Theists have to get very esoteric if not downright fallacious when they explain how God can both know the future and give humans free will.

A simpler explanation would be that he loved humans so much he relinquished that power. I am just wondering how heretical it is to think such a thing.

According to some, very heretical.

The funny thing is saying that God cannot know the decision of a free will action no more limits his power then saying he cannot create a square circle.

And I would actually say that the God of classical omniscience is a weaker God than that of open theism.

I remember giving an easy explanation. Twice. The simplest way to reconcile God's foreknowledge with our free will is that God knows every possible permutation and outcome from the set of all available choices we are able to make.

I think free will is a philosophical bridging concept. People find it useful to explain things in the absence of really reading and searching out the scriptures.

I don't know how long the idea of free will has been around. Most likely since at least Augustine tried to theologize everything but if you read some oldies like the Quaker founder George Fox you will see that free will wasn't even discussed in his day.

We've also tweaked the whole idea of justification all out of proportion to the historical norm. It was never suppose to be this big decision by humans...It just worked out to be that way in the modern world.

Seems right to me. The question is whether your fellow theists can accept this as a reasonable way of looking at things.

I don't think atheists really understand what you are saying, and if they did they wouldn't agree with it.

Same for theists.

I think Dr. Stephen E. Jones is right. He says:

"Whomever the Father has given to Christ will come to Him. In other words, those who decide to come to Christ by their own “free will” are the people whom the Father has given Him already. There is Someone behind the scenes Who has called these people, and therefore their response is, “I think I want to come to Christ.” They think it is all by their own free will, but yet God has played a hidden role in the background, choosing to remain anonymous.

God has chosen them, so they will in turn choose God seemingly of their own free will. God preserves this illusion of free will, and this gives us the idea that we all have decided our own course. We hold this illusion of free will in our immaturity. Once we begin to understand who God is, and see His sovereignty and His glory and understand that He really is the Sovereign of the universe, then we begin to see that our will is merely a response to His will. The more we come to know Him, the more sovereign He seems to become, and the less free our will seems to be."

Christ said:

John 12:32

32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

Jones' essay: "Freewill Versus Ownership":
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.o...klet.cfm?PID=7

Many mature Christians emphasize the concept of "surrender". It the surrender of the human will to God's. Its only the philosophy that confuses everybody. Somethings are meant to be just done not intellectualized...Intellectualizing makes everything hard because you can't let go until you have crossed every "t" and dotted every dot.

The error in thinking the two is incompatible stems from ascribing temporal existence to God. Knowing what I chose yesterday doesnt mean it wasn't a free choice - hence the knowledge of a freely made choice is not in itself problematic. It's just that it doesnt make sense to know the result of a free choice before it is made.

God doesnt exist within time - all moments are equally accessible, he isn't knowing something before it is chosen so there is no contradiction created. Modern conceptions of time lend more credence to this view than in Newton's day, since we now know there is not an objective 'flow' of time through which the three dimensional universe passes. God knowing the evolution of the universe 'all at once' is a better description than him knowing how it will turn out before it happens (though it still has a temporal element, eliminating the concept of 'present' from language seems pretty much impossible to me).

Jones prefaces the quote I listed above with this quote:

"We do see in the Bible that man is told to choose what is right and to shun that which is wrong. Man does have a will; there is no question about that. It is commonly believed that if man has a will at all, then it must be totally free. The problem is that we are told in John 6:44 that no man is able to come to the Father except the Father drag him. The Greek helkuo means “to drag.” It is translated in the King James as “draw.”

Well they would have to read the extended explanation provided by Dr. Jones to understand it.

Dr Jones' theology is a combination of reformed/universalist.

He doesn't weaken God's sovereignty at all to throw a bone to free will though he acknowledges people do have wills and he explains God will save everyone.

Jones explains how things relate to the Old Testament.

God conditionally gives up some of His power when entering into covenantal relationships, so no problem there. It seems reasonable to say that free will itself represents a giving up, or maybe delegation, of some power by God.

As for an incompatibility between free will and foreknowledge, this would be so only if knowing what someone is going to do somehow restricted their choice in doing it, which does not follow. This is a non-paradox as far as I can tell.

From the other thread, if God's foreknowledge is communicated to the person, that could effect their free will choice, though this is rarely a factor.

Don't see a problem with the concept, that may even be how time actually is for all of us. This all-at-once picture.... is there only one of them?

What's wrong with everyone's thinking today? You can't "give up" power if you're omnipotent! It's unpossible.

I think so - metric or Max Raker would be the best people to ask.

Again I say that this explanation can't work if God talks to us.

Meanwhile no one has answered my question.

It's heretical, if you ask me. There aren't varying degrees of heresy.

The problem with B-theory of time and the bible is that they are incompatible. If B-theory is correct and all time exists at once, non-linear, then everything has essentially existed along side God for eternity.

The bible clearly states that there was a time where creation did not exist, and then a time when it did. So although B-theory solves the omniscience/free will problem it enters a much bigger issue to biblical theology.

You're equivocating on the nature of "time" here. Time (as we intuitively understand it) is a construct internal to the universe, not external to it. So to say that there was a "time" when creation did not exist is the same as saying there was a "time" when time did not exist.

How sinful it is depends on what your view of God is.

Oh well if you say it....

See post #11 (first paragraph).

Not sure what you mean by B-theory. Going back to spacetime, it only exists "all at once" for God, who created it. We are within it and thus limited to perspectives that distinguish past and future in its terms. There is (not "was") a condition in which, from God's eternal perspective, the spacetime we are in does not ("yet") exist.

Listen boys "all at once" can't be right unless God is purely an observer. Only a deist can invoke this argument. I can't believe I have to explain this.

I don't know what's wrong with you lately. Have you been getting enough sleep? I don't often agree with you, but usually you're at least lucid. A post saying "You're wrong and I could explain why but won't." is a complete waste of everyone's time. (Although slightly better than "I already have".)

He can intervene all-at-once just as easily as observe all-at-once. The fact you can't conceive what it would be like to have a non-temporal existence doesn't make it nonsensical. Knowledge of a decision does not preclude the choice being free, it is pre-knowledge which causes problems. Someone not experiencing time (the all-at-once theory doesnt even have to be correct) does not know something before it happens - no contradiction.

To give you a satisfactory answer, one must almost know the exact spiritual makeup of God. God himself cannot explain who he is in words, so the best way he did it was by saying that He is who he is or "I am that I am"

If you investigated the Bible thoroughly, which I believe you refuse to do, some of your questions will either cease, or be answered fully.