I have been contemplating and have reached a decision about foreknowledge and free will that I find very satisfactory:

1. God knows all truths (future, contingent and necessary), and His knowledge is not "propositional knowledge" - a presupposition that I accept.

1b. Knowledge as we know is not causal nor does the concept of contingency imply that God cannot know the outcome of a free action. contingency only implies that "man" can only know the consequences of certain antecedent events through induction, not God.

2. Man actualizes much of his future of his own free will (except for where God chooses to intervene).

3. God has given man true free will and because if this gift; God must let man choose his own fate (aside from God striving with man WITHOUT crossing the line of violating free will). I am sure at the Judgment we will see how much God tried to convince us to choose Him albeit without a violation our free will.

4. God's foreknowledge of what world man will actualize is moot. If we accept the presupposition that man is truly free; then it doesn't matter what world actualizes in terms of God being responsible. If God some how kept "rolling the dice" until He found a world that could actualize where all men were saved; He could no more take credit for that than could He be blamed for the actual state of affairs and men choosing to reject Christ and go to hell.

5. So we may conclude that God's foreknowledge does not preclude man's free will. Remember how we get stuck on the proposition necessarily ( if God knows Clarence will eat an omelet tomorrow, then Clarence will eat an omelet tomorrow) is not an issue with God because if Clarence chooses not to eat an omelet tomorrow; God would have already known this. This is not a logical bind for God because He doesn't know things propositionally (another presupposition which is not hard to accept). So there is no issue with the antecedent entailing the consequent because God knows the future free will acts of men period. He doesn't have a propositional knowledge that creates a relative necessity do to a conditional proposition.

6. The problem with foreknowledge and free will is not with God but with us. We frame the argument in logical propositions, and because of our propositional logic we have logical binds and "backwards causation".....

7. What about God's determining which world to actualize, doesn't this imply necessity? No if we hold that men are truly free, then they are responsible for what world THEY actualize. What ever world God allows to actualize (if this action can even be expressed within the domain of human knowledge) is the doing of man and not God. Again God cannot take full credit for who is saved nor can He take the blame for who is lost. These are implications of free will.

8. What about Chaz's presuppositions, how can they be justified? The same way the Open Theist justifies his presuppositions that God cannot know the future or a certain theory of time: These are transcendental or ontological commitments that cannot be verified, none the less every person grounds their beliefs and knowledge in transcendentals that are not subject to verification.

9. What about the theories of time and the existence of the future? They are just theories of man, we don't know that God how God knows things, we have to assume that He created reality and the universe and no task it too big for Him.

Finally: In Him we live and move and have our being; He is the author of existence and consciousness; yet we are all free enough to be held responsible for our actions based on our belief in free will, His knowledge is not causative nor does it preclude free will. If we consider the essence of free will; we don't know how or what God knew at the creation and again if we are truly free; we are responsible for our futures and decisions, not God. We have to stop at some point and agree that our freedom stops at the a predetermined point of our essence, and the world we live in. Our freedom was given to us by God; I suppose some one could really argue that we are not free unless we are free from all causal influences in the universe. But this is moot; we live in a world created by God.

Any comments?