Well, if you re-read your post, you have “answered” the question that there is one future which God does know. As you point out, once that future is established (which it must be or there would not be a future that He knew definitively), the other options cease to be possible. Thus, the “free agents” are not free.
If you were consistent, you would be an Open Theist contending that God does not know the unchosen future any more than we do BECAUSE the free choices have not been made yet. However, you attempt to say, Up is both down and up. That may be grammatically correct, but it is not possible in the world. A is not non-A. Law of the excluded middle.
“Well, if you re-read your post, you have “answered” the question that there is one future which God does know.”
Sure, I’ll buy that, there can only be one future, since everyone can only actually choose one out of the many possibilities when they are at some point in the “decision tree”.
“As you point out, once that future is established (which it must be or there would not be a future that He knew definitively), the other options cease to be possible. Thus, the “free agents” are not free.”
No, you’re logic goes off the rails here. There will be only one future, because if we were at the “end of time”, and could look backwards, we would only see one chain of events that actually occurred. However, that doesn’t mean that no other future could have happened. Alternate futures were possible at every point, they just didn’t happen, because choices were made that narrowed those possibilities to the single chain of events that did happen.
Just because God can perceive the entire chain of events doesn’t mean that He is forcing any of the decisions that lead to it. He just has a level of perception far beyond ours, so that he can see the entire span of history, while we are bound to see only one sliver at a time.
Really, even saying there is a “future” that God knows is a misleading statement, because none of it is “future” to God. He is not bound by time, and past, future, present are all words that are human descriptions of OUR state in time. God has no such “position” or “direction of travel” in that dimension, unless He were to choose to enter into our universe and let those terms have some meaning for Him (as when He incarnated as Christ).
“If you were consistent, you would be an Open Theist contending that God does not know the unchosen future any more than we do BECAUSE the free choices have not been made yet.”
No, I believe I’m being totally consistent, it just may not be an easy argument to grasp. The future is unchosen (until we choose it), but that is only meaningful to us, because of our perception of time. God perceives things differently, so when you try to apply our views of time to Him, you are going to draw bad conclusions.
“However, you attempt to say, Up is both down and up. That may be grammatically correct, but it is not possible in the world. A is not non-A. Law of the excluded middle.”
No, I’m don’t think that is what I am doing. I am not saying “the future is both chosen and unchosen”. I am saying that we perceive the future to be unchosen, because we cannot see it. If we could see it, then we would necessarily have to see it as chosen, not because it is predetermined, but because it will be determined, once it occurs. Whether the future is an open tree of possibilities or a single unbranching line of finalities is a matter of perspective, not a difference in reality.
That’s apparent from how we view the past versus how we view the future. When we know what choices are made during a period of time, as we can with the past, then it becomes an unbranching line. When we don’t know, as with the future, then it is a tree of possibilities. The only difference is in our knowledge, which depends on the limitations of our perception. At each point, in the past or future, time is filled with human actors, making decisions from a range of possibilities. All that changes is our ability to perceive what choices are made.