Free Will and God's Foreknowledge

The problem stated plainly

IIf God knew every choice Adam and Eve would make before he made them, then their choice was seen and settled before it happened, the test was not a test, and all the wickedness in history existed first in the mind of God as foreknowledge and was set in motion when he said, "Let us make man." That is the picture most churches teach, and it is why so many people cannot love the God they were given.

Power that is governed

God is omnipotent, but he does not unleash limitless power at every moment; he uses it according to his purpose. The same is true of his omniscience. He has the ability to foreknow whatever he chooses to see, and he governs that ability the same way he governs his power. His purpose for creation included free will, and free will cannot exist if the chooser's decision is already fixed in the mind of the Judge.

Outside the stream of time

(Ps 90:2) Even from time indefinite to time indefinite you are God.

Time is a creation. Jehovah exists outside it and can see any point on our timeline he chooses. The studies on this site describe what he does with the choices of his creatures as a filter: he sees the events and filters out the free will that produces them. That is why prophecy comes in symbols. A seven-headed beast, an eighth king, two witnesses, a woman in the wilderness: each is a real event, with the people who will be part of it filtered out, so that no one is predestined to fill the role before they are born.

What God did foresee

He foresaw that genuine free will, given without artificial limits, would eventually be used to choose bad. He did not foresee who, or when. Like the builder in Luke 14:28 who counts the cost before laying the foundation, he prepared the solution before he created: the Sacred Secret, with Christ and the chosen ones foreordained "before the founding of the world" (Ephesians 1:4) as a group patterned after the Son (Romans 8:29). The role was foreordained. The individuals who would fill it were not.

Why this matters

It means the test in Eden was fair. God gave two choices, warned of the consequence, provided everything needed to choose well, and stepped back. It means hell cannot have been prepared in advance. And it means Jehovah never had to change his plan, because the plan already covered the one variable he chose not to control. "To it there is nothing to add and from it there is nothing to subtract" (Ecclesiastes 3:14).