what you in fact freely choose is what God knows if you had freely chosen not-A instead, then God would have infallibly known that. His knowledge is of your free choice , it does not determine it or render it unfree
You could have chosen otherwise, and had you done so, God’s knowledge would have been different. The fact that God already knows what you will freely do does not turn your free act into a determined one
Restating your claim does not magically make it come true, W2G.
What I said above:
Your position is unfalsifiable as you've framed it. (And no, that's not a good thing.)
You're trying to have it both ways.
Either the future is settled or it isn't.
If God's infallible foreknowledge means the future is already settled, then the past that contains God's infallible knowledge is settled too.
So if God already infallibly knows that I will choose A, then that is part of the settled past.
I cannot later choose not-A without making that supposedly settled past false.
Your response is:
"If you had chosen not-A, then God would always have known not-A."
But that doesn't preserve the same past.
You've simply switched to a different history in which God's prior knowledge is different.
In one history:
God knows A → I choose A.
In another:
God knows not-A → I choose not-A.
That does not show that I could choose either A or not-A given the same settled past.
It shows only that different outcomes correspond to different pasts.
So you're trying to keep the future 100% settled when it supports infallible foreknowledge, but then make the past effectively changeable when you need to preserve free will.
You can't have both.
Either the future is 100% settled, in which case only one outcome is genuinely possible,
or the future is not 100% settled, in which case infallible foreknowledge of every future free choice is impossible.
There is no third option where the future is settled enough to be infallibly known, but somehow unsettled enough that the opposite choice remains genuinely possible.
... has not been rebutted.
You simply repeated the claim that the choice is free without addressing the contradiction.
I read Rev 9:21 as 100% true & accurate , open theist read it as just a possibility (Rev 22:18-19)
(Revelation 9:21) And they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
God already knows the choices they will freely make , to murder etc , to not repent after the judgements
No.
Open Theists read Revelation 9:21 as 100% true and accurate too.
What we reject is your additional claim that the verse therefore establishes exhaustive, infallible foreknowledge of every future free choice.
It doesn't.
We've already gone over the distinction between:
things God predicts or has determined will occur
and
the proposition that every future free choice of every creature is exhaustively settled and infallibly foreknown.
Those are not the same thing.
You're also talking about a group of people under particular future circumstances, not identifying specific individuals and establishing that each individual's allegedly free choices were infallibly settled from eternity past.
And, most importantly, this argument has already been addressed.
If you think the rebuttal is wrong, address the rebuttal.
Repeating Revelation 9:21 again doesn't answer it.
open theism says if God has infallible foreknowledge of their choices God would be responsible for their actions to murder & to not repent after the judgements are poured out
Repeating yourself does not magically make what you said come true.
That's not the argument I've made.
What I said here:
Incorrect.
Logic and reason says if God has exhaustive infallible foreknowledge we don't have free will. Because it's true.
Open Theism affirms this logical truth.
You do not affirm this logical truth. That makes you wrong.
. . .
But none of your verses establish this entirely different proposition:
Every future free choice of every creature has always been an exhaustively settled fact that God infallibly foreknows.
You're continually moving from:
God has determined that certain future events will happen.
to:
Therefore every future event and every future free choice is exhaustively settled.
That conclusion does not follow from the premise.
And this distinction has now been explained to you repeatedly.
If you disagree with it, then address the distinction instead of giving me more examples of one of the two categories.
... has not been rebutted.
The issue is not that God's knowledge somehow
causes a person to sin.
The issue is necessity.
If God infallibly knows that someone will commit murder, then that person cannot refrain from committing that murder without making God's supposedly infallible knowledge false.
If he genuinely can refrain, then the future murder was not infallibly knowable as an already-settled fact.
You've repeatedly replaced that argument with one nobody here is making.
classic theism, they're free & agents bear full responsibility for their non-repentance of their free will choices.
You keep calling them "free" while refusing to deal with what freedom actually requires.
If God infallibly knew from eternity past that they would choose A, then they cannot choose not-A.
So according to your own premises, there is only one possible outcome.
Calling an act "free" does not magically give the person an alternative that your theology has already made impossible.
in open theism they transfer that responsibility of sin to God if God has infallible foreknowledge
You don't even know what we believe, do you?
Making stuff up is a terrible way to debate.
You have it completely backwards!
Open Theism does
not teach that God's foreknowledge would somehow
cause the sinner to act and thereby transfer moral responsibility to God.
We've told you repeatedly:
The issue is necessity, not causation.
Open Theism places responsibility for a person's freely chosen sin squarely on the person who chose to commit it.
God did not eternally decree that person's sin.
God did not force him to commit it.
God did not need him to commit it in order for an eternally fixed history to remain true.
And unless God Himself had determined the relevant outcome, that person's future free choice was not an already-settled fact that God infallibly knew before the person made it.
The person could genuinely have done otherwise.
That's precisely why he is morally responsible for what he chose.
And if you want to appeal broadly to "classic theism," you should probably be more careful about what major representatives of classical Christian theology have actually taught.
Augustine wrote:
"Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either allows it to happen or actually causes it to happen."
Enchiridion, 95.
And regarding sinful creaturely wills, Augustine wrote that when angels and men sinned, acting according to their own wills rather than God's:
"He used the very will of the creature which was working in opposition to the Creator's will as an instrument for carrying out His will"
Enchiridion, 100.
Calvin went even further.
He wrote concerning the Fall that God:
"not only foresaw the fall of the first man ... but also at his own pleasure arranged it."
Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.23.7.
Now, Augustine and Calvin are not identical. Augustine distinguished between what God directly causes and what He permits, while Calvin developed a considerably stronger doctrine of divine decree.
But neither supports the caricature you're trying to assign to Open Theism.
Historically, it is deterministic forms of theology that face the much more serious responsibility problem:
If God eternally decreed that a sinful action would occur, rendered its occurrence certain, and ensured that history could unfold no other way, then how is God completely removed from responsibility for the occurrence of that action?
Open Theism doesn't have that problem.
Under Open Theism, a man can genuinely choose A or not-A.
If he chooses evil,
he chose it.
God neither decreed his sin nor required it to happen.
The responsibility belongs to the sinner.
Open Theism does not transfer responsibility for sin to God, but rather rightly places it on the sinner!
