I havent really followed this whole thread to see how it got from the law saving us to free will/foreknowledge tension but I would say that God does know exactly how the future will play out because that best fits the Biblical picture. Tom, is your reason for going with an open view that you cant understand why God would have created a being like Lucifer that He knew would certainly sin? If God really did know the future yet that knowledge isnt causative then wouldnt He have to still create those beings or risk true free will? If God decided not to make a creature because He knew it would end up sinning then thats not real free will, is it? And why does this knowledge have to be causative anyway? Isnt that assuming a God that is limited to our view of time? Also I can see how God still goes through emotions even though He already knew something was going to happen because as humans we do the same thing. We all know our parents will die one day yet when that happens we are still sad. I think its like that with God. Also I am still confused about this concept of in every possible situation one event is certain to happen in them all. I think the example that was used before during the thread on Boyds "God of the Possible" was Peter denying Christ. Dont open theists say that Jesus knew that because in all possible scenarios Peter denied Him? Yet I fail to see how one possibility couldn’t have been a guard killing Peter before He ever got the chance to deny Christ or something similar. I hope this post is coherent it's a confusing topic for me.

Aaron

Well, this is a subject many have trouble with. I've thought about it for a long, long time, so I can't point to one single thing that's led to me to think this way. I guess the short answer is that it just makes more sense than the orthdox way of looking at things.

I would say the question regarding Lucifer is a reason. I wouldn't say that's it's that I don't understand how God would create Lucifer if his sinning were a certainty as much as, given what I know about God, I don't believe He would do such a thing.



You'll have to explain this more for me to comment other than to say the issue is not God's knowledge being causative. His knowledge doesn't cause the future to happen.



It's free will for God, but not for the creature, because the creature doesn't exist. Until a creature exists, it has no free will (nor anything else).

Consider Lucifer, for example. How many choices did God have for the covering cherub? A billion? A trillion? More? Assuming for the moment that God could know what choices a given creature would make, surely many of these creatures, perhaps billions of them, would have chosen not to sin. Why not choose one of these creatures over Lucifer? Why should Lucifer have precidence over these others? Surely God thought of other creatures He could have created besides Lucifer. Why wouldn't the free will of these other creatures that God could have created but didn't have been violated?



It's not. A lot of people have this misconception. The problem has nothing to do with knowledge being causative.



Well, since this isn't the issue, I'd have to think about it. If knowledge were causative, I don't know what to say. It's too weird an idea for me to comment on. I don't see how knowledge could be causative. That makes no sense to me.

I think this is one way to express that God's knowledge is causative:

No, Arnold, that's not cause. That A implies B does not mean that A causes B.

If I say, "The problem with God foreseeing one option is that this means they only have one option" what I would mean by that is A causes B, resulting in a loss of free will.

"God foreseeing one option taken means they only choose one option" is how I would say A implies B, removing the causal relationship between God's knowledge and the person's choice. The availability of multiple options preserves free will, while God's foreknowledge lets Him know which option will be taken.

Anyway, that's what I think Aaron might have meant.

I'll split this into two posts, because your second point is tricky, and requires explanation.



Here are some examples of the use of "means."

1.The phone is ringing, and it's 7:00 A.M. That means your Mom is on the phone. (This is assuming only your Mom would call you at 7:00 A.M.)

2.Obama has won Ohio. That means he has won the election.


In neither of these cases does the former event cause the latter to happen. Many more examples could be given where "means" means "implies," not causes.

This isn't what I meant. I didn't mean they only choose one option but that they only have one option available. In fact, this was the whole point.

If God foresees that only one option is available, then only one option is available, because God foresees things as they really are.



There aren't really multiple options in this case, just apparently multiple options. An ignorant being would *think* that there are multiple options, but an all-knowing being would know there is only one. Saying the all-knowing being knows which option will be chosen is simply another way of stating this. There are only multiple options in reality if there is some probability greater than 0 that some other option will be chosen.

What you just said there is just another way of saying "knowledge is causative."

Not at all. Two factors can be highly correlated, even 100% correlated, without one factor causing the other.

We could infer certain information in regards to the nature of the future given the fact that God always knew which option would be chosen. This is not a cause, but an inference.

OK, then let's go back to Genesis. God revealed to Satan, "He will bruise your head." Were there multiple options available or only one? Was there any option with a non-zero probability of happening, other than Jesus bruising Satan's head?