God does not know the result of a free choice ahead of time, and that is OK
One way to explain what my book God’s Active Preservation of the World is about is that “God does not know the result of a free choice ahead of time, and that is OK.”
To explain what I mean by that I will first have to explain what I mean by “free choice” and “ahead of time.”
A free will action can be defined as an action that truly could have been made otherwise. This is a definition that is consistent with the Formula of Concord—Epitome II, 7–8.
I do not mean “ahead of time” in a sense that we would understand it, such as “a month ahead of time” but rather “ahead of time” as God would experience it, such as “before God even created the free will person making the free choice.”
Given these, God could not have known what the free choice would be because it could truly have happened otherwise. That is what those words mean. If you claim that God did know what the choice would be ahead of time, I would point out that the choice truly could have happened otherwise, and what then? God would have been mistaken.
In the book I explain why this is OK, but only if it is the case that God is not absolutely immutable.
What does it mean for God to be absolutely immutable? Immutability describes God attribute of being changeless. Absolute immutability imagines that changelessness in every way complete in a very literal manner. An absolutely immutable being exists in a timeless eternity where there exists no next moment for him to be any different than he is previously. An absolutely immutable God would necessarily have to take every action he is ever taken and will ever take “all at once” and “at the same time.” No action taken by God could be said to have taken place in any way before or after another action. An absolutely immutable God performed all actions truly simultaneously.
So this is the problem that comes in if God is absolutely immutable. God does not know the result of an action taken by a free being ahead of time. Then God uses his one action to create the entire world, including that free being. God did not know ahead of time about the free choices the man would make, but now God is stuck. He already used his one action to create the entire world, and since he exists in a timeless eternity, he is no longer able to do anything else in response to what that free choice actually was.
This problem goes away as long as we do not take it as fact that God is literally absolutely changeless in such a way. This is also OK.
This is what my book is about. The consideration of God’s creation and preservation of the world, human free will, and the true nature of God’s changelessness. In the book I fit all three of these things together in a smooth and logical way. It all works out nicely. If you like the book, please leave a review on Amazon.