A contingency is a possible outcome. It depends. For something to be contingent, it would have to depend on what other things will happen. So, if God is omniscient, He knows all contingencies. But if He is sovereign, He knows nothing contingently. He knows all the "what ifs" and He knows what will actually happen.
It's interesting to see this played out in Acts. Paul is being ferried to Rome. They run into bad weather. Really bad weather. So bad the crew fears for their lives. Paul, however, assures them there would be no loss of life. God had assured him (Acts 27:22-26). Woohoo! The outcome was already known. It's strange, then, that later, when the sailors tried to sneak off the ship, Paul warned, "Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved" (Acts 27:31). Well, now, hang on. How is that possible? Didn't God promise Paul that no one would die? How can he say they might all die "if"? That is a contingency. The story highlights the concept of the contingent without any contingencies. The outcome was known. If a certain option was exercised, that outcome would not occur. What then? That option would not be exercised, and God knew it. In fact, the warning of the contingency prevented it from happening.
This is the same thing we see in the question of losing one's salvation. Lots of Scriptures suggest that if we do certain things, we can lose our salvation. On the other hand, Scripture is abundantly clear that God always wins, that God always saves His own, that not one will be lost. That would seem to say that the warnings we see serve to prevent us from following the wrong paths, just like those sailors trying to escape the ship. "If" you fail to persevere, you could lose it. But ... God will see to it that you don't fail. He knows all contingencies, but He knows nothing contingently.
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But they will tell us that warnings didn't actually produce desired outcomes, which is why we have rampant immorality, mass shootings, mass illegal migration, and on. Will the death penalty for murder prevent all murders? No, but it will prevent some. And it's easy to demonstrate the truth of it. If you're speeding down the highway and you see a cop, do you stay speeding or slow down? You show down because your any to about the ticket. Warnings are mitigating instruments in all sorts of parts of life, even in our perseverance.
“[God] knows all contingencies, but He knows nothing contingently.” I think I can follow the logic on this, but I admit it does boggle my mind quite a bit. The important thing to consider, to my mind, is that God knows the beginning from the end…and everything in between. He has perfect clarity of vision and knowledge in advance (where we might have it only partially even in hindsight). He knows all the options and possible scenarios and also how all things will “go down,” especially regarding those who will be shown to be truly in Christ when all is said and done. No wonder the angels look intently with great wonder upon God’s saving work on our behalf (1 Pet. 1:12).
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