Bob... you said
As an Open Thiest, I would not say God is learning. He knows all that is knowable. I also think He also knows every possible thing that will happen in the future. But, from Scripture, we see that He is surprised at the things that man actually does, at times.
no offence, but this strikes me as being incoherent... God must in fact be "learning" if He can be surprised, for what is it to be surprised but to have something unexpected happen, that one does not know will happen? Otherwise, what is there to be surprised about?? …. and if it was unexpected, then God must not have known that it was going to happen, He had to learn what happened as it unfolded in order to be surprised.... for if God perfectly knows every possibility, then whatever happens ought notand could not surprise God... whatever happened was just one out of numerous possibilities He already knew ahead of time as possibilities, thus, when it does or did happen, what was there to be surprised at? The very definition of "surprised” contains the idea that something unexpected happens, and if God already knew all possibilities, then manifestly,whichever one happens could not be totally unexpected..... . If God perfectly knows all possibilities, then whichever of the possibilities becomes actualized was already known to God, and therefore could not surprise Him.
surprised:
To encounter suddenly or unexpectedly; take or catch unawares.
To attack or capture suddenly and without warning.
To cause to feel wonder, astonishment, or amazement, as at something unanticipated.
To cause (someone) to do or say something unintended.
To elicit or detect through surprise.
n.
The act of surprising or the condition of being surprised.
Something, such as an unexpected encounter, event, or gift, that surprises. (answers.com)
So what I see you doing is still being “plagued” by the inconsistency that traditional Arminians have been laboring under for a long time, that if God knows what will happen in the future, even if it is simply one outcome out of many others, then manifestly, man was not free, for whatever happened was already “there” in God’s mind’s eye so to speak, even if it existed as a possibility. The difference between you and the traditional Arminian is simply that for them, one single future is fixed, while for you, there are a fixed finite number of futures which God perfectly knows could be actualized at any given time, every one of those possibilities exists as a blueprint in His mind as one possibility out of many others. It seems as if you must make a radical break and say that the future is such that God really does not have any certainty regarding what will happen, not even one possibility out of many, in order to be genuinely surprised.
blessings