Joel D. White
A God that makes mistakes doesn’t make any sence. He has never made a mistake. But some might ask “what about satan and the third of angels that went to hell?” Or why did He let Adam and Eve have the choice to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when He already knew what would happen? Well I don’t have those answers. God certainly knows all and He has not given me the priviledge or curse of knowing all that. I don’t believe in predestination, but do believe that God is omnipotent. Aren’t those the same to a degree?
When it boils down to it, I don’t have the answers. I don’t want the answers. I’ll know the answers when God tells me. But I doubt it will be while I’m on this earth. In the meantime, I enjoy having faith that God is the creator of all, the answerer of prayers, and the greatest Daddy ever! Sometimes I think it’s better not to ask your Daddy why. He lets us know what we need to know. Trying to understand the “mind” of God is an impossible task for us sinful humans. After all, we’re made in His image. Not Him in ours.

Love ya,
Joel

Joel D. White

I certainly agree that Open Theism isn’t Biblically grounded. Although the 2 Kings 20 argument was new to me, I like the points that you make about God “changing his mind” in a very definite way that clearly implies that he’d laid out the next 15 years of Hezekiah’s life.

However, even though I don’t think OT is a very good theological solution, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to those whom it lures in. Maybe it’s my curse of empathy, I don’t know. But it’s interesting to consider why OT would appear a satisfying solution to certain vexing theological problems. If nothing else, it really points out some of the mysteries of our faith.

Exploring all of the motivations to adopt the OT view is beyond the scope of this comment, and probably requires a Psychology PhD too. But my first thought is that theodicy is really tough, and a benevolent, all-powerful God appears to be incompatible with the existence of evil. Of course there are theological explanations for this apparent paradox, some of them more satisfying than others, but it’s still a really thorny problem. So I guess in one sense maybe it’s tempting to just “exonerate” God from any responsibility for what happens in his universe. Maybe he knew what was coming, but he certainly didn’t have any control over it.

Of course this just opens up a whole other can of worms because a God not in control is scarier than a God whose ways don’t make sense to us. But I can definitely see where the temptation arises.

Good points, Philip. For another perspective on Open Theism from John Piper, read this. Piper argues that Open Theism plays to our sinful tendency for idolatory because it “ascribes ultimate causality for many calamities and evils to Satan or the autonomous will of man, not finally to the all-disposing counsel and wisdom of God”.

In 2001, the Evangelical Theological Soceity formally rejected Open Theism although they could not agree how to handle those that advocate it.

Finally, if you have the time and are inclined to really dig into this, here is a collection of articles on Open Theism including a number by Piper.

Believing and trusting that God knows my future …

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

As an addendum, I must also point out that the New Testament clearly contradicts Open Theism. Examples:

- Matthew 26:33-35 (Jesus’ very specific prediction of Peter’s betrayal)
- John 6:64, 70-71 (Jesus’ prediction of Judas’s betrayal years before)
- fullfillment of specific prophecies made several centuries earlier (i.e., soldiers gambling for the cloak - John 19:24 cf. Ps 22:18; etc.)

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

10 things a Calvinist God might say:

Yeah I sent ya to Hell, so what?

Sorry, could you repeat that last prayer I wasn’t paying attention.

You don’t have any choice in the matter, come to think of it neither do I.

Well Adolph I’m not sure why I let you up here, I guess it was just my will that day.

Yeah that was a pretty cool way for those people to die. I thought it up way before they even invented elevators.

I knew you’d do that

I made you do that

I’m holding you accountable for that.

Why not just sleep in this coming Sunday, you’re destined to burn anyway!

Hey, do you remember that one time you thought I cared about how you felt…that was pretty cute. I still laugh thinking back on it.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, John. Let us all wrestle with the mystery of God. Let us all search the Bible diligently. I certainly don’t have all the answers. But I rest well knowing that God does and He graciously bridges the gap between my stupidity and His Godness.

Sincere blessings,

–
David Thew
Sojourn Founding Pastor

David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
Thewblog

Well, I’ll stick to the jokes about God saying “Oh my me” or “Who’s your deity,” I guess.

…

I think we’re getting a different impression of open theism we would get if we actually if we had an open theist explaining it. If any of you guys have had Calvinism - or even just Christianity in general - explained to you by someone who is opposed to the idea, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The “Wait … what?” moments come fast and furious, it seems.

Let me take a whack at explaining this in a way that’s a little more sympathetic to open theists. I’m not going to be terrific at this (if only because I am not an open theist), but I think it’s vital that we understand why, exactly, this way of thinking has such appeal to some folks out there today.

