Foreknowledge: To Know Beforehand or to Determine What is Known. Acts 2:22, 23

Acts 2:5 ^NASB “Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven.” The focus is on the men. When we get to the application in verse 22, after Peter quotes Joel 2, he addresses “Men of Israel.” The word for men in both places is not anthropos [a)nqrwpoj] which is the generic term for human beings, it is aner [a)nhr] which is a term for males. He is addressing males because under divine institutions 2 & 3 it is the male who is the spiritual leader in the marriage and it is the male who is the spiritual leader in the home. In the culture at that time, because of the residual impact of establishment principles, they really didn’t have this concept of single people like they do today. Even if you were a widow, a young woman, or even a young man you still lived with the family until you were prepared to operate out on your own. So the family is seen as the basic unit of society, not the individual. When Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and faces the crowd he doesn’t say, Ladies and gentlemen, men and women, boys and girls; he says men, males. He is addressing the males because if you get the males then you get the family.

One of the problems we have had in Christianity over the past 2000 years is the feminization of the church. Even in the colonial period there was about a 65-35 representation of women to men in the local church. This has always been a problem and in some churches in our culture today in America (and it is worse in Europe) it is 80-20 and in some cases 90-10. What happens to a culture in this situation is that when you put the emphasis on women it feminizes the culture, whether the culture is business or the church or the entire civilization. If you build the men to be men, godly men, the kind of men that the Bible speaks of in terms of true biblical masculinity and leadership—not cultural masculinity, which is often perverted by pagan notions of masochism and egotism and many other factors—but building in the biblical view, and you build to the strength of the men in the community, then the result is that it strengthens everyone. But because God designed women to be responders and men to be initiators and you build to the women in the community, then you begin to see a role reversal and the men become feminized and the women become masculinized. That is the exact trend that is seen in pagan cultures, e.g. the period of the judges in the Old Testament.

So at the very beginning of this passage when Peter shifts from his Old Testament quote from Joel 2 and begins to make application of that passage to his situation he addresses the men of Israel and he is addressing them as males because that is the proper way to do it, #1, but #2 God the Holy Spirit is leading him and God the Holy Spirit is going to build the church, not on the foundation of women but on the foundation of male leadership. If there is no strong male leadership in a church then there are real problems. At the very beginning of the church the emphasis was on the men, and the church is going to be built on the leadership of men, and you don’t have women in a leadership role at all in the early church. All of this from that first phrase: “Men [males] of Israel, listen to these words.”

Acts 2:22 ^NASB “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— ” He starts out addressing the males, and listen to how he starts: “Jesus of Nazareth.” His focus is on the humanity of Christ, that He appeared as a human being. The reason he does this is because he is going to make this connection to his physical death and physical resurrection and that Jesus is the fulfilment of the messianic prophecies. He just starts off by identifying Him as Jesus of Nazareth. He then says He is a man, emphasizing His humanity. Then we have the word “attested,” the Greek word apodeiknumi [a)podeiknumi] which means to prove something, sometimes it means to appoint someone to some position, or to appoint a particular circumstance or situation. It means to demonstrate in a legal sense, demonstrating the truth of a proposition. That is what this is talking about: creating a logical proof for something. It is the same as a word that would be used for a lawyer who is presenting a logical case in a courtroom to demonstrate the guilt or innocence of the person who was charged. So it has to do with a logically structured argument or presentation of facts. What Peter is saying is that God demonstrated, validated through miracles, signs and wonders, the claims of Jesus to be God, to be the Messiah. So He is not operating in a vacuum, it is not some sort of mysticism. He is not a man who acquires deity later on or is ascribed deity later on by His followers; His claims are validated by God through the miracles.

Acts 2:23 ^NASB “this {Man,} delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put {Him} to death.” There are two parts to this verse. The first part has to do with the fact that Jesus was delivered by the determined purpose and the foreknowledge of God. That brings in the whole issue of God’s election, foreknowledge, omniscience, determinism, free will, etc., and God’s oversight of the events. The second half of the verse has to do with human responsibility. In that he is directly accusing those before him, even though they weren’t part of the Sanhedrin or the group that made the decision, nevertheless as being part of Israel and part of the nation that is represented by that leadership they bore a measure of responsibility. This is not to say that the Jews are to blame for the crucifixion; the whole human race is to blame for the crucifixion. But this is the generation that made the decision to arrest Jesus and to bring Him before Pilate, and it was the Romans who crucified Him. But they did this in an illegal manner. The trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin, the way in which He was arrested, the way in which He was taken, the lack of witnesses—there were about seven things that were done in the course of the trials of Jesus that were in complete violation of code that the Jews operated under—was completely illegal, according to the Mosaic Law. Nevertheless they had their agenda, just like politicians today, and they weren’t about to let something like the law stand in their way. That is why Peter said they were taken by “lawless hands.” They were in violation of the law and they crucified Him and put Him to death.

