Did God ordain, from the foundation of the world, that His chosen people would commit acts that are so bad that God wouldn't ever imagine telling His people to do them?
God is, and always was so perfectly wise, that nothing ever did, or does, or can elude His knowledge. God knew, from all eternity, not only what He Himself intended to do, but also what He would incline and permit others to do. "
Known unto God are all His works from eternity" (Acts 15:18).
Consequently, God knows nothing now, nor will know anything hereafter, which He did not know and foresee from everlasting, His foreknowledge being co-eternal with Himself, and extending to everything that is or shall be done (Heb 4:13).
The influence which God's divine foreknowledge has on the certain futurition of the things foreknown does not render the intervention of second causes needless, nor destroy the nature of the things themselves.
By this, I mean that the prescience of God does not lay any coercive necessity on the wills of beings naturally free. For instance, man, even in his fallen state, is endued with a natural freedom of will, yet he acts, from the first to the last moment of his life, in absolute subserviency (though, perhaps, he does not know it nor design it) to the purposes and decrees of God concerning him, notwithstanding which, he is sensible of no compulsion, but acts as freely and voluntarily as if he was
sui juris, subject to no control and absolutely lord of himself.
This made Luther—after he had shown how all things necessarily and inevitably come to pass, in consequence of the sovereign will and infallible foreknowledge of God—to say that "
we should carefully distinguish between a necessity of infallibility and a necessity of coaction, since both good and evil men, though by their actions they fulfil the decree and appointment of God, yet are not forcibly constrained to do any thing, but act willingly."
Most assuredly, all that happens, whether in the nature of creation or by moral agents, was ordained by God. In His providence all that was ordained comes to fruition by secondary means, necessarily, freely, though
with respect to second causes and us, many things are
contingent, i.e., unexpected and seemingly accidental. That said, from the perspective of God there is no such thing as chance or fortune.
While the decree of God determines the certainty of future events, the decree of God neither directly effects or causes any event. In every case the decree of God provides that these events are rendered certain by causes that are acting in such a manner that is perfectly consistent with the nature of these events in question.
The purposes of God that relate to every kind of event constitute one single, comprehensive intention (volition) by God’s comprehending all events. Thus God comprehends the free events as free events, the necessary events as necessary events, all together, including all their causes, their relations, their conditions. This comprehension is one, indivisible system of things, every link of which is essential to the vital integrity of the whole.
Being the cause of all things, God knows everything by knowing Himself; all things
possible, by the knowledge of His power, and all things
actual, by the knowledge of His own purposes.
This distinction between the
possible and
actual, is the foundation of the distinction between the knowledge of
simple intelligence and the
knowledge of vision.
Simple intelligence is founded on God's power, and
knowledge of vision upon God's will. This only means that, in virtue of God's omniscient intelligence, He knows whatever infinite power can effect; and that from the consciousness of His own purposes, He knows what He has determined to effect or to permit to occur.
This is a distinction which the moderns, like yourself, Derf, ignore. Nothing, according to your philosophy is possible, but
the actual. All that can be, either is, or is to be. This follows from the idea of God as but mere cause. He produces all that can be; and there is in God no causality for what does not exist.
Further such a view as yours necessarily implies if God creates by thinking or knowing, then all God knows must be, and must be as soon as He knows or thinks it, that is, from eternity. If, however, we retain the Scriptural idea of God as a spirit, who can do more than He does; if we ascribe to Him what we know to be a perfection in ourselves, namely, that our power exceeds our acts, that a
faculty and the
exercise of that faculty are not identical, then we can understand how God can know the possible as well as the actual. God is not limited to the universe, which of necessity is finite. God has not exhausted Himself in determining to cause the present order of things to be.
AMR
