I believe this is a very common misperception of scripture. The situation you describe virtually eliminates the concept of free will. Without free will it's hard to make sense of anything in the Bible, or anything else for that matter. The best way I can describe my take on it, is that God is outside of time and space. He sees all of creation, from the beginning to end at once, much like you would hold a book or DVD in your hand. You have the entirety of the story right there at once, beginning, middle and end. However, in order to play it out in a manner that we can recognise, you have to introduce the concept of duration, and linear time. With the example given, you either read the book, or pop the DVD into a player to let the story play out.
Of course, the analogy breaks down somewhat, as all analogies do, because the characters in book and film are scripted. In our case, we have the free will granted to us by His providence. Because we were not designed in such a way as to percieve the universe without the constructs of time and space, we have a hard time wrapping our minds around a way for him to know everything we have done, do, and will do, yet not force us to make the choices we make in regards to Him or anything else.
Personally, I think the ultimate end-game is much larger than anything we are even capable of imagining, but it is not necessary (or perhaps desired) for us to understand what is really going on for us to play whatever part it is that we play.
One major objection to the existance of God, is the presence on this green earth of pain and suffering. Many theologians much smarter than myself have tackled that problem, and seeming contradiction of the belief in a God who genuinely loves his creation. However, as I see it, in brief, if we are immortal beings, as the Bible claims, what, really, is the consequence of anything we could experience here in the brief time we have 'in theater' compared to the vast reach and breadth of eternity itself, or whatever an existance outside of time and space is like?
Just my two cents, you are free, of course, to agree. Or not.
Cheers!
Free will is evil until adoptions. Only then can "it" choose the things of God.
Obviously, this is much more than two cents worth. You have brought up a number of very good issues. I don't align with those, and don't have the time right now to address them. But, we'll discuss this more.
“I believe this is a very common misperception of scripture. The situation you describe virtually eliminates the concept of free will.”
Aye, and what a vile and worthy thing to crush beneath our feet! For a will that is the servant of sin, is nothing more than a voluntary slave. How can you call our will free, in the sense that we could do either good or evil as if our will stands neutral, when you sin every day, and will continue to sin until your death? As the scripture saith, “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Again, “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Again, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” and again, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Gen 6:5, 8:21, Ps 51:5, Jer 17:6). Does this sound like we have “free” will, that is free to do good of our own desire? And if it is free-will, what good is it that we should protect it, like some new golden calf, when with our “freedom” our corrupt wills plunge headlong into sin? And how can a person who is dead in sin, walking in the corruption of the flesh and of the mind, be sensible in any way to the things of God? (Eph 2:3-5). Nay, rather, that which is carnal cannot know or understand anything of God (Rom 8:7, 1 Co 2:14), and since we were all “children of wrath” who walked according to our perverted desires before salvation, so it follows that unless God appears to all us atheists, none of us can ever believe. Unless He quickens our spirit, and opens our eyes, and gives to us faith, we cannot believe with our own “free-will,” for until God plucks us out of the fire, our will is so corrupted it is free only to commit evil.
1Co_12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
“The best way I can describe my take on it, is that God is outside of time and space. He sees all of creation, from the beginning to end at once, much like you would hold a book or DVD in your hand.”
A mere foreknowledge as the basis of election does not account for what the scripture actually teaches. For it does not say that God foreknew that we would have faith, but rather says that He foreknew what He Himself would do before the foundation of the world. My favorite example of this is in John 6, wherein Christ explains to the unbelievers the reason why they do not believe. Not because He foreknew they would not believe, but because He foreknew what He would and wouldn’t do.
“But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
(Joh 6:64-65)