Westminster Confession of Faith 3.2
"Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions."
Summary
God knows all of reality and, because He is
all-knowing, He also knows all potential realities. He knows everything that is
and everything that could be. Yet His foreordination of all things is not based
on His foreknowledge of all things. In other words, God does not look down the
corridors of time, see what is going to happen, and then decree that it will
happen. Rather, God foreordains all things that will come to pass because of
His own good pleasure. This is another way of saying that God is in no way
bound in His decrees. Particularly in the question of election to salvation,
this is an important point. Arminians, Pelagians, and others who deny the absolute
sovereignty of God in salvation imagine that, when the Bible speaks of God’s
foreordaining people to salvation (Eph 1:11), what it really means is that God
looked down the corridors of time, saw the faith that certain people would have
in Christ, and on the basis of that foreseen faith, chose them to salvation. On the contrary,
God’s election to salvation is based entirely on His own free love and grace,
and not on His foreknowledge of faith.
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