Future

The Future refers to events and states that have not yet come into existence. The biblical concept of predestination implies that future things are established from eternity. Calvinist theologians reject human free will where such freedom impugns God's sovereign power to foreordain human history.

## Contents

* 1 Future things in the Summa Theologica
* 2 Future things in the Bible
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Future things in the Summa Theologica[edit]

In the Summa Theologica St. Thomas Aquinas affirms that future things remain contingent even while God knows them from his vantage in eternity. He wrote, "All things that are in time are present to God from eternity, not only because He has the types of things present within Him, as some say; but because His glance is carried from eternity over all things as they are in their presentiality. Hence it is manifest that contingent things are infallibly known by God, inasmuch as they are subject to the divine sight in their presentiality; yet they are future contingent things in relation to their own causes." [1]

## Future things in the Bible[edit]

In Isaiah chapter 41 God confidently issues a challenge to the oppressors of Israel to declare the things to come in the future, knowing that He alone possesses that power:

Isaiah 41:21 Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. 23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. 24 Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.

The book of Revelation describes what will happen during the end times, when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. These events are also foreshadowed in other books of the New Testament.

## See also[edit]

* Present
* Past
* Tense

## References[edit]

1. ↑ http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP014.html#FPQ14A13THEP1 Summa Theologica