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CHAPTER 8
 

HYPOTHESIS, HYPOSTASIS AND FACT

The Fabric of Foreknowledge, The Fathering of Freedom and
The Reality of Love.

The Fabric of Foreknowledge

During our investigations into the biblical meaning and character of predestination, foreknowledge, freewill, human duty,  responsibility and the like, and delighted findings of the unique validity and capability of the biblical depiction, covering alone all aspects of this dynamic arena of failed philosophy, which grinds on as if grudging in the unsatisfied fumbling of that domain, what might be deemed a schema has been presented.

1) the biblical propositions as in the M.U., M.A., Predestination and Freewill.

2) the systematic secular failure to cover the elements of the empirical case.

3) the biblical perspicuity in covering them all, based on the effectual basis consistently found there, and the consideration of 1) above.

4) some major theological write-downs or extremes have been considered, including more recently one which one was not at the time (1964) permitted to add, because the M.A. was already some 75,000 words instead of perhaps 25,000 (Whitehead), it is of the nature of a hybrid. It thus has interest in our  aspect of TYPES of approach in this area.

5) 6 more volumes on this arena of thought, revelation, the empirical, the interstices and the resultants biblically, on many sides have now been published, so that from various vantage points more might be seen, more implications and functions, coverages and verificatory felicities on the bible basis, in which nothing systematic is lacking, and no contradiction or ineluctability is discernible.

6) Emphasis has been made in these seven volumes that in presenting the thesis, there is no attempt to lay down as if certain, any propositions or elements within the whole arena which go beyond the first biblical principles collected for consideration in this field, and vindicated, and any enlargement which becomes there exhibited over the (nearly fifty) years since that first volume of the heptad was written, and in the associated presentation made to the Melbourne University Faculty at the time. Emphasis is thence laid substantially on application or implication.

That is to say, the endeavour was to show the lack of defect at the systematic level, the presence of total harmony in the biblically based approach, within itself,  concerning the empirical data available in this arena of thought as well, so that the unique property of this revelation in this area has been  thoroughly tested and vindicated. No intention at any time was held to present anything intrusive into the functioning of the divine, outside the entire biblical  revelation, lest there be at another level, presumption. An hypothesis is presented on a given basis, and in the process of verifying it, and showing its unique reasonableness and scope, there is no intent to add to the revelation, its model, in the interests simply of exhibiting its rationality, a duty in Christian Apologetics within a given case, from first to last.

Thus where the thesis presents the hypostasis, in the divine foreknowledge to cover the lines specified in Ephesians 1:4 and Romans 8, for example, so that beyond time,  as biblically declared,  and  before creation of this universe, before therefore sin in it, God has chosen His own people, and prepared in His (then) forthcoming creation their due coming selection and sustaining (John 6, for example), nothing not given in the Bible is necessary or permissible,  but an embodiment of a case or specification of it is expressed to enable the demonstration of its adequacy in principle.

Thus, it is made clear (John 3:19, for example) that in the face of the divine love for this world, which has reached such an intensity that anyone believing in the divine sacrifice to bear sin thrust as wide as the reception of the gift of pardon goes, is freely forgiven sin (as in Romans 3, Galatians 1, 3, 5). There is a solution found to why in the Bible, this being so, all the race is not so saved. It is the divine testimony that some have a preference for another deal, pursuit, that of evil (John 3:19). Despite the  love of God as stated, its immensity and intensity as portrayed in the arena of divine practical intervention in this world (John 3:16), there is a reason to explain why this coming not to condemn the world, but to save it, in Jesus Christ, failed to cover the practical case for some. In this He did not fail, to present the cover adequately and meaningfully (I John 2:1-2), but that it should be received freely. It is a grant but not a tyranny, and so this was the opening for love to have its meaning, and not a mere catabolism into something else.

