But if God knew the actual event of Bobby getting hit by a truck, then what sense does it make to say that He should intervene to change it?  How can an actual event by changed?  Because if, for the sake of argument, God decided to intervene and surround Bobby with an invisible (and invincible) force-field just seconds before the truck collided into him, that what essentially did God know initially?

Here we see a huge incongruity in simultaneously affirming the exhaustive foreknowledge of God and His intervention as a result of prayer.

Do we believe that God genuinely responds to us in prayer?  That God in His time and wisdom performs actions in our lives which would not have occurred had we not prayed?  That our prayers (or lack of) make a difference to God?

If we do, then let us not be too hasty in affirming total foreknowledge, because doesn't such a view of divine omniscience holds God ‘captive’ to His knowledge?  God cannot change anything because everything He knows is everything which will actually happen.  How can God change that which He knows (from eternity) will occur?  Or is His foreknowledge mistaken?

(It should be noted here that consistent Reformed theologians would’ve given an unqualified No to all the questions above.  In such theology, everything has already been determined since eternity and so it would make no sense to speak of God intervening – one cannot speak meaningfully of ‘intervening’ in a history in which everything has been eternally fixed by God Himself).

And this is why questions like, “If God knew that Adam & Eve would fall, why didn’t He stop them?” are internally flawed, because if God knew that A&E would actually screw up then to suggest that He changes the scenario would also imply that what He foreknew was mistaken.

Exhaustive foreknowledge and genuine divine intervention cannot be easily reconciled.  In fact, it would seem that we are left with essentially two options:

One is to take the Reformed approach whereby divine foreknowledge is exhaustive and absolute because everything has been foreordained.  God knows all because He has determined all (including sin and evil).  Nothing anybody does makes any difference whatsoever to reality because the tape of history has already been written and is immutable.  I've elaborated elsewhere about the problems I have with such deterministic theology so I won't go into them here.

The other option is to hold to the Open View of God, whereby God knows all possibilities or potentialities (as opposed to actualities) in the future.  This is a God who gives us genuine choices within fixed parameters and who assures us that He will grant us victory over evil even as He promises us an eternity of joy and love with Him and His angels.  Such promises will be realised not because God has already 'seen it all' but because He is an omni-resourceful and omni-wise God who will see His plans through.

Clark Pinnock beautifully sums up this view of God:

"(According to the Bible) God is both transcendant (that is, self-sufficient, the Creator of the world, ontologically other than creation, sovereign and eternal) and at the same time immanent (that is, present to the world, active within history, involved, relational and temporal).  Combining the two, we say that God is so transcendent that he creates room for others to exist and maintains a relationship with them, that God is so powerful as to be able to stoop down and humble himself, that God is so stable and secure as to be able to risk suffering and change."

(Go here for a good short Biblical introduction to open theism and its issues by Gregory Boyd or here for a more philosophical treatment by William Hasker).
 

AL