11/29/05—
In my opinion, time by definition, is always in motion, for anything in time must be in a process of change. Therefore, if God were a single being and if he were entirely in time only, he would be constantly changing. So, he couldn’t know the future, because that implies the future is set, not changeable. On the other hand, if there were three persons within the one God, they could assume three different points of view. The Father would know the future—no, scratch that. The Father would have to be outside of time in order to know the past and he wouldn’t need to know the future because he’s outside of it. The Son would originally have lived outside of time, then created it, held it together, and thereby began to experience time and change, and therefore a lack of knowledge of the future. His lack of foreknowledge implies his subservient role in relation to the Father, though he is equal in his nature and power.
So what does all this have to do with our free will? It’s clear that free will is possible. After all, the Son and the Spirit both have free wills apart from the Father. And it’s their infinite nature that provides them that freedom. We, on the other hand, prior to our salvation, were slaves to sin, and we would be utterly depraved were it not for God’s influence in the world. Our free will, then, is based entirely on God’s intervention into the world. That may be an argument against predestination. After all, he could’ve just granted free will to those he chose to be saved. Wait. If he chose them, would they have any choice? Before I tackle predestination, perhaps I ought to work on settling the issue of determinism. I think that it’s been established that God can know what we consider the future by looking back at it as the past. But does time have to have ended and passed by him completely in order for him to look at it all? It would seem so.

It’s the Godhead’s infinite nature that allows the Father to know all, yet with the Son acting freely (and the Holy Spirit, too). Yet, at the same time, that same infinite nature allows the Father to know what the Son will do (and the Holy Spirit, too.) Remember that an infinite line cannot be divided, which makes the second proposition true. Also, remember that there can be more that one infinite line existing simultaneously within one main line, even though, paradoxically, the main line cannot be split. This makes the first proposition true. In other words, this paradox of multiple infinities in one infinity makes possible how God can foreknow and not foreknow the future.