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Isaiah 46:9-10 "Remember former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring end from beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure."
Now argument could be made that God knows His purposes but does not know purposes of man or demons. But this assumes that there are two classes of future events, those that God predestines and foreknows and those that He cannot know are coming, those that arise from human and demonic choice. But if this were true then why does Isaiah not separate what God is planning to do and what man or demon will choose to do.Virtually all of God's judgements and deliverance's involve choices that humans would make as instruments of God's plan, see examples above regarding Peter and Judas.
This is also where first chapter of Matthew comes into play. The genealogy of Christ is proof that God has foreordained birth of Christ and is directly involved in every aspect of it throughout all world and every generation. One wrong choice in any of these generations and Jesus could never have fulfilled prophecies of Old Testament. Even prophecies of Old Testament show God's knowledge and foresight to be conclusive.
Within God's plan there is still free-will and moral accountability. Jesus' absolute knowledge that Peter would deny Him, how often he would do it, where he would do it and that he would repent never removes Peter's moral responsibility in least, which is made plain by fact that Peter weeps bitterly WHEN he remembers words of Jesus' prediction. Peter didn't say,"Well you predicted this sin, so it had to take place, and so it can't have been an act of my free will, so I am not responsible for it!!" Instead he wept bitterly. He was guilty and he knew it. Jesus was glorious in prediction, and Peter was guilty. This is why Jesus said before in John 13:19, "I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am." This was His glory, and therefore a denial of Christ's foreknowledge would also be a denial of His deity.
The other belief held in openness of God is that God did not foreknow fall of man, or of angels and so could not know great things which would coincide as a result of these events, such as His sending His son to die for sins of world. Neither did God know that Jesus' incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, nevermind meticulous four thousand years before Christ came in which world's stage was arranged in preparation for His coming. Neither would God foreknow Christ's second coming and end of age to be able to allow John to write down Revelation for God's chosen people.
This cannot be chance, God knew it all along. God must have foreknown fall of Adam and it's terrible moral effect on mankind. Paul says,"[God] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity." When you add this to teaching of Paul in Ephesians 1:4-6, we can see that God's glory is linked to His foreknowledge and His deity. "[God] chose us in [Christ] before foundation of world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to kind intention of His will, to praise of glory of His grace."
It is of course ironic that desire of openness theology is to have a God who can relate to us in time and space and have same limitations as we do. Indeed, if all we knew about God was what he had revealed of himself to Moses and prophets, we would be astonished by very suggestion that transcendent God that could not be looked upon had somehow taken human form and begun to live among us. According to traditional Christian understanding of God, it is precisely in person of Christ that impassible, immutable, eternal God becomes passable, mutable, and temporal. We do not need to invent an 'open' conception of divine nature in order to marvel at "folly" of a risk taking, passible God; all we need to do is to contemplate Christ crucified.
So if God does not know our future, or our present (for that is where we actively bring our unknown choices from conceptualisation into past) or what decisions we or demons make, He is actually very limited indeed. He is in effect confined to past, His own plans and musings and calculation of probability of future events. This leaves God in a somewhat dire state. I would almost feel sorry for a God like that. Would He inspire awe and entice me to worship Him? I doubt it.
So how much does that leave to God? What percentage of world and future does God really know. If we were to talk of percentages, how much does that leave to God, 30%? This is problem for any person who believes that God is limited to time. So problem, then, is that God is cut out of future entirely and only has what is old to work with, as one man said, all He has is fossils. It would be as foolish as us studying dinosaur bones to try and discover future of our world. So He is confined to possibilities and probabilities, but He doesn't know actualities nor future certainties.
I do not think that that is a God I would like to love and serve.To do that would be to love only 30% of Him!.
"Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays." Kierkegaard
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Aleck is a missionary and Christian, find out more about his work and ministry at www.god-life.com