You seem to be making the common error that because someone predicts something that turns out to be true, the person must have known it beforehand. We do it in ordinary speech. How often have we heard someone say, “I knew that” after some event has a particular outcome which he thought would occur. When my son was two years old, I would have affirmed to anyone, “If I say to my son, ‘Jamie, come here’, I know he will come.” But I didn’t know he would come. Even though he had always come when I called him for the previous 3 months, he may have chosen on this occasion not to come.Paidion, since you brought this topic up in the Calvinism thread with my post I will post here where this topic is already being discussed.
While you might have already responded to posts about these passages I'm about to quote I ask that you respond again here so I don't have to go back a re-read many pages of posts.
Please respond to these so I can consider you position:
Luke 22:34 Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."
How did Jesus know that? Peter hadn't made the choice yet. Still, Jesus knew the time (before the rooster crows) and the number of times (3) Peter would deny the Lord.
Peter’s impulsive nature was obvious to everyone, and especially to Jesus who “knew what was in man.” Roosters do crow in the morning. So it is not unreasonable to predict that Peter would deny the Lord before the rooster crows.
Now you may rightly ask, “How could Jesus have correctly predicted that Peter would deny him 3 times?” But do we know that Jesus stated that in his prediction? Yes, we know that this is stated in all four gospels. Yet not all gospels record exactly the same words that Jesus supposedly said. Mark’s gospel states that our Lord said, "Truly I tell you, that this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny me three times." None of the other gospels has Jesus saying that the rooster will crow twice before the denial. Which of the two did Jesus actually say?
It is probable that Peter in relating the incident to his convert, Mark, who wrote down the memoirs of Peter,had specifically remembered the rooster crowing twice before he denied his Lord. And so he recalled the Lord as saying so. In actual fact, the Lord may have simply said, “before the rooster crows” as recorded by the other authors.
Similarily, it may also have been the case that it was known to Matthew, Peter, and John that Peter had denied the Lord 3 times. Paul may have learned this fact from them. (Luke, as Paul's scribe recorded what Paul knew). And thus each writer of the memoirs (or “gospels”) of the apostles recorded that our Lord said in his prophecy that Peter would deny him 3 times. This may be a matter of “remembering” at a later time what was said or done after the facts are known. Is this not the reason for conflicting “memories” of witnesses to auto accidents today?
Of course, this explanation will not satisfy those who believe that the accounts in the memoirs are the “infallible, inerrant Word of God”, but then how do such explain the apparent conflict as to the number of times the rooster crowed?
This was not knowledge of what the Israelites would choose, but knowledge of the Israelites.Deuteronomy 17:14 "When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'
How did God know that? I mean, that's a free will choice by man. Not only that but those men had these scriptures that warned them not to ask for a king.
But, you may object, their insistence on having a king took place a long time after God said those words. True, but all through those years, the Israelites encountered kings in surrounding countries and their armies. God knew the hearts of this people, and how much they wanted to be like other nations. This came out in their offering of appeasing sacrifices, and at one point in their history, even to the extent of offering their children. God, knowing every detail of their state of mind, as well as military and political conditions in their world, was well able to predict that they would want a king like the nearby nations.
There is nothing in this passage to indicate God knowing what free will agents will choose. Indeed, it is debatable that Psalm 22 is even a prediction of the crucifixion. You made reference to “Jesus having His hands and feet pierced”, this even presumably declared in Psalm 22:16How in Psalm 22 did God (or David) know that Jesus would have His hands and feet would be pierced, that they would cast lots for his garments, etc.
Remember that these as you say are free moral agents and can do as they will. How did God know they would be killing people by nailing them up. How did God know they would cast lots for garments, etc. They could have simply chose not to perform those customs hundreds of years before Christ.
Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. NIV
But translation from the Hebrew of the Masoretic text is quite different:
For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet Jewish Publication Society
Going at a person’s hands and feet in the manner of lions, hardly fits a crucifixion.
Further, if this verse describes the crucifixion of Christ, one would expect New Testament writers to have quoted it with that application. But that is not the case, not even once.
True, the apostle John wrote:
John 19:24 so they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be." This was to fulfil the scripture, "They parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots."
But does “fulfil the scripture” mean that the event of the casting of lots for Christ’s clothing was written in Psalm 22 as foreknowledge?
If so, would the same line of reasoning apply to the following?
And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son." Matthew 2:14,15
Does this mean that the prophet, when he said these words was speaking of Jesus, having been taken to Egypt by his parents, and having come out of Egypt to His home?
It is obvious that the words were originally written as descriptive of God having called Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land. Then in what sense did Jesus return from Egypt fulfill this scripture?
I think John Sanders answered this question rather well when he wrote:
What do the New Testament writers when they claim that Jesus did “fulfilled” an Old Testament passage? For instance, when Matthew cites Hosea 11:1 as being “fulfilled”, by the return of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus from Egypt, he is well aware that the passage in Hosea is not a prediction of the future at all (Mt 2:15). Rather, it is a reference to the exodus of Moses’ day. For Matthew, such events are not fulfillments of Ancient predictions about the Messiah; they serve to show Jesus as having similar experiences to those of Israel or individuals in the Old Testament. Matthew goes on to say that Jesus’ being from Nazareth fulfilled what was written in the Prophets (2:23). M. Eugene Boring, who has a helpful discussion of Matthew’s view of prophecy, comments on this verse: “The fact that Jesus came from Nazareth generated a ‘prediction’ in 2:24.” It is in retrospect that the New Testament authors read the Old Testament for parallels or recapitulation between the life of Jesus and Old Testament event. The God Who Risks by John Sanders, ch4.16 Excursus on Predictions and Foreknowledge
How did Daniel predict so precisely what free moral agents would do in the future (Daniel 11 specifically) if God could have not idea who would do what? God couldn't control them because that would violate that presumed fact that we are free moral agents./quote]
I understand that there are a variety of interpretations as to when these predictions were fulfilled or will be fulfilled. I don’t pretend to know the answer. And I do not know to what extent they were fulfilled, if indeed the were fulfilled.
You refer to the “presumed fact that we are free moral agents.” Are you suggesting that it may not be the case that we, in fact, are free agents in the sense that we have the ability to choose? Is not the main way in which man was created in the image of God, his ability to choose?
I have never been able to understand how some of the very people who make choices every day of their lives, can deny their ability to make these choices, and can regard all of their actions as having been predetermined.
You downplay and retranslate all the passages that give you trouble. Now do you see why I said what I did in the other thread? Just realize that there are those of us that should actually be allowed the same freedom as you to interpret these scriptures the way we best see fit. 
