Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.

So, to be clear, you think that Jesus was guesstimating that destruction of the Temple would occur given the Roman occupation? So then conceivably this leaves the door open to the possibility that God gets some things wrong?

I have an open question for all:
IF God foreknew every future action, would that in and of itself be a problem?I know that one can easily argue that it wipes out free will, but so what?From our point of view we are still choosing how to act.

I don't see why this would be a problem.Further, I believe the argument that this would wipe out free will is fallacious. I can look through the window and see something happen, but this does not mean that I caused or determined it. Likewise, God can look through the window of time and see what will happen in the future, but this does necessarily not mean that He caused or determined it. I don't see how prescience destroys free will. (I think the open theists who make this claim are confusing themselves with the concept of infinity, similar to the math paradoxes that one gets by multiplying and dividing by zero.)Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

the basic counterargument is that we can never do anything apart from His foreknowledge...but I have no problem with that. After all, why would i want to do such a thing? Im not satan, after all.

I have no problem with this, either. And I don't see why it should be a problem at all.

That makes no sense. Using your analogy once God has looked out the window of time, (which in your view is the entire future), and observed you doing something, even before you were ever born, then that action is fixed and you have no free will to deviate from it.

Jesus spoke out against the militants and with His knowledge of the politics of the time He saw a rebellion at some point in the future to be inevitable. Given the strength of the Romans it then wasn't to difficult to forecast the outcome. Not at all. I can say with a coin toss that I have a 50% chance of calling it right. If I then call it heads and tails comes up it wasn't that I was wrong. Actually I was right in saying that I had a 50% chance to get it right.Again my point is that God knows everything that is knowable but has created a world where the future is open and unknowable.IMHO both God and I know that my life as I enjoy it now is going to come to an end. Neither of us know when, although I'm sure God has better estimation of that as He would have greater knowledge of my personal health situation.

My action is not "fixed" in time until I perform it. God's prescience doesn't "fix" the action. But God can see the future, and knows exactly what I will do even before I do it.God knows and sees the future just as clearly as He does the past. So I suppose you could say that in God's foreknowledge the entire future is "fixed" in His mind. But we humans cannot see the future. For us, actions are not "fixed" until we perform them.This seems simple and straightforward to me; I don't see the problem that you have with it.

I get the argument but it makes no sense even from a fundamentalists perspective. Why would God debate with OT characters about things like how many righteous men it takes before He doesn't kill everyone in a village?
From Genesis 18:

quote:

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1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 3 He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way--now that you have come to your servant." "Very well," they answered, "do as you say." 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. "Quick," he said, "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread." 7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. 8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. 9 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said. 10 Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" 13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' 14 Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." 15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
Abraham Pleads for Sodom
16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." 20 Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know." 22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD. 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing--to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" 26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." 27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?" "If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it." 29 Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?" He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it." 30 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?" He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." 31 Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?" He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it." 32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it." 33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

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This passage points out a couple of problems with your understanding of the Bible. Firstly it has God willing to slaughter a whole village when the God we see in Jesus says to love our enemy. Secondly does this really sound like a god who knows the future.Is God not capable of creating a universe where He has left the future open even to Him? If God knows the entire future and it is set before we are even born why bother with the Holy Spirit?Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

I agree that this is a difficult passage (as is the one where Moses pleads with God not to destroy the nation). But there are a number of possibilities which you don't seem to consider. For instance, could this be a test of Abraham's character and heart, similar to the command to kill his son? I believe the future IS open to us (did you mean to say "to Him"?)Again, divine prescience does NOT mean divine determinism. Yes, God knows the entire future. But this does not mean that the entire future is "set" before we are born. It is not "set" until we do it.I think that you and other open theists have too limited a view of God. I think you are trying to force His actions and knowledge into a human temporal construct. If He is truly the creator, he created time and thus exists outside of it. When Jesus said "before Abraham was, I am", he was saying that the human past tense is as the present tense to Him. Expanding on this, I suggest that all time (past, present, future) is as the present tense to God. It's as if he is sitting above the timeline of history, in another dimension, and can see the entire thing at once. But I don't see how this divine prescience has any impact on questions of determinism or free will.

But that isn't what these passages say, and didn't Jesus teach us to pray, "lead us not into temptation". Besides, the idea of God slaughtering communities, or asking His people to is not uncommon in the OT so there is no reason to suggest that this is anything but what it says. I did and it is corrected. Thanks If God knows the whole future then He knows what it is you will have for lunch on Jan 23 2019 and that is that. You can change your mind all you want but it will always wind up being predestined from before you were born. How can you argue around that? I am not trying to force anything. I am simply seeking truth through scripture and reason. I have shown how scripture argues against your position and I think it is pretty obvious that reason does as well. OK, but that does not mean that He knows our future in the same way He knows our past and present. If He is truly the creator
then He is quite capable of creating a world where the future is open. That makes no sense. If everything is present tense then there is only "now" that exists which does not allow for change. There would be no present or future. Time is simply the way we experience change.I go back again. If God knows the entire future why does He send His Holy Spirit to change people's hearts?

Yes. No, this does not mean that what I do is predestined. It only means that it is foreknown through divine prescience. There's a big difference between prescience and predestination. Yes, I believe that for God, everything is "now".Can't you conceive of God existing "outside" of time, in a higher dimension, so that He can look down and see all time spread out before Him? This is outside of our experience, of course, but it is analogous to our ability to look down at a Flatland world and see the whole thing at once, whereas a Flatland creature is bound in two dimensions. Analogously, we are bound in the time dimension but God is not.The only alternative that I can see is to propose that God is bound by time as we are. But this makes no sense. How can the creator be bound by His creation? The Holy Spirit was sent to convict people of sin and to lead us into all truth. The need for this is not affected by God knowing the entire future. Why would it be?You seem to repeatedly, continually misconstrue "prescience" as "causation" or "determinism." Prescience is NOT these things! It's simply knowledge of what will happen in the future. It implies nothing about causation, determination, or free will. Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.Edited by kbertsche, : Clarification. Replaced "foreknowledge" with "prescience" in a few places.

Keep in mind that what God sees is you doing a future action that you chose. You couldn't deviate from it without changing your mind at that moment. You already chose the action. And lets say God observed you at time-point 1.15. You then changed your mind at 1.16. What we would then have is God observing you at 1.17 or later. God observes us changing our minds quite often. He also observes us doing what we chose to do.(at any given point in time)

You are fortunate in that you questioned it at an early age. I am the son of a preacher and was steeped in it from infancy. I even preached it for years before the unanswerable questions became too many. Reading the Bible back nowadays fills me with constant wonder that I could have fallen for such barbarism. The merciless brutality of the cross when He could have chosen to...forgive. Jesus "Paying the price" is not forgiveness. It's paying the freaking sky-high price!What are we teaching our kids? That when they are wronged in the schoolyard or playground that the should forgive ONLY after extracting a heinous penalty from the wrongdoer? Or some other innocent kid who had nothing to do with the incident? That's not what forgiveness means.It's just absurd.

Do you see how you are dehumanizing the victims here? That's what terrorists do. They convince themselves and their fellow terrorists that their victims are somehow less than they are, less human. And they therefore are doing the world and their favorite deity great service in cleansing the perceived scourge. This is the type of thinking required for the leader of a primitive desert tribal leader to hear voices in his head telling him to overrun a city and kill everybody, including pregnant mothers. There is no archaeological record that "The Conquest" ever happened, thank goodness. But the stories are heinous, and please notice that you are defending terrorism.