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Christianity Today, December (Web-only), 2008 |

THEOLOGY IN THE NEWS

Ignorance as Blessing

Foreknowledge: for God and not for us.

Collin Hansen | posted 12/01/2008 10:13AM

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Some of Jesus' clearest words about the folly of foreknowledge relate to his return. In the same discourse when Jesus gave signs of the close of the age, he said that not even he knows when the end will come (Matt. 24). Why should God want to keep us ignorant of such an important time? Because our sinful nature would otherwise kick in, and we would procrastinate. We cannot handle foreknowledge. By withholding the future from us, God builds our faith in him as we learn to trust the only one who controls the future. We learn humility, for our lives are a "mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes" (James 4:14).

At the root of the quest for foreknowledge is control. Testing children for genetic abnormalities gives concerned parents a measure of control over the situation. But abortion can only negate the pregnancy; it cannot make their children healthy. We have much less control than we want or think we have. And that is the good news, because the God who knows all that was, all that is, and all that will be holds out the promise that by faith we can have peace with all that he brings to pass.

Collin Hansen is a CT editor at large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.

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December (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 53

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Rev. J. Shaffer

Posted: December 12, 2008 2:17 PM

"Testing children for genetic abnormalities gives concerned parents a measure of control over the situation. But abortion can only negate the pregnancy; it cannot make their children healthy." This is true. At this time, genetic testing can only show if there is a problem. . . In the future, however, if the people doing this research continue along the path they are following, it may become possible to reverse these genetic anomalies. Until then, the testing gives parents a way to discover whether they are going to have a healthy child or one that will be a burden not only to the parents but to society as well. Seems like a reasonable precaution to me. To denigrate this technology and it's uses is worse than ignorance. . . it is willing, voluntary stupidity. In my book, that is a sin greater than murder.

s-b-t

Posted: December 12, 2008 7:38 AM

With all due respect, I have a problem with one of the fundamental issues in this argument against the testing. Since when does foreknowledge end only after the child is born? If you take as a given that life begins at conception, and the human life carried in the mother is recognized as a separate being unto itself while still carried in the mother, how can you say there is no knowledge about it as a separate entity? Would not foreknowledge be the outcome of conception: that is, which sperm meets the egg? Now I agree that if doctors could determine that (beyond probability, that is), I can see how one would definitely have a problem. But testing a child after conception, and before it is born? Why is that abuse of some kind of foreknowledge?

Omar Doreste

Posted: December 12, 2008 6:34 AM

Oh yes, by all means let us careen across expressways with blindfolds on, lest we be frightened by the foreknowledge of the dangers that loom. "It's that these books threaten readers with a future no author can fully know with any certainty. " Sounds like a certain Book you may have heard about and furiously cited. A tidy little dispatch of everything that is and ever will be, through which people like you claim to know God's will.

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