Your example of knowledge of past actions would only be effective if time moved backward. Since time moves forward it doesn’t help support your position. No one disputes that the past is set — lots of people dispute the idea that the future is fixed though.

Some people think that if we have real agency then God can’t know the future perfectly. I disagree. My knowledge of the past doesn’t mean that the actors in the past didn’t have agency.

I think that God is able to view Time differently than we do. I think he sees our future the same way he views our past. In this way, he has omniscience without destroying agency.

That doesn’t answer the question about whether He can know what would have happened if we had made different choices. For example, does God know that Satan would have messed up if he had come to earth to get a body? Perhaps God doesn’t know with certainty the end result of every possible path, but I think he knows the actual path our lives with take with perfect certainty.

It is the “he gave it to them” supposition I disagree with. Intelegences are eternal, from what I uderstand. God did not do anything to them that they did not do to themselves.

Lets try a thought experiment. Supose a master farmer could tell what kind of tomato plant would come up once planted by just looking at the seeds. Would it be farmer’s fault that the seeds, once planted, produced bad plants? No, it was a problem with the seeds.

God’s knowledge had no bearing on the fate of these souls.

We should also acknowledge things we don’t know. Geoff’s explanation could be true, but we also do not know what kinds of laws the casting out was carried out under.

Moreover, we really do not know what a state of “omnessence” really is. It is so far outside the human experence we do not know how God’s knowledge works. Beyound a few clews in the scriptures.

Why are we so afraid to admit that God’s judgement, whether for the 1/3 or for those who don’t make exaltation, is permanent?

What’s wrong with permanent judgement?

It seems like we are all a bunch of “scaredy cats” looking for a way out of what we deserve.

They are good thoughts – and please don’t get Geoff started. I also agree with Matt. I believe that the fallen 1/3 may change their ways and recieve a physical body. How this could occur is up for speculation. I always enjoyed the digression argument – that those who failed their first estate will return to intelligence and have the choice to re-enter the progression process. That way agency remains the constant. For every action there is a consequence –

I don’t think God “knew” the 1/3 well enough to proeclude them from progressing, but the consequence of their action, as determined by natural law, was that they could not continue in their progression. That’s the whole justice/mercy argument in BofM. For them, justice and mercy are the same – justice that they would not be allowed to progress as a consequence of their choice to follow Satan. Mercy that they would not be able to recieve a body when they would not be able to uphold the rudimentary covenants of earthlife.

On a side note, perhaps the fact that they were “thrust down” to earth, is actually a way for God to “hope” that they might see the benefits of earth life and change their ways. I can’t see why a loving God would freely allow additional adverserial elements into the world (I’m not talking about the evil that human kind can
create on its own) without their being a loving benefit in the end. Perhaps our own earthly experiences will influence those that followed Satan to repent, humble themselves, and choose to enter the process again.