By the way, I believe the Lord purposely ordered nature to provide us with these apparent paradoxes (GR, light, etc.) as clues to His nature.

You wrote:

"These things are not real paradoxes but merely appear to be so because incompatible perspectives or frames of reference are conflated. God can be omniscient and we can have free will. One is true from the Divine frame of reference while the other is true from a mortal's frame of reference. We certainly cannot occupy God's frame of reference, so there's no possible paradox from this direction."

What does it matter if we cannot occupy God's frame of reference? The reality is, if He is omniscient, then it doesn't really matter what I think. He's omniscient. Therefore even though I could think I have free will, He knows everything and the reality is, that I really don't have free will.

Take for example the ones that thought they were going to be with God when they passed on. They did good things and thought - believed - they were saved. Then when their day of reckoning came, God said to them, "Go away, you are not welcome with me, because I never knew you." Those people thought they would be with God, but God trumped them and said no. He has the last say.

So it almost doesn't seem to matter what I think on this matter, God will trump my thoughts anyway. Especially since His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and His ways are higher than my ways. There is no way a mortal can comprehend the complete glory of the Holy God. So how could we be so presumptuous to think that we actually have free will here on Earth? We think we do, but in God's reality, we really don't.

Setting aside for a moment that you're still conflating two different frames of reference (I wish all believers had an intuitive understanding of Relativity, because it would make this so much easier), you seem to be suggesting that the Lord is capricious and that salvation is arbitrary. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You said, "They did good things...but God trumped them and said no." God did not "trump" them. Doing good things is irrelevant to salvation. Only those in relationship with the Lord will see salvation. You'll understand this much better when your children become teenagers. Kids can seemingly obey your every command, follow all the rules, even live in your home and eat meals with you, and yet still fail to be in relationship with their parents. The Lord makes salvation very plain and very easy--because we could not achieve it by our own merit anyway. We need only put our faith (belief and trust) in the Lord through His Son (John 6:40). Salvation, then, is assured.

God desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), but He allows us to choose, as any good parent does. Of course we want our children to remain in relationship with us, but they will ultimately choose their course themselves, often to our chagrin. If we deny them that choice, then it is not a relationship at all, because it was not freely chosen; instead, they would be like prisoners or merely things to be possessed. To deny another the freedom of choice to deny that which makes them sapient, human, made in God's image.

What you wrongly perceive as a lack of free will is merely a logical fallacy. Again, I naturally turn to Relativity for examples, because it's so beautifully parallel. The concept of simultaneity in Relativity is nonsensical. Two different inertial frames of reference may disagree on the simultaneity of an event, but neither is wrong. One point of view does not preclude the other. Both are equally true. Neither denies the other's truthfulness despite the appearance of conflict. There is a complex mathematical way of translating one inertial frame to the other, thereby demonstrating their equivalence--and the intuitiveness of it can come with practice. Relativity may fly in the face of common sense, but this does not make it untrue. In fact, countless experiments have and continue to confirm its accuracy. With time and practice, common sense can be reshaped to fit this superior understanding of physics and the world will again make sense. Similarly, such apparent paradoxes in Christian doctrine may also melt away as we explore God's nature. (This is not to suggest we can know all there is to know about God, but we can certainly know more tomorrow than we knew yesterday.)

If the truth of these doctrines (both omniscience and free will) is not intuitive to you, then perhaps you must accept the apparent paradox by appealing to the very verse you reference: God's thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and He has made a way for you to freely choose even while He retains omniscience. Just because you seemingly cannot rectify these two points of view [yet] does not mean He is bound by your fallacious logic.

Or we can put it another way... There is plenty of Biblical evidence that we may choose our final destination (e.g., Joshua 24:15; Proverbs 1:29; Proverbs 8:10; John 7:17). There is also plenty of Biblical evidence that God is omniscient and in control (e.g., here; John 15:16). Therefore, whatever your conclusion, these doctrines must both be true, unless you're prepared to deny Scripture. If they are both true, then we may either find out how they both might be true (as I've tried to demonstrate, albeit unsuccessfully), or you must merely accept them both as true and live with the unresolved paradox.

You have free will. To deny this is to deny personal responsibility and open the door to falsely justified immorality. ("It doesn't matter what I do.") Choose this day whom you will serve, the Lord or someone else. The former is salvation; the latter, damnation. The former is made possible not by our merit or effort but by the atoning, substitutionary sacrifice the Lord's Son made for us; we need only accept this gift freely, and eternal salvation is assured.

See http://tuscanycircle.net/drupal/post/good_wor... for a description of how good works play into salvation.

As Wayne indicated, here are my thoughts on this matter.

Actually, they are not my thoughts at all. As I read this thread, I couldn't help but think of a passage I read in Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, in which he does an excellent job of addressing this issue. I will let Mr. Lewis speak for himself:

Another difficulty we get if we believe God is in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call 'tomorrow' is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call 'today'. All the days are 'Now' for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not 'foresee' you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way -- because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already 'Now' for Him.

Lewis echoes Wayne's point about perspective. The difficulty arises when we look at God's omniscience from the human, time-bound perspective. If someone knows what we "will" do, then we must not be free to do it. But God isn't in time. He doesn't have foreknowledge in the the sense that we think He must. Rather, He knows what we will do because all yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows are Now for Him, and He observes what we are doing at each point in time. And, as Lewis says, none of us feels that our free will is impaired because someone else is watching us while we make decisions and go through our day.

I must both agree and disagree with Dave and Lewis. Lewis is talking about the problem I mentioned about conflating the two perspectives (God's and ours). With this, I agree. However, I must disagree with the thought that if God were in our time, that there must again be a problem. I think I've demonstrated a couple of different ways why this need not be so at all. Either way you slice it, (either from differing frames of reference or a proper understanding of foreknowledge--these thoughts are not really separate, though), there is no actual paradox and no denial of free will.

"Foreknowledge does not necessarily mean control."

This statement in itself helped me to comprehend the paradox. The example of the time traveler and the passage by C.S. Lewis really helped. Even though God does see what decisions I will make tomorrow because they are in His present doesn't mean that He is going to control me one way or the other as to the decisions I do eventually make.

However, the promptings of the Holy Spirit could lead me one way or the other, so yes in some fashion, He does "control" what decisions I make. Or at least He should if I would be quiet more and let Him. But I could decide not to listen and choose differently, thereby reinforcing my [rebellious] "free will." But in His mercy He sends His promptings anyway.

I do not question my salvation, although the whole good works discussion was a good reminder. I do tend to get caught up in what am I doing & how much am I serving & does it please the Lord. It was a tear-jerker to remember that it's just a simple choice, using free will and not under duress, a quaint decision to just believe in the gift He offers for salvation. He never wanted us to struggle for His free gift.

I don't know why I thought of this and posted it but nevertheless it has been an enlightening discussion. Thanks for sharing.