I said: "Iffy, I should mention that I believe it possible for God to know our choices before we even make them, but that he chooses not to."
Iffy responded: "Yes, you should have mentioned but that still sounds quite 'iffy' to me. Can you please elaborate?"
Yes. I just got a revelation from the Holy Spirit in answer to your question. Just as God can forgive and forget our sin totally and remember it no more, so too that works in reverse: that God "forgets" and chooses not to know our future choices at the point that such knowledge would limit the free will we have to please him by faith.
Does this make sense? It's kind of a freeing aspect of knowing that your choices aren't already determined by fate, and by a rigid program that God knows all about. Instead, it is freeing to know that God works with our choices, both good and bad, so that no matter where we are in our walk with Him, He always knows the way back on the right path that he DOES want you to follow and KNOWS is the most PERFECT path for you.
"I think first of all, you need to justify what you said about God knowing our choices not being able to co-exist with free will."
I'll be happy to. God invented time, right? So when God created time, as he created it, he knew what all its outcomes would be... so that when he created it, time and everything in it would follow within the design of time - thus God would be in total control of it's construction and in all the outcomes of which he is supposed to have knowledge of. That means then, that before you were born, God knew if you would reject him or not.
Now, let's find a scripture verse where it says that God desires all men to come to know Him. Wow. That's quite a desire. Don't we think it's within His power to do that? Of course! But does he? No! At least not in the way we think an omnipotent God would fulfill his own desires. So obviously, here is our first precedent to free will: God is not getting what he wants out of it. The logical conclusion to this statement would be to say then that God, though possible for him to do so, is in fact not doing the omnipotent thing to get out of free will the fulfillment of his desire that all men come to know him. Thus, in more analogous terms we can understand, God is "choosing" not to omnipotently act. Translated for our discussion: God is choosing not to infringe on our choices.
Now, combine the conclusions of both paragraphs.
If God invented time, then he has available knowledge of all outcomes. However, such a fact would prove that choice then is merely an illusion since all things have been predetermined. But the second paragraph concludes this is not the case: that we do have choice, and that God chooses not to impinge on it. Thus we have the combined logical conclusion: God chooses not to know about our future choices because he desires all men to come to know Him, and thus he actively sets out appealing to the hearts of men to choose him, even though they may or may not do so.
Is any of this making sense? I'm trying to preach against the deterministic fatalism the church has so quietly accepted and has tried to harmonize with scripture that loudly proclaims just the opposite: that nothing is determined, other than what God has already planned (like the Beginning, the Ending, and all the neat stories in-between in which prophecy proves there is a God), but that God desires all men to come to know Him; by that freedom of not having your choices already dictated in the mind of some infinite God who really doesn't love you enough to let you please him with faith.
"You haven't answered my question about God's hardening of people's hearts ('manipulation') and how that affects free will?"
Well let's see here. Satan is stupid. He hates God so much that he opposes him wherever God is not. If God chooses to remove the protective covering of his spirit over a person's heart, then the devil is free to fill that heart with all kinds of thoughts and hatreds that "harden" the heart. Of course, the person still can choose to come back, but I personally believe God is smart enough to know when mentally a person never can, and thus that is why scripture often talks of God "giving" someone "over to a reprobate mind" - a mind that only thinks of evil.
Of course, God can use that too for his purposes.
"It makes God seem redundant and not like the smart being we think He is, right?"
Oh, on the contrary. Knowing that God chooses not to know our exact future choices to me, seems like the most romantic thing in the world because then it means he loves me enough to work with me when I make the wrong choice - a process of advice, consultation, and planning that only an infinite mind of brilliance and perfection, an a mind with infinite knowledge of all variables, could ever design. After all, he is our Counselor.
"Actually this is just like an argument against predestination. If God has already chosen His people, why do I need to evangelise to my friend?"
It is an argument against predestination. Predestination is unbiblical and one of the greatest lies the church has ever put forth to people. That lie gives people a greater sense of uncertainty (which is definately NOT a fruit of the spirit), and drives many others away from the church, and even Satan himself uses that as an argument to convince non-Christians that Christianity is just like every other religion out there that gives no certainty to anything.
If you read the scruptures, you will see that the determinism that IS being talked about is this: that God has determined in his mind how many will be saved before he returns. That's it. Not who will be saved, but how many. It's up to us to choose to part of that "many." That's free will. That's freedom, and that's truth.
"Oh, but can't we....if he doesn't know what choice we are going to make??"
*sigh* you're not thinking very linearly. In fact, you're not really taking me seriously. You're not thinking linearly. Pretend Jesus is standing right with you. When Jesus walked on this earth, he choose to limit himself. He choose to be human. A perfect human, but still human. He was limited by time. He knows only what a person bound by time would know. Granted, with access to the Spirit, who is everywhere, he would have knowledge of all variables...but still the future would be undetermined... it wouldn't be real to him. The future, to Jesus, is not actualized. As such, the knowledge Jesus had of the near future would be accurate predictions based on extrapolation of current variables: like, knowing Peter's acknowledgement of Him was based more on pride, than what Jesus knew was really in his heart; which is why Jesus, with God, planned to test Peter three times that night, and knowing full well Peter's heart and his condition and predeposition to certain situations, he would tell Peter, in a loving way, that he would deny him three times before God appealed to the mind of a rooster to crow.
I see a God who chooses to limit himself, for our benefit. Whether or not you see that, I see it as the most romantic thing in the whole world of creation.
"God is infinite in knowledge of alll vairables and choices but not THE choice we make, is that what you're saying?"
Yes, to a certain point: the point when in linear time, living actively with us, he can accurately predict the near-future based on simple extrapolation... thus he can predict our choices the closer in time we get to making them. This is why God works with our hearts: so that he can get us in a place where we can make the right choice he KNOWS we could make if certain variables were taken care of.
"Oh wait, God is infintely knowing ALL but He chooses not to know some??"
I never said God is infinitely knowing of all. I said he is capable of it, but has choosen not to - like he has choosen not to remember your sin any more.
"He LET us write our own scripts."
Rather, it's more beautiful than that: He writes them with us.
