Isaiah 44:28; 45:4, 13
King James Version (KJV)
28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my
pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy
foundation shall be laid…
4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even
called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me…
13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his
ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price
nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.
According to the setting presented in Isaiah 1:1, Isaiah
wrote this book between 739 and 681 BCE. History records that Cyrus[ii]
lived between 598 and 530 BCE. Taken at face value, this prediction of Isaiah
preceded the reign of Cyrus by well over 100 years. Christians have
traditionally assigned omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence to God. As
such God can read history not only in what has already occurred but equally in what
is yet to come.
Many biblical scholars worry that if a supreme being has
perfect foreknowledge, then that knowledge removes the possibility of created
beings having free will. If these creatures do not have free will, then they
are not responsible for their own sins, so Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is
unnecessary. Some of these scholars date “Deutero-Isaiah,” chapters 40 to 55 of
Isaiah, to a prophet who lived in Babylon during the captivity of the Jews and
already knew of Cyrus. They claim his/her writings are published as part of the
prophecies of Isaiah. This raises the very real concern about what we mean by
all scripture being inspired by God. Is God relying on a misrepresentation to
get the prophetic message to the world?
My physicist friends insist on another way to look at
creation and the Creator. We must assume that in the beginning God created our
entire universe, which includes both space and time. In this case God is
outside of both time and space. This means that God is not restricted to the
inexorable march of time. God can view time as completely and clearly as He can
physical space. This concept of creation gets us around whether or not there is
a Deutero-Isaiah. What does this do to the problem raised about human free
will?
As I see it, in either case we still have divine
foreknowledge. What I do not see is that foreknowledge automatically includes
God’s fore-ordaining human actions. It does include acknowledging that God’s
intellect and knowledge are infinitely greater than humans can know or understand.
Lord, I thank You that
although Your thoughts are infinitely higher than mine, You still take a
personal interest in me and my life.
[i]
https://iranterritory.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/happy-cyrus-day-the-king-of-persia/
[ii]
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cyrus-the-Great
No comments:
Post a Comment