I tried posting this message twice last night and lost the message both times in the process of posting. An hour's worth of thinking and typing gone...grrrr. Well, let's try it one more time from memory.

> I'm not entirely certain where you are presenting
> alternative views and where you are presenting your
> own. Nonetheless, I don't think this issue is
> nearly as complicated as it's made out to be.

Sorry that I wasn't more clear about that. I realized as I typed, that I was slipping into that mode that my wife is trying to cure me of: the "professor rambling on in the abstract."

I'm with you on the definition of freedom as the "right to do what we ought." That's more or less what I mean by freedom being a perishable good: we have it only so we can spend it on doing what it right, and then sticking with that decision.

There are difficulties, I think, with claiming that God's foreknowledge of the future doesn't constitute determinism. For one thing, in the scenario you've given, God is observing a state of affairs which He Himself did not bring about, something which has an existence independent of God. Also, the logical problem is not overcome: whether or not God is personally responsible for determining the future that you saw with the aid of your time machine, that future was there to observe. The future was already writ, and whether it was written by God, by itself, or some other unknown agent, it exists already in a fixed state, and that is determinism.

It might be that the future is not writ, that it does not yet have a real existence even as God regards it. In that case, there's plenty of room for us to decide our destinies by the exercise of free will. But I don't really believe that's the case; God (as portrayed in Scripture) doesn't seem to regard the future as an unknown, or as still up in the air, so to speak.

What I *do* think (get ready for a clear statement here from old Issa) is that it may be that the problem in its reality is not complex (as you've stated). Yet that reality is beyond our capacity to comprehend in the way that God fully comprehends it. If we could view the problem with omniscience, we would see that there is no paradox, but limited creatures that we are, there will always appear to be paradox in whatever position we adopt regarding free will and God's control over history and the future.

For that reason, I am satisfied with finding the most comfortable and Scriptural means of expressing the problem that I can, even though I cannot completely overcome all the logical problems that could be brought against it.

Right now, the position that I find most compelling is as follows. God has given human beings true free will, so that we not only are able to make choices apart from that which He will us to do, we make those choices constantly; this is what we call sin. God has not brought sin into the world and He does not cause us to choose sin. But this seems to give sin a dangerously high status: if it is completely outside of God's will, then it seems to be a choice which has an existence independent of God. This is dualism: attributing to evil an eternal co-existence and rivalry against God.

Karl Barth had a fascinating and controversial means of assigning to evil its proper place. He taught that evil has its origin in the will of God, yet not God's creative will but His prohibitive will. God gives His "Yes", in a sense, to His creation, but His "No" to evil--to that which must never be. Evil has a sort of negative existence; it is an "impossible possibility." Human beings, through the exercise of their free will, do what God has not done, and give their "Yes" to evil, allowing it a place within God's perfect creation.

A problem then arises: to what standard did God appeal in exercising His will to approve His good Creation and prohibit evil? To some standard higher than Himself? No, because that would conflict with God's nature as highest of all, and be another form of dualism. God appealed to a standard of right and wrong internal to Himself.

A further problem: does God's might then make right? Are good and evil what they are only because God has dictated that they be so, and enforced that choice through His power? You could say so, but we have to trust God, that He has discerned good and evil in His wisdom and holiness, and has not made an error or an arbitrary choice. I can't get any further than that, to prove to someone that God has chosen rightly in giving His "yes" to the good and His "no" to evil. At that point I have to rest on faith alone. But that's a point at which I'm comfortable resting on faith alone, especially because it seems to me very much in keeping with the Scriptural portrait of God.

If you really wanted to know what I think and not what I would say just for the sake of argument, here it is, in a mile-long (yet for me very capsule-sized) form. It's complex, I think, but not at all problematic for God, so that complexity doesn't disturb me the way it used to. Please correct me wherever you can show that I've gone outside the bounds of Scripture, if you like. It's great to have the (virtual) company of lots of folks who enjoy a good, difficult and sometimes controversial conversation!

Iss