Kristopher

Comparing your human understanding of your children (however close you may be to them) is an apples and oranges comparison to how God knows His children. And I don't mean to say that you don't know your kids very well or that you don't love them, because clearly you do for both questions.

It's just that God illustrates in the Bible that He knew you intimately before you were even formed in your mother's womb. I believe that God knows each and every person so well that He knows exactly who will accept Him and who will not accept him. Therefore, those who will not accept Him are not "predestined" as people tend to say. God knows us so well that He knows exactly what decisions we will make in our lives before we have made them. We still have the free will to make decisions in our lives, but God knows what we are going to do.

Mr. Harris

This is my layman's breakdown of Free Will.

Think of it like this:

Let's say there are 200 choices that you will make each day, it's a lowball number, but it's a nice round one. This line of thinking gets really big really fast, so bear with me.

Today you make the choice to take a left at the hallway instead of a right, and you trip over your son's toy and nearly die of panic before crashing into the ground. You could have taken the right and went through the room that overlooks the pool, but for some reason you went left today.

Think of every day, every thing you do, as one of those choices. Wake up on time or hit the snooze, drive into work and take a different exit or go the same old way. Tell someone something or just keep it to yourself.

Now imagine all those things, all the seemingly simple choices that you make every day, and the big choices as well, and imagine all the possibilities of anything you could possibly do over a given day, even the strange things that come into your head, like running around the front yard naked screaming "It's not fair, It's not faaa-aaa-haa-haa-aair!" As silly as it sounds, it's a choice that you COULD honestly excercise at any time.

So imagine if you could see all the choices and paths that a person could possibly make, all at once, every day of their existence.

Free will would mean that you would not be able to influence those choices, just that you could see them all and know all the possible outcomes, so no matter what happened or how crazy or benign anything you did might seem to you or anyone else you know, to someone omniscient (I.E. God) it would just be the choice you made.

Mr. Harris

LFJC

We have free will. BUT God knows which choices we will make. Therefore Jesus knows he will be denied 3 times because he is God, and can see the future.

God knows what we will do, but allows us the free will to make whatever choice we want.

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"Fossils came to exist during the flood. So did oil and all that. Dinosaurs lived with man, and were called dragons until the 1800s" <--Fanatical Theory ,2008

EaglesWings

I would argue that our will is never truly free. We are constrained by many forces...scientific realities (I can't will my body to levitate, no matter how hard I try), societal pressures, and limited understanding among other things. What we call "free will" would be better defined as "ability of contrary choice" (the ability to choose that which is against God's revealed will, which naturally carries the consequences of that choice). Only God is truly free to act in whatever way He chooses, only He can fully reject any external pressure.

Incidentally, the full extension of secular humanist philosophy (Evolutionism, etc.) rejects the concept of free will. According to them, our responses to external stimuli are conditioned by our electrochemical systems, which are determined by our genetic makeup; our concept of "reason" is simply our rationalization of that response which occurs faster than any kind of thought. This concept is called biological determinism. We are seeing alcoholism, adultery, and homosexuality (among others) explained away as genetic predispositions.

Dandi

This is truly an interesting, complex topic that makes you think...

I. I don't think that because God predicts things means that he has predetermined those things. For instance, if you watched the news and the weather forecaster predicted on Saturday that it would rain all day Monday through Friday, and it did in fact rain all day Monday through Friday, does that mean that the weather forecaster caused the weather to be that way simply because he predicted it with accuracy? No. Rather, his prediction was accurate based on what he observed occuring on an atmospheric, scientific level and his knowledge of those things. Well, God is able to observe things on a level that humans cannot with knowledge that is far superior to our own.

II. Yes, God set in motion and designed a plan that would make everlasting life possible for humans because this was his original purpose. Jesus had a central role in this plan as his sacrificial death would allow for the forgiveness of the sins of mankind. BUT each individual has to choose whether or not they will accept the benefits of Jesus' sacrifice.
For example, suppose there is a person who has a life threatening illness. A doctor who had been aware of this illness and had studied its causes and symptoms and had done extentensive research concocted an antidote that would cure the person's illness. The doctor can then provide the sick person with the prescription for the antidote after explaining to the person how it will help him or her. Then, it is totally up to the person to do what he/she needs to do to benefit from the antidote. The sick person must use his/her free will to choose whether or not to take any action and take the doctor's advice. The sick person may not even think they are that sick and not believe it is necessary to take the antidote. The sick person must choose to go out and obtain the medicine needed to be cured, he/she must choose to follow the directions presented. If he/she must take 3 pills a day after a meal with a glass of water for the medicine to work, will the person choose to do it? It's up to the person alone. The cure is available for sure, but no one will make him/her do any of the things necessary to save his/her life. He/she must decide for him/herself.

III. Jesus knew Peter would deny him 3 times and told Peter what he would do. Jesus was right. Does this mean that Peter's actions were not the result of his own free will, that he was made to deny Jesus?

Or is it possible that Jesus, who evidently had ability to discern and observe a person's inner nature, their thoughts, and inclinations, desires, etc... that he knew, for instance, that Peter had a weakness, fear of man? And it was Peter's own fear of man that caused him to choose to deny Jesus when he was under pressure.


IV. God will intefere in the affairs of mankind and the earth. He has in the past and will in the future. He will make sure that his will will be accomplished in the long run, even when individuals with free will choose not to cooperate with him always.
Again an example: God's purpose was for Adam and Eve to fill the earth with perfect offspring like themselves and live forever on paradise earth. He warned them that they needed to be obedient in not eating fruit from a particular tree, otherwise they would die. The warning he gave would indicate that he was not causing or predetermining them to do anything. It would be pointless to warn someone not to do something and then make them to do it. No, they had free will to decide to obey or not. They chose not to obey.
So, at first, it would seem like God's purpose was never to be realized. There would be no perfect humans living forever on earth because Adam and Eve were disobedient. Well, God did intervene in matters and designed a plan that would redeem mankind from the sin and death incurred and would eventually lead to the accomplishment of his initial purpose in regards to mankind and the earth. God knows that some people will choose to do what's necessary to be a part of the fulfillment of his purpose and some people will choose not to. He does not force anyone to do what they don't truly want to do.

Eric

Hi Dandi, welcome

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