Knight, thank you for the clarity here.
I understand from what you state above why you also believe that there are times that what God thought would happen did not come about. This causes me to question what level of confidence you could have that God's promise to eliminate evil at the eschaton.
If God's anticipation of the future is not completely infallible, given that the free will of His creatures is always maintained, how is this kind of fallible anticipation enabling God to omni-competently respond to whatever free agents decide to do (how could a false anticipation help God deal with the future challenges of human history?).
If God is like a Grand Master chess player, yet human freedom is truly libertarian, how can God guarantee He will be able to respond to every move in the cosmic chess game that is made by free creatures? Yes, God's wisdom, skill, and resourcefulness is infinitely greater that the greatest Grand Master chess player, but what guarantee do you have that the novice (human) will not simply stumble by blind chance into the one in a million move that the Grand Master cannot respond to? As long as libertarian free will always exists this must be conceded to be always a possibility, even if the likelihood is small.
Open theists point to the flood as an example where God was grieved of that He had made man on the earth and that creation had miscarried. Open theists will maintain that for this Divine repentance to be real and authentic, the depth and pervasiveness of sin must not have been foreseen, and most certainly not planned by God. Hence, in responsiveness to unforeseen and and freely chosen human decisions, God undertakes a a new and different course of action (judges the world through the flood).
What is to prevent another future degeneration of humanity into sin that is even greater than that which precipitated the flood and thereby have God abandon His plans and destroy humanity completely in His judgment? I recognize that the open theist will point to the Noahic covenant as evidence that God at that time promised to not do so. Some open theists, but not yourself, will also argue that God can unilaterally intervene and override the free will of man to make sure this does not happen. But, can God really know what He will choose to do or not unilaterally in the future? If God is genuinely responsive to humans and to the course of history, and if God cannot infallibly know the future free decisions of man, it is in principle impossible for God to know infallibly what He will do in the future as well. In other words, God's knowledge of His own actions in the future is at best probabilistic. Thus, to my opening point of discussion about the eschaton, given the positions stated here, God's statement that He will ultimately triumph over evil is no absolute guarantee.
It would seem that for open theists to insist on a guaranteed final outcome in history, either God must be able to unilaterally intervene and override libertarian free will, or open theists must assume that God's ultimate plan to eliminate evil is not an absolute certainty. And, if God unilaterally intervenes, the question remains, given the free choices of man, how God can infallibly know when it would be the right time for Him to intervene. In effect God must make His decision based upon incomplete knowledge. Moreover, if God intervenes, such intervention overrules the open theist's free will, for it is seen to be 'coercive', and, the open theist would be forced to conclude that there is no moral responsibility for those that would be held accountable by God who have had their free will overridden by God's intervention.