Indeed, it  was, despite the amplitude of the divine love for man, a contrary preference on the part of some, even amidst the expansive divine love (as in I John 2:1-2, I Timothy 4:10) and the profundity of divine grief expressed when the diligent seeking for salvation for many is wilfully bypassed, as need not have been (as in Matthew 22, Isaiah 48:16ff., and frequently^*1).

God is set to avoid judgment in His cosmic presentation, enablement, desire and longing (Matthew 23:37ff., I Timothy 2, Luke 19:46, Ezekiel 33:11), and although when the point comes, wrath  and judgment will at length arrive for those concerned, as often enough over history for Israel (Isaiah 1), and later this world (cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 66, Deuteronomy 32, Revelation, Isaiah 24), that is and is to be the self-ruined remnant of this world (Matthew 24): that outcome at the first had a very different outset. Love parries the blade but does not alter the truth.

Thus the overall condition and position of those in this adamantine spiritual category, who have come to the irreparable category, because their arbitrary assertion or coercion to evil is so intense that it may at any time be noted by Him, its fateful frenzy like a freely impacted tooth: this may be cited. It may be used to show His glory in patience or incorruptibility; and to illustrate His resolution of each case before whom all time and opportunity is known and foreknown (Romans 9:710 with 22) - and II Chronicles 36, Ezekiel 20, Psalm 78 give good dynamic testimony in this line). Methods and costs to overcome are not cancelled because they did not avail, just as torn up cheques do not contribute to the assets of the persistently delinquent (cf. Hebrews 6). Indeed they may be cancelled at the butt before issue, where the result is fore known.

Indeed clearly, the final position for any party does not define how it got there either qualitatively or quantitatively

Thus in no way does the final position for any party neither forces not determines how it got there. In the Old, Isaiah 48, and in the New, for example, Luke 19 and Matthew 23 show the lament and loathing of the loss, by the Lord. Yet He is not subverted by His sorrow, nor does He resort to distortion of any case, to realise the thrust of His love. The love of evil in some does not equate to the lack of love on the part of the Lord. Such an amazing distortion of logic, comparable to saying for example, 'God had an angry relationship with Israel' - true of phases but in this case, opposite to the eventual attestation of the underlying situation, allows careless thought to attribute what ?

It is to attribute the end to the beginning, as in the case of Romans 9, despite the pointer of 9:22, and allow the very existence of divine sovereignty to presuppose some mystery about its nature, and His, when the  end being known from the beginning, the announcement of the final result in a given case, is like examinee's results. If the examiner were God, He could announce this cold fact at any time, with absolutely no reference to the actual historic years or empirical depths or eternal knowledge in which this was obtained. God not taking that time or phase in this ultimate report or exhibiting the patience in the procedure, He does not thereby cancel it, as if a mother's long care were cancelled because the son eschewed it, behaving monstrously.

Of this II Chronicles 36 and Ezekiel 20 give an excellent example, except that in these cases concerning Israel , there was interim judgment, only for the ultimate mercy to prevail, as so delicately described for Israel in the poignant case of Micah 7! What if, as so often recorded in the Bible for certain cases, God bore the provocation most patiently, but being in the end spurned, the double mercy mashed, He used the negative case for exhortation to others! Outcomes are not incomes, ends are not beginnings, hopeful attitudes are not negative results, and known endings are not eliminated heart, when these are known. They were found out, analytically speaking. We learn the result, when that is the theme and the topic of the word of God.
 

THE POINT TO CLARITY

Returning then to what the Bible declares, in principle here and there, and in practice, and to the need to realise in any model, be it factual or hypothetical, the need for consistency in its application and to avoid the use of one approach or model, in the very midst of expounding a totally or vitally different model, let us ponder divine foreknowledge.

What are some of its features, viewed simply for comparison with what is another model, without admixtures of approaches, or confusion of outcome with outset ?

