Quote:
Originally posted by WarChild
Okay sure .. But he had to KNOW that's what we would do.
So why run such a cruel experiment?
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If you follow Augustines argumentation, God would be an eternal being instead of a temporally linear one, eternal here meaning existing outside of time, or in all timeframes at once. Which makes sense - after all, a God that's subjected to time isn't really all that omnipotent.
Now, if that is the case, God only knew what the outcome of the experiment would be by actually executing it - but not without the experiment, since humans have free will and thus can't be the subject of a logical theory. This doesn't clash with the concept of God's omniscience, since God still knows reality as a whole at all times.
I'll post a more extensive thing on the whole subject in a few hours.