While I wholly agree that such cross referencing needs to be done carefully... I don't think anyone would argue that it shouldn't be done. We believe in the canon of Scripture. And we believe that words mean things. Once we interpret what it means for John to say that "God is love" and what it means to say that "Love is ______" then we can do the careful work of deciding how the passages might best relate to one another. In my opinion, there is a deep relationship.Singalphile wrote:Regarding the proof: I agree with backwoodsman and Steve's thoughts about 1 Cor 13. I tend not to like putting separate passages by separate authors together like that.
My answer to what I take to be your question would be...The questions that puzzle my little mind:
Does God know everything that He Himself will ever allow, cause, or communicate (i.e., "do" or "say")?
That means that God knows what decisions He will make before He makes them?
Open theists believe that the future is partially open and partially secured. So there are SOME things He knows He will allow, cause, or communicate and there are OTHER THINGS He hasn't decided yet whether He will allow, cause, or communicate. There may even be some things that fit both categories (He knows generally that He will do something, for instance, but is remaining undecided on exact details).
What God doesn't know is what genuinely free creatures will decide, but it should also be considered that 1) our freedom is not without limits (we have a limited number of choices for a variety of reasons) and 2) our degree of freedom varies (we can become hardened, for example, and less free to choose wisely). Because of these truths, in many cases God knows what individual human beings will do even before they do them (even we humans can do that sometimes).