First  it is sure, predestination simply carrying it out, being in logical sequence (Romans 8). Secondly, it involves divine "choice", as in  Ephesians 1:4. Thirdly it prevents confusion and enables prediction, or qualification, or  illustrations of eventuation. Fourthly, the result is a matter of grace only with no contribution from human resources relevant to  pardon and salvation. Indeed, in Romans 3, so strong is this emphasis that the  application is even made that were this not so, boasting would be possible in heaven, the savvy sophisticate able to have read where best result was, and hypocritically to meet or supply some condition as a devious investment for mere personal advantage with no more repentance than that of a hurricane in mid-course. But God is a Spirit and knows the heart, there being no provision for self- or cynical-satisfaction. There is no sorrow in heaven, nor any ground for self-elevation, the cost of purging and pardon being total in every case, and the contribution from man being nil in weight. Death is not annulled by a flicker, or dismissed in justice by a foul.

Thus any characterisation of foreknowledge which provides for the opposite, is invalid as a biblical model. God supplies a) the love to be interested, b) the power to make the interest effectual, c) the wisdom to relate all aptly, d) the Gospel by which the payment for pardon is made, all precisely as He wishes, with help from none (cf. Isaiah 40). He also provides the spiritual site for this service, as distinct from having all mankind in a disabling prison or separation, away from mercy altogether because of sin, or lost in some incinerator for waste products.

He also supplies the sacrificial butt for the payment and the lively Spirit for its application. He makes it clear that it does not depend, the selection for  salvation, on the will or flesh or blood of the recipient (John 1:1-14), thespirit of man,   the historic target.

Yet it is not at all the exclusivistic will of God in terms of love and desire (as in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, and their implications - as again in Isaiah 48:16ff.) which in cold, abstract or any other outward thrust of love at the outset, simply excludes because He feels like it, does not have the dynamic for it, or there is some limiting mood, or mode of this kind. Mystery in the depth of divine love (Ephesians 3) is aplenty; but missing divine love is not the predisposition of God as repeatedly stated in the Bible. The opposite is the case, and feeble parenthood gives a feeble yet highly significant illustration.

There is no thought of force at THIS level, as the lamentations show afterwards because the step was not taken. Force does not create love, being an  alternate approach, resulting in loathing at best, and misnomer at worst, an abortion of the topic in view,  violating its nature. Accordingly it is not used in this area, except by those lost to love, engines of lust, rumbling with unreason, self-exalting and the like. God is biblically the purest example of the opposite. What He chooses is in terms of what, of who He is, and is to be learned, not  presumptuously assigned, using contradiction as a criterion for meaning repeated stated. Each select assertion in its due impact is not removed by others, but amplified; assumption of clash is mere pretence for confusion.

The word of God is clear, it does not vary, as shown in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock and other words in this Set, including the Heptad. His clarity is not other than that which God assigns to it. Ezekiel 1 is not false imagery but the very vision of the opposite, of a clarity of marvellous penetration and sublime thrust. Negative assumptions on this point are mere assumptions not borne out, presumptions not fulfilled. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and His speech is clear, with nothing twisted in it. Such is the finding, and such is the claim as in Proverbs 8.

Despite and in the face of the multiply announced breadth and character of the desire and love of God, then, there is foreknowledge of the case, the negative case, the differentially negative case with some. It is not a love which at the same time and logical step, both loves to the UTTERMOST (as here), and PREVENTS to the uttermost, the fulfilment. It is as is most well-known to man in countless observations, a love which goes to the uttermost for its children,  but does not endeavour to impress force to secure some substitute for love. Rather it grieves when force being irrelevant, the loved one is lost, and through imperious, or imperial follies, itself systematically ruins, step by step, all that was hoped for. Thus does it  aborting each path which led back to sanity, sobriety and spirituality.

