John146 said: Let's take a biblical example from the book of Jonah. Did God lie? Did God change his mind?
Jonah 3:
9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way;
and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
What does this mean? That God did not know in advance they would repent, or that God was ignorant and didn't know and therefore was reactive to what they did?
What they
would do had no real existence, since it had not happened yet. Their future behaviour was at most a bunch of probability functions with no real resolution as yet. God knows all that exists and has existed, including any specific plans He has formulated and any probability functions in their unresolved form, That is all a being
needs to know to be
truly omniscient,
An
omnipotent being can predict
specific future events and use
omnipotence to bring them about to prove His
omnipotent power to fulfil His promises. Predicting specific events and bringing them to pass does not logically prove foreknowledge of
all future events.
The Jonah text cited means what it says.
And God
saw their works, that they turned from their evil way;
and [in response] God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
What do
you think it means? Why would God repent
only after seeing that they turned, if God knew in advance that they would turn? Why would God say He was going to destroy them in three days, if He already knew He was not going to destroy them in three days? Would that theoretical perspective on the nature of God not make Him a liar?