Hello all! It's been awhile since I've posted on here but, as some of you know I have a JW friend that I visit with every week. The past couple of weeks we've been discussing how God can choose not to know the future. He (my friend) says that it is his belief that God didn't know Adam was going to sin, nor did He know that satan was going to tempt them. My friend explained that, "if God knows what I'm going to do tomorrow at 6:00, then I don't have free will because God knows I'm going to do it." I tried to explain that God knows the choice he (my friend) is going to make, but he didn't understand that. What are your beliefs/understandings/opinions on this? I believe God knows everything and does not choose not to know.
Been studying this topic lately and am beginning to change my views. The biblical evidence seems to indicate The Father knows our choices because He is responsible for making some of them in order to fulfill His sovereign plan:
Psa 139:16 Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. (NIV)
Jer 10:23 You know, O LORD, that man is not master of his way; man's course is not within his choice, nor is it for him to direct his step. (NAB)
Psa 37:23 The steps of a man are established by the LORD, and He delights in his way. (NASU)
Pro 20:24 Man's steps are ordained by the LORD, how then can man understand his way? (NASU)
The Son, on the other hand, does not have The Father's omniscience:
Joh 14:28 You have heard Me say to you, 'I am going away and coming back to you.' If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, 'I am going to the Father,' for My Father is greater than I.
Gen 22:12 And He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." [It was an angel or messenger (elohim) of YHVH, speaking in the first person as an agent for the Father, who "did not know" the choice Abraham would make, whom the evidence indicates is Christ pre-incarnate].
Mar 13:32 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Luk 8:45-46 And Jesus said, "Who touched Me?" When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, "Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, 'Who touched Me?' " 46 But Jesus said, "Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me." [Christ did not know who touched Him].
Implicating the Son does not
always know our choices or the future.