Forseen Faith

"Notice how those who deny God’s free election end up marring and falsifying Holy Scripture. They say that God does not choose out of his free goodness but instead chooses based on what he sees the person will be like and how they will behave themselves. This is similar to the false teaching that we humans are not all alike, all made from one corrupt lump and all condemned, all wholly subject to Satan. Actually, what good can God find in any of us? What else could he foresee in us except sin, until he puts some goodness in us? And why does he put it in one and not another, if it is not by his own free choice? So then we see that God does not choose men to take them into the number of his children because he foresaw that they would be better than those whom he forsook and cast aside. But the truth is that God’s good sovereignty holds all the sway there without any other consideration. I say consideration that we know of. We see this in the fact that Saint Paul was made an Apostle, for if God had sought for any worthiness in him then he would have had to remain in his state of destruction." - John Calvin

"...if God is not mistaken in what He foreknows, then what He foreknows must necessarily come to pass." - Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 213.

"God did not elect any sinner because He foresaw that he would believe, for the simple but sufficient reason that no sinner ever believes until God gives him faith, just as no man sees until God gives him sight." - A.W. Pink

The verb proginosko (foreknowledge) is used five times in the New Testament (Romans 8:29, 11:2; Acts 26:5; 1 Peter 1:20; 2 Peter 3:17), while the noun prognosis is attested twice (Acts 2:23; 1 Peter 1:2).