Featured Perishing without having ever heard the gospel they end up in....

Heresy is just a theory you haven't adopted yet (kidding)

My point is that the flaw in open theism is not the logic but their understanding of God. Some people will say that they believe God knew things, all decisions, all sin...everything....before Creation. If that is true then all will unfold as God knew from the past they will (all is at least predestined to occur by God's creative act, and all is at least destined to occur within God's will because God freely spoke into being Creation as he knew it would be). But some people seem, against all logic, to reject this part.

 

I don't think that Augustine thought that contingencies and freedom diminished God's sovereignty (not that it matters so much what he thought). I know Edwards didn't think that. But, more importantly, I don't think that contingencies and freedom diminishes God's sovereignty. In fact, if anything does not the fact of our freedom, our ability to freely choose and the results of these decisions highlight God's sovereignty? It seems so to me, anyway.

What I am saying is that God knew all of these things before he created man. Whether you believe God is the direct cause of everything or that God allows and plans on things because he knew they would happen is not really important this topic because the result is exactly the same. Everything ends up predetermined (determined by God directly through causing, or determined by God indirectly through creating).

 

Not long ago it was you who claimed to believe that God knew, before Creation, who would be saved and who would not. Now you seem to be saying that these things are in fact not predetermined (God did not at least create man knowing before he created them who would and would not be saved).

You are backtracking and altering your statements/views (the assembled facts) to suit your conclusion. This is never a good idea. Instead you should alter your conclusion based on assembled facts. I other words, you not long ago gave us an equation that looked like this: 1+1=3. And now, instead of changing the answer you are changing the variables to 1+2=3. That is not honest work, brother. You'd do better cheating off my paper .

I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. I've given you Edward's quotes (which I believe to be the best and simplest explanation of this biblical teaching). I will try, once again, because If you can't understand this part then you will continue to fight windmills. Just please, please ,please, stop idolizing Horatio Nelson .
X = Omniscience, God is all knowing
Y= Creator-ship, God is Creator
Z= Sovereignty God is sovereign and nothing occurs without God's willingness for it to have existed.

X+Y=Z

If X is correct and God is omniscient (God knows everything, even who will and will not be saved) AND
If Y is correct and God is the Creator
Then Z is correct because a God who knows everything that will be before he creates and still creates was willing that all things unfold as he knew they would.

NOW, let's look at your logic (the one that faltered a couple of threads ago and left you speechless):

X = God is omniscient and knew before Creation that Adam would sin just as Adam had sinned.
Y = God created Adam, planted a Garden in Eden, and put Adam in the Garden with the tree.

The logical answer is Z= God created man willingly, knowing that man would sin

But you denied that answer. Your answer was that the Fall was not predestined to occur (either directly by God causing the Fall, or indirectly by God creating knowing for certain how Creation would unfold).

Your answer was illogical. If we reduce this down to a simple two step problem and your logic is flawed, then how can it be trusted against other systems that do not fall prey to such error (Calvinism, Arminianism, Open Theism...they are all logical....yours is not)?

 

Erroneous illustration. You said that God knew all that would occur in creation (even that Adam would sin before he created Adam). Boeing/Airbus company did not know that their plain was going to be used in that attack. But I understand the gist of your argument.

David Basinger echoed it by saying that we "need not maintain that God’s creative goals require that many people in the Third World be allowed to starve or that many children be allowed to suffer abuse. We are free to maintain, rather, that these evils, and also their patterns of distribution, are byproducts of a world containing freedom – byproducts that God, as well as each of us, wishes had not occurred.”