Perfect Plans

Drats! I thought I could slip by this question, but you're too clever, deep.thought. Drats! :-)

The issue here is tied into the question of God's omniscience -- his all-knowing nature. Did God know that Satan would rebel prior to his creating the angels? Did God know that mankind would fall prior to his creating man? If God did know this would happen, can it be said that therefore it was part of his plan?

Somewhere in the Bible -- I sure wish I could find it -- I read that it was God's eternal plan to send Jesus his only Son to act as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind. If my recollection of that is true, then it suggests that God did indeed have foreknowledge of our fall, and planned well in advance for a mechanism to rectify it.

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you ... I just don't know how to answer this. If I grant that God doesn't know the events that are yet to unfold, then I deny his omniscience. If I grant that he does know, then it suggests (but not proves) that it was part of his plan. That opens up the thorny issue of explaining the existence of bad things within the realm of God's creative plan. It also draws into question the true nature of our free will in a context where God knows exactly what we'll do anyway. I don't like these discussions ... not just because I can't answer them (which is certainly part of my dislike), but because it distracts me so forcefully from the main point of the faith: Christ himself.

So I will defer answering this until I feel I am better equipped. Right now I am not -- either intellectually or spiritually.