J.I. Packer - An Evangelic Argument for Classic Theism

And now…kudos to J. I. Packer for this brilliant article

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/11/and-now-kudos-to-j-i-packer-for-this-brilliant-article/

by Dr. Roger Olson

posted November 7, 2011

Lest anyone think I hate Packer or disdain everything he’s written, I want to applaud him for one of the best basic theology articles I have ever read. It’s so good I copied it and have kept it in my files for years (since 1986!). The article is “What do you mean when you say ‘God’?” (Remember article titles are assigned by editors and not by authors; that may not have been Packer’s preferred title.) It was published in Christianity Today in (I think) September, 1986. (My copy does not have the exact publication date on it; I can see only the year–1986.)

This is a magnificent article decrying what Packer calls “mystification” of the doctrine of God. He calls for a cautious “retooling” of traditional Christian theism insofar as traditional theism (Augustine, Aquinas, et al.) has tended to downplay the personal aspects of God’s being. But he warns that any such retooling must purge “elements of mystification” from the doctrine of God. “By ‘mystification’ I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.”

In that section of the article headed “Exit mystification” Packer more than hints that God really does change his mind and that traditional theology has been wrong to say otherwise. Here is what he wrote: “To be specific, sometimes [in Scripture] God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a ‘victim’ of his creation. … But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the question: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actually misrepresent and so conceal God?”

There Packer sounds like an open theist! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was an open theist in 1986, only that this particular point about God changing his mind and the ways in which traditional theology have “mystified” those passages foreshadows an argument used by open theists.

Packer goes on in that section to call for biblical exegetes and theologians to take biblical allusions to God’s personal characteristics and interactions with creatures more seriously and not to dismiss them as mere figures of speech right out of hand. He also calls for theologians to discard traditional notions of God’s immutability and impassibility. Here is what he wrote about God’s impassibility: “Let us be clear: A totally impassive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong in Islam; he has no place in Christianity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosen-ness of God’s grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.”

Was Packer suggesting that a certain notion of God common among Christian theologians is an idol? Was he suggesting that he would not worship such a god (viz., one that cannot suffer)? Perhaps not, but it does sound that way. His language against divine impassibility (as traditionally understood in classical Christian theism) is very strong. What would Packer have said to this question asked of him right after he wrote that article: “Dear Professor Packer, if it were somehow revealed to you that God IS actually incapable of suffering, would you still worship him?” I suggest his answer is revealed in that statement that such a god might belong in Islam but has no place in Christianity.

Packer goes on to call for the purging of elements of rationalism in Christian theism. Most significantly, he says “theological triumphalism” is to be avoided because, although Scripture is authoritative, we cannot claim to have a complete grasp of God or ever think we have “enlisted him on our side.” He is clearly there talking about theologians who think they know too much about God beyond what is revealed.

I couldn’t agree more with Packer’s closing statement that reveals why he wrote this article. Talking about an expected coming syncretism of Christianity with other religions (something he was against) Packer concludes that “If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism–whether or not we are going to think about God the Christian way, or some other way–will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare ourselves along the lines suggested–just in case.”

I found this article extremely helpful in 1986 and I still find it helpful. I agree with almost everything in it. But if you remove the name “J. I. Packer” from it, someone might think it was written by a postconservative evangelical! In fact, I believe IF that article were to be published today WITHOUT the author’s identity attached, many conservative evangelicals would assume it was written by an open theist or a “leftwing evangelical” and attack it as dangerous.

Personally, I do not see how the article’s central thrust can be reconciled with classical Calvinism.Classical Calvinism is closely tied to classical theism. It certainly does not believe that God can change his mind or “make new decisions as he reacts to human doings.”

This is why I DO NOT SAY that Calvinists and I worship different Gods. Typical of most Calvinists I know, Packer was (at least in 1986) inconsistent. R. C. Sproul lets Arminians be Christians (just barely) due to a “felicitous inconsistency.” So I can say that my fellow evangelicals who happen to be Calvinists are Christians (not just barely!) and worship the same God I do due to a many felicitous inconsistencies. What I mean is that IF I BELIEVED WHAT THEY DO I would have to be more consistent and believe God is a monster and not worship him–something fortunately they do not believe so they can worship him. But the only reason they do not believe it is because they, like Packer, are inconsistent.

I hope this clears things up with regard to what I mean when I say the God of classical Calvinism is a monster IF Calvinism is pressed to its logical conclusion following out and embracing its good and necessary consequences, something almost no Calvinist does. I mean the same thing THEY MEAN about me and fellow Arminians when they say our theology, if pressed to its good and necessary consequences (which most of them acknowledge we don’t do), would amount to a man-centered false gospel of self-salvation.

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What Do You Mean

When You Say

God?

by J.I. Packard

September 19, 1986

Christianity Today, pp 27-30

What does it mean to say "God"? Many today would have to answer this question as Augustine did when asked for a definition of time: "When I am not asked I know very well, but when I am asked I do not know at all!”

The doctrine of God is a confused area in Western theology. Each of its three departments - the divine at­tributes, the Trinity, and God's relation to the world­ - is disputed territory. This is basically because agreement is lacking as to how the doc­trine should be constructed and defended. Different in­tellectual methods for doing this naturally produce dif­ferent theological results.

Hybrids often prove unsta­ble, and the Western heri­tage of theism is a hybrid. It grew out of the apologetic theology of the early centu­ries in which much was made of the thought that Greco-Roman philosophy was a providential preparation for the gospel.

This theism, which found its fullest statement when Thomas Aquinas formulated it in Aristotelian terms was a blend of reasoning from philosophy and the Bible, the former appearing to pro­vide the frame into which the latter has to fit. But that changed with the Kuyperian, Barthian, and neo-Lutheran movements of this [20^th] century. Each of these, in its own way, drew on Luther's and Calvin's criticisms of natural theology. But they pushed Luther's and Calvin's arguments to the point where it seemed that any appeal to reason to support or confirm scriptural rev­elation would be out of place. As a result, some as­pects of theism in its tradi­tional form have become widely suspect among main­stream theologians.

This means that when fac­ing challenges to theism, Protestant theologians have not always known what to say. They have sometimes been tempted to take up pan­icky and defeatist slogans like that fathered by the late John Robinson: "Our image of God must go." But that is not the way of wisdom. Certainly some rethinking is called for, but it is minor modification, not abandon­ment of traditional theism, that we need.

The anatomy of theism

It will help us to review the ingredients that make up his­toric Christian theism. Here is a check list of the usual items, expressed in as simple a way as the thoughts allow.

1.      God is personal and tri­une. God is as truly three personal centers in a rela­tionship of mutual love as he is a single personal deity. God is always Three-In-One and One-in-Three, and in all divine acts all three persons are involved. "He," when used of God, means "they" - the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2.      God is self-existent -and self-suffi­cient. God does not have it in him, ei­ther in purpose or in power, to stop existing. He exists necessarily. The an­swer to the child's question "Who made God?" is that God did not need to be made since he was always there. He depends on nothing outside himself, but is at every point self-sustaining.

3.      God is simple, perfect, and immutable. This means he is wholly and totally involved in everything that he is, and does, and his nature, goals, plans, and ways of acting do not change, either for the better (for, being perfect, he cannot become better than he is) or, for the worse.

4.      God is infinite, without body, all-­present, all-knowing, and eternal. God is not bound by any of the limitations of space or time that apply to us, his crea­tures, in our present body-anchored ex­istence. Instead, he is always present everywhere, though invisibly and imperceptibly. He is at every moment cog­nizant of everything that ever was, or ­now is, or shall be.

5.      God is purposeful and all-powerful. He has a plan for the history of the universe, and in executing it he governs and controls all created realities, with­out violating the nature of things. And ­without at any stage infringing upon ­the human free will, God acts in, with, and through, his creatures to do every­thing that he wishes to do exactly as he wishes to do it. By this sovereign, over­ruling action he achieves his goals.

6.      God is both transcendent over, and immanent in, his world. On the one hand he is distinct from the world, does not need it, and exceeds the grasp of any created intelligence that is found in it. Yet on the other hand he permeates the world in sustaining and creative power, shaping and steering it in a way that keeps it on its-planned course.

