We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
How do you respond to Matthew 16:21?
“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
The ministry and death of Jesus are the centerpieces of God’s plan in world history. Therefore, very little surrounding Jesus’ life and death was left to chance. It had been determined from ages past that the Lord himself would have to become a man and die. This is something God was going to do, and thus it was foreknown from whatever time he decided it. In this verse Jesus reveals the divine plan to his disciples. But we have no reason to conclude from this that the whole of the future was settled in Jesus’ mind (see Mark 13:32). Indeed, Jesus’ prayer in the Garden suggests that he held an outside hope that even his death could be averted at the last minute (Matt. 26:39). Nor should we conclude that the specific elders, chief priests and scribes who were going to be instrumental in putting Jesus to death were predestined or foreknown from ages past to do so. The verse simply indicates that by the time Jesus was teaching his disciples about his future it was certain that some of these people would act in this fashion.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism, Responding to Objections
Verse: Matthew 16
Related Reading
If God Can’t Control, How Can I Trust Him?
Question: If God can’t always answer our prayers for healing, for example (and I completely understand why—free will etc), then HOW can he promise to bring good out of the bad things that happen? Surely he is powerless to do that too? And if he can bring good why can’t he therefore heal in the…
Does God Change His Mind?
Classical theologians usually argue that texts that attribute change to God describe how he appears to us; they do not depict God as he really is. It looks like God changed his mind, but he really didn’t. Unfortunately for the classical interpretation, there are many texts that do not say, or remotely imply, that it…
Does Following Jesus Rule Out Serving in the Military if a War is Just?
Jesus and Military People Some soldiers responded to the preaching of John the Baptist by asking him what they should do. John gave them some ethical instruction, but, interestingly enough, he didn’t tell them to leave the army (Lk 3:12-13). So too, Jesus praised the faith of a Centurion and healed his servant while not…
What is the significance of Acts 15:7?
At the Jerusalem council, “Peter stood up and said to them, ‘My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles should hear the message of the good news…’” The tense of the verb that locates God’s “choice” in “the…
What is the significance of 1 Samuel 2:27–31?
Because Eli “scorned” God’s sacrifices and did not punish his sons for their vile behavior, the Lord says, “‘I promised that your house and your father’s house would minister before me forever.’ But now the Lord declares, ‘Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will…
What is the significance of 2 Chronicles 32:31?
“God left [Hezekiah] to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.” God tests his covenant partners to discover whether they will choose to remain faithful to him, an exercise that is absurd if God exhaustively foreknows exactly how faithful every person will choose to be. If the…