Pinnock, Alzheimer’s, and Open Theology
by Thomas Jay Oord
March 24, 2013
I received sad news in an email recently: Clark Pinnock is suffering from
Alzheimer’s disease. Clark sent John Sanders and me the following note:
Dear Tom and John:
I want to inform you that I am now middle stage Alzheimer’s. I will not be
able to do my writing etc. I am 73 years now, and I've enjoyed my biblical three
score and ten. I am not bitter. I have had a good life. I'll meet you over
Jordan if not before.
You are free to make this news known.
With love,
Clark
Clark Pinnock is a theological giant in our day. His influence has been
great, especially in Evangelical circles. This news of Alzheimer’s disease
indicates that his active contribution to theology will now diminish if not
cease.
Pinnock’s personal theological journey has been intriguing. He moved from
affirming a more or less conventional and/or fundamentalist view of God to the
Open view he considers more faithful to the biblical witness.
In this journey, Pinnock consistently considered the Bible his primary source
for theology. He gave particular weight to biblical narrative and the language
of personal relationships found in Scripture. Although he rejected a
Fundamentalist view of the Bible, he remained committed to honoring the Bible as
his principal authority for theology.
Open theology offers a coherent doctrine of God, says Pinnock, in which each
divine attribute “should be compatible with one another and with the vision of
God as a whole.” For instance, Pinnock wishes to offer a vision of the God who
“combines love and power perfectly.” Unless the portrait of God compels, he
says, the “credibility of belief in God is bound to decline.”
Open theology as Pinnock presents it depicts God as a self-sufficient, though
relational, Trinitarian being. God graciously relates to the world as one
self-limited out of respect for the genuine freedom of creatures. Creatures
genuinely influence God. God is transcendent and immanent, has changing and
unchanging aspects, gives to and receives from others, is present to all things,
and has supreme power. God’s love, says Pinnock, includes responsiveness,
generosity, sensitivity, openness, and vulnerability.
Open theology
rejects traditional
theologies that portray God as an aloof monarch. Influential theologians of
yesteryear often portrayed God as completely unchangeable, ultimately all
determining, and irresistible. By contrast, Pinnock says the biblical vision
presents a loving God who seeks relationship with free creatures. “The Christian
life involves a genuine interaction between God and human beings,” he says. “We
respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses... and on it goes.”
rejects traditional
theologies that portray God as an aloof monarch. Influential theologians of
yesteryear often portrayed God as completely unchangeable, ultimately all
determining, and irresistible. By contrast, Pinnock says the biblical vision
presents a loving God who seeks relationship with free creatures. “The Christian
life involves a genuine interaction between God and human beings,” he says. “We
respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses... and on it goes.”
The future is not entirely settled, according to Open theology. This means
that while God knows all possibilities, God does not know with certainty what
free creatures will actually do until creatures act. Classic views of God’s
foreknowledge are incompatible with creaturely freedom, says Pinnock. “If
choices are real and freedom significant,” he argues, “future decisions cannot
be exhaustively known.”
Open theology does affirm that God is all knowing. God knows all things
knowable. Believers should not understand divine omniscience as the idea God
possesses exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events, says Pinnock. After
all, future possible events are not yet actual.
Biblical evidence for Open theology’s view of omniscience comes in many
forms. Dozens of biblical passages, for instance, record God saying “perhaps.”
This uncertainty [allowance for free will interaction on the part of man - res] on God’s part means the future remains open, and not completely
certain [knowable; nor is it necessary that it be knowable - res]. The Bible also says God makes various covenants. These covenants
suggest God does not know with certainty everything to occur in the future. God
often asks Israel to choose one course of action over another.
For instance, Jeremiah records God offering two possible futures for Israel:
“If you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall
enter kings who sit on the throne of David…. But if you will not heed these
words, I will swear by myself, says the LORD, that this house shall become a
desolation” (Jer. 22: 4-5). God’s particular course of future action depends in
part upon Israel’s choice. God apparently does not know with certainty what
Israel’s choice will be. Other Old Testament passages exhibit covenant language
in which the future is yet to be decided, and God does not know with certainty
what will actually occur.
God cannot be in all ways timeless, say Open theologians. We best conceive of
God’s experience as temporally everlasting rather than timelessly eternal. To
say God is in all ways timeless implies God is totally actualized, immutable,
impassible, and outside of time and sequence. Such a God is static and aloof,
says Pinnock, not relational and responsive. The temporally everlasting Lord is
the Living God of the Bible.
Those who embrace conventional theology have difficulty accepting Open
theology. This difficulty arises because Open theology challenges certain
well-established traditions, argues Pinnock, not because it opposes th
e
Bible. Open theology themes appear throughout the biblical witness: “the idea of
God taking risks, of God’s will being thwarted, of God being flexible, of grace
being resistible, of God having a temporal dimension, of God being impacted by
the creature, and of God not knowing the entire future as certain.”
e
Bible. Open theology themes appear throughout the biblical witness: “the idea of
God taking risks, of God’s will being thwarted, of God being flexible, of grace
being resistible, of God having a temporal dimension, of God being impacted by
the creature, and of God not knowing the entire future as certain.”
One of Open theology’s greatest assets is its fit with Christian experience.
It addresses well the demands of ordinary life and practices of the saints. “It
is no small point in favor of the openness model,” Pinnock argues, “that it is
difficult to live life in any other way than the way it describes.”
Open theology releases people to live their lives meaningfully, says Pinnock.
“As individuals we are significant in God’s eyes… the things we do and say, the
decisions and choices we make, and our prayers all help shape the future.” Our
lives and life-decisions really matter.
Open theology is preferable in other ways. It points to a friendship with God
possible in cooperative relationship. Most conventional theologies implicitly or
explicitly reject friendship with God. Open theology emphasizes the reality of
freedom we all presuppose. Many conventional theologies directly or indirectly
reject creaturely freedom vis-à-vis God.
Open theology corresponds with our intuition that love ought to be persuasive
rather than coercive. It emphasizes sanctification in the sense of growth in
grace and decisive moments. Open theology corresponds with the view that God
calls and empowers growth in Christ-likeness.
Christians should especially prefer Open theology to conventional theology on
the issue of petitionary prayer. Most Christians believe their prayers make a
difference to God, including influencing at least sometimes how God acts.
Pinnock argues that petitionary prayer does not genuinely influence now the God
who foreordains and/or foreknows all things. Petitionary prayer cannot change an
already settled future.
“People pray passionately when they see purpose in it, when they think prayer
can make a difference and that God may act because of it,” argues Pinnock.
“There would not be much urgency in our praying if we thought God’s decrees
could not be changed and/or that the future is entirely settled.”
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Above all, Open theology emphasizes love as God’s chief attribute and
priority for theological construction. “God created the world out of love and
with the goal of acquiring a people who would, like a bride, freely participate
in his love.” Love was God’s goal, and giving freedom the means to that goal.
“God is inviting us to join in his own ongoing Trinitarian communion and
conversation,” says Pinnock. God “wants us to join in and share the intimacy of
his own divine life.”
God’s loving nature is unchanging, but God’s experience, knowledge, and
action change in the divine give-and-take of interactive loving relationship.
“The living God is . . . the God of the Bible,” says Pinnock, “the one who is
genuinely related to the world, whose nature is the power of love, and whose
relationship with the world is that of a most moved, not unmoved, Mover.”
Because of this, Open theology “is a model of love.”
*Comments mine own - R.E. Slater (res)
