[Dutchboy88]

"God seeks even those who never seek Him. He wants all to be saved, but knows many will choose a different path. Free will."

The grave dilemma with "free will" is that if such a concept were true, it would require God not to know in advance who would choose Him. Otherwise, He would be aware of a fixed future from which the "free" chooser could not deviate. If God does know, and the chooser could not deviate, then the chooser is not as "free" as he believed. Oila', predestination. It is everywhere in the Scriptures.

[MHGinTN]

Your assertion is akin to my seeing a car rushing toward a tree and after hitting the tree me being blamed for the car hitting the tree. That God can see all of the volume of time, simultaneously, does not mean God causes each individual event in the volume. God's Spirit sustains the universe in the very precarious balance (on the order of 1/10¹²⁰), but one should not conclude therefore God is specifically making every event happen within that universe.

[RegulatorCountry]

The grave dilemma with "free will" is that if such a concept were true, it would require God not to know in advance who would choose Him. Otherwise, He would be aware of a fixed future from which the "free" chooser could not deviate. If God does know, and the chooser could not deviate, then the chooser is not as "free" as he believed. Oila', predestination. It is everywhere in the Scriptures.

If I were to see you blasting down the road and I knew that a bridge was out just around the next curve, so close that you'd never be able to stop in time, would you be in my thrall because I saw you and knew that, thereby meaning that I forced you run into the river?

No, you wouldn't be in thrall to me. Just because the outcome is known that does not change the fact that you had and have choices to make of your own free will, and continue to make those choices until the day you leave this earth.

[aruanan]

The grave dilemma with "free will" is that if such a concept were true, it would require God not to know in advance who would choose Him. Otherwise, He would be aware of a fixed future from which the "free" chooser could not deviate. If God does know, and the chooser could not deviate, then the chooser is not as "free" as he believed. Oila', predestination. It is everywhere in the Scriptures.

Only if you've got on your predestination-tinted glasses. Your first sentence is defective. The second half of it does not follow from the first. You merely assert that it does. Take a few moments to consider what the fruits of theological determinism have wrought in philosophy, science, and political economy since Calvin first took it out for a spin. It has not been a pretty picture. Attempting to immanentize the eschaton has always resulted in trouble, from Geneva up to the present day.

[RegulatorCountry]

He would be aware of a fixed future

What purpose do you believe prophecy to serve, and furthermore, why would a prophecy made in some cases thousands of years ago ever be fulfilled? It's because the future is knowable to God, and if it's knowable it is to some extent fixed.

What never fails to amuse me is all these science fiction fans who are fascinated with time travel. If you can travel into the past, then you're coming from a fixed future in the perspective of the people in the time you chose to visit. And, if the future is not fixed, then there would be no future to which to return, either.

Something tells me that the various authors and screenwriters would be aghast if they ever realized that they've inadvertangly reinforced "predestination." They'd certainly be at pains to find an explanation outside Christianity, at a minimum.

[SnakeDoctor]

Knowing in advance the product of free will does not negate free will. We make the choice freely — He simply knows the choice we will freely make. This is not a logical contradiction.

SnakeDoc

[irishtenor]

What I don’t want to hear when I get to heaven...
God - “How the heck did YOU get here?”

[Natural Law]

" it would require God not to know in advance who would choose Him.."

No one on this thread will contest that God is omniscient; He know the outcome, but that does not mean He willfully controls it denying us the gift of free will.