7.      God is impassible. This means that-no one can inflict suffering, pain, or any sort of distress on him. Insofar as God enters into an experience of suffering, it is by empathy for his creatures and according to his own deliberate decision. He is never his creature’s vic­tim. This impassibility has not been taken by the Christian mainstream to mean that God is a stranger to joy and delight. Rather, it has been construed as an assertion of the permanence of God's joy, which no pain clouds.

8.      God is love. Giving out of good will, for the recipient's benefit, is the abiding quality both of ongoing rela­tionships within the Trinity and of God's relationship with his creatures. This love is qualified by holiness (puri­ty), a further facet of God's character that finds expression in his abhorrence and rejection of moral evil.

9.       God's ways with mankind, as set forth in Scripture, show him to be awesome and adorable by reason of his truthfulness, faithfulness, grace, mercy, patience, constancy, wisdom, justice, , goodness, and generosity. For these glorious qualities God is eternally worthy of our praise, loyalty, and love. The ultimate purpose of human life is to render to him worship and service, in which both he, and we, will find joy. This is what we were made for, and are saved for. This is what it means to know God, and to be known by him, and to glorify him.

10.  God uses his gift of language, giv­en to mankind, to tell us things directly in-and-through the words of his spokes­men – [the] prophets, apostles, the incarnate Son, the writers of Holy Scripture, and those who preach the Bible. God's mes­sages all come to us as good news of grace. They may contain particular commands, even threats or warnings, but the fact that God addresses us at all is an expression of his good will and an invitation to fellowship. And the cen­tral message of Scripture, the hub of the wheel whose spokes are the various truths about God that the Bible teaches, is, and always will, be God's unmerited gift of salvation, freely offered to us in and by Jesus Christ.

Traditional theism under fire

Now, what are the present-day prob­lems with this venerable understand­ing of God? They come down to its sources and method. The positions them­selves, as stated above, are plainly bib­lical. But the Platonist-Augustinian-­Thomist tradition of philosophical theism has persistently held that knowl­edge of God's reality and of several of the above facts about him can, and should be, gleaned by rational analysis apart from the Bible's witness. This is where the uncertainty centers.

Karl Barth in the powerful Bible-­based reassertions of trinitarian theism of his Church Dogmatics, spurned the help of this kind of rational theology. (It has traditionally been called natural theology.)

This did more than any other twenti­eth-century contribution to produce a pendulum swing against attempts to wed theology to philosophy. To be con­cerned lest philosophy becomes the dominant partner in this marriage is right and proper. Barth, however, want­ed to go further, and divorce them - a different agenda altogether.

Barth himself would use philosophi­cal concepts as tools to help investigate biblical teaching. But he would not let these concepts become grids limiting in advance what God is free to say to us through Scripture.

Barth's protest, though justified with­in limits, threw the doctrine of God into great confusion. It opened the door to a selective reading of the Bible, free of coherent rational control; and operating without regard for any of the tradi­tional fixed points. That is what we face today in many quarters. The pendulum still swings between Thomist and Barth­ian extremes, and shows no sign of com­ing to rest.

Minor modification of traditional theism, rather than

abandonment, is what the present-day situation demands.

Karl Barth's theism

Barth's contribution, though disrup­tive in the way just described, paves the way for some clarifications of the doc­trine of God that we badly need.

Granted, his attack on the basis of natural theology - that is, the recogni­tion that our existence and God's have something in common - was certainly overdone. Granted, too, Barth's denial of general revelation through the creat­ed order was a mistake. (His refusal to recognize general revelation, apart from the gospel, in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:9-16, seems little short of perverse.)

Nevertheless, his polemic against the claim of natural theology, to establish for us foundation truths about God as a kind of runway for revelation, now ap­pears as a largely justified attack on nineteenth-century attempts to domes­ticate God. (Barth's break with liberal theology began around 1915, when prominent German theologians blithe­ly spoke of "using" the Christian faith “for purposes of conducting” World War 1.) And Barth's insistence that all our doctrine of God must come from the Bible was healthy and right.

So it will not be enough to dismiss Barth as eccentric and then slump back into traditional postures and parrot­ings. If Barth, with his type of biblicism, did not do well enough, we must try with ours to do better. To that end I now venture some comments on the doctrine of God as today's evangelicals have received it.

There are three important respects in which the traditional doctrine needs purging. It needs to be purged of ele­ments of natural theology, elements of mystification, and elements of rational­ism. Let me explain.

First, elements of natural theology need to be purged. Against Barth, I affirm that general revelation is a fact, and its impact will again and again produce thoughts about God that, so far as they go, are right. (Like those of Epimenides and Aratus that Paul cites in Acts 17:28.) Many are confident that rational apolo­getics (a form of natural theology) can, under God, trigger and crystallize such thoughts and insights. Unlike Barth, I see no reason to doubt their confidence.

Yet I contend that natural theology needs to be eliminated from our at­tempts at theological construction. There are five reasons.

First, we do not need natural theol­ogy for information. Everything that natural theology, operating upon gen­eral revelation, can discern about the Creator and his ways is republished for us in those very Scriptures that refer to the general revelation of these things (see Ps. 19; Acts 14:17, 17:28; Rom 1: 18-32,2:9-16). And Scripture, which we rightly receive on the grounds that it is God's own word of testimony and law, is a better source of knowledge about God than natural theology can ever be.

Second, we do not strengthen our position by invoking natural theology. On the contrary, claiming that biblical truths rest on philosophical founda­tions can only give the impression that the biblical message about God's re­demption is no more certain than is the prior philosophical assertion of God's reality. And God's reality on this sce­nario must be established by reason­ unaided by revelation. Thus revelation becomes distinctly dependent on philosophy.

Third, all expositions of the analogy of being, and all attempts to show the naturalness of theism - all "proofs" for God's existence and goodness, in other words - are logically loose. They state no more than possibilities (for probabil­ities are only one kind of possibilities) and can all be argued against indefi­nitely. This will damage the credit of any theology that appears to be build­ing and relying on these arguments.

Fourth, the speculative method for building up a theology is inappropriate. As Louis Berkhof has observed, such a method takes man as its starting point and works from what it finds in man to what is found in God. "And in so far as it' does this," Berkhof writes, "it makes man the measure of God." That, of course, does not "fit in a theology of revelation."

Fifth, there is always a risk the foun­dations that natural theology lays will prove too narrow to build all the em­phases of Scripture upon. Thus, for in­stance, in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica,  natural theology purports to establish that there is one God, who is the first cause of everything. But nothing is said about the personal as­pects of God's being. This personal dimension is central to the biblical revelation of God, setting it in stark contrast with (for instance) the divine principle in Hindu thought.

Thomas's approach, however, en­courages the theologian, to downplay the biblical stress on it, to treat God as an impersonal object rather than a per­sonal subject, and to see himself as standing over God to study him, rather than under God, to obey him.

It seems right to limit our use of natural theology to the realm of sup­portive apologetics (showing biblical faith to be reasonable), and not to give it any place in our attempts to state what the biblical faith actually is.

Exit mystification

In 'retooling traditional theism for to­day, we need, secondly; to purge elements of mystifications. By “mystifica­tion” I mean the idea that some biblical statements about God mislead as they stand, and ought to be explained away. A problem arises from a recurring' tendency in orthodox theism to press the legitimate and necessary distinction between what God is in himself and what Scripture says about his relation to us.

To be specific, sometimes God is said to change his mind and to make new decisions as he reacts to human doings. Orthodox theists have insisted that God did not really change his mind, since God is impassible and never a "victim" of his creation. As writes Louis Berkhof, representative of this view, "the change is not in God, but in man, and man's relations to God."

But to say that is to say that some things that Scripture affirms about God do not mean what they seem to mean, and do mean what they do not seem to mean. That provokes the ques­tion: How can these statements be part of the revelation of God when they actu­ally misrepresent and so conceal God? In other words, how may we explain these statements about God's grief and re­pentance without seeming to explain them away?

