Featured If God Never decreed/ordained the Fall...

I'm saying that if God knows what will happen then what happens is predetermined in that it is going to occur (no with variance) that way that God knew it would occur before Creation. When God created man, what would become of man was already known by God as a certainly.

I am saying that God determined all things to occur at least by actively creating man, knowing exactly what would occur.

 

I do believe that foreknowledge is more than pre-knowledge (I think Scripture bares this out). But I do not see the need to impose that interpretation on anyone. If we believe that God knows all that will happen before Creation, then end is the same. Causation and predestination have to logically be accepted at least to a degree/application. But we do not have to say that God "infallibly causes all to pass".

If God knows that Adam will sin, and God is willing to create Adam knowing that Adam will sin....then we can in this sense say that God "caused" Adam to fall by the fact that God created Adam knowing he will sin (but not that God caused Adam's sin). We can also say that God is the "cause" of sin simply because God is the Standard that we fail to achieve. But this is playing with the word "cause".

As I respond I see that I am not articulating this well. There is a difference between saying that God's design facilitated Adam's sin and God caused Adam's sin. There is even a difference between saying God caused Adam to sin and God caused Adam's sin. Does that make sense?

 

I am not saying that things predetermine themselves. I am, however, STRONGLY hinting at the idea that when we speak of God as "determining", "calculating", "figuring things out", "planning", and "allowing" we are speaking anthropomorphically. So I don't think it is necessarily a poor choice of words, but I do think we have to be careful lest we present God as man.

All things are predetermined in the sense that God has willed they occur by creating them knowing they will occur.

Has anything deviated from unfolding as God know it would unfold before he spoke the world into existence?

 

I think that you may be blending Calvin with Beza here. But we don't need to get into that.

I do not think that it matters whether you believe all things are predetermined inherently in Creation itself as God willingly created man knowing everything that would occur or if you believe God directly caused all things to occur. These differences reflect differences in human understanding insofar as understanding how God "thinks", but the logical implications on man and creation are identical. Either everything is determined (by design or as a part of that design) or the future is open and unknown to God. Those are the only two logical choices.

 

Why would I say "God predetermined all" when that is not exactly what I believe? I do not believe that God "predetermined" sin itself, except that it would occur as a part of Creation (I don't believe God was taken by surprise when Adam sinned).

I am not an Open Theist, so I can say that God created all things knowing what would become. In that sense, yes.

Are you saying that things unfold differently from how God thought they would unfold?

 

Yes, in the context that God knew man would sin, knew what man's sin would be, and still created men with that freedom, God predetermined that men would sin in Creation.