Nevertheless, how can we speak of an omniscient god putting people to the test? Even if we generously grant that human beings have free will, still God has foreknowledge of what every free agent will decide to do. This does not fail to exclude knowledge of how people will react to his tests. Yet what kind of test is it when the outcome is already known? Consider the case of Abraham and Isaac. Yahweh wanted to see just how faithful Abraham actually was, so he devised a test in which the patriarch was forced to sacrifice what he valued most. Having found out thereby how much Abraham loved him, Yahweh could only reciprocate in kind. But what happens if we turn Yahweh into the Greek Perfect God? This deity must now know ab initio what Abraham would do, not only in this case, but in every conceivable situation. So why go through with such tests at all? Why not damn those predestined for hell without bothering to torture them further with a foregone failure? If this seems absurd, consider the popular response to God's war crimes against the Amelikites, et alia: "God knew that the little children killed in the siege would grow up to be anathema to him, so he ordered the Israelites to slaughter them in their infancy." God here allows children to be born, then slaughters them for iniquities they will never live to commit. More to the point: why allow the creation of beings whose dismal moral failure dooms them to be popped on the barby for eternity?

A defender of the Perfect God might step forward and say, "Indeed it is nothing but a demonstration: it is an exemplar designed to teach all future generations an historical lesson in faith, love, and devotion. The test is thus not for God's enlightenment since he lacks nothing in perfect knowledge, but for the enlightenment of those who experience it, whether directly or vicariously. By such means human beings learn the nature of adversity and faith.

However, the results of moral testing can often go awry by mere miscalculation. A few years ago, while browsing through the Gentleman's Magazine (the issue of 1715, I believe), I chanced upon a very clever fable by an anonymous author in a communication to the editors. He related the story of two French aristocrats out riding one day who encountered a pair of monks walking along the road. One aristocrat said to the other, "I shall send one of these monks to heaven and the other to hell." Whereupon, he pulled out his flint lock and said to the first monk, "Abjure your faith and I shall spare your life." The monk, reasoning that at some future time he could repent and save himself from the otherwise mortal sin, promptly denied his Savior; and just as promptly was shot dead. The second monk, given to ponder the same question, but with the added advantage of the late example before him, refused to abjure his faith and was immediately given the glory of martyrdom with all its attendant benefits. The supposition is that if the question had been posed to the martyr first, he would have landed in Hell and his partner would have saved himself. The oddly capricious system of testing which can give to a purveyor of evil the power to sort the eternal fate of randomly encountered people is a blatant absurdity. Yet such examples can be multiplied endlessly.

In the present instance, the use of temptation actually gives God a tincture of evil as a being who entraps people for reasons that do not stand up to ethical scrutiny. We have it on the best authority that this testing can be sufficiently capricious that God can be dissuaded from it by petitions for mercy. After all, was it not to him that Jesus addressed the plea, "Lead us not into temptation"?

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