Indeed, though the real issue is showing that God knows all things that WOULD happen even when/if he desires something.....and whether or not its impossible for the Lord to experience both.
That's amazing to consider as well...
For some good articles on the issue, one can go to his site and look up the following articles:
The issue that may wrestle with is whether or not its possible that the Lord ordained for Himself to go through pain...willing his own displeasure/being willing to endure it for the sake of illustrating to others who He is.
It really does make for interesting discussion...though it also does serve to make one ponder how things all began to come together.
"Did God Plan The Fall of Man?" or "Was the Fall Necessary for Man to See God truly as He was?....and on that, I have issue. For one must wonder that even in Paradise, man was with perfect communion with the Lord and yet to a degree, He may've been unable to see the Lord as He was fully when it comes to love since the ultimate expression of love is seen in being able to give up one's life for another,
John 15:12-14/
John 15,
1 John 3:15-17 /
1 John 3.
Again, that's a very complex issue---especially seeing that on the flip side, God made clear in many places that He did not desire sin/suffering to occur originally, hence, why man was given a choice IN THE garden/warning from the Lord (which was genuine and that man was not bound to do so/could've chosen differently) and is continually given one daily to make since one doesn't HAVE to sin in order to understand grace. With the garden, one must also wonder in light of the "Middle Knowledge" perspective if it was planned by the Lord to give Adam free-will and yet somehow setting up circumstances whereby Adams choice would naturally go toward rebellion---as in what occured when the Accuser was kicked out of Heaven and allowed to come to the Earth to tempt Adam through His wife.
To a degree, it does seem like a Divine Soap Opera and much of Human History going according to a script. And as Christ was prepared before the foundation of the World to die, one can either see things playing out in the sense of the "Christus Victor" view where God literally had to rescue us from the Dominion of Darknes or in the sense of the Lord really playing us like on a Divine
Chess Board or puppets in a "play"...
To a significant degree, I'm reminded of The Matrix Trilogy..paticularly, the second one known as
"The Matrix Reloaded" ()where Neo discovers that the entire issue of "The One" prophecy and his choosing to leave the Matrix to wage war on the Machines was in no way really true freedom--as it was all set up as a system of control, with the Oracle playing off of intuition/knowledge of free-will choices and influences others toward certain action.
But from a Christian perspective, as God (whether directly or indirectly) causes no man to sin (James 1) andGod is not the author of our sin, man is the first cause of his own actions.
One cannot deny that Adams choice to sin was within the sovereign plan of God---where it was allowed and the Lord was more than prepared for it, even though the effects of it grieved Him significantly, as seen in
Gen 6:6 where the Lord was greatly saddened at the turn-out of man. But I will not agree when others say that Adam sinned because God ordained him to sin...as in essence, that's akin to saying that if a man rapes a child/sins just like Adam, man is not the FIRST cause of his actions or choices. IMHO, God is the First cause of ALL, and God created man (in His own image a moral agent), consequently meaning that man is the first cause of his own actions and choices. But it is still something I'm wrestling with/over...
Something that one of my brothers in Christ said on the issue when it came to addressing the issues of Arminism and Calvinism in regards to how could God both plan an event and yet allow free will to men or change His mind if He does know all things:
There are two perspectives involved, that of God's eternal plan which is unfailingly carried out, and that of temporal events. Thus, God's relation to any event (or moment) is two-fold. For example, God hates all sin. One aspect of God's relation to any sin is that it is against His will and incurs His wrath. But the other aspect of God's relation to that sin is that it is part of God's eternal plan, having been incorporated at the beginning for God's ultimate glory. Sinful acts were necessary in the crucifixion of Christ, and yet it was accomplished by God as part of His plan. So I would say that God does change His mind within time, but always in accordance with the eternal plan that He formed before time began.
