No problem, as you can see I am pretty good at falling behind myself. :)
FK: "...if God's plan is micro specific, as I suspect it is, then human free will would be a problem."
Only if God's omniscience is not "micro specific."
But if omniscience is not accompanied by causation, then God's plan is wholly dependent on chance and circumstance. I don't see how God could actually get everything He wants, if man is really in control of things down here on earth. Necessary conditions are simply not perpetual if chance governs.
FK: "Now, what if God "needs" a particular pair to get together for His purposes?"
If creation did not meet his purposes, He would have a different creation. He foreknew whether this particular pair would get together or not.
OH!, well THAT would be very different. :) If God creates in a specific way to get His plan accomplished then we are in perfect agreement. I would call that "interference" and "causation" but if you don't that's OK. At least we agree then.
Knowing - microknowing if you wish - what the result of allowing free will would be God created man with free will.
As long as God created in a specific way to get what He wanted, and man was not free to thwart God's will within time because the individual was created just so, then we are coming to the same end from different directions. That is perfectly fine with me. Free will discussions often wind up like this. :)
we are coming to the same end from different directions. That is perfectly fine with me. Free will discussions often wind up like this.
If discussed calmly and intelligently, I've noticed that too. It shouldn't surprise since we're discussing something we have direct experience with - it's in the abstractions and redifinings and speculative systems with special vocabularies that things fly off into contrariness.
God created in a specific way to get what He wanted
God is sovereign, omnipotent and omniscient is a sufficient premise.
man was not free to thwart God's will within time
God is sovereign, omnipotent and omniscient and created man with free will is sufficient. [Else you're leading toward Man's will=God's will, unless you speculate more on God's methodology or derive a term of art for what precisely "thwart God's will without Man's will=God's will" means.]
because the individual was created just so
Unnecessary given the previous and misleading into more speculation about God's methods.
Hoping not to spoil the mood of your agreement with my previous point.. :)
It's important, very important IMHO, to resist the temptation to define God as we would a man with a plan, as "me" if I were God. We do not know God as a man; as man we can only "define" God so far. Much less than we commonly do. We end up doing such things as descibing moods of God, changes in God's mood, variations in his treatment of individuals, assigning specific reasons that God did this and that and such.
God is neither completely knowable or completely unknowable. We can know that He is One, is ineffable, eternal, uncreated, unchangeable, invariable, incorporeal, invisible, infinite, good, just, creator of all things created, omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign, judge, love..
So we can say a lot about God, but not that he thinks like we do. That he rules like we would, that he judges like we would and so on.
The problem I see with systematic theologies such as Calvinism is they read like they were written for the legal profession - and a noble profession it is; however, there's too much system, too much construct to fit man's mind of how all the pieces must fit - and all the pieces MUST fit. They're too humanized and speculative.
We cannot know the mind of God, else He would not be God.