God and Time: Does it really matter??

So I got together with my buddy Patrick yesterday who is working on his PhD in Philosophy right now. Of course what began as "catching up over coffee" quickly became a deep (in my mind, anyway) dialogue about God, foreknowledge and time and space, etc. (This basically consisted of my questions with his answers). But it got my mind reeling about the question of God and time. Especially in regards to God's knowledge of future events, I've always been hung up on the issue of God's relation to time. Is God IN time with creation? Does God somehow exist ABOVE time or "beyond" time? Does that mean that God can see the entire spectrum of time at once?

Previously, I would think to myself, "OK, if God relates to humanity temporally, then God cannot see future events in their entirety (whether by choice or ability). But if God exists outside of time and can view the entire spectrum of past, present, and future events all at once, then God can see future events in their entirety."

After our conversation yesterday, Patrick pointed out an alternative starting point. Rather than starting with the issue of God and time, why not start with the issue of the existence of future events on the foundation of your belief in free will. Does a future event even exist if it has not yet happened? If it exists, then it must occur exactly as it exists. This would be determinism and we would have no other option than acting exactly as the event exists as foreknown in the future.

However, if I start with my conviction that God gave humanity free will, and concur that events in the future must not yet exist (it's an impossibility- like a square triangle), then I am able to see that it doesn't really matter where I land on the God and time issue. Of course I have an opinion about God and time... but either way you put it--whether God exists within or outside of time--doesn't change the fact that future events do not even exist. So it's not that God isn't powerful enough to see future events in their entirety, it's that they don't even exist in the first place. So even if God IS outside of time looking at the entire spectrum... the spectrum of events that exist is a lot smaller than most may imagine.

OK... this is just my mind wrestling with this issue right now. I had to write it out to articulate it to myself, even. Of course it leads back to previous conversations about Open Theism and God's foreknowledge (which could go on and on), but I at least had to get some of this out of my head. Now off to that Hebrew homework...