I agree with what I'm quite sure he meant. I might not have worded it the same way.




No, this isn't true. Under my view, God *might* not know the result of His influence, not can't. It depends upon how the individual might respond.

Here's a simple example. Say you are offered vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream. You hate vanilla and chocolate, but love strawberry. It's easy to foresee that given these choices, you will opt for strawberry. However, maybe you like cherry just as well as strawberry. In this circumstance, you're future decision might not be known.

So depending on the circumstances, how an individual may respond to God's influence could be known with certainty.



As I said, I didn't look to see what exactly was being referenced. I laid out the general principles that could be used.



Whether parameters would need to be set (this expression is a bit ambiguous, I think) would depend on the parents. Some parents would for sure name their child in a certain way, after the father, or some other relative, or something like that. For others, their choice would be more fluid, so it would depend upon the situation as to what influence God might need to use.

If God knew who the parents were going to be, it seems to me that it would be easy for Him to know how a given set of parents could respond to a specific situation.

One of the points of the book is that certain aspects of the future are certain, or settled, and others not. In the first chapter of the book, he goes throw texts which give weight to this first point. In the second chapter he discusses texts which indicate the future is not settled (such as God's regretting a decision, speaking of the future being maybe this or maybe that, God's changing His mind regarding a decision, things like that).

His point is that both sets of texts are true.

If I already exist and God knows me. Of course, under your perspective, this is impossible to know almost 400 years before my existence.


How could God know who the parents of Cyrus would be 200 years in advance?

So you and Tom were talking about two different prophecies?After the zealous rampage Josia had had in Juda with the remains of idolatry there, it wouldnt have taken a very large nudge by God to get Josia to burn bones on the altar. In fact, as the text reads, Josia saw graves on the site and acted on impulse to burn the bones on the altar.
How God could know that Josia would be a godly king in the first place is the better question. But when one sees his history up to that point, with rebellion against his father and Josia being made king at an early age, Gods providential action to make sure Josia was tutored by men who led him on the right paths can be an explanation.Remember that this is not a case of God knowing everything about the future or God knowing nothing about the future. Even humans have invented methods for predicting the actions of large groups of people. The arts of advertisement and crowd controll are based on such methods. While they cannot predict that any single individual will buy Aunt Ann's Apple Sauce, they can predict that with the right adds, 35% of all who see the adds will buy it.

Therefore, the GC was necessasry, right? Without it, God cannot guarantee FMAs will never rebel again, right?

Thats the general idea, is it not?

The same one, but he was focusing just on the aspect of the name of the person, while I was focusing on the aspects which depended on the free will of the person.


So the basic difference between your view and mine, in what respects prophecies, is that mine emphasizes God’s knowledge of how the future will play out, while yours emphasizes God’s power to make the future play out in the way He said it would. The problem I see with this, even considering that God influences free will instead of forcing it, is that, logically, the same must be applied both for good and for bad actions. For instance, David, almost 1,000 years before the fact, says that an intimate friend of the Messiah would betray Him. How did this happen?

So depending on the circumstances, how an individual may respond to God's influence could be known with certainty.

If I already exist and God knows me. Of course, under your perspective, this is impossible to know almost 400 years before my existence.

God would certainly know of your possible existence. By the way, I looked up Boyd's comments on 1 King 13. I found it as a footnote in "Satan and the Problem of Evil." I'm not sure if it's the "God of the Possible" book. Unfortunately, I've slept since I read it, so I can't remember the wording he used. But the general idea is that God foresaw what the result of His influence would be. He also makes the point that it's a big jump to go from God's knowing that the outcome of one specific event will be to concluding that all future history is already settled.



Quote:
If God knew who the parents were going to be, it seems to me that it would be easy for Him to know how a given set of parents could respond to a specific situation.

How could God know who the parents of Cyrus would be 200 years in advance?

God would have known all the possible parents of the leader who would become Cyrus would be, and how each set of possible parents would react to God's influence.

Thomas' point about knowing how a group will react without knowing who the specific individuals will be to take the given action is an important point, and finds application to many situations. It makes it possible, for example, to be certain how chemical actions will behave, without knowing what specific sub-atomic particles will behave. Also many chaotic systems can be understood in this way (i.e., what will generally happen when water is brought to a boil, although not the specific "whirls" if that's the right term; lots of examples of this can be given.)

In the Josiah case, for example, Thomas' point is correct. The real question is how God knew there would be a godly king. That's the most challenging part. Once you have a godly king, then, of course, a person under the guidance of the Holy Spirit will do whatever God wants.

Well, that would be the basic difference in regards to the symptoms. The real difference of course is our different views of what time is and what the future is.
If Judas would have choosen not to betray Jesus, someone else would have done it instead. Jesus had no lack of enemies nor of "friends" with ulterior motives. This can be seen with the crowd wanting to crown Jesus king on the Jerusalem road, hoping for a military hero to throw out the Romans from Israel and restoring the kingdom in that way.

Parts of the sermon I posted here http://www.maritime-sda-online.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92964#Post9296
illustrates the differences in our views of reality and other things.

It had to be someone from Christ's inner circle of friends, for the prophecy says: "Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me" (Ps 41:9).
How would God make the future to play out in the way He had said it would? By influencing the person to betray Christ, or in what other way?