It is predestined if God or anything already knows it. That is not compatible with free will. That would be the illusion of free will.
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They are not, given that the extent of our ability to understand is completely limited to sequential time. But our God is bigger than that, and I am willing to not try and confine him to our sequential time limited thinking box and to accept the reality of the wonderful mystery of the dynamic relationship he has with us, illogical as it seems to us if we feebly try and explain. The Bible teaches both concepts quite clearly, God’s absolute sovereignty and our freedom and responsibility.
That is an excellent picture of how our thinking is limited to sequential time.
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That too is illustrative of how we limit God to sequential time – all of the verbs are tensed. That is the only language we have.
Free will is not an illusion, it is real, but so is God’s absolute sovereignty. Limited to sequential time, yes, they are incompatible, but God is not so limited. Can we get our heads around God’s dynamic reality and put it in a box? No, we cannot, but we can accept and enjoy the mystery, if we are in his family.
A Co-instants Log entry:
*CCM: contemporary Christian music
There is an underlying assumption here that God is not in sequential time. What are your reasons for saying that he is not?
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A very basic one is scripture – the Bible teaches both free will and predestination/election/chosenness/etc. As has already been made abundantly clear and accepted by all comers, including myself, they are incompatible… in linear sequential time. (I say ‘linear’ because we know from physics and relativity that time can be bent, compressed or warped – the twin paradox is a good example. It should not be too surprising nor difficult then to understand that our sequential time is not an absolute.)
The other major reason is my life-experience, I guess. The first ‘co-instants’ that knocked me over is the one below. There was another whole set of co-instances that I realized in retrospect that was far more significant to my life’s path – my chasing my future wife around the country, unbeknownst to either of us, at the time, and finally catching up with her (she reminds me that I still am sometimes 
). Part of that set had already occurred at the time of this story:
NYC, Bermuda and Dr. Rayburn
Back to scripture again, there are numerous examples of God’s providence for his people in both testaments, and they correlate well to God’s extra- or supra-dimensionality, shall we say, as I have described it.
Yet another reason is big bang cosmology – it tells us that time itself had a beginning, and God ‘pre’-existed that.
I wouldn’t say it’s an impossible task – I think it just depends what you mean by “mix.” Like Dale said, I do believe scripture teaches God’s sovereignty, but it also teaches free will. I just can’t get behind any ideology that requires me to choose between one or the other – it would be like cutting scripture in half.
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I don’t buy into Molinism, either, which to me is an academic and intellectual exercise that tries, with limited success, to meld the two (libertarian free will and God’s absolute sovereignty). It’s been described as turning God into an epistemological calculator, and I see basically zero scriptural support for it – a lot of unjustified inference and projection or extrapolation is required.
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if God transcends everything including you he has no chance of not knowing everything that happens everywhere at any time. Thus the term "predestined " is meaningless in the context of God. To God what you do as an act of free will is already known to him as he has already been there. That does not deprive you of free will to do something utterly stupid - or not. It just means that you can’t fathom that someone already knew yesterday what happened to you tomorrow. It definitely does not excuse the stupid action of you xxxxx (fill in what silly thing you do tomorrow) as you could not possibly see that it caused YYYYY because of ZZZZZ 5000 years ago.
Just imagine you seen the happy end of a film. Does it mean that there could be no wrongdoing on the way to that ending, or incredible acts of love or hate? Does it mean that everything on the way to that ending was morally justifiable because of that ending? It could have arisen from an infinite number of actions in between.
