Prophecy involves divine omniscience. It’s supernatural because it’s the ability of God to know beforehand what free creatures are going to do. If prophecy was instead only a matter of God knowing what He unilaterally decreed that creatures would do, then that is no longer special. For instance, what would be special about me telling you what I plan to do? However, if I could tell you what will unfailingly happen that I neither cause nor influence, then that is special, and it would have to come from God, who alone has that ability. God created all time and space, so it is illogical to place Him within the confines of what He created.
Frequently, the matter of Judas comes up with this type of discussion. For instance, in the Old Testament, does God prophesy that a certain person would betray the Messiah or does it say that God predestined it?467
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “These are places where plainly the sovereign decree of God is guiding and determining what takes place in time. There’s no question about it. If you believe in prophecy, you have to believe this. If you don’t believe this, you have no basis for believing in prophecy.”468
Our reply:
Prophecy does not determine the future but instead reveals the future, because God (who is not limited to time in our dimension, and moreover who created all time and space), can know what man will self-determine in the future. Even John Calvin agreed that prophecy is not the same thing as predestination:
John Calvin: “I acknowledge that nothing happens but what but has been ordained by God, but the only question now is whether their being foretold or prophesied makes people do things, and I have already shown this is not so.”469
Non-Calvinists are free to deny John Calvin’s belief in exhaustive determinism while still calling him to the Witness Stand as a “Hostile Witness” to point out a mutual agreement that omniscience does not necessarily require determinism.
Stated another way, if God’s prophecies are not predetermined by Him, where would He obtain the information on those prophecies? A common non-Calvinist answer derives from God being outside of time. If God created time, space and matter, surely He cannot be limited to what He creates, can He? Therefore, it logically follows God must transcend time itself, in which God can then infallibly know future human events simply from the perspective of being outside of time.
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467 See also the topical discussion on Judas.
468 Does Isaiah 10 prove Determinism? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzG62s2018, 6:28-6:53.
469 The Crossway Classic Commentaries: John (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), 397.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
