On Acts 3:13-18:
All those definite things which God had
specifically determined upon, as to the sufferings of Christ for sin, all those
many things the Son of Man must suffer, he “so fulfilled”; fulfilled while
allowing wicked men to take Christ, and to put him to ignominious death upon
the Roman cross. In this way he overruled the wrath and wickedness of men, accomplishing,
despite their malice, his great purpose of human redemption. They fulfilled the
prophecies in condemning Christ, when they fulfilled all that was specifically written
of him and to be accomplished by him in making atonement (Acts xiii, 27, 29.)
Dean Alford says, on Acts ii, 3, that the words “determinate counsel and foreknowledge
of God” must not be joined to the word delivered” as agents (as if the counsel
and foreknowledge of God were co-agents with wicked men in the crucifixion of
Christ), because the dative case in which those words appear express the idea
of accordance and appointment, not of agency. The death of Christ was solemnly
foreordained and fixed, but the instruments by whom he finally was put to death
were by no means predestined.
The expiatory victim was prepared and
furnished in accordance with the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
Christ was delivered to die for the world, not by wicked men but according to
the fore-appointment of God. But contrary to God’s purposes and desires, wicked
men shamefully and wickedly nailed him to a Roman cross. (Lorenzo McCabe, The
Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy, repr. Two
Books on Open Theism: Divine Nescience and Future Contingencies a Necessity AND
The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy, ed.
Christopher Fisher [2024], 327-28)
On
Acts 4:27 and Jesus’s prophecies concerning his death:
God had provided a Savior to die for
the world; wicked men, in their malice, accomplished his death.
If God determined beforehand that
these particular persons should murder his son, how great the inconstancy of Christ,
pouring out with his dying breath, “Father, forgive them, they know not what
they do.” They were in that case only doing what they were set to do. St. Paul
openly alleges, form the Scriptures, that Christ must needs have suffered and
risen again. (Acts xvii, 3.) Moses and Elias “appeared in glory and spake of
his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Luke ix, 31.) How clearly
do these passages teach that the wickedness of the crucifixion, the way he did
actually die, had not been predetermined by the Father.
It is hard indeed to consider how any
thing could be made more explicit. But you inquire, Do we not find definite prophecies
made by Christ himself concerning the circumstances of his death? Yes; but they
do not at all contact with the denial of the foreknowledge of free choices of accountable
beings. . . . Now if any of these things had been mentioned or hinted in the
Hebrew Scriptures, it is marvelous that none of the apostles had any idea of what
Christ meant by these solemn and impressive declarations. They had acquaintance
with the Old Testament Scriptures; but not one of them, not even Peter, knew
any thing of what Christ meant by these utterances. Luke expressly says, “They
understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it
not; and they feared to ask him of that saying.” (ix, 45; also, Mark ix, 32.)
All these utterances seemed deeply to affect Christ, and to be so made by him,
as if to himself they were new, and unexpected and alarming developments. (Lorenzo
McCabe, The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy,
repr. Two Books on Open Theism: Divine Nescience and Future Contingencies a
Necessity AND The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and
Philosophy, ed. Christopher Fisher [2024], 328-29, 330)
The expressions, “The Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world” (Rev. xiii, 8), and “According as he has chosen us
[for as he chose us for himself] in him, before the foundation of the world”
(Eph. i, 4), may by some be thought inconsistent with the views concerning foreknowledge
which are here suggested. In 1 Peter I, 20, it is said concerning Christ, “Who
verily was foreknown [not, “was foreordained,” as in our English version]
before the foundation of the world.” Christ as a Redeemer was, in God’s plan,
without doubt foreknown from the very beginning of the universe. Without an
arrangement for a Savior able to meet all possible future necessities God, in
his goodness, could not consistently have created a race of free moral beings
such as man. For, while man’s rewardableness is contingent upon his
accountability, his accountability involves the possibility of his sinning; and
that possibility requires that a scheme of salvation, a SAVIOR, be provided in
the divine plan. In contemplating the plan for this world, all future
contingencies and possibilities were spread out before the divine mind. It was
fitting, therefore, that God should make, and he did make, a complete scheme of
salvation for all the human race who might ever need it. With such a provision
in his plan he made the world, and made man, even though the doing of this
might cost what it has cost. The atonement for sin, through his Son, was
provided for from the beginning, though not consummated until the “fullness of
time” in the completion of the ages. When, to meet all contingencies, God
arranged a scheme of salvation, he also “chose for himself” all who through the
ages should be saved by it. We thus see that the expression, “From before the foundation
of the world,” as making the time—though indefinitely—when the scheme of salvation
was arranged in the divine mind, harmonizes readily and naturally with our
views of the divine foreknowledge. (Lorenzo McCabe, The Foreknowledge of God
AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy, repr. Two Books on Open
Theism: Divine Nescience and Future Contingencies a Necessity AND The Foreknowledge
of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy, ed. Christopher Fisher
[2024], 362-63)