Surely we must accept Barth's insis­tence that at every point in his self ­disclosure God reveals what he essen­tially is, with no gestures that mystify. And surely we must reject as intoler­able any suggestion that God in reality is different at any point from what Scripture makes him appear to be. Scripture was not written to mystify, and therefore we, need to ask how we can dispel the contrary impression that the time-honored, orthodox line of ex­planation leaves.

Three things seem to be called for as means to this end.

First, we need exegetical restraint in handling Scripture's, anthropomor­phisms (phrases using human figures to describe God). Anthropomorphism is characteristic of the entire biblical pre­sentation of God. This is so not because God bears man's image, but because man bears God's, and hence is capable of understanding God's testimony to the reasons for his actions. The anthropomorphisms are there to show us why God acted as he did in the biblical story" and how therefore he might act towards us in our own personal stories. But nothing that is said about God's negative or positive reactions to his creatures is meant to put us in a posi­tion where we can tell what it feels like to be God. Our interpretation of the Bible must recognize this.

Second, we need to guard against misunderstanding of God's changeless­ness. True to Scripture, this must not be understood as a beautiful pose, eternal­ly frozen, but as the Creator's moral constancy, his unwavering faithfulness and dependability. God's changeless­ness is not a matter of intrinsic immobil­ity, but of moral consistency. God is always in action. He enters into the lives of his creatures. There is change around him and change in the relations of men to him. But, to use the words of Louis Berkhof, "there is no change in his being, his attributes, his purpose, his motives of action, or his promises." When one conceives of God's immuta­bility in this biblical way, as a moral quality that is expressed whenever God changes his way of dealing with people for moral reasons, the biblical refer­ence to such change will cease to" mystify.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that

we have enlisted God on our side, and now have him in our pockets.

Third, we also need, to rethink God's impassibility. This conception of God represents no single biblical term, but was introduced into Christian theology in the second century. What was it supposed to mean? The historical answer is: Not impassivity, unconcern, and im­personal detachment in face of the cre­ation. Not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief, either. It means simply that God's expe­riences do not come upon him as ours come upon us. His are foreknown, willed, and chosen by himself; and are not in­voluntary surprises forced on him from outside; apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.

This understanding was hinted at earlier, but it is spelled out here be­cause-it is so important, and so often missed. Let us be clear: A totally impas­sive God would be a horror, and not the God of Calvary at all. He might belong [in some other religion, but] he has no place in Christian­ity. If, therefore, we can learn to think of the chosenness of God's grief and pain as the essence of his impassibility, so-called, we will do well.

Problems of rationalism

The final step needed to spruce up tra­ditional theism is to purge it of elements of rationalism. Just as the two-year-old son of a man with a brain like Einstein's could not understand all that was going on in his father's mind if his father told him, so it would be beyond us to under­stand all that goes on in the all-wise, and not in any way time-bound mind of God.

But, just as the genius who loves his boy will take care to speak to him at his own level, even though that means re­ducing everything to baby talk, so God does when he opens his mind and heart to us in the Scriptures. The child, though aware that his father knows far more than he is currently saying, may yet learn from him all that he needs to know for a full and happy relationship with Dad. Similarly, Scripture, [when] viewed as torah (God's fatherly law), tells us all that we need to know for faith and godliness.

But we must never-forget that we are in the little boy's position. At no point dare we imagine that the thoughts about God that Scripture teaches us take the full measure of his reality. The fact that God condescends and accommodates himself to us in his revelation certainly makes possible clarify and sureness of understanding. Equally certain, how­ever, it involves limitation in the reve­lation itself.

But we forget this, or so it seems; and. then appears the rationalism of which I am speaking. It is more, I think, a tem­per than a tenet, but it produces a style of speech that in effect denies that there is anything about God we do not know. By thus failing to acknowledge his in­comprehensibility beyond the limits of what he has revealed, we shrink him in thought down to our size. The process is sometimes described as putting God in a box.

It is certainly proper to stress, as against the sleep of reason in the world and the zaniness of subjectivism in the church, that scriptural revelation is ra­tional. But the most thorough-going Bible believers are sometimes required, like Job, to go on adoring God when we do not specifically understand what he is doing and why he is doing it.

We should avoid like the plague any talk that suggests that we have enlisted him on our side, and now have him in our pockets. Confidence in the teaching of God's written Word is to be main­tained all the time. But this stance of theological triumphalism is some­thing quite different, and is to be avoided.

God the image maker

This review of traditional theism, and suggestions for its possible refinement, has been heavy sledding. How can it all be pulled together? Can we focus our theism in a phrase? I welcome the sug­gestion that we should speak of God as the image maker.

This phrase binds together the main theistic thrusts that our secular world needs to face. Say "God," and you point to the infinite, eternal, self-existent, self-revealing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Say "Maker," and you point to the fundamental relationship between God and us. He is the Creator, we are his creatures.

Say "Image Maker," and you point to the basis and presupposition of our knowledge of God-namely, the fact that he made us like himself. Included in that image are rationality, relation­ality, and the capacity for-that right­eousness that consists of receiving and responding to God's revelation. We are able to-know God because we are think­ing, feeling, relating, loving beings, just as he is himself.

I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but it seems fairly clear to me that pressure on conservative theology is still building up from exponents of re­ligious relativism and pluralism. This is so both within the church (where some think that the more theologies there are, the healthier and merrier we shall be) and outside it.

*I expect over the next few decades to see the quest for a synthesis of world religions gain impetus, with constant attempts to assimilate Christianity into other faiths. We may expect a genera­tion of debate-on the program of mov­ing through and beyond syncretism to a nobler religion than any that has yet been seen. That notion, which has emerged more than once in liberal cir­cles, looks like an idea whose time, hu­manly speaking, has come; and coun­tering it, I predict, will be the next round in the church's unending task of defending and propagating the gospel. If this guess is right, we shall be badly at a disadvantage if we have not taken pains to brush up our theism, since the question of theism-whether or not we are going to think about God the Chris­tian way, or some other way will be at the heart of the debate. So I hope we shall take time out to prepare our­selves along the lines suggested-just in case.

Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 2/2

*Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 1/2 may be found here -

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/process-theology-terence-fretheim.html
(for additional discussions see sidebar under "Theism")

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

TYPES OF THEISM

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Theism

Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.^[1][2] In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe.^[3] Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. The use of the word theism as indicating a particular doctrine of monotheism arose in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to contrast with the then emerging deism that contended that God, though transcendent and supreme, did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation.^[4]

The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning God. The term theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688).^[5] The claim of no knowledge is known as agnosticism; the claim of no god or deity is known as atheism.

Types

Monotheism

Main article: Monotheism

Monotheism (from Greek μόνος) is the belief in theology that only one deity exists.^[6] Some modern day monotheistic religions include Christianity, Islam, Judiasm, and some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism.

Polytheism

Main article: Polytheism

While a specific definition of theism may exclude polytheism, it is included by the most general definition. Polytheism is the belief that there is more than one deity.^[7] In practice, polytheism is not just the belief that there are multiple gods; it usually includes belief in the existence of a specific pantheon of distinct deities.

Within polytheism there are hard and soft varieties:

• Hard polytheism views the gods as being distinct and separate beings; an example of this would be the Egyptian and Greek Religions; along with certain schools of Hinduism.
• Soft polytheism views the gods as being subsumed into a greater whole. Some forms of Hinduism such as Smartism/Advaita Vedanta serve as examples of soft polytheism.

Polytheism is also divided according to how the individual deities are regarded:

• Henotheism: The viewpoint/belief that there may be more than one deity, but worship of only one of them.
• Kathenotheism: The viewpoint/belief that there is more than one deity, but only one deity is worshipped at a time or ever, and another may be worthy of worship at another time or place. If they are worshipped one at a time, then each is supreme in turn.
• Monolatrism: The belief that there may be more than one deity, but that only one is worthy of being worshipped. Most of the modern monotheistic religions may have begun as monolatric ones.

Pantheism and panentheism

Main articles: pantheism and panentheism

While a specific definition of theism may exclude pantheism, it is included by the most general definition.

