Weighing The Evidence For Open Theism

There is a hermenutical principle known as recurrence and frequency, meaning those themes that are most recurrent in Scripture should be given precedence in interpreting the rest. Millard Erickson in his book What Does God Know and When Does He Know It, cites the extensive rearch of Steven Roy on the biblical texts that bear upon divine omniscience and especially, divine foreknowlege. He categorizes the results …

1) 164 texts explicitly teach/affirm God’s foreknowledge
2) 271 texts explicitly teach/affirm other aspects of God’s omniscience
3) 128 texts offer predictions of what God will do through nature
4) 1,893 texts state predictively that God will do something through or in human beings
5) 1,474 texts state predictively what human beings will do, apart from God directly acting in or through them
6) 622 texts state predictively what unbelievers will do or have happen to them
7) 143 texts affirm God’s sovereign control of human choices
8) 105 texts of apparent counter evidence (for open theism)

Thus, of 4,800 instances, only 105 or 2.1875% possibly support an open theist view - or to put it another way, cannot be easily accounted for by the traditional view of God’s knowledge of the future. Categories 5 & 7 in particular, are huge problems for the open theist.

The principle of recurrence and frequency demands the difficult 105 passages be interpreted in light of the others. Don’t downsize God.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
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Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)