I promised I would respond to your post on foreknowledge, so here goes:
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Foreknowledge can be translated as "ordained purposes.
The Greek for "foreknowledge" is "prognosis", and unless I'm mistaken it has never been translated as "ordained purposes". Only in 1 Peter 1:20 has "proginosko" been translated as "foreordained" in the King James Version.
In Acts 2:23 I believe that there is a distinction between "determinate purpose" (Gk. horizo boule) and "foreknowledge" (Gk. prognosis), although they are closely related to each other.
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I would be interested in your definition of foreknowledge, because I think you are mistakenly defining "foreknowledge" as we human's would define foreknowledge, meaning, looking forward in to time. The Bible never uses the word in this manner, especially in decribing the acts of an omniscient God."
My definition of foreknowledge is simply a dictionary-definition: Knowledge of something before it occurs. I have recently purchased a four views book called God and Time (IVP). I haven't read it yet, so I won't pretend I know (at least not yet) all the philosophical and theological arguments of the matter. At the moment I do know that I hold to a "simple foreknowledge view" as advocated by David Hunt (although the author remains an "agnostic" as to how God knows the future):
"God has complete and infallible knowledge of the future." (Divine Foreknowledge, IVP, 2001, p. 65)
And like Hunt (and Augustine), I believe that God's foreknowledge of what man will do "does not cause, force or coerce him... simply knowing what the person will do is not an interference of any sort" (Ibid, p. 88).
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In a similar cross reference to Acts 2:23, Peter states in Acts 4:27,28, For truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do, whatever Your hand and Your purposes determined before to be done. Here, predetermined is a synonym for "foreknow."
Yes, Acts 4:28 speaks of God's predetermined purposes (Gk. "proorizo boule"). But it doesn't mention anything about an unconditional determinative decree which is not based on foreknowledge. However, if you want to assert that predetermination or foreordination is synonymous with foreknowledge, then that's fine. But I think that such an interpretation is based on one's premise that "God foreknows because he foreordains". But I believe that God foreordains certain events on the basis of his foreknowledge of future volitions (even sinful ones).
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Like I stated above, having no ability to chose otherwise does not equate being forced to do something."
You are quite correct. My apologies if I implied this. As I pointed out in my paper on Determinism and Freedom, soft determinists believe that one is free if there are nonconstraining causes that influence their desire to act in the way which God has determined (see p. 12).
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It is as if we have God sitting in heaven sighing to himself and saying, "Well, this is not the way I would have preserved my people, but I can't override the freewills of Joseph's brothers, let me see how I can make lemonaide out this big mess of lemons." It implies that God was surprised by what happened and had to move to plan "B.""
Not at all, but again, I deal with this false assertion - Boettner also argued this way - in my paper (see p. 25, esp. the quote from Clines).