• Pantheism: The belief that the physical universe is equivalent to a god or gods, and that there is no division between a Creator and the substance of its creation.^[8] Examples include many forms of Saivism.
• Panentheism: Like Pantheism, the belief that the physical universe is joined to a god or gods. However, it also believes that a god or gods are greater than the material universe. Examples include most forms of Vaishnavism.

Some people find the distinction between these two beliefs as ambiguous and unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division.^[9]

Deism

Main article: Deism

While the specific definition of theism given above may exclude deism, deism is included as a form of theism by the most general definition given above.

• Deism is the belief that at least one deity exists and created the world, but that the creator(s) does/do not alter the original plan for the universe.^[10] Deism typically rejects supernatural events (such as prophecies, miracles, and divine revelations) prominent in organized religion. Instead, Deism holds that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of a supreme being as creator.^[11]
  • Pandeism: The belief that a god preceded the universe and created it, but is now equivalent with it.
  • Panendeism combines deism with panentheism, believing the universe is a part (but not the whole) of deity
  • Polydeism: The belief that multiple gods existed, but do not intervene with the universe.

Autotheism

Main article: Apotheosis

While a specific definition of theism may exclude autotheism, it is included by the most general definition. Autotheism is the viewpoint that, whether divinity is also external or not, it is inherently within 'oneself' and that one has a duty to become perfect (or divine). This can either be in a selfish, wilful, egotistical way or a selfless way following the implications of statements attributed to ethical, philosophical, and religious leaders such as Jesus,^[12][13] Buddha, Mahavira, and Socrates.^{[citation needed]}

Autotheism can also refer to the belief that one's self is a deity (often the only one), within the context of subjectivism. This is a fairly extreme version of subjectivism, however.

Value-judgment theisms

• Eutheism is the viewpoint/belief that a deity(ies) is wholly benevolent; dystheism allows for there being evil in the divine realm.
• Maltheism is the belief that a deity exists, but that god is wholly malicious and abusive.

See also

• Open theism
• Theistic evolution
• Animism
• Nontheistic religions

References

1. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition
2. ↑ "Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theism. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
3. ↑ See, for example,The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Second Edition and The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997) or the current Encyclopedia Britannica.
4. ↑ John Orr (English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits, 1934) explains that before the seventeenth century theism and deism were interchangeable terms but during the course of the seventeenth century they gained separate and mutually exclusive meanings (see deism)
5. ↑ Halsey, William; Robert H. Blackburn, Sir Frank Francis (1969). Louis Shores. ed. Collier's Encyclopedia. 22 (20 ed.). Crowell-Collier Educational Corporation. pp. 266–267.
6. ↑ “Monotheism”, in Britannica, 15th ed. (1986), 8:266.
7. ↑ AskOxford: polytheism
8. ↑ Philosophical Dictionary: Pacifism-Particular
9. ↑ What is Panentheism?. About Agnosticism/Atheism. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
10. ↑ AskOxford: deism
11. ↑ Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (G. & C. Merriam, 1924) defines deism as "belief in the existence of a personal god, with disbelief in Christian teaching, or with a purely rationalistic interpretation of Scripture".
12. ↑ Matthew 5:38 "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"
13. ↑ Luke 17:21 "The Kingdom of God is within you"

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PANENTHEISM

http://www.enotes.com/panentheism-reference/panentheism

The term panentheism (from the Greek) literally means "all (is) in God." As a concept of God, panentheism attempts to do justice both to divine transcendence (God is beyond or more than the world) and divine immanence (God is in the world). Panentheism maintains that the world is in God, included in the divine life, but that God's reality is not reducible to nor exhausted by the reality of the individuals or the structures of the universe or of the universe as a whole. Thus God is all-inclusive or all-encompassing with respect to being.

Strictly construed this entails that all divine relations are internal relations, that is, relations between God as integrated whole and the creatures as included parts. For panentheism then, while the universe is part of God, God and the universe do not form an undifferentiated whole. Panentheism draws definite distinctions between God as the including whole and the nondivine parts of the universe considered in themselves. Certain properties of divinity, such as aseity (self-existence) or necessary existence and the all-encompassing attributes of omnipresence (everywhere present), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnipotence (all power or all-powerful) apply to God but definitely not to individual creatures or to the universe itself. (Note though that process forms of panentheism find the notion of divine omnipotence problematic.)

Another important distinction drawn between God and creatures concerns mutual freedom. Panentheism upholds indeterminism: Spontaneity and free will in the universe mean that antecedent causes do not fully determine present events and actions, so the future is not fully predictable or foreknown, even by God; creatures have real choices. In summary, while God is not an individual simply distinct from the nondivine individuals, in the way, for example, that one human being is distinct from another, neither is God to be equated with the universe or its constituents.


Panentheism as alternative

In construing divine transcendence and immanence as above, panentheism mediates between deism and certain forms of traditional theism on the one hand and pantheism on the other hand, attempting to avoid pitfalls of both. Deism, as developed in the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, holds that God created the world to operate according to natural laws but is uninvolved in its destiny. The God posited by traditional theism is not as separate from the universe as is in deism; however, panentheists judge what they call classical theism to be equally inadequate. Classical theism, in affirming certain divine attributes stemming from ancient Greek philosophy—immutability (unchangeability), impassibility (to be unaffected by another), and eternity (in the sense of strict timelessness)—does not permit God to be in genuine relation to the world.

The term pantheism literally means "all (is) God." That is, everything at least in its true essence is divine. Clearly panentheism has affinities with pantheism. American Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), the principle theological interpreter and developer of process philosophy, at first labeled his concept of God "The New Pantheism." The trajectory of German idealism produced both pantheists and panentheists. One could say that panentheism attempts to get as close to pantheism as possible in stressing the intimate relationship between God and nature, while still maintaining clear distinctions between them. A key difference is that pantheism tends to a (quasi) materialistic or (quasi) substantialistic understanding of God: Entities in the world share the divine essence or substance to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore, any distinction between God as a whole and the constituents of the universe is a matter of degree rather than of kind. In addition, since everything is a mode or attribute of God, pantheism typically denies indeterminate freedom.

The metaphor or analogy of the world as the body of God is popular among panentheists. Hartshorne compares the God-world relationship to that between a person's mind and the cells of its body. Arthur Peacocke (1924–), a key figure in the science and religion dialogue, speaks approvingly of the feminine, womb imagery that panentheism encourages: As with a fetus in its mother, creation is within God. American Christian theologian Sallie McFague (1933–) has been the principal developer of the metaphor of world as body of God. British philosophical theologian Grace Jantzen (1948–), in drawing the connection between God and world so tightly as to jettison indeterminate freedom, offers a pantheistic version of the metaphor.

Some connections with science

Panentheism offers diverse advantages for those interested in the intersection of science and religion. Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), in his role as a philosopher of science, and others have observed that the dominant model for the natural world moved from mechanism to organism during the nineteenth century. Panentheism offers an organistic understanding of the God-world relation in contrast to deism's mechanistic understanding. Like deism, panentheism offers a concept of God where natural laws or processes are respected, where God refrains from interventions that overturn nature. The crucial difference is that panentheism posits a God intimately involved, continuously interacting, with the world.

Panentheism's intimate connection of God with a world in time entails a God who in some sense or dimension is also temporal. As the trajectory of modern science—from the Newtonian mechanics of the Enlightenment to evolution to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity—has put an exclamation point on the temporal nature of reality, panentheism offers a consonant concept of the divine.

As indicated above, creaturely spontaneity and indeterminate freedom are crucial for panentheism in its distinction of God from creation. Both quantum mechanics, in stating that the motions of subatomic particles are probabilistic rather than determinable from known antecedent conditions, and chaos theory, in demonstrating the unpredictability of future events, provide openings for panentheists and other supporters of indeterminacy. In particular, Peacocke, a British physical chemist, Anglican priest, and panentheistic theologian, applauds panentheism's picture of a God who is continuously creative in relation to an open universe. It must be noted, though, that no consensus exists among scientists that quantum indeterminacy or, even less, chaos theory unpredictability entail any ultimate indeterminacy in the universe.

