Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Peter’s readers have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father (1:2). The word foreknowledge is a compound word meaning to know beforehand. One of the attributes of God is His omniscience, His complete knowledge of the world and time.
Foreknowledge is the concept of knowledge regarding future events. The Problem: If God knows, then He knows everything. So then, God would know what will happen tomorrow, next year, or one thousand years from now. Furthermore, an omniscient being is never wrong. Therefore, it seems that it would follow that whatever God knows will happen in the future will happen in the future. Below we will unravel this supposed problem.
How is it that Adam and Eve were blamed for their actions before the foundation of the world (predestination) when they had not been created yet? Doesn’t that violate God’s principle of justice?
Are some chosen (predestined) to eternal salvation and others to eternal condemnation? The 16th-century Reformer John Calvin wrote: “We define predestination as the eternal design of God, whereby he determined what he wanted to do with each man. For he did not create them all in the same condition but foreordains some to everlasting life and others to eternal damnation.”
How is it that Adam and Eve were blamed for their actions before the foundation of the world? Does God foreknowing that Judas Iscariot will betray Jesus, predestine him, or coerce him to act against his free will? Are some chosen (predestined) to eternal salvation and others to eternal condemnation? Does God really ordain each of us individually ahead of time as to what our actions and final destiny will be? What does the Bible really teach?