Since God shows both His own absolute divorce from anything of that character, to force or shanghai and so spuriously gain the object of desire, and then call it love, and His grief when the differential outcome of His love is negative even in the face of the adequate cost of the redemption which is both eternal in kind, available as a grant and associated in heaven with great joy when it is received, yet some may ask further. In view of the occurrence of these abortive results for many, some may ask, How did the foreknowledge at the first deal out such  outcomes ? Why did they die ? But God replies, as to one phase in Israel, Why will you die! (Ezekiel 33:11); for HE has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he should live. TURN, He cries, turn!

PRIOR NATURE, ABSTRACTED NATURE BUT HUMAN NATURE

In the domain before our time (a creation as in Roman 8:38, Genesis 1), before the world was (as in Ephesians 1:4), therefore before the sin of man was, therefore before the sinners of mankind were, or even the sinless priority Adam, God knew in advance of time itself, who were His own. Indeed, He had chosen them with knowledge and integrity! Though they were not there in normal human life, to Him they were; and though therefore THEY could not make the ultimate choice, God could see its nature, not as determined from within, which is no freedom, but as that freedom which ONLY God can make, delivered from nexus control, circumstantial dictation. It is mere confusion to assume in a given model, what is the contradiction of its main feature.

Indeed, in using the concept of hypostasis to enable ready imagination or conception of such a condition and situation, one has seen and specifies a number of conditions fulfilled to meet the biblical specifications of the action itself of foreknowing, as biblically given.

The qualities of the action included the following, then.

1) There was no inhibition or direction bound to produce the result, or it would not have been a choice to be made in the Being of Deity. Moreover, then  Adam, though the type or kind of man, would have been different in fundamental kind, not a federal or any other head, or source. Nor was it conditional on  any facility or agility, endured capacity,  donated, operative and constraining, for this was not so with Adam, who was indeed given a test, but not a mere exposure like a chemical reagent, rather a test for testimony. Life and death lay in it, and utter responsibility to bring down his life to an almost bathetic loss was no charade, deceit or pretence.

As in Lamentations 3:33, 

"God does not afflict willingly or grieve the children of men."

2) Neither in construction nor in spiritual consistency, in condition nor instruction differential was any by virtue of creation either disposed or inclined to go one way, for or against God. True only two humans were created, but their institution did not contain any negative constraint, nor was the test bogus, a responsibility distortion nor a quiver in justice.

Had this been so, then it would merely be a case of exhibiting the way it was instituted or constituted, and no cause for grief, only for failure at a level not that of man. God however biblically and logically (cf. SMR) is not about to fail (cf. Zephaniah 3:5), His word to fail nor His justice to become sodden. Rather it is His mercy which comes into impact with judgment, not for specious demand from man, but from the tenderness of His heart. When man realises the ravages in his soul and the parodies in his life, then the mercies to be sought become clearer, as when the sun creeps through mist, only to become blatantly blight and inescapable.

3) Whether man in divine foreknowledge, then, is viewed beyond time, in this case, then, as sinless in hypostasis, enabling ready disposition and choice, according to his preference (as in John 3:19), by this envisagement and  readout of divine desire for the case (as essentially with Adam, but now not through action, since the man is in this case not actually there except by divine presentation), or there is some other other way of achieving the same evocation and testing result, is not the point. The requirement in terms of logical need is  only that SOME method be there, not which one.

Thus it could be that there is a divine analytical lift-off or abstraction of sin and removal of its dynamic in the hypostatic method chosen in divine foreknowledge, resulting in the same exposure of the reality, or of sin itself before the assessing divine eye in that originating phase. Who are we, and what is Christian Apologetics to dictate what is neither necessary to know, nor germane to the demonstration of the harmony of the elements of the matter! Man, however, is not operative in this regard, in history, for this neither initiates it nor is it dependent on it (Romans 9, John 1:1-4). He may of course dependent on divine approach, experience more or less of the underlying reality as in Hebrews 6 and I Samuel  10:11-12.