Avoiding violation of natural processes is not only a concern of panentheists but of other theologians involved in the science and religion dialogue, including Americans Thomas F. Tracy and Nancey Murphy. It may seem that such thinkers must renounce any traditional Christian notion of special providence, namely, that God causes particular events in natural or human history (in contrast to general providence, that God determines the general laws or processes of the universe), however, this is not uniformly the case.

For example, in his later writings, Peacocke develops his notion of top-down causation, maintaining that divine action with respect to the universe not only upholds general laws or patterns but causes specific events. Whether such divine predetermination is compatible with indeterminate creaturely decisions and their chance interactions is a major difficulty for this viewpoint.

Murphy and Tracy purchase special providence by positing that God determines the probabilistic quantum movements of subatomic particles and that these in turn produce macro-effects that result in specific events. The virtue of this notion is that it contravenes no natural laws or regularities: The quantum events that God determines are within the scientifically permissible ranges of motion, and apparently no conceivable method exists for discerning God's causation on the quantum level. At the same time, this "invisibility" is problematic: That God ultimately causes a valued event (as opposed to, say, an event issuing in tremendous evil) appears to be a matter of blind faith, at least as far as physics is concerned. Other problems for this viewpoint are the speculative nature of the connection between quantum events and macro-effects and, for advocates of indeterminacy and openness, the denial that quantum events are ultimately indeterminate. More broadly, critics of the above approaches might judge them to be backdoor attempts to reintroduce too much transcendent or interventionist causation by God.

Panentheism's history

The term panentheism was coined by German idealist philosopher Carl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832). As mentioned above, German idealism, with strong ties to nature romanticism, produced various panentheistic and pantheistic thinkers. The clearest and most fully developed panentheistic model was that of physicist, experimental psychologist, and philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887). Earlier examples of panentheism or panentheistic tendencies include Western mysticism and Hindu bhakti (referring to devotion to a personal god) and its principal theologian Ramanuja (traditional dates, 1017–1137). These examples are not surprising, as mysticism generally softens the creator-creature distinction, while in India that distinction is not drawn as sharply as is typical in Western religions.

Various philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century have been labeled panentheists, including Nicolai Berdyaev, William Pepperell Montague, Paul Weiss, Karl Rahner, and John MacQuarrie. While the panentheistic affinities of these thinkers are undeniable, some failed to develop a clear panentheistic model, others promoted ideas contrary to basic premises of panentheism, while still others explicitly refused the label panentheism for their thought. Coming out of German idealism, American Paul Tillich (1886–1965), an exile from the Nazis, is regarded as one of the premier theologians of the twentieth century. Tillichians widely acknowledge his panentheism. His famous phrase, "God is not a being, but being-itself," has obvious panentheistic implications. Tillich, who claimed the phrase "eschatological pan-en-theism," was accused by some critics of pantheism, to which he would jokingly respond, "This pantheist is going to take a walk in his garden." Tillich's reluctance to disavow the attributes of divine immutability, impassibility, and eternity compromise his manifest panentheistic intentions, according to American theologian David Nikkel (1952–).

The fullest explicit development of panentheism in the twentieth century came from process thought. Whitehead, a British mathematical physicist and philosopher, originated process philosophy, its theism developed and to some extent modified by Hartshorne. For process thought, reality at its depth is not static being but rather a process of becoming. God is not an exception to, but the highest exemplar of, this ultimate or metaphysical principle. As did Fechner, process thought advocates panpsychism, that all integrated entities of the universe possess some degree of sentience or feeling. The fundamental unit of reality for process philosophy is an occasion of experience. God, in the consequent nature for Whitehead or the concrete pole of divinity for Hartshorne, includes all past occasions of experience. Process panentheism emphasizes omniscience and, to coin a word, omnipathy (all-feeling). God intimately knows all experience, is affected by, sympathizes with, all feelings. As Whitehead puts it, "God is the fellow sufferer who understands" (1928, p. 351). Whitehead purchases divine transcendence through the primordial nature, which is the reservoir of all possibility. Hartshorne purchases the same through the abstract pole of divinity, which refers to the changeless character of God, namely, that God will always lovingly know and integrate whatever experiences occur in the universe. If the world influences God as object of divine knowledge, God likewise influences the nondivine individuals as object of their awareness, as a lure providing preferences for their actions. To what extent the divine lure only persuades versus constrains decisions as the unavoidable object of awareness is debated by process theologians. What is beyond dispute is the rejection of omnipotence, if interpreted to mean God is all-powerful, which would overthrow indeterminate freedom.

Contemporary issues

McFague, mentioned earlier in relation to feminist divine imagery, has presented one of the most well-known models of panentheism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her development of metaphors for a God in intimate relation with the world enflesh and enhance the sense of the concept of panentheism. On the other hand, her doubts concerning what we can actually know about God pose a potential problem for her panentheism. McFague's minimal Christian theistic claim is that there is a power in the universe on the side of life that is, metaphorically speaking, personal. When McFague adds that this power is many rather than one, critics may question whether God in her concept or metaphor is sufficiently integrated to panentheistically include the universe; critics may question whether there is a difference of substance between her view and American Christian theologian Gordon Kaufman's serendipitous creativity, that God should refer to the cosmic and evolutionary forces that have resulted in life and human life rather than to any personal or agential reality. Contrast McFague's outlook to that of Tillich and Hartshorne, who maintained that God is "not less than conscious" or superconscious (while recognizing the anthropomorphic dangers of attributing conscious personhood to God).

Many theologians in the science and religion dialogue affirm some notion of God's sustaining creativity common to the Western religious traditions: Every aspect of every particular constituent of the universe is radically contingent, dependent upon divine power for its continued existence moment by moment. Process theism rejects such an understanding of divine power. Whitehead is clear that both divine and finite occasions of experience are manifestations of the ultimate metaphysical principle of creative synthesis, each such occasion possessing ultimate independence of being. Whitehead reasons that if God were upholding the very existence of occasions, then indeterminate freedom would be overridden and his panentheism would transmute into a pantheism. Christian process theologians, while often neglecting to acknowledge this Whiteheadian perspective on divine power, have not challenged it either. The question for panentheists who wish to retain a notion of divine sustaining activity is this: Can omnipotence be defined as "all power" rather than "all-powerful"? Can God panentheistically encompass all power by sustaining and thus empowering the existence of each creature, as an existence with indeterminate freedom? If such a concept is not self-contradictory, then one can avoid pantheism and affirm a notion of divine power more consonant with the all-inclusive logic of panentheism.

See also CHAOS THEORY; DEISM; DOWNWARD CAUSATION; EINSTEIN, ALBERT; GOD; NEWTON, ISAAC; PHYSICS, QUANTUM; PROCESS THOUGHT; PROVIDENCE; THEISM; WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH

Bibliography

Fechner, Gustav Theodor. Zend-Avesta: Oder ueber die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits, Vom Standpunkt der Naturbeschreibung, 5th edition. Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss, 1922. Translated excerpts appear in Philosophers Speak to God, ed. Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.

Hartshorne, Charles. Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941). Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964.

Hartshorne, Charles. The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948.

Jantzen, Grace M. God's World, God's Body. Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminster Press, 1984.

McFague, Sallie. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1987.

McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Nikkel, David H. Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich: A Creative Synthesis. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

Peacocke, Arthur R. Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

Peacocke, Arthur R. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human, 2nd edition. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Russell, Robert John; Murphey, Nancey; and Peacocke, Arthur R., eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1995.

Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, 3 Vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan, 1925.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), corrected edition, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Macmillan, 1978.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Macmillan, 1933.

DAVID H. NIKKEL

Source: Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, ©2003 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

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OPEN THEISM

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Open_theism

Open theism is a recent theological movement that has developed within evangelical and post-evangelical Protestant Christianity as a response to certain ideas that are related to the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Several of these ideas within classical theism (a designation which is not to be taken as inclusive of all of orthodox theism) state that God is immutable, impassible, and timeless. For several versions of classical theism, God fully determines the future; thus, humanity does not have libertarian free will, or, if free, that its freedom must necessarily be compatible with God's determining actions.^[1] Open theists argue that these attributes do not belong to the God of the Bible and are at odds with personhood.

