Every Foreknowledge
Every verse asserting God’s foreknowledge, the falsifier scan for a stated mechanism, the two verbs, and Boethius and Aquinas verbatim.
The falsifier, set before the scan: any verse that states HOW God knows a future free act, in either form, ’because he decreed it’ or ’because he is outside time’.
Result across the foreknowledge texts and the standard decree texts: not found. the mechanism is unstated in both directions. Both sides bring philosophy to the gap. The essay must say this of its own side first.
Exact versus assisted: Wording of every verse and quotation, the parses, the counts, and the edition markers are exact. The classification of a verse as ’asserting foreknowledge’ or ’stating a mechanism’, and the reading of Boethius as compatible with Provisionism, are assisted (judgment) and marked. The thesis rests on the exact part: no verse states how God knows a free act, and Romans 8:29 has two verbs.
Foreknowledge asserted
Scripture asserts that God knows the future. Exact wording, King James Version.
| Reference | KJV |
|---|---|
| Isaiah 46:10 | “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:” |
| Isaiah 41:23 | “Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.” |
| Isaiah 42:9 | “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” |
| Isaiah 48:5 | “I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.” |
| Psalms 139:4 | “For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.” |
| Psalms 139:16 | “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” |
| Psalms 147:5 | “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” |
| Hebrews 4:13 | “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” |
| 1 John 3:20 | “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” |
| Acts 2:23 | “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:” |
| Romans 8:29 | “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” |
| 1 Peter 1:2 | “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” |
Knowledge of conditional futures
What would happen on a condition that never obtained. Exact: in 1 Samuel 23 God answers two questions about what Saul and Keilah ’will’ do, David leaves, and neither happens. Overclaim trap: do not say God ’predicted something false’; he answered a conditional and David changed the condition.
| Reference | KJV |
|---|---|
| 1 Samuel 23:11 | “Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down.” |
| 1 Samuel 23:12 | “Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver thee up.” |
| 1 Samuel 23:13 | “Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth.” |
| Jeremiah 38:17 | “Then said Jeremiah unto Zedekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon’s princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire; and thou shalt live, and thine house:” |
| Jeremiah 38:18 | “But if thou wilt not go forth to the king of Babylon’s princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.” |
| Matthew 11:21 | “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” |
| Matthew 11:23 | “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.” |
The decree texts, and what they state
The texts the decree reading rests on, with the verb and its object from STEPBible TAGNT (own-Strong’s-field). Exact: both state that God purposes and works; neither states that God’s knowledge of a free act is derived from his decree of it.
| Reference | KJV | Greek, parsed |
|---|---|---|
| Acts 4:28 | “For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” | proorisen V-AAI-3S, subject ’thy hand and thy counsel’, object hosa ... genesthai, neuter plural, ’the things ... to happen’: the deeds done to Jesus |
| Ephesians 1:11 | “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:” | energountos G1754 V-PAP-GSM, present active participle, ’the one working all things’, kata ten boulen tou thelematos autou |
| Acts 2:23 | “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:” | ’determinate counsel’ (horismene boule) AND ’foreknowledge’ (prognosei) side by side, joined by kai |
The two verbs
proginosko G4267, ’know beforehand’, whole New Testament, own-field: 5, all NKO. prognosis G4268, the noun: 2 (Acts 2:23; 1 Peter 1:2). Exact finding: the New Testament has one word for knowing beforehand and another for marking out beforehand, keeps them distinct in every occurrence, and uses both in one clause in Romans 8:29. Lexically, foreknow is not foreordain.
| Reference | Form, parsed | Subject and object | KJV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acts 26:5 | proginoskontes V-PAP-NPM | human subject: Paul’s accusers | “Which knew me from the beginning” |
| Rom 8:29 | proegno V-2AAI-3S | God; object the group of 8:28 | “whom he did foreknow” |
| Rom 11:2 | proegno V-2AAI-3S | God; object ’his people’ (Israel) | “his people which he foreknew” |
| 1 Pet 1:20 | proegnosmenou V-RPP-GSM | God; object Christ; KJV ’foreordained’ | “foreordained before the foundation of the world” |
| 2 Pet 3:17 | proginoskontes V-PAP-NPM | human subject: ’ye know these things before’ | “seeing ye know these things before” |
proorizo G4309, ’mark out beforehand’, whole New Testament, own-field: 6. Romans 8:29, TAGNT rows 03-05: proegno (G4267 V-2AAI-3S), kai (G2532), proorisen (G4309 V-AAI-3S). Two different lexemes, one conjunction.
