From the
conclusion to last Sunday afternoon’s sermon on God’s Decree and Foreknowledge
(from the 1689 Baptist confession, chapter three, paragraph 2):
In 1642 John Owen wrote a treatise with the title
“A Display of Arminianism” in which he responded point by point to the
objections of Arminianism to the Biblical doctrine of election. The subtitle, in
good Puritan fashion reads, in part: “A discovery of the old Pelagian idol
free-will, with the new goddess contingency.” Thus, the Arminian idea that
God’s decree is contingent or conditioned by man’s response, Owen declared to
be a “new goddess,” that is, a “false goddess.”
Chapter 3 is titled “Of the prescience or
foreknowledge of God, and how it is questioned and overthrown by the Arminians.”
His point is that God knows all things not because he anticipates various
contingencies but that he has sovereignly decreed all things.
Owen closes that chapter with a meditation on the
pastoral benefits of rightly understanding God’s decree and his foreknowledge:
Amidst all our
afflictions and temptations, under whose pressure we should else faint and
despair, it is no small comfort to be assured that we do nor can suffer nothing
but what his hand and counsel guides unto us, what is open and naked before his
eyes, and whose end and issue he knoweth long before; which is a strong motive
to patience, a sure anchor of hope, a firm ground of consolation (Works, Vol. 10, p. 29).
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