The bit of fate that is predestined or “dead certain”, as we say, is, that there will come the day where you have to justify yourself and your actions. That is ofcourse only if you do not live in denial of that possibility and hope that all the memory of you, including yours, is erased with your death and there is no time to reflect upon it. The bad news is that there is an infinite time for that when you lose time at the point of reentry into the metaphysical world. So yes, you have free will and you are predestined to justify how you used it. It does not mean that your actions are predetermined as by the chemical positioning of the molecules in your brain and you could not do otherwise or God determined what you were going to do as you live,e.g.you have control over the movement of energy or matter yourself. Just that God already knew yesterday what you did tomorrow but did not stop you from doing it or not (particularly because he loves you) does not excuse your actions. In fact denying you your free will would deny you being your self which would be the ultimate act of not loving you. Telling you that it would be a stupid thing to do AAA would allow you to change your mind - which is what God does, but he can’t force you to do it as it would be incoherent with his love for you. He can always help you to pick up the pieces, if you let him 
Where does this illogical concept come from, that God transcends time? What is the basis for this mystery?
Upon futher review of my views of free will I have noted that I am of open theist free will and go along with this statement:
open theism says that since God and humans are free, God’s knowledge is dynamic and God’s providence flexible. While several versions of traditional theism picture God’s knowledge of the future as a singular, fixed trajectory, open theism sees it as a plurality of branching possibilities, with some possibilities becoming settled as time moves forward.
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Indeed it does and that is the confusion, what is more emphasized? Human free will or God’s sovereignty? That has been the issue that has plagued as the Bible does seem to support free will and predestination. I often consider God’s sovereignty in terms of election a mystery but don’t’ negate human free will as a person of Wesleyan-Methodist theology do believe that humans do have free will in terms of salvation.
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Indeed. It’s certainly worth asking whether one or the other seems to be more emphasized, especially in the New Testament. But I think some go too far and make it a false dichotomy, or pick one and interpret texts referring to the other in light of the one they believe to be “dominant.” Of course, I’d affirm that God’s sovereignty is greater than human freedom, but it doesn’t have to negate it. Both can be true.
I would mostly agree, but Olson is describing an approach that I’d run across (narrative theology, relational theology) but didn’t really think through its implications for divine sovereignty. The essay (linked above) is worth reading if you haven’t. A couple of points that may further the discussion:
My own view of God’s sovereignty is what I call “relational.” I believe in God’s “relational sovereignty.” What I want to do here, today, is explain what I mean by that and invite you to consider it as an alternative to the view of God’s sovereignty currently enjoying great popularity—the Augustinian-Calvinist view that I call, for lack of any more descriptive term, “divine determinism.” … According to it, whatever happens is planned, ordained and governed by God. Another way of saying that is that God foreordains and renders certain everything that happens without exception.
The second view of God’s sovereignty, the one I plan to expound here, is relational theism . Oord, one of the editors and authors of Relational Theology , defines it this way: “At its core, relational theology affirms two key ideas: 1. God affects creatures in various ways. Instead of being aloof and detached, God is active and involved in relationship with others. God relates to us, and that makes an essential difference. 2. Creatures affect God in various ways. While God’s nature is unchanging, creatures influence the loving and living Creator of the universe. We relate to God, and creation makes a difference to God.”
Divine determinism of any type cannot explain how God is good in any meaningful sense or how people are responsible for the evil they do. Mediating theology, theologies of paradox, cannot explain the consistency of God’s comprehensive, meticulous providence with genuine free will and prayer playing a role in the outworking of God’s plan. Relational sovereignty, which is what I will call the view of God’s sovereignty derived from relational theism, seeks and finds consistency and flexibility.
@ThomasJayOord is not a regular here, but if he should see this and have a free moment, I’d love for him to drop by and explain a little more.
Good discussion. This lead me to read more on Molinism, which is appealing. Evidently William Lane Craig leans that way. Any critiques of Molinism?
I haven’t done much reading on it – I probably should, but from what little I’ve read I like how it distinguishes between God’s knowledge and God’s will.
why is it illogical. It would be illogical to have an all knowing God that you can surprise by what you do tomorrow, but perhaps you will
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Molinism is very interesting, seems to present God’s sovereignty and human free will as equal in status. The three different states of foreknowledge was also pretty interesting as well.