First, though, I think it’s necessary to differentiate in theology between what doesn’t make sense and what can’t make sense. That is to say: I can’t reject something about God just because it doesn’t, from my perspective, make sense. There are a lot of things about God that do not make sense to me, but not because they’re contrary to logic, but because they’re beyond it. Examples of this include things like the trinity, free will existing with God being sovereign, and how the sovereignty of God is somehow consistent with the existence of evil in the world.

They’re beyond logic but not necessarily contrary to it. I don’t think that means that anything in that list is false, but if I accept it - even though it doesn’t make a complete amount of sense to me - then I don’t have grounds for rejecting open theism because “it doesn’t make sense.”

On the other hand: questions like “Could God make a rock so big he couldn’t lift it” are not beyond my capacity to understand … they’re just stupid. The question makes no sense according to the laws of logic that we understand, and it’s on a level with “Could God make a square circle” or “Could blorg erb yak nard nard fleem nard spuz” - just because you can come up with words to describe it doesn’t mean that it’s a logical question. God can’t do things that are contrary to the laws of logic.

Is the idea that God can completely know the future while still giving humanity true freedom an idea that belongs in the category of things that we don’t understand but are not contrary to logic, or does it belong in the category of things that we know don’t make sense? Traditional theology says that it’s just not understandable by us, open theists will say that it’s just not logically possible.

Open theists say that God wouldn’t create a world in which we don’t have true freedom, and the only way for Him to do this is to create a world in which He is not completely sure of the future. Logically, it’s the only other possibility. This only makes more sense if we keep in mind that the limits that God has in open theism are self-imposed. God could have created a world in which He knew the future and controlled everything, but didn’t because he wanted to give humanity true freedom.

Open theism is not process theology, which says that God is limited - not by His choices, but by actually how he is - i.e., God isn’t powerful enough to defeat evil, for example. (Kushner’s “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” is probably the most popular example of this.) Open theism and process theology bear a passing resemblance to each other but take different paths to get there, and as a result, have very different views of God. Do not confuse the two.

Open theism, unlike process theology, doesn’t make claims about if God is powerful enough to do something. It does make claims about what is and what is not logically possible.

…

This is appealing for several reasons. As Philip has pointed out, theodicy is really tough. I think it is the problem whatever field is on the intersection of theology, philosophy, and apologetics. Open theism provides a way to get around this, though, as Bob has noted already, not to the satisfaction of John Piper.

There are quite a few references (in addition to 2 Kings 20:1-20, which has already been discussed) that seem to imply that God repents - Exodus 32:9,10; 1 Samuel 15:11, etc. They’re pulling from more than just one verse, here.

…

If the God of open theism is under no circumstances worthy of worship, then doesn’t something about this belong in our essentials basket?

…

I’m kind of expecting someone to post a rebuttal to this sometime in the next few days, and I’m hoping that someone does. Odds are, they will do a better job than I will, plus, it saves me the trouble of rebutting myself, which I’ll otherwise have to do. I just see it as being important that we are fair to what we are rebutting and really try to understand where these other folks are coming from. We’d want them to do the same for us.

On the other hand, you guys have inspired me to buy the book. Just what I need … a longer reading list.

- garrett

- garrett (golfsierra.org/blog)

Good post, Garrett. Excellent points. But you’ve brought up way too much stuff for me to address in entirety and I’ve got to run. Let me handle one really good question though …

“If the God of open theism is under no circumstances worthy of worship, then doesn’t something about this belong in our essentials basket?”

I would answer “No.”

Do I believe that one can be an open theist and still be a Christian? Yes. In my view, the question is essential for orthodoxy - not salvation. This is similar along the lines of my belief that one can have an unorthodox (i.e., inaccurate) understanding of the Trinity (God) and still be a Christian. I believe that one can be an open theist with an unorthodox understanding of God, and still be a Christian. (Many [most?] Christians I encounter cannot articulate an orthodox defintion of the Trinity which is an indictment of the contemporary churche’s failure to clearly teach it.)

Is Open Theism an essential for salvation? No. Essential for orthodoxy? Yes. In other words, I wouldn’t want an Open Theist teaching the Bible in the church.

Open Theism can be quite complex. Millard Erickson does a good job of fairly and accurately presenting their arguements in his book.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

As an addendum, The Introduction To Theology course from The Theology Program does a good job of differentiating between truths that are …

- Essential for Salvation
- Essential for Orthodoxy
- Important But Not Essential
- Not Important
- Pure Speculation

Here are some key questions the course addresses:

What are the different categories of theology?
What is the Theological Process?
What is epistemology?
What is postmodernism?
What questions are postmoderns asking?
What is the postmodern view of truth?
What is the modern view of truth?
What is the Christian view of truth?
What truths are relative and what truths are objective?
What truths are essential for orthodoxy?
How certain are you about your beliefs?
What is the essential difference in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism?
Why are there so many Protestant denominations?
What are the different sources for truth?
What are the benefits and deficiencies of each source?
How do the different sources interact to form our theology?
Does God still speak today?
What is the Continuationist view of prophecy?
What is the Hard Cessationist view of prophecy?
What is the Soft Cessationist view of prophecy?
How do we do theology in our emerging context?

