Foreknowledge and Foreknew

2022-04-03

What is meant by the foreknowledge of God? It can mean anything from God knowing something ahead of time to God ordaining something to happen beforehand. The context may give us some ideas in each case. The noun form “foreknowledge” appears twice in the Scriptures, and the verb form “foreknow,” “know,” and “foreordain” appears six times.

We know that this word does not necessarily mean something was predetermined ahead of time. The word is used of people “foreknowing” twice. First, we read that “...know all the Jews; Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee” (Acts 26:4-5), where the word “knew” is this word. The context says that Paul was known to be a Pharisee from the beginning of his career. Also, Peter used the verb of the addressees of his letter: “Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness” (2 Peter 3:17). The recipients knew from the beginning that false prophets twisted the Scriptures, so they would be held accountable if they fell for it.

In other cases, it probably means the choosing of a certain event to happen. We have the example of Jesus Christ Himself: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). The use of “determinate counsel” and “foreknowledge” shows that God orchestrated the event of Jesus’ passion and had complete knowledge of it ahead of time. Redundancy is common throughout the Scriptures to ensure the audience knows the meaning of terms; this seems to be the case here.

We will examine more about God’s foreknowledge and what that means next.