Does God elect based on His knowing who would choose Him?

This seems to be the “go to” view of those trying to straddle the line between an Arminian perspective and a Reformed one. It is, however, firmly on the Arminian side of the divide. To its credit it at least acknowledges that words like election and predestination are in our Bibles, even as it, however unintentionally, guts those words of their meanings.

There are at least three things wrong with this view. It fails to understand who we are, who God is, and how we relate. That’s all. First, how does it misunderstand who we are? Because the truth is if God were to peer down the corridor of time to see who would choose Him the answer would be none of us. We are by nature children of wrath. We are His enemies, unless or until HE puts enmity in our hearts against the serpent (Genesis 3:15). We who believe in God’s sovereign election believe so in large part because we understand that none of us have the power to even repent and believe unless He first changes us.

Second, this view misunderstands who God is. It presents a God who is omniscient, but by no means omnipotent. For God to look down the corridor of time to see what would happen then history is something different from what He planned. History would receive His imprimatur, His seal of approval, but would not be His. It is as if history is a movie that God watched, approved of, but did not write, direct, produce or act in. It makes Him into an observer, rather than the sovereign Lord over all things. There is no movie to look at apart from the movie He is bringing to pass.

Third, this view misunderstands how we relate to God. The Bible tells us that we are the clay and He is the potter, that He reserves the right to make some vessels fit for destruction and some for honor (Romans 9). It tells us that once there was God, and nothing else (Genesis 1:1). Everything that comes after, when tracing its roots, will always come back to that same moment. We are dependent, contingent, derived. We are, in short, creatures. One need not tussle over Paul’s letters or parse John 3:16 to find the truth. It’s all there in the first verse. There is no being, no power, no change, no one coming to faith apart from His sovereign, efficacious will. God can no more share ultimate causality than He can share His glory. For the two are one.

Doesn’t Romans 8:29 say “Those whom He foreknew?” Indeed it does. Trouble is, “foreknew” doesn’t mean “knew ahead of time” for two good reasons. First, that’s not how the Greek word is used. To foreknow is to love in advance. To know here functions like the euphemism we find in Genesis, “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” Second, the list, each category all inclusive of the next, in Romans 8:29 and 30 covers all who are saved. All that God knew in advance would include both believers and unbelievers. Which would mean all would end up glorified. No, to foreknow is to love in advance, something reserved for the elect, those He predestined to life.