Openness is based on God as the Living God. The five most fundamental attributes of God are that God is Living, Personal, Relational, Good, and Loving. These faithfully represent God the way that Scripture presents Him, and starkly contrast with the Greek and Roman philosophical construction of God.^[2]

Practically, open theism makes the case for a personal God who is open to influence through the prayers, decisions, and actions of people. Although many specific outcomes of the future are unknowable, God's foreknowledge of the future includes that which is determined as time progresses often in light of free decisions that have been made and what has been sociologically determined. So God knows everything that has been determined as well as what has not yet been determined but remains open. As such, God is able to anticipate the future, yet remains fluid to respond and react to prayer and decisions made either contrary or advantageous to His plan or presuppositions.

Gregory A. Boyd claims that "open theism" is an inappropriate term since the position posits more about the nature of time and reality than it does about God itself. This is to say that open theists do not believe that God does not know the future, but rather that the future does not exist to be known by anyone. For the open theist the future simply has not happened yet, not for anyone, and thus is unknowable in the common sense. Thus, to say that God does not know the future is akin to saying that God does not know about square circles. In this understanding, it could be technically wiser to refer to the view as "open futurism".^[3]

Historical development

The first known post-biblical writings by a Christian advocating concepts similar to open theism with regard to the issue of foreknowledge is found in the writings of Calcidius, a 5th-century interpreter of Plato. It was affirmed in the 16'th century by Socinus, in the early 18'th century by Samuel Fancourt and Andrew Ramsay (an important figure in Methodism). In the 19th century several theologians wrote in defense of this idea, including Isaak Dorner, Gustav Fechner, Otto Pfleiderer, Jules Lequier, Adam Clarke, Billy Hibbard, Joel Hayes, T.W. Brents, and Lorenzo D. McCabe. Contributions to this defense increased as the century drew to a close.

The term "open theism" was introduced in 1980 with theologian Richard Rice's book The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will. The broader articulation of open theism was given in 1994, when five essays were published by Evangelical scholars (including Rice) under the title The Openness of God. Theologians of note currently espousing this view include: Clark Pinnock, John E. Sanders, Jürgen Moltmann, Richard Rice, Gregory Boyd, Thomas Jay Oord, C. Peter Wagner, Roger T. Forster, John Polkinghorne, Hendrikus Berkhof, Adrio Konig, Harry Boer, Thomas Finger (Mennonite), W. Norris Clarke (Roman Catholic), Brian Hebblethwaite, Robert Ellis, Kenneth Archer (Pentecostal) Barry Callen (Church of God), William Abraham, Henry Knight III, Gordon Olson, and Winkie Pratney. A significant number of philosophers of religion affirm it: William Hasker, David Basinger, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, Peter Van Inwagen, J. R. Lucas, Vincent Brümmer, Peter Geach, Richard Purtill, A. N. Prior, and Keith Ward. Biblical scholars Terence E. Fretheim and John Goldingay (Fuller) affirm it. Others include writers Madelline L’Engle and Paul Borgman, mathematician D. J. Barholomew and physicist Arthur Peacocke.^[4]

The dynamic omniscience view has been affirmed by a number of non Christians as well: Cicero (first century BCE) Alexander of Aphrodisias (second century CE) and Porphyry (third century). God’s statement to Abraham “Now I know that you fear me” (Gen 22:12) was much discussed by Medieval Jewish theologians. Two significant Jewish thinkers who affirmed dynamic omniscience as the proper interpretation of the passage were Ibn Ezra (12'th century) and Gersonides (14'th century).

Philosophical arguments

Open theists maintain that some of the classical attributes of God are contradictory and unintelligible. The five main classical attributes are as follows:

• Immutability: God cannot change in any way. Augustine argued that because God is immutable God cannot even speak in time, using created beings to utter eternal words.^[5]. [This is actually a false citation. Augustine argues here that God's words recorded in Matthew 17:5 are not the same as His Eternal Word—namely Christ—by Whom God creates and upholds all things. God actually spoke, but the words were not God Himself.]
• Impassibility: God is not the object of actions, but the subject.^[6] ("Impassable" is from the Latin patior: suffer, undergo, endure.) Thus we cannot reach up to God without Him first coming down to us (cf. Romans 10:6), and any real interaction we have with God must be the result of God's condescension to us through the Incarnation and Pentecost. Neither impassibility nor immutability should be taken to imply we cannot actually interact with God. Classical Theist Blaise Pascal even says God has established prayer "To communicate to His creatures the dignity of causality." ^[7] The Definition of Chalcedon established the orthodox doctrine that Mary is the mother of God. The Passion is called the "passion" to underscore the fact that here, the impassible One suffers [Latin: passus] on the Cross. And Alexander bishop of Alexandria says of the Crucifixion "the impassable suffers and does not avenge its own injury."^[8] (in Greek, the same root is used for "suffer" and "impassible" so perhaps a more accurate (though more wordy) translation would be "the one who does not suffer suffers and does not avenge his own injury.").
• Omnipotence: God has all power, which includes complete sovereignty over all things. Thus God's sovereign will that we be free and that our will be effective is necessarily realized; and we are free and our will is effective.
• Omnipresence: God is present everywhere, or more precisely, all things find their location in God; or alternatively God transcends space and time.
• Omniscience: God has all knowledge, including of all past, present, and future events.

Contradictions in the traditional attributes are pointed out by open theists and atheists alike. Atheist author and educator George H. Smith writes in his book Atheism: the Case Against God that if God is omniscient, meaning God knows the future, God cannot be omnipotent, meaning God can do anything, because: "If God knew the future with infallible certainty, he cannot change it – in which case he cannot be omnipotent. If God can change the future, however, he cannot have infallible knowledge of it."^[9] Likewise, if God is omnipresent, God cannot be omnipotent because God could not limit his own location. Open theists would again use the same argument here that changing his location would conflict with his immutability. A classical theist would respond to such an argument by pointing out that their position is that God is the author of the future, and thus there is no more contradiction in saying God knows the future and is sovereign over it than in saying "Shakespeare was free to make Romeo and Juliet as he would, but having made it He is not free to make it different from how he had."

Open theism also answers the question of how God can be blameless and omnipotent even though evil exists in the world. H. Roy Elseth gives an example of a parent that knows with certainty that his child would go out and murder someone if he was given a gun. Elseth argues that if the parent did give the gun to the child then the parent would be responsible for that crime.^[10] However, if God was unsure about the outcome then God would not be culpable for that act; only the one who committed the act would be guilty. This position is, however, dubious, as a parent who know his child was probable, or likely, or even possibly going to shoot someone would be culpable; and God knew that it was likely that man would sin, and thus God is still culpable. An orthodox Christian might, on the contrary, seek to ground a theodicy in the Resurrection, both of Christ and the general Resurrection to come^[11], though this is not the traditional answer to evil.

Another claim made by open theists is that the traditional definition of omniscience is incompatible with a real love relationship with God. It is claimed that for someone to have a real love relationship, it must be give and take. Each member opens themselves up and becomes vulnerable. They point out that God, throughout the Bible, is shown as grieving over Israel's rebellion. They claim that if the future was known with absolute certainty, then Israel could not have freely chosen to rebel and God could not be genuinely grieving, knowing that this was the only possibility. Israel's actions would have been set in stone a millennia before they were ever born. They would have been compelled by fate or providence to take those actions. This would be the same as a relationship between a programmer and computer. Open theists, such as John Sanders, claim that the only way a relationship can be real is if there is freedom to choose.

It should be noted that many open theists believe that God's infinite intelligence affords him an infinite understanding of all probabilities in the universe. Thus, to an unknown degree, God is able to "know the future" with certainty due to his understanding of the probabilities at hand. However, other open theists reply that this perspective simply reinforces the intellectual image of God which open theism is working to revise. God´s knowledge that "exceeds human wisdom" should not be thought of in terms of Greek philosophical categories. Biblically speaking, this inscrutability is a confession: either of human limitation and incompleteness or else of God´s care that goes beyond our horizon of comprehension.

