Board index ‹ Free Will

[Olivia]

If we make our own choices good, bad, right, or left, doesn't God already know the choice we are going to choose? He is all knowing.

[jimwalton]

There has been a "movement" lately where some people (theologians, professors, pastors)—not too many—are saying that God genuinely doesn't know what we're going to decide, that he is sometimes surprised by our decisions, and then makes adjustments accordingly. It's called "open theology," in case you want to google it to find out more about it. Anyway, despite that some are teaching it, it is being resoundly put down by the majority because it takes away God's omniscience.

So we have to go with exactly what you you said: God already knows the choice we are going to choose. That doesn't diminish that we are making those choices freely with our free will; it just means that he knows us so well, and sees the future as clearly as he sees the present (unlike us), and already knows the choice we are going to choose. An example of it would be Adam and Eve. The plan of salvation was in place before the foundation of the world because God knew they were going to blow it.

So there are two immovable forces at work, as far as our discussion goes, anyway: (1) God knows everything: past, present, future, attitudes, thoughts, actions, and (2) we have a free will to make our own choices good, bad, right, or left. God doesn't make those choices for us—we are perfectly free to decide as we wish. But in his all-knowingness, he knows what we will do. (Sort of like your daughters. You know them quite well, and if you were shopping for something, you could do pretty well at predicting what they'll buy. Expand that to the infinite degree, and God knows us better than we know ourselves, and He knows exactly what we'll do, not only because he knows us, but because he can see the future as easily as the present.