However, the Bible makes it clear what was done, and not done, at the level of basis and character, and this suffices for our purpose. When God makes freedom, He knows what He is doing; when the Great Physician makes choice, He knows the case. When the case is voluntary, so that there is genuine guilt or otherwise, then He knows the ingredients. When love is concerned at the uttermost divine level, then wisdom and desire mixed omit nothing. Here we have simply envisioned what would harmoniously produce the inscripturated result, and noted its adequacy, yes and a second way as well.

Either man's action or the divine action is the cause of the fall. Love does not do this. Many things happen despite it. Many loved ones fail to respond, even when it is in their manifest interest. A desire for quasi-autonomy possesses or even obsesses them; the eyes THEY shut and the ears disenable to such sight and sounds as these. This is the paradigm, the vast and initial paradigm of Him who uses just such analogy in speaking of His love, and gives to  love as distinct from abortive substitutes, its name of perfect purity. It is not even relevant to "love" when this is neither free to respond nor so placed as to make response even operative, in terms of its being that to love, and not simply to stimuli.

Whatever puts all in one of a love flicker, failure or limit in extent,  ignores the topic. When GOD puts HIS love into a Creator's loving desire, specified as to extent and intensity, it is best not to write some other story. Any religion which makes up some such situation is not even relevant to man. Where man is not recognised as at least in principle made operative by God, as free to love Him,  then it is the 'God' in view who is responsible. As Spurgeon pointed out, to envisage a God who makes some expressly for damnation is worse than oddity! That foreknown results occur despite passionate provisions to the contrary is one thing, for then there is curb only by the limits which love has in itself, That allows and indeed leads to this being the condemnation, that the limitless quality, extent and scope of the love being aborted by man, it is his privileged as human in the image of God. God has His own ways.

As in John 3:18, it is rebutted in the face of the love to the entire, not-to-be-condemned world; for it was to save this that His mission came. That bad outcomes should be relatable to no one's option, and with no one relevant but God in Himself, is to distort to horror, the giver of the most extreme provision for mankind, who has foreknown before all time, all persons, and shown His character, which does not change, in the process.

Jesus Christ is to be the JUDGE (John 5:19ff.), and He does not change (Hebrews 13:8)^*2. Indeed,  His approach whether in the Messianic passages of the Old Testament, or in the New, is to  avoid indifference because of love and concern, to find ways of reaching, to cut through needless obstructions, to remove twisted appearances in heartless attacks with ingenuity and discernment that is delightful. He is to be found hating the spiritual diseases which destroy, seeking to obviate destruction where it may yet be done, while lamenting the wilful blindness in man, which cuts out the willing kindness in God, who went so far as to come, to delete the bonds. No change for the future, for the past, or in the action of foreknowing: He is ONE, and if made other or many oddments by theologians, this is simply distortion in man's kind.

When  seen as in the Bible however, He presents the realities of predestination, liberty, foreknowledge, His own desires and actions, defining all. It is this which stands out above all the religious ramblings of man, none of which cover the case of the elements in this arena (cf. II Timothy 4, Jeremiah 23). That is hardly surprising and certainly verificatory; for who but the INFINITE Maker COULD understand and verify what He has done. When man baulks at it, or any part of it, he is unwise (cf. Proverbs 8:35-36). Yet God has spoken and it is deliciously clear (cf. Proverbs 8:8).

Whatever then, the systematic obscurations of sin, down the generations and degenerations of man, even as in Hebrews 6, God is well able to discern for His own part in His own presence and impact, which as in all matters goes past mere natural inhibitions to the spiritual essence and reality. He knows in particular whether the pre-world sinner separated from any all-nullifying sinfulness by the power of His own presence, and more readily before the person is even invented or existent, in the phase of foreknowledge, whether He is desired by that person. It is His choice on His terms which He chooses to be so tested before time, and so found out with a love which nothing can overturn by mere disease.

God chooses as only an infinitely knowledgeable lover can, and never violates the virtue of love to be  love, being a free matter and not a bucolic transformation to get His desire under false conditions.