Biblical arguments

In order to defend open theism, open theists also tend to focus on verses that tell of failed or subverted prophecies and instances where God changes his mind through interaction with man. The following is a quick overview of where the Bible expounds ideas that seem to contradict the classical attributes of God:

• Genesis 6:6-7 (KJV) And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

• Exodus 13:17 (KJV) And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:

• Exodus 32:7-14 (RSV) And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'" And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation." But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.'" And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.

• Exodus 33:4-6 (KJV) And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people; I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.

• Isaiah 5:4, 7 (KJV) What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

• Isaiah 38:1-5 At that time Hezekiah became very sick; he was almost dead. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to see him and told him, "This is what the Lord says: Make arrangements, because you are not going to live, but die." Hezekiah turned toward the wall and prayed to the Lord, "Lord, please remember that I have always obeyed you. I have given myself completely to you and have done what you said was right." Then Hezekiah cried loudly. Then the Lord spoke his word to Isaiah: "Go to Hezekiah and tell him: 'This is what the Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. So I will add fifteen years to your life.


Varieties of open theists

Philosopher Alan Rhoda has described several different approaches several open theists have taken with regard to God's knowledge of the future and the nature of the future.

• Voluntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because he has voluntarily chosen not to know truths about future contingents.

• Involuntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because truths about future contingents are in principle unknowable. William Hasker espouses this position.

• Non-Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions about future contingents are neither true nor false. J. R. Lucas espouses this position.

• Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions asserting of future contingents that they 'will' obtain or that they 'will not' obtain are both false. Instead, what is true is that they 'might and might not' obtain. Greg Boyd espouses this position." ^[12]

Critics of open theism

Opponents of open theism include Norman Geisler, Bruce A. Ware, Thomas R. Schreiner, John Frame and John Piper. Norman Geisler, in his book Creating God in the Image of Man? argues against open theism and in favor of the traditional attributes of God. He quotes Exodus 3:14 ("I am who I am") and claims that it establishes God's aseity. From there, Geisler deduces Simplicity, Necessity, Immutability, Impassability, Eternity, and Unity. He also addresses the claims that the Classical attributes were derived from the Greeks with three observations:

1. The quest for something unchanging is not bad
2. The Greeks did not have the same concept of God
3. Philosophical influences are not wrong in themselves^[13]

Opponents of open theism such as John Piper^[14] claim that the verses commonly used by open theists are anthropopathisms (see anthropopathy). They suggest that when God seems to change from action A to action B in response to prayer, action B was the inevitable event all along, and God divinely ordained human prayer as the means by which God actualized that course of events.

They also point to verses that suggest God is immutable, such as:

• Mal 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
• Num 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
• 1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.
• Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Those^[who?] advocating the orthodox view see these as the verses that form God's character, and they interpret other verses that say God repents as anthropomorphistic. Authors who claim this can be traced back through Calvin, Ambrose, and Augustine. Open theists note that there seems to be an arbitrary distinction here between those verses which are merely anthropopathic and others which form God´s character. They also note that the immediate sense of the passages addressing God´s inalterability ought to be understood in the Hebrew sense of his faithfulness and justice.

See also

• Conceptions of God
• Corporate election
• Open theism section of Arminianism
• Process theology
• Clark Pinnock
• John E. Sanders
• Gregory Boyd
• Thomas Jay Oord
• William Hasker
• Terence E. Fretheim
• John Polkinghorne

External links

• Open Theism Information Site maintained by John Sanders
• Christus Victor Ministries Open Theism site maintained by Greg Boyd
• Does God Know Your Entire Future? A debate between Knox Theological Seminary professor Samuel Lamerson and an open theist pastor.
• One-on-One Debate Between a Calvinist and an Open Theist A debate between a North American Reformed Seminary Theologian and an open theist pastor.
• Thomas Jay Oord's musings on Open and Relational Theology and related subjects
• Open Theology and Science seminar
• God vs. God a February 2000 editorial in Christianity Today
• Did Open Debate Help The Openness Debate? a February 2001 article from Christianity Today
• Open theism Theopedia — Theopedia's material is from a five point Calvinist perspective, see their statement of faith
• Open Theism — An Introductory Presentation Jonathan Erdman, not an Open Theism advocate, attempts an objective and very detailed analysis of Open Theism focussed on the biblical, philosophical, and existential arguments of Open Theism as outlined by their leading proponents.
• nOFuTuRe A blog exploring some of the positive, practical implications of open theism
• Open Theism, logically flawed (mostly critical thread, on the Blog Soli Deo Gloria)

Books

Pro

• Trinity and Process, G.Boyd, 1986
• "Satan & the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy", Greg Boyd (2001) ISBN 0-8308-1550-3
• The Case for Freewill Theism: a Philosophical Assessment, David Basinger, 1996, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0-8308-1876-6
• The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will, Richard Rice, 1980, Review and Herald Pub. Association, ISBN 0-8127-0303-0
• The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, Clark Pinnock editor, et al., 1994, InterVarsity Press ISBN 0-8308-1852-9, Paternoster Press (UK), ISBN 0-85364-635-X (followup to Rice book includes contribution from him)
• The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence, John Sanders, revised edition, 2007. InterVarsity Press, ISBN 978-0-8308-2837-1
• God, Time, and Knowledge, William Hasker, 1998, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-8545-2
• God of the Possible, Gregory A. Boyd, 2000 reprint, Baker Books, ISBN 0-8010-6290-X
• Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (The Didsbury Lectures), Clark Pinnock, 2001, Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-2290-8
• Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God, William Hasker, 2004, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-32949-3
• Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science, Thomas Jay Oord ed., 2009, Pickwick, ISBN 13:978-1-60608-488-5

Con

• God's Lesser Glory, Bruce A. Ware, 2000, Crossway Books, ISBN 1-58134-229-2
• Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (editors), 2000, Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-2232-0
• Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism, Douglas Wilson editor, et al., 2001, Canon Press, ISBN 1-885767-84-6
• No Other God: A Response to Open Theism, John M. Frame, P & R Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-87552-185-1
• Consuming Glory: A Classical Defense of Divine-Human Relationality Against Open Theism, Gannon Murphy, Wipf & Stock, 2006, ISBN 1-59752-843-9
• Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, John Piper et al., 2003, Crossway Books, ISBN 1-58134-462-7
• What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge, Millard J. Erickson, Zondervan, 2006, ISBN 0-310-27338-2
• How Much Does God Foreknow?: A Comprehensive Biblical Study, Steven C. Roy, InterVarsity Press, 2006, ISBN 0830827595
• The Benefits of Providence: A New Look at Divine Sovereignty, James S. Spiegel, Crossway Books, 2005, ISBN 1-58134-616-6

Multiple views

• The Sovereignty of God Debate, D. Steven Long and George Kalantizis editors, 2009 Cascade Books, ISBN 13:978-1-55635-217-1
• Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views, Bruce Ware editor, 2008, Broadman and Holman Academic, ISBN 978-0-8054-3060-8
• Divine Foreknowledge: 4 Views, James Beilby and Paul Eddy (editors), et al., 2001, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0-8308-2652-1
• God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff (editors), 2002, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-512965-2
• God & Time: Four Views, Gregory E. Ganssle (editor), et al., 2001, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0-8308-1551-1
• Predestination & Free Will, David and Randall Basinger (editors), et al., 1985, Intervarsity Press, ISBN 0-87784-567-0
• Searching for an Adequate God, John Cobb and Clark Pinnock (Editors), et al., 2000, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8028-4739-0

