Michael Heiser — Predestination & Foreknowledge

Predestination and foreknowledge aren’t the same. Foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination. In 1 Samuel 23:1–13 it’s clear, God foreknew a possible outcome that never actually happens—foreknowledge does not command that it’s predestined to happen. In other words, the means by which God works are His own—God can predestine things if He wants, but we cannot conclude that everything that happens was predestinated. 

We cannot exist as God’s own image if everything is predestined (Genesis 1:27). Free will (what we choose) matters, although we may not know how it matters exactly—God is omniscient and God will use it—only God knows such things. If everything is predestined, we would have no free will and we would simply be robots. This is why God does not eliminate evil just yet. In doing so, God would have to eliminate all of humanity as well as everything else in the spiritual world having free will. God is omniscient and knows what the cost is going to be. He would rather have us and have that cost happen than not have us at all!

God formed humanity in His own image—in meaning “functioning in the capacity of.” In other words, we are imager’s of God, created as God’s image. God is speaking to the divine council (the heavenly host)—the words Elohim and created are both used in the singular here (Genesis 1:26–27). In His own image is also singular—the image isn’t an attribute we have, it’s a status, a role in God’s divine plan. Given this status, our cognitive awareness of our very being, our existence and physicality, we are God-conscious—we worship and love God, understand and choose, and maintain the capacity for holiness:

• Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, the livestock, everything that crawls on the earth, and over the earth itself!” So God created mankind in his own image; in his own image God created them; he created them male and female. (Genesis 1:26–27)

As for the death penalty offenses in scripture, there is only one that preceded the theocracy, which is murder. Murder is so offensive because it’s like killing God in effigy. Bodily harm such as kidnapping or assault, these also were death penalty offenses—direct attacks against the image of God. This frame of reference was carried to the utmost degree:

• “Whoever sheds human blood, by a human his own blood is to be shed; because God made human beings in his own image. (Genesis 9:6)