It is a transformation, but one in accord with what in His own knowledge, does NOT want to be ruined by a continuation of sin. Doctors understand the effects of many diseases; God of all. Past the pathological palaver, HE knows the heart: and He says so (Jeremiah 9). Accordingly, He chooses, and His relief is always available, always reaches its target, always in truth, and always liberates. THEREFORE NO ONE ever has any reason but himself or herself, to decay into a sinner's destiny, for it is God who yearns for the contrary, and at every level has provided all!

NOTES

*1

See for example SMR Appendix B.

*2

To imagine that

the exceedingly brilliant compassion and penetration,

concern and activistic energy of Jesus Christ

in meeting needs almost inconceivable in magnitude and multiplicity,

as in diversity and explosive order of service,

together with His statements and those of the Gospel writers and Paul
(cf. SMR Appendix B, for one exposition)

are compatible

with a lack of concern for interception, in principle or practice,
by this means or by that,

by that same Eternal Word of God in the Department of  Foreknowledge ,

is monstrous.

Apart from time in Himself, for it is His creation (Romans 8:36), He is neither aged by it nor changed, for if a human author changes but little in writing a book, and is not subject to its time frame, how much more is the Lord of creation in His eternal life (I John 1), beyond any taint or turning by its presence.

Indeed, to posit that this same Person who delighted to become  flesh and do the will of His Father, humbling Himself to dwell among us (John 1:1-14), weeping at the coming loss of Jerusalem and the wilful hardness of heart (Matthew 23:37, 13:15ff.) of those who He had left from before creation, dashed His concern where it mattered most,  as if incapable of responding to what He died for (I John 2:1-2) is a contradiction of His stated principles and evidenced character so vast as to become overturning by odium.

He always did the will of His Father and was in eternal consort with Him (John 8:29ff., 17:1ff.), contrary to His own  revealed nature and impetus ? That is multiplication by division  and logic by anaesthetic.  It is like calling a spotlight, deep shade, or an athlete a paraplegic, or a philanthropist, a miserly millionaire. It is not merely a gauche contradiction of data for this model, but a distortively disreputable one.

What He was, He became in a format for specialised service, and there He showed through what He in the form of a servant DID and SAID (for example, Matthew 18:14, Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42), the spectacular concentration of delivering from perishing to the cost of His own life. As in Matthew 22, largesse was pressed on the least when the first called refused the wedding invitation, as on those who would least expect it (cf. I Corinthians 1:27-30); for there was no difference. Those who might be qualified, failed, and that being so, for the wedding now the  byways as well highways were  to be thoroughly searched for those now pressingly invited to the wedding. Formal invitees and informal, those hoped and those most seemingly inappropriate, all were zealously to be searched for, with energy to be sought with heart desire to be found as in I Timothy 2, and expressed in vast anguish in Isaiah 48, where lost. It is not the express image of the person of God who so varies, nor the invariable exhibit of His splendour and heart.

In  all His works, Christ is the same, and the Messianic majesty does not alter, let alone to the point of contradiction of affirmation, or contraction of expansion. HOW it is all done from any technical point of view, if you want to  apply such aspects to the Almighty Spirit of God, is not germane to our enquiry. It is the total harmony of the divine aspects which is in view, and found absolute in both Testaments. It is to be found not only from what He has said when incarnate, but in that prior to this; and this as shown in the Heptad noted, these facets have been examined on all sides, to ensure that it is entirely consistent both with all the aspects of the model, and with itself.

It is a work of grace in which the Lord leaves NOTHING (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ) out of line in the systematic inter-relationships of His words, and their impact sites whether in implication, declaration or activation. It is this type of quality which, like the computing-style and verbal-communication methods of His brilliance in sustaining physical life with words,  in DNA in no small part, just as He announced that He made it with words, now verified, which is one of the many constantly re-affirming marvels of His revelation through His word and His works.