| Reference | Object | KJV |
|---|---|---|
| Acts 4:28 | object: the deeds done to Christ | “determined before to be done” |
| Rom 8:29 | persons, to conformity to the Son | “he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son” |
| Rom 8:30 | 8:30 restates no object | “whom he did predestinate, them he also called” |
| 1 Cor 2:7 | object: God’s hidden wisdom | “which God ordained before the world unto our glory” |
| Eph 1:5 | persons, unto adoption | “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children” |
| Eph 1:11 | persons, an inheritance | “being predestinated according to the purpose” |
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy V.6, verbatim
Translation of H. R. James (Project Gutenberg #14328). Each quotation asserted as an exact substring of the fetched text.
“eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment.”
“everything that is known is cognized not in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature of the faculty that comprehends it”
“this ever-present comprehension and survey of all things God has received, not from the issue of future events, but from the simplicity of His own nature.”
“Wilt thou, then, say: “Shall the Divine knowledge be changed at my discretion, so that, when I will this or that, providence changes its knowledge correspondingly?” ’Surely not.’ ’True, for the Divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and transforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and varies not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this or that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations without altering.”
“Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time.”
“Whence it follows that when it perceives that something will come into existence, and yet is perfectly aware that this is unbound by any necessity, its apprehension is not opinion, but rather knowledge based on truth.”
“So, then, there are two necessities--one simple, as that men are necessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. For that which is known cannot indeed be otherwise than as it is known to be, and yet this fact by no means carries with it that other simple necessity. For the former necessity is not imposed by the thing’s own proper nature, but by the addition of a condition. No necessity compels one who is voluntarily walking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at the moment of walking.”
“Now, God views as present those coming events which happen of free will. These, accordingly, from the standpoint of the Divine vision are made necessary conditionally on the Divine cognizance; viewed, however, in themselves, they desist not from the absolute freedom naturally theirs. Accordingly, without doubt, all things will come to pass which God foreknows as about to happen, but of these certain proceed of free will; and though these happen, yet by the fact of their existence they do not lose their proper nature, in virtue of which before they happened it was really possible that they might not have come to pass.”
“some of them come from the necessity of things, others from the power of the agent.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.14, verbatim
English Dominican translation (New Advent), articles 8 and 13. Exact: Aquinas holds that God’s knowledge is a cause of things only ’in so far as His will is joined to it’, so knowledge as such is not causation even for Aquinas; and he gets CERTAIN knowledge of contingents not from their causes (that would be ’merely a conjectural knowledge’) but from their presence to eternity, Boethius’s road seen from a height.
“A thing will happen not because God knows it as future; but because it is future, it is on that account known by God, before it exists.”
“The knowledge of God is the cause of things.”
“His knowledge must be the cause of things, in so far as His will is joined to it.”
“whoever knows a contingent effect in its cause only, has merely a conjectural knowledge of it.”
“God knows all contingent things not only as they are in their causes, but also as each one of them is actually in itself.”
“Just as he who goes along the road, does not see those who come after him; whereas he who sees the whole road from a height, sees at once all travelling by the way.”
“what is known by God must be necessary according to the mode in which they are subject to the divine knowledge, as already stated, but not absolutely as considered in their own causes.”
Westminster, verbatim
Orthodox Presbyterian Church text. III.2 is the verified confessional form of the claim that God knows by decreeing; IX.1-2 grant the will natural liberty and Adam two-way power; IX.3 locates the loss at the fall. Exact: IX.1 denies that the will is ’by any absolute necessity of nature, determined’; IX.2 gives Adam ’power to will and to do ... mutably, so that he might fall’. That is contrary choice under limits, granted by God, in the Confession itself.
