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 Acts 2:23?
Peter preaches to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, “[T]his man [Jesus], handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.”
Jesus’ death was certainly planned and foreknown by God, as the previously discussed verses have repeatedly demonstrated. While the verse specifies that the “handing over” was part of God’s “definite plan,” it does not teach that any particular individual who participated in this event was determined or foreknown by God. God may predestine and/or foreknow an event which he plans to accomplish without predestining and/or foreknowing which individuals will carry out this event. He would simply have to know that “at the right time” there would be people, including several key religious and political figures, who would under the right conditions act this way toward his Son.
Some people have a difficult time fathoming how a group event could be predicted without predicting exactly which individuals will participate in it. But consider that despite their limited knowledge, advertisers, insurance agents and sociologists routinely predict group behavior with remarkable accuracy while being completely incapable of predicting individual behavior. One can, for example, quite accurately predict the percentage of drivers within a given age group who will get involved in a car accident within the next year. But one cannot predict which individuals will comprise this group. Group behavior is very predictable and consistent. Individual behavior is generally less predictable and often deviates from previous patterns.
Why then should we consider God’s ability to predestine and foreknow an event, while not predestining or foreknowing which individuals will carry out this event, to be a difficult matter for him? I submit that an omniscient Creator who eternally knows all possibilities, who sovereignly influences all things, and who perfectly knows each human’s heart, would have no trouble whatsoever accomplishing this.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism, Responding to Objections
Verse: Acts 2
Related Reading

What is the significance of Genesis 22:12 ?
Abraham passed God’s “test” (vs. 1) by being willing to sacrifice his son. The Lord says “…now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son…” If the classical understanding of foreknowledge is true, God’s statement “now I know” seems disingenuous. The meaning of God’s explanation for this knowledge — “since…

Is God All-Powerful?
I want to answer yes and no. God is all-powerful in the sense that God originally possessed all power. Before Creation, God was the only being who existed, and thus had all the power there was. He could do anything, and nothing opposed Him. But with the creation of free creatures, I maintain, God necessarily…

Why Did Jesus Curse The Poor Fig Tree?
Why Did Jesus Curse The Fig Tree? One of the strangest episodes recorded in the Gospels is Jesus cursing a fig tree because he was hungry and it didn’t have any figs (Mk 11:12-14; Mt 21:18-19). It’s the only destructive miracle found in the New Testament. What’s particularly puzzling is that Mark tells us the…

8346
Umberto Salvagnin via Compfight Oh oh. It’s getting ugly up in here. Frank Viola is suggesting that Greg needs to fix a nice tall glass of shut-up juice. He and Greg have decided to have a debate on the open view sometime this fall, and they have been engaging in some smack talk since that decision…

Resisting Evil
The New Testament refers to Satan as the “god of this age” and the “ruler of the power of the air” (2 Cor 4:4; Eph.2:2). In the first century Jewish worldview, “air” referred to the domain of spiritual authority over the earth. The author, Paul, was thus saying that the spiritual environment of the earth…

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…