In this verse there are two words that we need to spend a little time discussing. The first is the phrase “determined purpose” [predetermined plan], and the second is the word “foreknowledge.” The phrase “determined purpose” is actually comprised of two different Greek words. The first word is the verb horizo [o(rizw], translated “determined,” and the second word is boule [boulh], the word that is translated “purpose” and it usually means “will.” So it has to do with a determination or planning of a specific course of action. So it say, Jesus was being delivered by the determined plan of God, the determined will of God, the determined purpose of God, the specific plan of God. There are various ways in which that can be translated but it has to do with the fact that God the Father in eternity had a specific plan that was being fulfilled in and by the crucifixion of Christ. Another way this could be translated—in fact the New English Bible translates it this way—is, “the deliberate” or “intentional will and plan of God.” It is emphasizing that this was God’s intent, it is not just an accident, not something that would contradict God’s plan; it was what God intended.

How does this relate to the question that is often asked about election, predestination and the foreknowledge of God? Luke 22:22 ^NASB “For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined [o(rizw]; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!” Jesus is speaking here at the time of the last supper and it is in reference to the fact that Judas is about to leave and go to betray Him. Who does the determination here? It is God. It is not stated as such but it is the passive form of the verb, it is God who does the determination. And what is it that is being determined? It was God’s plan that He would be betrayed and that He would go to the cross—as God intended.

Acts 10:42 ^NASB “And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed [o(rizw] by God as Judge of the living and the dead.” This is Peter speaking to Cornelius. Here the NKJV translates horizo “ordained.” So the person who does the determination, again, is God. The determination is that Jesus as the Messiah would be the judge of the living and the dead.

Acts 11:29 ^NASB “And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined [o(rizw] to send {a contribution} for the relief of the brethren living in Judea.” God is not the one making the plan here, it is the disciples.

The point of this verb is that God as the sovereign of the universe, the creator God, has a plan of salvation and He has sent His Son to fulfil that plan. And what Jesus did on the cross was not an accident, it is what God intended.

Acts 17:26 ^NASB “and He made from one {man} every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined [o(rizw] {their} appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” This is Paul speaking to the Athenians. It is a great verse for divine institution #4, national distinctions and distinctions between ethnic groups, maintaining borders, and none of this world without borders nonsense we hear day from the internationalists. As the overseer of history God determines the rise and the fall of nations. That is what we see in Daniel’s visions.

Acts 17:31 ^NASB “because He has fixed [o(rizw] a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

The next word, about which we get much more debate, is the word “foreknowledge.” There are two sides to this debate. There is one side that is the Calvinist/determinist side, and the basic Calvinist position is that foreknowledge is not simply knowing something ahead of time—also described by the word “prescience”—but that foreknowledge has to do with establishing a relationship ahead of time. The way that they will get to that conclusion is they will take the word prognosis [prognwsij], from which we get our word prognosis, and take the “fore” off, the pro, and go back to knowing. They say that the first couple of times we run into the word “knowing” in Scripture is, for example, back in Genesis where Adam knew Eve. That doesn’t mean that he had an academic acquaintance with her, it had to do with an intimate knowledge and understanding of someone. They try to import that meaning, which is a secondary meaning to gnosis [gnwsij] as a primary meaning to every other use of the word. So what they would say is in the foreknowledge of God, God is determining a relationship ahead of time. That is how they build to the Calvinist doctrine of election. But that is what is called by people who study semantics, and lexicographers, as illegitimate totality transfer. Words have primary core meanings and then they pick up secondary nuances. And when you take a secondary nuanced of a word in one passage and try to make that the core meaning and transfer that over to another passage, that is illegitimate totality transfer.

Foreknowledge: Liddell Scott Jones states that the basic meaning is to know, perceive, learn or understand something beforehand, or to make a prediction.

It is to know something ahead of time. The idea in some passages of judging beforehand, but this judging ahead of time is grounded in knowledge ahead of time—prescience.

One scholar who teaches at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville writes in his commentary on Romans: “Some have argued that the verb meaning “he foreknew” here should be defined only in terms of God’s foreknowledge [prescience]. That is, that God predestined to salvation those whom He saw in advance would choose to be part of His redeemed community. This fits with Acts 26:5 and 2 Peter 3:17 where the verb proginosko [prwginwskw] clearly means to know beforehand. According to this understanding predestination is not ultimately based on God’s decision to save some. Such an interpretation is attractive in that it forestalls the impression that God arbitrarily saves some and not others.”

That word “arbitrarily” is an important word. When you get to the question of election in Scripture it is very clear that God chose—present active indicative verb, God is the subject of the verb: He chose who would be saved. It doesn’t tell us what the basis was for that choice.

In Calvinism we read many of the authors who say God just chose; it is arbitrary. Because nothing is said in Scripture as to what the basis was for God’s choice they infer that it is just arbitrary: God chooses some and He passes over others, or in more extreme forms He chooses some to salvation and others He selects for damnation. This is the view on foreknowledge. So it become foundational to understanding any discussion later on related to predestination or election.

