Foreknowledge of God

The foreknowledge of God is his knowledge, from eternity, of everything that will come to pass. The disputed question is how that foreknowledge relates to God’s election of particular sinners to salvation. Reformed, Arminian, Molinist, and open theist theology all affirm that God knows the future, but differ over whether his knowledge of a person’s faith precedes and grounds his choice of that person, or instead follows from and expresses a choice already made on other grounds.

The Reformed answer: election is the cause of foreknown faith, not its result

Reformed theology holds that, strictly speaking, God has no “foreknowledge” distinct from his one timeless knowledge of all things. Bavinck quotes Augustine: “For what is foreknowledge if not knowledge of future events? But can anything be future to God, who surpasses all times? … for this reason we should no longer speak of God’s foreknowledge but simply of God’s knowledge.”¹ Where Scripture does speak of God “foreknowing” his people (Rom. 8:29; 1 Pet. 1:2), the underlying Hebrew and Greek words carry a different sense than bare foresight. Berkhof explains that these words “do not denote simple intellectual foresight or prescience, the mere taking knowledge of something beforehand, but rather a selective knowledge which regards one with favor and makes one an object of love.”² On this reading, God’s foreknowledge of his elect is his eternal, loving choice of them, not his advance observation of a faith they would produce on their own.

Consequently, Reformed theology denies that foreseen faith is the ground of election. Bavinck writes: “the decree of election is not prompted by foreseen faith; on the contrary, election is the cause of faith.”³ The full case for election’s ground in God’s own will, rather than in anything foreseen in the creature, belongs to election and the decrees of God.

The Arminian answer: election conditioned on foreseen faith

Arminianism reverses this order: God elects individuals to salvation because he foreknows, from eternity, that they will freely believe. A. A. Hodge summarizes the Arminian position as holding “that the eternal election of men to salvation is not absolute, but conditioned upon foreseen faith and obedience.”⁴ Arminius’s own account places foreseen faith within a longer sequence: God’s general antecedent love and will toward all, the giving of Christ as mediator, human faith foreseen, God’s consequent love and will in Christ, and only then particular election and reprobation.⁵ On this account, God’s knowledge of who will believe comes logically before, and is the basis for, his choice of whom to elect.

The Molinist answer: middle knowledge as the ground of election

Molinism proposes that God’s foreknowledge of free creaturely choices rests on a distinct kind of knowledge, logically prior to any decree of his own. Bavinck describes its origin in Luis de Molina: God, “by a mediate knowledge, saw in advance that some humans would make good use of preparatory grace and for that reason decided to bestow it. Reprobation is then only a decree of God to punish eternally those whose sin and unbelief he has foreseen.”³ A. A. Hodge, describing the same mechanism from within his account of the wider Arminian system, calls it “the distinction expressed by the term Scientia Media to explain God’s certain foreknowledge of future events, the futurition of which remain undetermined by his will, or any other antecedent cause.”⁴ Van Mastricht likewise treats this “middle knowledge” as a third kind of divine foreknowledge, alongside the knowledge of simple intelligence and the knowledge of vision.⁶

The open theist answer: denial of exhaustive foreknowledge

Open theism goes further still, denying that God’s foreknowledge of future free choices is exhaustive at all. “Open theists are those who say the future is open to God; he does not know what will happen. Open theists turn to texts that say God ‘now knows’ or ‘relents’ or ‘regrets’ to argue God does not know the future.”⁷ Barrett traces this move historically to Arminianism’s own internal pressure: “This problem has led many Arminians (Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, etc.) to Open Theism because they cannot reconcile exhaustive foreknowledge with libertarian free will. Therefore, rather than rejecting libertarianism they reject God’s exhaustive foreknowledge.”⁸

Barrett judges the Arminian, Molinist, and open theist positions to share a single underlying structure despite their real differences from one another: each “conditions God’s knowledge and his ability to act on that knowledge upon human libertarian freedom, a freedom that can always do otherwise and is never necessitated.”⁹

Related Doctrines

References

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 8, “The Living, Acting God.” ↩
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 98. ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩ ↩²
Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 6, “Comparison of Systems,” 108. ↩ ↩²
Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism, Synergism, and the Will of God,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 411-431. ↩
Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 13, “The Intellect, Knowledge, and Wisdom of God.” ↩
Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 7, “Does God Have Emotions? Impassibility.” ↩
Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Inadequacy of Arminian Synergism,” in “Reclaiming Monergism,” 317-355, at 335. ↩
Barrett, None Greater, chap. 10, “Is God All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Wise? Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnisapience.” ↩