Can God know everything without controlling everything?

This is a live question in philosophy of religion, and the answer depends significantly on which view of God's knowledge and providence a Christian holds.

Some Christian views argue yes: through what's called "middle knowledge," God can know exactly what every genuinely free creature would choose in any possible circumstance, and then providentially arrange history around those choices—achieving his purposes through real freedom rather than by controlling each individual choice directly.

Other views hold that complete knowledge and complete control are more tightly linked than that—if God truly knows the future exhaustively and with certainty, some argue this requires that the future be settled in a way that's difficult to distinguish from being determined, even if human choices still feel free from the inside.

A third view, open theism, resolves the tension differently: by holding that God doesn't have exhaustive, settled knowledge of future free choices at all, preserving both real freedom and a meaningful sense in which God doesn't control every outcome.