This word always indicates knowledge ahead of time. It doesn’t indicate a predetermination, it is not a synonym for choice, it is not a synonym for God’s putting His elective love on people; it simply means God knew something ahead of time. The foreknowledge of God here has to do with simply knowing what will happen ahead of time.

Acts 26:5 ^NASB “since they have known about me for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I lived {as} a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of our religion.” There are a couple of things to notice here about the way the words are used in this sentence by Paul. First, proginosko [prwginwskw] here simply refers to knowledge. It doesn’t refer to any kind of relationship, to any kind of choice, and it doesn’t indicate any kind of intimacy between those who were Pharisees who now would be giving their testimony against Paul. He just said, They knew me beforehand. They were aware of who he was and his background. Second, there is a chronology here that indicates that it has to do with time: “they have known about me for a long time.” Third, the most significant thing that we see here in terms of the syntax is that the object of the verb is “me”; they knew me beforehand. The idea is they knew something about Paul. They knew how he lived. It is not talking about a personal relationship with Paul but that they knew he lived according to the strictest sect of their religion. So proginosko doesn’t mean to know somebody personally but to know something about someone. That is important because in their discussion about election and foreknowledge Calvinists will say it means to know you personally. But here it is clearly used in the sense of knowing something about Paul beforehand.

1 Peter 1:20 ^NASB “For He was foreknown [known ahead of time] before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you.” Notice the contrast. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but manifest in these last times. So there is a comparison going on that He has foreknown (indicating previous knowledge) before the world was created but He is manifest now in these particular times. So again, it has the idea of prescience: knowing something ahead of time.

2 Peter 3:17 ^NASB “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand [prescience], be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness.”

1 Peter 1:2 ^NASB “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.” Here we get into the question of what it means to be elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. The preposition that is used here is kata [kata] which gives the ground or reason for an action. The action is the election of those “the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood,” but it is on the basis of the foreknowledge of God the Father. So now we have to address this question of what exactly is foreknowledge.

God’s omniscience means that He has infinite knowledge. That means that when we as finite human beings have spent a billion years listening to God teach us we will still be learning things we never dreamed of and we haven’t even started. God knows all that can be known within the infinite imagination and knowledge of God. He knows all of the what-ifs. God knows all things immediately. There is no temporal nature to God’s knowledge; there is no before or after to His understanding of things. God’s knowledge does not determine what will or will not be; this is just His omniscience. He just knows what might be as well as what will be. God’s knowledge of what will actually happen is a subset of all that He knows.

His foreknowledge relates to what will be; He knows everything else, but it is still not causing it in a sense that He causes it in a moral, ethical sense.

God perceives instantly everything that happens in the creation. All of this has to go into our understanding of what foreknowledge is. Foreknowledge basically means that God knows beforehand what is going to happen and what He determines will happen. But as soon as we mention that word “determination” it introduces the idea of causation. But it is at the divine level and the problem we get into with deterministic Calvinism and other fatalistic philosophies in theology is that they try to make the causation at the divine level the same as the causation at the creaturely level. As soon as they do that they have real problems because God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge. His thinking is far above ours and categorically different from ours.

God’s knowledge includes all events, choices, actions, thoughts, actual and potential.

God’s decision of what will be is usually presented as a) He determines every detail of what will take place. That is determinism; b) He determines what will be on the basis of the decision of the creature. If God’s decisions are based on the decision of the creature and God is just in reaction to what creatures decide, then He is not really God. He is not leading, He is just reacting. Leadership means that you are taking the initiative. But if God’s knowledge is in response to what the creature does then you have a problem with the creature getting saved by his works: God chooses him because of what he does. Scripture never says that. Scripture says we are saved though faith, not because of faith.

So usually what is set up are these two false opposites: either God determines everything or the creature determines everything. But God in His sovereignty determines that man has volition in certain areas and he doesn’t have volition in other areas. Not one person here could choose when they were born, what color hair they were going to have, or what kind of body they were going to have. There are some decisions we just can’t make.

Scripture does not inform us of why God chose Abraham to be the one He would work through and not, for example, Job who lived about the same time. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a reason; it just means God didn’t tell us what the reason was. But to say that He doesn’t include in the reason He makes that choice information from His foreknowledge is to end up saying God is completely arbitrary—He just chose Abraham for no reason whatsoever. Or, did He choose him on the basis of His foreknowledge of things that He knew would take place in history. So we are left with two options: either God chose arbitrarily or He included within the reason He makes a choice all that He knew. But to include His omniscience, what He knows, as part of His decision making, doesn’t make man’s decision causative. It doesn’t mean that man is really the horse pulling the cart without a driver—especially if some decisions are non-meritorious.

So when God takes into account who would believe and who would not believe He is not letting our choice become the cause of His choice; it is the means of His choice, and it is a non-meritorious factor. And that is why it would end up with the gospel of grace.

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