“God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
“Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”
“God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.”
“Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.”
“Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”
Free is not autonomous: the texts
Bounded, accountable, two-way freedom in the text. Matthew 23:37 TAGNT: ethelesa G2309 V-AAI-1S (’I willed’) ... ouk ethelesate G2309 V-AAI-2P (’ye did not will’): one verb, both sides, all NKO.
| Reference | KJV |
|---|---|
| Genesis 2:16 | “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:” |
| Genesis 2:17 | “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” |
| Deuteronomy 30:19 | “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” |
| Ezekiel 33:11 | “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” |
| Matthew 23:37 | “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” |
The verb draw: every use
helkyo G1670, whole New Testament, own-field: 8. Exact: the same verb, the same evangelist, and in 12:32 the object is ’all’ with no restriction in the sentence. Concede: 12:20-21 (the Greeks) is the trigger, and ’all kinds’ is a real contextual reading. Sized use: whatever ’all’ means, not everyone the lifted-up Christ draws comes; so helkyo in John is not a synonym for an effectual call of a fixed set. It does not prove every individual is drawn. Do not say it does.
| Reference | Object | KJV |
|---|---|---|
| John 6:44 | helkuse, aorist subj. | “except the Father which hath sent me draw him” |
| John 12:32 | helkuso, future, object pantas ’all’ | “will draw all men unto me” |
| John 18:10 | Peter drew his sword | “drew it” |
| John 21:6 | a net | “not able to draw it” |
| John 21:11 | a net | “drew the net to land” |
| Acts 16:19 | persons dragged | “drew them into the marketplace” |
| Acts 21:30 | persons dragged | “drew him out of the temple” |
| James 2:6 | the rich ’draw you before the judgment seats’ | “draw you before the judgment seats” |
What the Boethian answer settles, and what it does not
Answers (exact, from the quotations above):
- that foreknowledge imposes necessity on the act (two necessities)
- that certainty requires necessity (the glance; ’knowledge based on truth’)
- that God’s knowledge is received from events, or changes with them (’not from the issue of future events’; ’Surely not’)
- that seeing free and necessary acts together flattens the difference
Does not answer:
- the decree. Boethius never engages ’God knows because he ordained’. He answers the observer-and-necessity objection. The decree is the Calvinist’s premise, brought to the passage; it is not Boethius’s omission, and the essay must not say Boethius refutes it.
- the mechanism. Eternal presence names the mode; it does not explain how eternity makes the future present. That is a mystery at the HOW, confessed. The decree view has its own unexplained HOW: WCF III.1 asserts ’ordain whatsoever comes to pass’ with ’the liberty or contingency of second causes ... rather established’ and does not say how. Both sides carry a mystery; only one calls the other’s a defect.
Method
- English: the King James Version from the project database, 31,102 rows, whitespace-normalised; every quotation on this page an exact substring of the fetched verse.
- Greek: STEPBible TAGNT (CC BY 4.0), each occurrence matched on the word’s own Strong’s field, never on the grammatical-link column. Hebrew: STEPBible TAHOT, braced-root matches.
- Boethius, Aquinas and Westminster fetched raw from Project Gutenberg, New Advent and opc.org; every quotation asserted verbatim at generation time. No secondary summary was used for any quotation. Wording attributed to John Piper was not verified and is not quoted.
- The falsifier was defined before the scan ran. Counts for the record (exact): proginosko G4267 own-field 5 (any-column line control 13); prognosis G4268 2; proorizo G4309 6; helkyo G1670 8; Romans 8:29 rows 03-05: G4267, G2532, G4309, all NKO; Boethius quotations 9, Aquinas 7, Westminster 5, all asserted verbatim; KJV verses cited 46, all from the 31,102-row pull.
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Greek forms from STEPBible TAGNT (CC BY 4.0). The classification of each row and every conclusion drawn from it are the author’s, and are argued in Knowing Isn’t Writing.