Does God's foreknowledge take away from free will?

by Christ Alone 317 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  frankiespeakin

  CA,

  They also know the Bible and what the Bible says about God. You can deny that the Bible is accurate, and that is fine. But it doesn't change the fact that if one believes it, it has a wealth of information about God's mind, what he likes and doesn't like, what makes Him happy or sad, etc...

  No I can't deny this fact. Just as you can't deny the fact it is all an assumption based on wishfull thinking and or past indoctrination or both. No evidence to even suggest the bible is true source to understanding the abilities or feeling of God, but quite to the contrary the evidence if looked at more objectively would suggest that the bible expresses the niave thinking of people over 2000 years ago.
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  PSacramento

  Choice means that I can decide chocolate or vanilla. I am very fond of both (ladies, take note....). If God, before I was born, sees the future and know on which occasions I will have chocolate and which I will have vanilla and there is ZERO percent chance I could do anything else, how is it a choice? It's set in stone because God knows and God's knowledge means it MUST happen. OTOH, if, as in your example of your child....you say you "know", but that is not foreknowledge in same sense God would have, that's an educated guess because there some percent of the time that you will be surprised, that your "knowledge" will not be true.

  We aren't talking about choice as much as being free to choose, ie: no coersion.

  God's onmiscience is not based on knowing everything you will do, but knowing evertything that He knows at any given point that He wants to know it.

  God knowing that you will choose chocolate because of that is what you will choose does NOT negate that YOU chose because you wanted, not because you were forced to.

  If God knows all possibel outcomes to all possible choices then it can't be "just" an educated guess, it is complete knowledge of ALL things.

  The very definition of All Knowing IMO.
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  Christ Alone

  That's not really foreknowledge, that's just knowing what possible choices there are. Using that definition, the flight attendant that served me lunch last week knew all possible outcomes as well.

  No, you must need to read what Middle Knowledge is. It is knowing all the choice and options and knowing the OUTCOME of them all. This is spoken of as the knowledge of counterfactuals.

  William Lane Craig calls Molinism “one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived. For it would serve to explain not only God’s knowledge of the future, but divine providence and predestination as well”. Under it, God retains a measure of divine providence without hindering man's freedom. Because God has middle knowledge, He knows what an agent will freely do in a particular situation. So, agent A, when placed in circumstance C, will freely choose option X over option Y.

  Paul in Romans 8:29 says: ""For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."

  Romans 9 is a proof that shows God's foreknowledge of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau were foreknown before they had ever done anything either good or bad.

  Again, I suppose I don't know the Bible and am twisting it. But the entire chapter of Psalm 139 deals with foreknowledge of us personally. He knows us better than we could ever know each other. So our comparisson of knowing our children and knowing what they will do...is really no comparison. God knows the number of hairs on our heads, and knows the words that we will speak before we speak them. Job 42:2 says that God can do everything. No thought can be withheld from Him.

  Using the Bible, one cannot show that God does not have foreknowledge. Romans 8:29, Romans 11:2, and 1Peter 1:20 speaks of God's foreknowledge of people and wo they would become. Acts 2:23 says that Jesus was delivered up according to the foreknowledge of God. 1Peter 1:2 speaks of those that were chosen because God had foreknowledge of them. 1John 3:20 says that God knows our hearts and in fact knows EVERYTHING. Note the word everything. There is nothing that God does not know.
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  EntirelyPossible

  No, you must need to read what Middle Knowledge is. It is knowing all the choice and options and knowing the OUTCOME of them all. This is spoken of as the knowledge of counterfactuals.

  Yeah, I know what it is. That's what I said.

  Why do you argue against pre-destination, then quote scripture that says it's a thing?
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  Christ Alone

  No I can't deny this fact.

  That's fine. This isn't a discussion about the accuracy of the Bible, but what the Bible actually teaches about free will and its relationship to foreknowledge.
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  EntirelyPossible

  This isn't a discussion about the accuracy of the Bible, but what the Bible actually teaches about free will and its relationship to foreknowledge.

  What does it teach?
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  prologos

  suavojr: does God exist in the future? Yes, becauses He does not live in our created realm that started to MOVE through time. Time is stationary and always existed it is eternal because God is eternal. Our universe started moving through time at the BB. God is eternal in the future waiting for us to MOVE into OUR future. Think of a balloon expanding: the skin is us moving through time outward. God existed in time before he started to inflate that balloon at the BB. this picture oor model is scripture based: beabeorean.com
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  EntirelyPossible

  Yes, becauses He does not live in our created realm that started to MOVE through time. Time is stationary and always existed it is eternal because God is eternal.

  Time is not stationary. The rest...pure conjecture.
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  prologos

  new chapter,suavjr: do we see the the 3 space dimensions as moving or as stationary? we are moving form a to b. the same with time WE MOVE from now to later . its not Time that moves. at the Big Bang Einsteins spacetime (in his language of work it's one word) was started, they are linked. we move in all 4 dimensions or perish. good thought stimulation, thank you.
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  EntirelyPossible

  its not Time that moves.

  Yes it is. You just don't know what you are talking about. Time and space both move.