Synchronicity
This theory was developed by Carl Jung, and as he explains it, is "a-causal orderedness which lies behind phenomena. What he means by "a-causal orderedness" refers to something that is not causal in our known physical senses, and is a type of ordering power that has two locations of operations. One is in the psyche, while the other is in the external world. Though this may contain some truth, I fail to see how it even remotely deals with the subject and advances us any closer to an answer.
Two Kinds of Time
For those of you familiar with the debate among philosophers about God's relation to time, this will sound familiar. Basically, there are two types of time; "A time" and "B time". B time is the eternal now; or when talking about God and time, it refers to the fact that God is eternal and exists outside of time as we know it. A time is that time in which we as humans experience a succession of moments, or in the debate of God and time, it is called being temporal. For example, let's say that B time is a big circle on a sheet of paper. All time exists in an eternal "now". There is no past, present, or future- all events appear as in the "present". Now, let's say we begin to put little dots all inside that circle. This would represent A time. A time is the sequential movement of time that we all experience. In order to explain precognition, some say that man is connected to both kinds of time. If connected with B time, humans can at times receive glimpses from this realm.
Three Kinds of Time
Like the the above theory, this view promotes different variations of how time is experienced to explain precognition. Time 1 is present chronological time. Time 3 is the real future. Time 2 is an intermediate time- a pliable time, like putty. Certain glimpses of the future can be gained through Time 2. These events are already shaped, but still somewhat pliable. The actualization of the event can therefore be achieved by a variety of actions that we can take. A plea to simplicity makes this view a little too superfluous for me as well. The appeal to there being some sort of "pliable" time is unnecessary when the Two Kinds of Time theory already provides a better explanation.
In my opinion, I think that the Two Kinds of Time theory is the best model to explain precognition. Time is an allusion, and our experience of it is based on how our brains process reality, along with how objects move and relate to one another in space time. According to the block universe theory, what we would consider the past, present, and future already exists all at once. Furthermore, when we throw the eternal nature of God in the mix, we can make a good argument for this theory. Though humans experience A time in day to day life, precognition seems to be a natural ability in which we can, through our consciousness, gain a faint glimpse into the "future" that is already existing. This shouldn't surprise us, since we are made in the image of God. Using this theological category, it seems only natural that we would be able to, at points, escape the bounds of time in order to see future events.
But what does this mean for the prophets of the Bible, and Jesus for that matter? Were the prophets just humans with special precognitive powers? Also, what about the prophetic ability of Jesus? In this new apologetic, these are questions that we must anticipate. As I have stated elsewhere, parapsychology is on the brink of become a recognized, scientific discipline. Belief in the paranormal is on the rise. The pendulum is about to swing from the naturalistic statement, "the supernatural/miracles have no place and are ancient cultural folklore," to the parapsychology statement "what was once considered supernatural phenomenon can now be explained by natural psychic ability." The common factor is that each statement seeks to deny the possibility of the supernatural, but they do it in different ways. The naturalist dismisses it all together. The parapsychologist attributes it to something else. So. let's deal with the objection from parapsychology.
Biblical prophecy does seem to be a mixture of precognition, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. From the classical prophets like Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, to the major and minor prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zechariah, their prophecies contain elements of visions and predictions. Again, because time and space permits me, I am not going to go into detail about specific prophecies in the Bible. Suffice to know is that Daniel had visions and predictions about future empires. Isaiah and Ezekiel pronounced future judgments on the surrounding nations, as well as God's people who would not repent. Furthermore, we must also consider all the messianic prophecies, as well as the prophecies of Jesus. Can these all be explained by simple precognition. The answer is no. Here is why:
First, I will grant that the prophets and Jesus did have precognitive abilities. As I have stated elsewhere, I think this sort of phenomena is a natural ability that some possess more than others. Therefore, the ability of the prophets and Jesus does have some natural element. The problem of attributing all of their power to natural ability arises when we compare biblical prophecy to actual precognition. In all of the testing, never has their been a precognition that has spanned great distances of time. Precognitive ability seems to only be able to sense the immediate future- from moments before something happens to years. This seems to be the limit of natural precognitive powers. If this is so, then precognition cannot adequately explain many of the prophecies of the Bible, which span centuries. But what about clairvoyance and remote viewing? In the case studies, details are given, yet though accurate, seem to still be somewhat blurry. The biblical prophets, though seeing through a glass darkly, seem to have a much more refined vision of what they saw.
What all of this means is that psychic phenomena, though real, cannot adequately explain the level of detail and accuracy that we see with Jesus and the prophets. Therefore, my conclusion (as with telepathy) is that Jesus and the prophets definitely possessed the natural psychic abilities of precognition, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. This natural ability was a gateway in which the Spirit of God operated to reveal events to them, and supernaturally heightened in order to reveal accurate details of the distant future. This means that only a supernatural explanation makes sense of the evidence that we have in Scripture. Again, let me be abundantly clear on this. Precognition, etc is a naturally occurring phenomena, and one that many in the Bible possessed. However, it does not explain the level of accuracy that we see. This can only be attributed to God. He worked through their natural ability, using it as a gateway to give them revelation that goes way beyond their natural abilities. With His Spirit upon them, they were able to go above and beyond any psychic phenomena. Thus, we can acknowledge with parapsychology that these types of phenomena are real, and that they were indeed abilities possessed by those in Scripture; while at the same time, we can rejecting their paradigm and hold to the supernatural nature of biblical prophecy.