quote:

---

Otherwise, the freedom we have almost eliminates the "I saw what you did in the future" predictions.

---

quote:

---

GOD: "Well, Bob, I know what you're going to do, Bob, in 2 minutes; I've seen it all in the future. You're going to look to the left, scratch your head and then look back to me."

---

quote:

---

I reread your post again and you seem to be saying that our free will eliminates what is called seeing the future, I think you agree and were using the examples to show this, am I right? So if a person doesn't do what God says He saw him do it proves God didn't see the future. Am I tracking now?

---

quote:

---

The past and the future do not literally exist, except as mental concepts to help us relate to and deal with the ever-changing present. Time itself doesn't actually flow, move, extend, stretch, fly, or crawl. Everything else does, though. Time just eternally "is", because God "is". It never leaves the present, nor does God. Time is just another unchanging, eternal attribute of God, alluded to when God revealed to Moses His name -- I AM. (EXODUS 3:14) Jesus used the same phrase relating to Himself as well. (JOHN 8:58) God "was" and "will be" simply because He always "is", but He only exists in the present.

The "past" does not coexist alongside the present, even though the present is a result of past events. The past should be thought of only as the memory of what used to be the present. It does not exist anymore. It is not a place you can visit in a time machine.

The present never even really "goes by" to become "the past". The present merely continuously changes its form to become a different present. The past only "exists" in the perfect memory of the Lord our God, who can faultlessly remember everything that has led up to this very moment. But even He has no access to it in terms of visiting or changing it. Whatever has happened in the past really did happen, and is part of the truth, and even God cannot deny or alter it. He can only choose to "forget" or overlook portions of it, as He has promised to do with our sins. (ISAIAH 43:25)

Here comes the exciting part. I believe that the future, like the past, also does not coexist with the present. In fact, the future doesn't exist by itself either. The future does not exist, period! It only "exists" in terms of plans, dreams, hopes, trends, probabilities, possibilities, promises, and intentions. We can think about tomorrow, but we will never see tomorrow, because we will always live today.

---

quote:

---

What do you think of the statement: "The present never even really "goes by" to become "the past". The present merely continuously changes its form to become a different present."

---

quote:

---

It's been a while since I read McCabe's book (which is excellent, IMO); however, as I recall he was using "nescience of future contingencies" to mean "the future not completely settled," not that God does not know the fact that possibilities are real.

---

quote:

---

But freedom in an infinite Intelligence necessitates also contingencies. Contingencies are and must be instantaneous originations in the absence of all eternal conceptions thereof. Contingencies originate in no anterior causes, but are created by beings possessing the power of inception, and alternative choices necessitate present nescience of what may be the elective exercises of this alternative choosing power.

We thus see that the Divine nescience of future contingencies is a necessity grounded in the profoundest necessities of things, and hence cannot be regarded as an imperfection in the Deity. Prescience and originality are incompatible propositions. But to originality Divine nescience is absolutely indispensable.

---

quote:

---

As far as I understand your question, yes, we ourselves originate our own choices. Certainly there may be any number of both internal and external influences to our choices (God, Satan, demons, friends, enemies, family, acquired habits, etc.), but ultimately we do in fact originate our own choices. This is just another way of expressing the concept of libertarian free will.

---

quote:

---

Free will is indeterminate, capable of an origination that had no prior existence, and not foreknown. Wouldn't nescience of future contingencies also mean nescience of future possibilities originated by the free agent?

---

quote:

---

As far as I understand the concept, perfect knowledge of all possibilities is implied in God's supreme intelligence. As the Holy Scriptures many times reveal God as speaking in subjunctive terms about the future (if, perhaps, and might) as well as a subjunctive sense about the past (if this would have happened, then God would have done thus and such), it seems quite reasonable to me to say that God knows all possibilities as real and all certainties as real too.

---

quote:

---

God could, we can see, estimate approximately what are likely to be the choices of free agents in the early future. And this estimate of probabilities may be so nearly indubitable in many cases, as to resemble prescience itself. It might, perhaps, be termed a modified foreknowledge a foreknowledge, however, that could be relied upon only to a very limited extent by the divine administration in the kingdom of free grace or freedom; a foreknowledge, too, that is widely different from absolute certainty. This estimate of probabilities on the part of God, though clothed with the highest degree of probability, would still be liable to modifications. And so far is the doctrine of probabilities this side certainty that an authority no less than Professor Goldwin Smith denies to free actions the susceptibility of any calculation of probabilities at all. He denies this upon the ground that no certain antecedent to the will can ever be determined upon. "The science of history," he theref ore boldly declares, "is laid in the mere quicksands of free will."
But however true it may be that the will may or may not determine in view of any recognized or conceived motives, and however much its choices might disappoint the most sagacious calculations of probabilities, based on the ordinary influence of such motives, still there does remain the important doctrine of probability, which, as we have before indicated, proves oftener trustworthy than deceptive, and, as we have learned from observation, is indispensable to the regulation and harmonious working of human society. The number of chances, the number of presumptions in favor of any future event is therefore ground of probability, but not of certainty of its coming to pass. I can judge with great probability how a man will act in any case; still it would be folly to deny that he may resist all the motives I may conceive as acting upon him, and disappoint all my expectations and defeat all the plans I had made dependent on his decisions.

As future free choices are self-originated, Goldwin Smith no doubt perceived that the foreknowledge of them involved self-contradiction. But he failed to see that the basis of the law of probabilities, as to future free choices, was not to be sought for in the causative action of the will, but in the habits, temperament, dispositions, and temptations of the free agent. These circumstances do not act supernaturally upon the will to constrain it, but they act naturally along the lines of cause and effect. Their influence may therefore be so approximately calculated as to enable one who knows them to form a judgment as to the result; but this judgment or opinion never rises to absolute certainty while the freedom of the choosing agent remains.

---

quote:

---

But while we maintain that it is impossible for Omniscience to foresee with definite and absolute certainty the choices of free agents when they act under the law of liberty, we nevertheless believe that God can in multitudes of cases, perhaps in most, judge very accurately as to what is most likely to take place, in given contemplated circumstances.

---

quote:

---

I want to say that I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it too. I gave me a better understanding of how prophecy fits into the Open model than most of the works that I have read so far in the past two years on this subject.

---