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

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 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.

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.

Interesting. It will be nice to have someone else here with theological training. What degree and what school? With your theology background you know that in God's eyes no one is "innocent". Theologically, all of us participated in the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden. We are all just as guilty as they were and just as deserving of death (c.f. Rom 5).

Why not? I don't see how this follows at all. We are talking only about "prescience", knowing something ahead of time.I suppose I could agree that the future is fixed by our future actions, and that God sees these ahead of time. But I don't think this says much.

You guys are saying the same thing, but I don't follow your logic. Please try to explain, as painstakingly and pedantically as possible, the logic that leads you to this conclusion.We are talking about only knowledge here, specifically omniscience and prescience, not about determinism. KNOWLEDGE of what will happen does not DETERMINE or FIX what will happen. Knowledge alone is simply passive, imagining God as an observer. (Yes, God is much more than just an observer, but these other aspects of God are not addressed by the terms "omniscience" or "prescience".)From our perspective, the future is "fixed" only after we live it and "fix" it. But a God who is not bound by time can see into the future and know perfectly what we will do even before we do it. Again, you could say that this makes it a-priori "fixed" in the mind of God, but it is WE living in history who do the "fixing". Divine prescience does not and cannot remove freedom or responsibility from us. What is so hard about this to grasp?Imagine, if you will, a God who is not bound by time but can see (and travel) both backward and forward through it. This is somewhat like the "Back to the Future" movies, but much more complete. Like these movies, God is able to interact with humanity at all points of time. This doesn't abolish the personality and individuality of others any more than the movies did. But unlike the movies, God's knowledge is perfect and complete, so He doesn't cause the catastrophic problems that nearly happened in the movies. This is a poor analogy, of course, but it gives a hint of what may be going on.

Again, I can agree that the future is "fixed" in the mind of a God who transcends time. But for humans who do not transcend time, the future is not "fixed" until after we live it.You say that "a fixed future is a requirement for perfect foreknowledge". I agree that for a human (or any other being who does not transcend time) this is true. But for a being who transcends time things become much more complicated.

I suppose I can agree with this. From our perspective, the future is not fixed and we have freedom to decide our own actions. From God's perspective, the future is "fixed" by our future actions.

So long as free moral agents other than God exist in the universe, I don't see how it follows that "God has dictated everything that occurs". Perhaps "scripted", but not "dictated".

To me, the word "dictated" implies determinism and causation. But the biblical God is not the author of evil; it's not correct to say that He "dictated" evil. He forsaw evil and directed His "script" around it and in spite of it, but He did not "dictate" the evil.

This may be the issue that you are interested in discussing at the moment. But the original issue that I engaged with GDR was different and more fundamental. The original issue was whether or not God knows the future perfectly, whether or not divine omniscience (specifically prescience) conflicts with man's free will.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in discussing other topics or going down rabbit trails until we have finished discussing the original issue (prescience vs free will).

During the Crusades you could make a case for your claim. But not in the first three centuries, when Christians were powerless, poor, and persecuted. Yet Christianity grew very rapidly during this time. "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church."

But don't you see the huge difference between these cases? ISIS promotes using their ancient text as a model for current-day behavior. They promote murder, killing, and genocide today.The biblical case is very different. I do not see Faith arguing for present-day genocide. I know of no orthodox Christian group which argues for such a thing. The commands for genocide were restricted to a particular time, place, and situation, and are not normative for today.

If you were Abraham, and God told you to sacrifice your only son on top of a mountain, would you obey God or would you refuse?