beloved57
Well-known member
Oh, you are being silly now. All that has, is, or will happen in God's creation appear before Him equally vividly. So asking what God knows and when He knew it implies one does not have a full grasp of the eternal existence of God. Accordingly, one must distinguish between God's perspective and man's perspective, since man is bound in a timeless existence created by God.
This does not mean God is incapable of acting within His temporally created and orderly universe. These actions, as in our regeneration, occur in time, the time of the one so regenerated. The very regenerative act is predicated on the active and passive obedience of Our Lord, who became flesh and walked the earth, per our temporal existence. God understands temporal existence and His knowing what occurs in time springs from the fact that He created the very things to be known by Him.
So again I note from our perspective we are not eternally justified, for the very ground of our justification relies upon Our Lord's perfect work during His earthly sojourn among us.
Your question and the obvious underlying assumption you make behind it leads to all manner of foolishness. For example, using your rationale you could just as easily, but wrongly, say that Our Lord was crucified and resurrected appearing before God the Father in glory before the event actually happened. Obviously that makes no sense, as does your question. No one is justified before they believe. That God sees all these things equally vividly does not obviate the accompanying fact that God also knows exactly when in our temporal existence someone is justified.
Your view collapses the distinction between God's eternal decree of justification and the temporal justification itself. Your view also imports a notion that faith merely realizes justification somehow already possessed by the one believing, even before they actually believe.
Furthermore, your view would mean God sees no sin in believers even before they believe, since you claim their act of belief is a mirage of sorts. For God to not see any sin in the believer also means our Lord becomes personally a sinner, and believers are made personally righteous; any idea of Scriptural imputation vanishes.
No, your view is word salad.
AMR
Way to evade my question!