The Christ-Centered model for early Genesis has provided answers to many perplexing questions in history, science, and theology. It now suggests a solution for the question of "What does God know?" Specifically the debates between Open Theism and more traditional views of God's omniscience.
I don't intend to get into the definitions and proofs here. I will assume the reader knows the basics. Instead, I want to demonstrate how the Christ-centered model for early Genesis naturally fits with a scenario which reconciles many seemingly contradictory passages of scripture and also elegantly resolves some apologetics questions.
One point of order here: My basic view on the choice for salvation is a Lutheran one. This is that though man does have ordinary free will, choosing God over self is not a decision that man can make by man's own will. Rather, God must enable such a choice. You could not say "yes" to God from your own heart. BUT, you can say "no" to God from your own heart. So He is completely responsible for our salvation and we are completely responsible for our condemnation. It isn't Synergist, and as monergism it is an odd sort. The agent depends on the outcome- God is the agent in our salvation, we are the agent in our condemnation. Now onto how the Christ-centered model fits into the question of what God knows...
It starts with the belief that all of the anthropomorphic occurrences of Yahweh in the OT, including the "Angel of the Lord" (Malach Yahweh) were God the Son, not God the Father who the NT tells us cannot be seen by man. When the Israelites saw God, it was the Son they were seeing. This isn't too unusual an idea, and church fathers such as Justin Martyr held it to be true. The idea of "Christophanies", OT appearances of a pre-incarnate Christ, is even more widely accepted. All this does is take that idea and understand that every time God interacted with man in an anthropomorphic form, it was God the Son. Including in the Garden of Eden.
What the Christ-centered model adds to this is that God the Son was not jumping in and out of (incorruptible) human form throughout the OT, but assumed that form in the beginning, in Genesis 1:27, and is presently in that form seated at the right hand of God. Whether this is eternal or He reverts to His condition before Genesis 1:27 once we become like Him (1 John 3) as He is now is a separate question. The point is that there was a pre-incarnate God the Son, who merged with humanity in the eternal realm and became the Man of Heaven, of whom Adam was an earthly copy. Mankind is the product of the Heavenly Man. Further, the Christ-centered model has Yahweh as regularly present among the clan of Adam right up until the flood.
Let's step back a bit and talk about God's complete foreknowledge. It makes sense that God would have complete foreknowledge of even our choices in any given situation, because He created us. Naturalists typically maintain that Free Will is an illusion on the basis that Nature is all there is, so we are just bouncing molecules whose outcomes can be known with enough information. Quantum forces are not an end-run to this because, in their thinking, they are random and cancel out. Sabine Hossenfelder is among the atheists who promote this view.
The (non-Calvinist) theist answer to this is that there is more than nature to man, so we can have true free will. We are not just bouncing molecules. But that part from man which is beyond nature isn't independent from God. It is from God. So this may permit freewill, but probably not without God's foreknowledge. After all, He is the source of the eternal within us, which makes man more than bouncing molecules whose free will is an illusion (and thus our future "choices" are knowable to one with enough information).
But there is an exception to this rule. There are three Persons in the Trinity, each uncreated. Does each Person of the Trinity have free will? I would argue they do. Does each have complete access to all knowledge about the future choices of the other members? I would argue that if they do, it would not be for the same reason they would have access to complete knowledge about the future choices of created beings, and there would be a caveat.
The three Persons of the Trinity share the same nature. In substance, they are the same. Therefore, if their knowledge and perspective is the same, One would always choose as the other were they making the same choice. Thus God's classical omniscience is retained even here, though for reasons that are different from that which applies to created beings.
But notice the caveat. If one Person of the Trinity set aside their Divine Perspective and took a more limited one, they would still have the same nature as the rest of the Godhead, but not the same perspective. Thus they could make different choices based on what they knew, though still in accord with their character. These choices would be the choices of a being with "true Libertarian Free Will". Would the other members of the Trinity have foreknowledge of those choices? Perhaps not. Would it be a case of limited Open Theism for this one condition only?
Now you might think that this is describing a very limited Open Theism indeed. It is only among the members of the Trinity, intramural to God Himself. But consider the consequences of the Son taking this limited perspective and then exercising His libertarian free will among men throughout history as recorded in scripture. His actions therefore influenced, and changed, the actions of other men. Which rippled and changed those of yet more men.
If I can know all the future choices of the members of Group X but not individual Y, then what happens when individual Y acts in such a way as to change the future choices of Group X? I suspect that my knowledge of the future choices of Group X is "reset" by the actions of Y.
Did you know the "random" number generators for most computer code isn't truly random? They use an algo. Suppose you have a 0-9 "random" number generator that just uses the second indicator on the computer's clock and selects the digit of Pi to the right of the decimal the corresponding number of digits back. At second 23 it goes 23 digits back, and so on. If one knows the digits of Pi back 60 digits, and one knows the second in which a "random" number is generated one can predict the number. Indeed one can predict the number for every second of the clock. But suppose someone could reset the clock to a number of seconds of their choosing? Once they made the choice, you could predict the next "random" number, but until they make that choice the number is unknown to you. I am suggesting that a member of the Trinity acting in such a way resets the clock.
What this means for Christianity is that God can be both all-knowing even of our future choices and aware of our eternal fate, yet have created us without knowing our all of our future choices or the eternal fate of all of us. This need not be all-encompassing. There could be some who will wind up in one fate or the other regardless of the possible range of actions of the Son - a range of action which could be known from His character alone. But in the main, the Libertarian Free Will of the Son temporally impacted the foreknowledge of the Father. In some cases, He doesn't know because in His wisdom and majesty He has found a way to not know, to reset the conditions so that what the conditions were when He handed off to the Son were changed.
Eternally, His foreknowledge remains, but not from Genesis 1:27 to the last Libertarian Free Will action the Son had with humans (though each succeeding ripple in time will have less and less consequence). It is a space in which even that was set aside.
This condition is now over. It may have never affected God knowing who is saved, if one also folds the in the "Complete Reconciliation in Christ" theory, also a consequent of the Christ-centered model. What changes is the list of the saved grows to what it would be in the best possible world, because the work of Christ completely undoes the fall of Adam. See video for details.
If there was any question before the ascension, there is no longer. God knows those who are His. What is left is for us to know. And the critics who dare to shake their fist at their Creator for "creating me and then sending me to hell for being who He knew I would be" should close their mouths and thoughtfully re-consider. It could be that He is smarter than you, a lot smarter. And has found a way to create you with free will without knowing what your choice will be and yet still knows it. Therefore, He will not be responsible for your choice. Maybe He never was- unless it is for life everlasting. Glory to His Holy name! Amen.
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