I agree that it's hypothetical. However, we do know that God is omniscient and omnipotent. God created knowing the fall would take place (omniscience) AND God created with that knowledge, but also with the power (omnipotence) to correct it. I imagine Him doing so deliberately, rather than reactively. In other words, He had a plan....the Jesus plan. The only real question is whether thinking something is the origin of it or implementing something is the origin of it.
If it's simply thinking it, then the determinism is eternal. If it's implementing it, then the determinism related to it is from the Fall or afterwards. This is with ready admission that foreknowledge is its own brand of determinism if one is dealing with a perfect Author.
However, it would also acknowledge that original humanity was created with free will, as indicated by the choice presented in Eden. However, at no time was there anything that has happened that was a surprise to God; i.e., that was unknown to God or outside the power of God.
In so many ways, absolute foreknowledge equates with absolute determinism, so in that sense, the above is all a day late and a dollar short.
So far as Christian Unity is concerned, you will find me wondering why the Allies in Europe could have common purpose despite different "command groups" and defeat a common enemy, but that Christianity seems impotent in that regard.
I still think Dr Walter Martin’s explanation is best.
IMAGINE . . .
A computer as vast as the known multiverse . . .
every choice of every organism was already programmed in.
At THE LEVEL OF each organism, there was a realistic perception of SIGNIFICANTLY FREE CHOICE.
NOT 100% determinism. NOT 100% FREE choice. There’s genetics, conditioning, learning, opportunity, perversity, selfishness, habit, social pressures . . . Yet, a significant degree of free will. Some days we choose vanilla. Some chocolate. Some mixed.
HOWEVER, GOD THE PROGRAMMER also has infinite and ultimate AND CERTAINLY COMPLETE FREE WILL.
HE can adjust the program, even the wiring, to achieve HIS WILL at any point with any component, organism, context, conditions, opportunities, experience.
AT THE LEVEL of human choice, we have some. And responsibility accordingly. And the chance to CHOOSE LOVE, accordingly.
Else the instructions in the NT to choose Life, CHOOSE Love are deceptive lies, blather.
Yes. And we remain how we have been made, endowed with free will. If the free will, hypothetically, had been removed in the Fall, then, first, we would have no explanation for this parade of good man - bad man doublets in the Bible, starting with Cain and Abel and all the way through the parables of Christ and Pauline letters.
So far as Christian Unity is concerned, you will find me wondering why the Allies in Europe could have common purpose despite different "command groups" and defeat a common enemy, but that Christianity seems impotent in that regard.
Maybe that is not what God wants for His disciples. He wants doctrinal unity (John 17). Loose likemindedness is not to His liking.
We can cooperate, of course, for example, on life issues. But ideas have consequences. One who believes in autonomous self-guided churches, total depravity of man, once-saved-always-saved faith-alone soteriology will form his social conscience differently than a Catholic who rejects all three.