I’ve been through the entire program and highly recommend it.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

Bob -

I really appreciate the distinction between what is necessary for salvation and what is essential for orthodoxy. I had never thought about that before. I’d be curious to know what’s on the “essential for orthodoxy” list. I think that your “essential for salvation” list is right on.

I’ve been thinking of - at some point in the future - taking some distance education classes through Trinity up in the Chicagoland area, but they don’t seem to offer a theology overview sort of class, which is a darn shame. That TTP stuff looks pretty interesting …

Sounds like I need to buy the Millard Erickson book, too.

- garrett

- garrett (golfsierra.org/blog)

Off the top of my head, my “essentials for orthodoxy” list would include …

- Sola Scriptura
- Trinitarianism (which includes the classical understanding of omniscience)
- Chaceldonian understanding of Christ
- Imageo Dei (mankind in the image of God)
- Sin
- Ordo Salutis (order of salvation)
- Nature of the church

may be others … need to think about some more

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

10 things God says of himself in Scripture. First, I’m not trying to form a doctrine or believe a list of 10 can reveal anything but a rough picture of God, I’m simply trying to keep with the theme. I think it is important to check out what God says of himself in all of scripture and especially the context that they are said in (which cannot be entirely included here). But I thought these may add to this discussion. They are not necessarily all proof texts or what might be the ‘best’ for making any particular point for an argument, but just a sampling of God revealing himself in Scripture (forgive my commentary around the passages which are quoted in NIV):

1) Speaking to the serpent in the garden after the fall “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Gen. 3:15 – Many regard this as speaking to the struggle of good and evil and the triumph over evil through the incarnation of Christ, laying out all of redemptive history as it began.

2) Speaking to Abram as he established a covenant with him “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great positions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the forth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Gen. 15 13-16 – God is in control of and has a purpose in history.

3) At the burning bush: “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.”” Ex. 3:14 – God characterizes himself as the always present one; there is no past or future in the divine nature of God because He always IS.

4) Just prior to the Passover, the final plague on the firstborn, God tells Moses “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.” Ex. 11:1b and after delivering God’s message to Pharaoh “The Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.”” Ex. 11:9. God says of Pharaoh “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Ex. 9:16

5) To Moses, “And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.””

6) In the last five chapters of Job, God makes it clear that He is the sovereign master, the unquestionable authority of everything. Read it all. Here’s a part, “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at every proud man and bring him low, look at every proud man and humble him, crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together; shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.” Job 40:8-14. Job gets it. “Then Job replied to the LORD: “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Job 42:1-3.

7) “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Is. 55:9

8) “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” John 1:1-5 – Christ is God, and everything that is proceeds from him; he is preeminent over everything, nothing exists without him (also see Col. 1:15-20)

9) “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” And a little later, “For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”” John 6:35-37 and 64-65. Later as Jesus prays, he starts his prayer saying “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those that you have given him.” John 17:1b-2.

10) “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Rev. 1:8

In the book of Daniel, we read how God humbled Nebuchadnezzar, who was the most powerful ruler of his day, in fact one of the most powerful in history. When Nebuchadnezzar raised his eyes to heaven his sanity was restored and he understood this about God, “His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”” Daniel 5:34b-35. I take comfort in a God who is in control and is the master of history—working everything to His purpose. I believe that this is the God that is revealed in Scripture.

And now some more philosophical thoughts:

Admittedly, I had not studied open theism before these posts, and still have not much. And the apparent paradox of free will and Sovereignty is mysterious. Our rational understanding of it breaks down at some point. But I believe there are serious problems with breaking this tension by arguing a god that has an open future. I believe the Bible teaches a timeless God—that before everything (people, nature, heaven, angles, space and time), HE IS (in an always present sense). Nature has every evidence and need of a beginning—that we exist seems to require a start to it all. Without drawing the conclusions of the other aspects of God as he is revealed in the Bible we see the need for a Beginner of space and time, a Cause that begins all effects. But the need for a Creator is not satisfied by a being that is constrained in any way by space-time, he must be above/ beyond it. Some naturalists pop back with an argument “your creation argument only brings it back one step… who created god?” But that is precisely what God must be—by definition and necessity HE IS that which is uncreated. We could not live in a universe that is infinitely old (time stretches back with no end) or we could never make it to the present (which would basically be infinitely distant to forever of the past). In a similar way the Creator of time cannot be divided or defined in any sense by anything like time, or time could not be. We cannot construct a god whose eternal nature in any way resembles time as we experience it. If the god we worship is caught within time, I believe that philosophically necessitates a greater Being because a god that is constrained or divided by time arguably cannot satisfy being the Creator of time. I think similar to the meaninglessness of the question “can an omnipotent God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?” is the question “can the creator of time not be in (or know) all of time?”

