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 contingences, 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)
