I recently worked on Article XVII of the Church of England’s official statement of doctrine, the Thirty-Nine Articles, in preparation for a lecture I gave at a seminary within the United States at the tip of last month. As I worked on this Article, I used to be struck by how its opening words raise the problem of God’s relationship with time.
The words in query run as follows:
‘Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, He hath always decreed by His counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honour.’
The sentence tells us two things about God’s relationship with time. First, God’s purpose is ‘everlasting,’ more precisely because the word aeternum utilized in the Latin version of the Article tells us, it’s ‘everlasting,’ not only lasting throughout time, but transcending time. Secondly, on the premise of that everlasting purpose, God has ‘always decreed’ something ‘before the muse of the world.’
All this may very well be read as meaning that after we discuss ‘predestination’ what we mean is that God has an everlasting purpose on the premise of which he issues a everlasting decree before a hard and fast time limit, namely the muse of the world. Now, from our perspective, as creatures who live in time as fish live in water, all that is perfectly true. However, it is barely a partial truth because, although we live in time, God doesn’t.
Time is a component of the created order and God dwells outside it, just as he lives outside the temporal restrictions which his creatures inhabit. In the words of the early Christian philosopher Boethius: ‘God abides for ever in an everlasting present’ and consequently:
‘…His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells within the simplicity of its own changeless present, and embracing the entire infinite sweep of the past and the longer term contemplates all that falls inside its easy cognition as if it were now happening.’
This point, which has traditionally been accepted by Christian theologians, is developed by the Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock in his lectures on The Existence and Attributes of God. Charnock writes that:
‘God knows all things from eternity, and, due to this fact, perpetually knows them: the explanation is since the Divine knowledge is infinite, and due to this fact comprehends all knowable truths directly. An everlasting knowledge comprehends in itself all time, and beholds past and present in the identical manner, and due to this fact his knowledge is immutable: by one easy knowledge he considers the infinite spaces of past and future.’
An extra aspect of God’s everlasting existence noted by Charnock is that there isn’t a succession within the decrees of God, his decisions concerning what might be either because he directly makes them occur or because he allows them to be as the results of the motion of his creatures. God doesn’t decree first this after which that but every part eternally. As that is true of things basically, so also it’s true of God’s decree that he’ll save his human creatures from the ability of the Devil and of sin. In Charnock’s words:
‘There isn’t any succession within the decrees of God. He doesn’t decree this now, which he decreed not before; for as his works were known from the start of the world, so his works were decreed from the start of the world; as they’re known directly, so that they are decreed directly; there’s a succession within the execution of them; first grace, then glory; however the purpose of God for the bestowing of each, was in a single and the identical moment of eternity. ‘He selected us in him before the muse of the world, that we should always be holy’ (Eph 1;4). The alternative of Christ, and the alternative of some in him to be holy and to be comfortable, were before the muse of the world; they seem of their order in keeping with the council and can of God from eternity. The redemption of the world is after the creation of the world; however the decree whereby the world was created, and whereby it was redeemed, was from eternity.’
What all this implies in relation to the primary sentence of Article XVII, is that God has known and decreed from all eternity, that there might be a world, that it should Fall into sin, and that a certain body of individuals might be brought through Christ to everlasting salvation.
Once one says this people generally begin to grow to be uneasy because they think it implies that the Fall and sin were inevitable, and that those that are saved don’t have any alternative but to be saved and in consequence the lost don’t have any alternative but to be lost. How can it’s right, they ask for God to cause the Fall and sin to occur, to then punish people for sin, and at last to avoid wasting some while rejecting others?
The problem with this objection is that it confuses God’s everlasting knowledge and decrees with some type of absolute determinism. God’s knowledge of things to come back is because they might be, they usually might be because he decrees that they must be, but this doesn’t preclude God decreeing, and due to this fact knowing, that certain things will occur consequently of the exercise of free will by his rational creatures. To quote Boethius again:
‘…no doubt, all things will come to pass which God foreknows as about to occur, but of those certain proceed of free will; and though these occur, yet by the very fact of their existence they don’t lose their proper nature, in virtue of which before they happened it was really possible that they won’t have come to pass.’
If we ask how this may be possible, how something may be foreknown by God if it may not occur, the reply is that the language of foreknowledge employed by Boethius is an example of what’s referred to as analogous language, language which speaks of God by analogy with creaturely existence. The point is that to us God’s knowledge of what has yet to occur on this world is sort of a human looking forward to something that may occur in the longer term. However, as now we have said, God transcends time.
To quote C S Lewis in his book Mere Christianity.
‘God is outside and above the timeline… All the times are ‘Now’ for Him. He doesn’t remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you will have lost yesterday, He has not. He doesn’t foresee you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow will not be yet there for you, it’s for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you’re doing. Well, He knows your to-morrow’s actions in only the identical way – because He is already in tomorrow and might simply watch you. In a way he doesn’t know your motion till you will have done it: but then the moment at which you will have done it’s already ‘Now’for him.’
Seeing things on this light means, for instance, that God eternally knew that Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and due to this fact Jesus, sharing the divine knowledge, accurately predicted it might occur (Matthew 26:14-16, John 13:21-30). However, this didn’t mean that Judas needed to betray Jesus or that it was God’s will that he should achieve this. What God eternally knew and allowed was a free decision by Judas to achieve this within the knowledge that this decision would form a part of the method by which the world would then be saved.
What is true within the case of Judas can be true within the case of the Fall of Adam and Eve and the existence of sin basically. If we ask whether God knew that the Devil would turn from God and other fallen angels with him, that the Devil would cause Adam and Eve to show from God and that the result could be, as Article XVII puts, ‘curse and damnation,’ then the reply is ‘Yes.’ If we asked whether he decreed that this stuff must be allowed to occur, then the reply can be ‘Yes.’ However, if we ask if he forced or willed them to occur then the reply is ‘No.’
What God knew, since it was real, but which he didn’t determine, was that some angels and all human beings would misuse their free will. As Lewis explains, such misuse of free will was not inevitable (‘curse and damnation’ didn’t need to occur) but the character of free will made it possible (and due to this fact when it happened real and due to this fact eternally known to God). To quote Lewis:
‘God created things which had free will. That means creatures which might go either incorrect or right. Some people think they will imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going incorrect; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, can be the one thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy price having. A world of automata – a world of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be price creating. The happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily, united to him and to one another in an ecstasy of affection and delight compared with which essentially the most rapturous love between a person and a lady on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they need to be free.’
Some people might argue, in fact, that the creation of a world through which the misuse of free will could occur was a mistake given the state of conflict within the universe that has resulted, and which we see today in examples similar to the wars happening in Ukraine and the Middle East. However, as Lewis comments:
‘If God thinks this state of war within the universe a price price paying without cost will – that’s, for making a live world through which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can occur, as an alternative of a toy world which only moves when he pulls the strings – then we may take it it’s price paying.’
If we ask what all this implies in practical terms, the reply is twofold.
First, if God knows the longer term in his everlasting present it means we are able to trust his guarantees of a great end result for our own lives and for creation as an entire. God has seen the longer term, and it is nice.
Secondly, because God has given us free will and has said that he’ll judge us on how we use it, which means we want to take seriously the responsibility to act rightly since, to cite Boethius one last time:
‘… rewards and punishments are held forth to wills unbound by any necessity…Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up yourselves to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven. Great is the need of righteousness laid up on you if ye is not going to hide it from yourselves, seeing that each one your actions are done before the eyes of a judge who seeth all things.’
