Thanks for your reply Steve
I guess I don't have a sufficiently persuasive open-theist interpretation of Jesus' prediction of Peter's denials. I've suggested some things in the past (as has Paidion), but obviously you were not persuaded
Of course, I'm not entirely satisfied with my own guesses on the matter. I wish I had a more persuasive argument. But, for me, the amount of remaining questions in the open theist camp became less numerous than the hurdles I kept bumping up against in alternative viewpoints.
I am like you in the sense that I don't feel a great need to make a final determination. I may be somewhat unlike you in that I feel it is better to pick the view that seems to make the most sense and accept the 'label' (in this case 'open theist'). I have found that when I accept a label (which I never do quickly), I, for whatever reason, feel more equipped to REALLY make a decision about it. I don't know if I explained that very well, but it's probably not so important that it needs to be explained
As for the Peter predictions... I can imagine a number of scenarios that may be satisfying. But here's 1....
There may have been some things going on behind the scenes that would explain Jesus' ability to accurately predict Peter's denials in such detail. For example, imagine this hypothetical scenario with me:
A. Imagine that the content of Job 1-2 were true facts, but were never revealed, written-down, and canonized
B. Imagine that God had sent a prophet to Job in the gap between Job 1:12 and Job 1:13 and predicted that "everything you have will be taken away from you today, but you yourself will not be harmed."
C. Imagine, again, that God sent a prophet to Job in the gap between Job 2:6 and Job 2:7 and predicted that "today your flesh and bones will be struck terribly, but your life will be spared."
In such a scenario, a non-open-theist might use those prophecies as evidence that God knows very precise details about the future. But what that non-open-theist did not know was that behind the scenes Satan had specifically requested to do those very things and God had granted permission. They weren't prophecies based on detailed knowledge of the future. They were prophecies based on known realities of the present (known to God, but not to us).
And, to be a bit more aggressive, I could have made this hypothetical scenario much more impressively similar to the Peter situation. Since open-theists believe that God is omniscient and, therefore, knows the present perfectly, it would have been well within God's means to know specifically that Satan was about to use the Sabeans (1:15), natural disasters (1:16, 19), the Chaldeans (1:17), and, later, painful sores (2:7) and to send a prophet to prophecy that level of detail. In such a scenario, non-open-theists would likely use those 'prophecies' just as often as they refer to Jesus' prophecy about Peter. But as impressive as such arguments would sound, they would actually be misinformed because God's knowledge of what was about to happen to Job was not based on knowing the future in advance but based on knowing what He had given permission to Satan to do and knowing what kind of devil Satan was and what kind of 'resources' were available to him.
Of course, I'm not claiming that this sort of 'behind the scenes' was going on in the case of Jesus' prediction about Peter (although Luke 22:31 could be used to support such a theory), just that there are so many possible 'behind the scenes' factors that we aren't privy too that imagining a scenario which makes an open-theist interpretation of the Peter prophecy legitimate is not actually as difficult as it might, at first, seem.