Last night I began teaching a 12 week course of study in the Westminster Confession of Faith for an elder/deacon officer training course at my church. What a joy it was to discuss the Scriptures, God, and His decrees—the first three chapters.
One point I made was that the confession begins at the proper place by putting the Scriptures first. Clearly, this was a proper thing for the framers to do since all that follows purports to be a systematic presentation of the truth in these Scriptures.
In the two hour session last night, in addition to the meaning of material in the Confession itself, we discussed “Open Theism” (or, as it’s sometimes called “Process Theology”). This utterly non-Christian heresy pops up from time to time in one form or another. Basically, it teaches such things as God learns from history, that He doesn’t, as the Scriptures clearly affirm, know the end from the beginning. So, if this man-honoring, God-debasing were true, they would be correct in asserting that God took a “risk” in creating man and endowing him with freedom to do as he pleased.
All of this—and much more—is, of course, non-biblical nonsense. For God not to foreknow the future, but to learn about it as it progresses, is to deny any biblical sort of God. He would be but a colossus-type man.
No, God doesn’t learn. He knew all things from before creation. Consequently, they were certain before creation (God’s knowledge isn’t faulty). And, of course, it follows that since He was all that existed before creation, it was He Who made them certain.
I don’t know, but I may treat a few more excerpts from this class in blogs to come. It would be fun to go over some of the things we chased down about the eternal decrees of God, the freedom of man, the canon of the Scriptures and so forth. But we’ll have to wait to see. Even though God doesn’t, I learn about what I am doing by doing it!
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Footnote: “Confession,” as in Westminster Confession of Faith means, literally, “to say together.” The term was used to refer to legal agreements. One who “confesses” his sin to God, in complete agreement, says what God says about it. In a Confession of faith, those who adhere to its tenets, “say the same thing” with each other. How ‘s wonderful when you confess it, to know that there are millions of others who do so in agreement with you!