Rather than suggest that freewill be satisfied by a condition placed on one of the primary (and I believe necessary and exclusive) attributes of God (His timeless nature), I think we need to look with wonder that God created and allows our freewill within time. The succession of time is how we experience everything and we can express it quite practically in terms we understand which are constrained by our time. We don’t have the perspective likely necessary to understand freewill from a timeless perspective. Perhaps it is tied with the idea or concept of the present (which is very meaningful to us since it is how we experience everything, but would be absolutely different to a timeless Being)—but right now (try to consider the difference between my statement ‘right now’ and how that may influence our concepts of God) it causes my head to spin. Also, I have to agree with Bob and Garrett that I would not put this belief (Timeless nature of God) as one necessary for salvation. I am simply struggling to understand God as best I can.

God, may we know you better and worship you.

Nate

Well thought-out Nate.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

Nate, I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Lemme throw a few more points into the mix:

It seems to me that it’s pretty self-evident that the adherents of open theism probably didn’t come to their conclusions by reading through Romans 9. What it looks like to me is a philosophical attempt to come up with something, and then slapping some selected verses on ideas that are already pretty much already there, if that makes sense.

I don’t like this very much. It seems as if they’re trying to fight bad theology (what they see as bad theology, anyway) with (what they see as good) philosophy … instead of fighting theology with theology, if that makes sense.

Along the same train of thought, I’m really skeptical of some Christians who want to fight (what they see as being) bad science with (what they see as being) good theology. At best, this is completely ineffective, and at worst, it convinces anyone that knows anything about the science that theology is something that is - and should be - easily dismissed.

Good philosophy must exist, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, if only to drive bad philosophy out. (This is true of any discipline, I think, and it has to be that way - it can’t be driven out by a different discipline - even a good one.)

I’m still trying to come up with some ideas on how to think about these areas that seem to cross disciplines … it seems extremely confusing to me right now.

…

Bob - I like your list of “essentials for orthodoxy” list, but doesn’t the “Sola Scriptura” idea toss Catholics and Eastern Orthodox folks out of the mix?

Though, maybe that’s not really all that big a deal, since they don’t think we’re orthodox either. (I still don’t know what I think about this … not being critical, just asking questions.)

- garrett

- garrett (golfsierra.org/blog)

The official Catholic position has tradition alongside Scripture, which I obviously disagree with. But remember, we’re talking essential for orthodoxy here - not salvation. But Sola Scriptura does NOT mean tradition is not important. Case in point: how did you accept Christ? Because someone shared with you? If so, tradition (what that person believed) played a huge role in your salvation.

Sola Scriptura was one of the key points of the reformation.

I really recommend you take the Into to Theology course at TTP which goes into great detail on the nature of truth and where we find truth. All of your excellent questions (and much more) is addressed in that course.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)

Roman Catholicism:
In the Roman Catholic tradition, the Church must define the Gospel, rather than the Gospel defining the Church. The primary argument for this view would be that it is impossible to have the Gospel without the Church, since the Gospel comes from the Church. No one could know what the Gospel is unless the Church defined the cannon of Scripture which contains the Gospel. No one could know what true doctrine is unless the Church defined orthodoxy. In short, if there is no Church, there is no Gospel.

Roman Catholics would interpret Peter’s confession in Matt. 16:13-19 as being justification for this model. Peter, according to the Roman Catholic interpretation, is given authority over the Church, which has the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. In essence, the Church, as it has descended from Peter, is given control over the Gospel. The Church is the guardian of the Gospel and the graces of God given through the sacraments. Therefore, as the saying became, extra ecclesia nula salutus, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.”

Prostestantism:
Martin Luther stated that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is the confession upon which the Church stands or falls. Protestants believe that the timeline of Christianity is defined by the Gospel. To the extent that people believe the true and unadulterated Gospel, they belong to the Church. Protestants have traditionally believed that there was mass corruption in the Gospel with the introduction of the sacramental system. This sacramental system moved the Catholic Church, as an institution, toward a works-based salvation. Therefore, the church, as an institution, lost the true Gospel and was no longer the true Church.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)