Prescience Problems

The single most important Biblical text used to support the prescience view of predestination is Romans 8:29–30. This passage contains what is sometimes called “the golden chain,” a series of divine actions that God performs when He saves a person. Heading the list and preceding predestined is the verb foreknew. As we saw in yesterday’s study, the word foreknowledge is a synonym for prescience. Thus, the argument is made that God’s prior knowledge of what certain individuals will do determines whom He selects in the next step of the process of salvation, predestination.

While Paul does not say explicitly that God predestines on the basis of His foreknowledge, that is a possible inference from this passage. The prescience view makes just such an inference. Also, Paul does not say explicitly that all who are foreknown are predestined, that all who are predestined are called, that all who are called are justified, and so forth. However, most scholars would say that the text is elliptical and tacitly assumes that all of those affected by one step are affected by the next. Again, the prescience view accepts this assumption.

However, if we work our way through the golden chain, a problem emerges for the prescience view at the third stage, calling. The Bible speaks of both an external and an internal call of God. The external call is the public preaching of the gospel, the general invitation to trust Christ. The internal call is the secret work of the Holy Spirit by which He revives people spiritually and impels them toward faith. Which of these is in view in Romans 8? It must be the inward call, for if it is the outward call, the verse is telling us that everyone who hears the offer of the gospel is justified, and that obviously is not the case. Therefore, Romans 8 must be teaching that God predestines people to receive the internal call. However, the prescience view holds that God predestines people on the basis of their response to the external call. This view seems to be dealing with a different call and to be changing the order of the events in Romans 8.

One final point: Romans 8 does not say that predestination is based on God’s prior knowledge of what people will do. Rather, His foreknowledge concerns His people themselves, the elect. He knows those whose destiny He predetermines.