Response from Kalynne Pudner on March 6, 2008

I think the difficulty here lies primarily in understanding God's knowledge and power as sort of "supersized" versions of our own knowledge and power. God's attributes are analogical at best. But the key to breaking through this kind of puzzle has to do more with the concept of time than of either omniscience or omnipotence. It's a commonplace of theology and phil of religion that God is "outside time." In other words, God's experience is not sequential, like ours is, but is eternally and universally present. So it makes no sense to talk about what God may or may not do "in the future" and what he knew "beforehand." Of course, what it means to be outside time is just as much, if not more, of a puzzle than the one you originally set out, but it seems to be closer to the target of inquiry than concerns about whether God's knowing or acting "comes first."