeed, did predict some things in the heathen oracles, but God is differenced from them here… in being able to predict things to come that they knew not, or things in their particularities, things that depended on the liberty of man’s will, which the devils could lay no claim to a certain knowledge of. Were it only a conjectural knowledge that is here meant, the devils might answer they can conjecture, and so their deity were as good as God’s… God asserts his knowledge of things to come as a manifest evidence of the Godhead; those that deny, therefore, the argument that proves it, deny the conclusion, too; for this will necessarily follow, that if he be God because he knows future things, then he that [does] not know the future things is not God; and if God knows not future things but only by conjecture, then there is no God, because a certain knowledge, so as infallibly to predict things to come, is an inseparable perfection of the Deity.[5]
God’s knowledge seems to encompass future contingencies. Just as God knows the thoughts humans have, so he foreknows the very thoughts they will have.[6]
O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it (Ps. 139.1-6).
The psalmist acknowledges that he is surrounded by God’s knowledge. God knows everything about him, even his thoughts. “From afar” (rachaq, רחק) may be taken to indicate a temporal distance—God knows the psalmist’s thoughts long before he thinks them.[7] To deny that God possess the knowledge of future events, contingencies, human thoughts, and place these predictions solely on God having a “good idea” or “guess” is wholly unbiblical.[8]
[1] William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 244.
[2] Scripture references are in the New American Standard Bible version (NASB) or the English Standard Version (ESV).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 245. The prophetic element is not limited to the Old Testament. Jesus was a prophet and makes many predictions (Mt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). The early church had prophets who told of future events (Acts 11.27-28; 21.10-11; see also 13.1; 15.32; 21.9; 1 Cor. 12.28-29; 14.29, 37; Eph. 4.11). The Revelation of John is a vision to the end of human history: “…the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent His angel to show His servants what must soon take place” (Rev. 22.6).
[5] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (1682; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), vol. 1, 431-432.
[6] Craig, Time and Eternity, 247.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Passages that imply God’s ignorance, repentance, and change of mind (i.e. Num 23.19; 1 Sam. 15.29; Isa. 38.1-5; Jer. 26.3; 36.3; Amos 7.1-6; Jonah 3) need to be understood in proper anthropomorphic terms. For further information and proper interpretation of anthropomorphisms please see Kirk MacGregor’s A Molinist Anabaptist Systematic Theology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 87-107.