God's Omniscience and Time

Okay, this is going to get pretty abstract here, but hopefully not too dull. Anyone who knows me and has gotten into any kind of conversation on religion with me, knows that I'm a big fan of Freewill. It's one of the cornerstones of how I view life, Christianity, etc. There's a problem with Freewill though. If God knows everything, then he knows what you're going to do, so do you really have Freewill?

Those of the Reform movement (Calvinism, Lutheran, etc) just flat out say no. For them, God set out from the beginning everything that was ever going to happen. You're in or you're out based on divine fiat. Sorry! Nothing you can do. I have several things against this idea.

1. It's flat out unbiblical. If you look at the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) you just don't get that picture at all.
2. By limiting our ability to choose, you also limit God's ability to choose. That is to say, if God pre-ordained everything from the very beginning, He can't change His mind even if He wants to. This also works backwards. If God can change His mind (and I think the Hebrew Bible shows that He can and does) then there cannot be anything really pre-ordained (i.e. you can have a choice.)

Other people then try to figure out how God is related to space and time in order to be Omniscient and allow for some sort of Freewill. I think the problem for them, and really everybody else too, is that they usually are playing around with God in relation to time and not playing around with our concept of time. If given the option of letting God be constant or time be constant, personally, I'm gonna chose God and see if I can manipulate my understanding of time to what the Bible expresses.

The standard concept of time in most Christian circles is perfectly linear. A straight line with a definitive beginning and end. From this understanding of time, of course everything is predetermined. But what if we change our perspective on time. Imagine not a perfectly straight line but say a Tournament bracket (You know like the March Madness thing that comes out every year). Only imagine the beginning of time being the finals of the bracket (one team left), and move towards the beginning of the brackets. Each division is another decision, each decision leads to more decisions.

Even this is too simple for my tastes, but you get the point. Suddenly time becomes much more complex. From this vantage point, God's Omniscience doesn't mean that he knows everything that's going to happen, instead it means that God knows everything that could possibly happen. God too suddenly becomes more complex.

Which God is more all knowing? (If such a thing can exist) The God who has set everything fixed from all time or the God who sees every single possible outcome? I'd say the second one. The second view also allows man to have free will and allows God to step in and direct things down a certain path, if He wants. There are other implications to this point of view, but it would take all day and a book to discuss them, and I'll probably get to them at some other point in time.