All of that I thought was highly intriguing. On the issue he brought up with changing His mind in accordance with what's akin to His "Master Blueprint" which was already laid out, I couldn't help but be reminded of the passage itself in Numbers where the Lord made clear He would do otherwise if his people acted one way and then chose to do opposite when they went against Him did not seem to be dealt with. It'd seem to be avoiding the text if saying "God chose to respond to the Israelites exactly as He always planned" when it seems clear from other texts that He also made clear certain outcomes could be avoided/that He would do differently.
It's the entire issue of having infinite knowledge of multiple possibilities/knowing how you'll respond in each and every scenario rather than saying that one will respond only a certain way. God changed His mind, knowing full well how he would react to certain actions, acting consistent with His nature...just like with Moses in Exodus 32/
Exodus 32:1 when He intercedded with the Lord. God relented, yet it did not mean that God changed His mnd in the sense that a parent decides not to discipline a child. Instead, He changed His behavior to remain consistent with His nature.
Whe God first wanted to destroy the people, He was acting in accordance with His justice. But when Moses interceded for the people, God relented in order to act consistently with His Mercy. God had often told the people that if they changed their ways, he would not condemn them. And many times, they changed, thus activating the other possibility of what He had planned beforehand on how He'd choose to respond based on what He had laid down before time. That's part of the issue of promises, blessings and curses.
As it seems, what the issue also comes down to is whether or not all things in the future are PRE-Determined by the Lord or whether or not there're other things open for possibility...and that'll always be at the "crux of the matter" whenever discussing Open Theism and its implications.
.
On the issue of "temporal perspective", I came across an article that sought to refine many of the points people may bring up in Open Theism...and one of them dealt with the concept of the Lord "learning" in regards to scripture where God said "Now I know.." after testing someone, much as it was with Hezekiah when He tested Him to know all that was in His Heart in
2 Chronicles 32:30-32 /
2 Chronicles 32or other passages where it makes clear the Lord was waiting to see what His people would do.
As
an excerpt from one article said (on Greg Boyd's stance) dealing with the example of the Testing of Abraham in
Hebrews 11:16-18 /
Hebrews 11:
The Testing of Abraham's Fear of God
Genesis 22:9-12
Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 12 He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."
Observations:
1. Boyd says that God did not know if Abraham would remain faithful and that the words "now I know" are disingenuous if this were not so. The test would be a charade if God already knew the outcome.
2. There is another way to think about God's knowing here. If God knows what will come to pass, does that mean that all testings in history are pointless? we don't think so. God has not created the world simply so that it might have been foreknown. He created the world to be actualized in history. That is, he wills not just to foreknow, but also to know by observation and experience. That is the point of creating a real world, rather than just knowing one that might be. Therefore, may not God truly know what Abraham is going to do, and yet also want to externalize that reality in a test that enables him to know it by observation, not just prognostication? "Now I know," thus may mean, "Now I see . . . now I experience by observation of your real action."
Seeing that really made me reconsider many things----as it made perfect sense, especially when the reality is that one's dealing with a God BEYOND our comprehension who is more than able to do that which may seem like paradoxes to us, in that it is more than possible for God to live in the realm of eternity/knowing all things and yet simultaneously choose to experience "temporal" time and limited knowledge as we do in differing situations. Trying to make sense of that would be no more logical than trying to say "How can God be everywhere and yet in a single place all at once?"
Personally, I have no problem believing God works with the leaders of the world to bring about certain things. He can use those people to bring judgments on others...and has shown repeatedly in the Word where that's the case. But where I have a problem is the idea that God actively controls every single detail in every single person, every single day
There is a specific view that seemed to make the most sense to me (to a degree) with reconcilling issues. The view advocates that God foreknows not only what
will come to pass but also what
would have come to pass under any and all circumstances in any and all possible worlds....and in regards to the view, it seems logical that can embrace both God's
sovereignty and man's free choice. Though even with the view, there're variations. In example, Gregory Boyd discussed it best when describing something on his site under the article title of
Neo-Molinism and the Infinite Intelligence of God ( )--in which the argument came up describing how "classical Molinism overlooked a whole left category of truths that an omniscient God would know: namely, the category of truths about what free agents
might and
might not do"