Related work

• The Nature of Love: A Theology, Thomas Jay Oord (2010) ISBN 9780827208285
• God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, John Martin Fischer (editor), 1989, Stanford, ISBN 0-8047-1580-7
• The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human, William Lane Craig, 2000, Wipf & Stock Publishers, ISBN 1-57910-316-2
• The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Linda Zagzebski, 1996, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-510763-2
• Eternal God : A Study of God without Time, Paul Helm, 1997, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-823725-1
• Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time, William Lane Craig, 2001, Crossway Books, ISBN 1-58134-241-1
• Time and Eternity, Brian Leftow, 1991, Cornell, ISBN 0-8014-2459-3
• Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time, Robin LePoidevin, 2003, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-875255-5 * The Ontology of Time, L Nathan Oaklander, 2004, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-59102-197-9
• Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Theodore Sider, 2003, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-926352-3 * Real Time II, Hugh Mellor, 1998, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09781-9
• The Suffering of God, Terence E. Fretheim, 1984, Fortress Press, ISBN 0-8006-1538-7

References

1. ↑ Viney, Donald (2008-10-06). "Process Theism". In Edward N. Zalta. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/. Retrieved 2008-12-01.
2. ↑ Openness Theology - Does God Know Your Entire Future?, Bob Enyart v. Samuel Lamerson
3. ↑ Boyd, Gregory A. (2001). Satan and the problem of evil: constructing a trinitarian warfare theodicy. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-1550-3. OCLC 46866232. ^{[page needed]}
4. ↑ See documentation on most of the people in this list see John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, revised edition (InterVarsity press, 2007)166-169.
5. ↑ Augustine, Confessions 11.6.8
6. ↑ David Bentley Hart "No Shadow of Turning: On Divine Impassibility", Pro Ecclesia (Spring 2002): 184-206.
7. ↑ Pascal, Thoughts VII.185.
8. ↑ Alexander of Alexandria , Addition in the Codex
9. ↑ Smith, George H. (1974). Atheism: the case against God. New York City: Nash. p. 74. ISBN 0-8402-1115-5. OCLC 991343.
10. ↑ Elseth, Howard R.; Elden J. Elseth (1977). Did God Know? A Study of the Nature of God. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Calvary United Church. p. 23. OCLC 11208194.
11. ↑ N. T. Wright Evil and the Justice of God
12. ↑ Alanyzer: Four Versions of Open Theism
13. ↑ Geisler, Norman L.. Creating God in the Image of Man. Minneapolis: Bethany House. p. 96. ISBN 1-556-61935-9. OCLC 35886058.
14. ↑ "The Sovereignty of God and Prayer". http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/resources/the-sovereignty-of-god-and-prayer. Retrieved 2010-10-07.

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PROCESS THEOLOGY

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Process_theology

Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000). While there are process theologies that are similar, but unrelated to the work of Whitehead (such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) the term is generally applied to the Whiteheadian/Hartshornean school. Process theology is unrelated to the Process Church.

History

The original ideas of process thought are found in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Various theological and philosophical aspects have been expanded and developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin. A characteristic of process theology each of these thinkers shared was a rejection of metaphysics that privilege "being" over "becoming," particularly those of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Hartshorne was deeply influenced by French philosopher Jules Lequier and by Swiss philosopher Charles Secrétan who were probably the first ones to claim that in God liberty of becoming is above his substantiality.

Process theology soon influenced a number of Jewish theologians including Rabbis Max Kadushin, Milton Steinberg and Levi A. Olan, Harry Slominsky and, to a lesser degree, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today some rabbis who advocate some form of process theology include Bradley Shavit Artson, Lawrence A. Englander, William E. Kaufman, Harold Kushner, Anton Laytner, Michael Lerner, Gilbert S. Rosenthal, Lawrence Troster, Donald B. Rossoff, Burton Mindick, and Nahum Ward.

Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have attempted to integrate process theology with the New Thought variant of Christianity.

The work of Richard Stadelmann has been to preserve the uniqueness of Jesus in process theology.

Major concepts

• God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. The divine has a power of persuasion rather than coercion. Process theologians interpret the classical doctrine of omnipotence as involving force, and suggest instead a forbearance in divine power. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God does not exert unilateral control.^[1]
• Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience (male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to the ongoing and interrelated process of reality.
• The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.^[2]
• God contains the universe but is not identical with it (panentheism, not pantheism or pandeism). Some also call this "theocosmocentrism" to emphasize that God has always been related to some world or another.
• Because God interacts with the changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid.
• Charles Hartshorne believes that people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. Other process theologians believe that people do have subjective experience after bodily death.^[3]
• Dipolar theism, is the idea that God has both a changing aspect (God's existence as a Living God) and an unchanging aspect (God's eternal essence).

Relationship to liberation theology

C. Robert Mesle, in his book Process Theology, outlines three aspects of a process theology of liberation:^[4]

1. There is a relational character to the divine which allows God to experience both the joy and suffering of humanity. God suffers just as those who experience oppression and God seeks to actualize all positive and beautiful potentials. God must, therefore, be in solidarity with the oppressed and must also work for their liberation.
2. God is not omnipotent in the classical sense and so God does not provide support for the status quo, but rather seeks the actualization of greater good.
3. God exercises relational power and not unilateral control. In this way God cannot instantly end evil and oppression in the world. God works in relational ways to help guide persons to liberation.

Relationship to pluralism

Process theology affirms that God is working in all persons to actualize potentialities. In that sense each religious manifestation is the Divine working in a unique way to bring out the beautiful and the good. Additionally, scripture and religion represent human interpretations of the divine. In this sense pluralism is the expression of the diversity of cultural backgrounds and assumptions that people use to approach the Divine.^[5]

Relationship to the doctrine of the incarnation

The Christ of process theology does not represent a hypostasis of divine and human persona. Rather God is incarnate in the lives of all humans when they act according to a call from God. Jesus fully and in every way responded to the call of God and so the person of Jesus is theologically understood to be “the divine Word in human form.” Jesus was not God-man in essence, but fully identified with God at all moments of life.^[6]

Further information: Incarnation (Christianity)

Process theologians

Bradley Shavit Artson Charles Birch Philip Clayton John B. Cobb Bruce G. Epperly Paul S. Fiddes Stephen T. Franklin

Terence E. Fretheim David Ray Griffin Charles Hartshorne Nancy R. Howell William E. Kaufman Catherine Keller Harold Kushner

Michael Lerner C. Robert Mesle Thomas Jay Oord Norman Pittenger Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki Alfred North Whitehead Daniel Day Williams

Further reading

• Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, new rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989, ISBN 0-8245-0970-6) demonstrates the practical integration of process philosophy with Christianity.
• C. Robert Mesle's Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8272-2945-3) is an introduction to process theology written for the layperson.
• Jewish introductions to classical theism, limited theism and process theology can be found in A Question of Faith: An Atheist and a Rabbi Debate the Existence of God (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994, ISBN 1-56821-089-2) and The Case for God (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8272-0458-2), both written by Rabbi William E. Kaufman. Jewish variations of process theology are also presented in Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Anchor Books, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-3472-8) and Sandra B. Lubarsky and David Ray Griffin, eds., Jewish Theology and Process Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, ISBN 0-7914-2810-9).
• Christian introductions may be found in Schubert M. Ogden's The Reality of God and Other Essays (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-87074-318-X); John B. Cobb, Doubting Thomas: Christology in Story Form (New York: Crossroad, 1990, ISBN 0-8245-1033-X); and Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984, ISBN 0-87395-771-7). In French, the best introduction may be André Gounelle, Le Dynamisme Créateur de Dieu: Essai sur la Théologie du Process, édition revue, modifiée et augmentee (Paris: Van Dieren, 2000, ISBN 2911087267).
• For essays exploring the relation of process thought to Wesleyan theology, see Bryan P. Stone and Thomas Jay Oord, Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue (Nashville: Kingswood, 2001, ISBN 0-687-05220-3).
• The most important work by Paul S. Fiddes is The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); see also his short overview "Process Theology," in A. E. McGrath, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Modern Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 472–76.
• Norman Pittenger's thought is exemplified in his God in Process (London: SCM Press, 1967, LCC BT83.6 .P5), Process-Thought and Christian Faith (New York: Macmillan Company, 1968, LCC BR100 .P615 1968), and Becoming and Belonging (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Publications, 1989, ISBN 0819214809).
• Constance Wise's Hidden Circles in the Web: Feminist Wicca, Occult Knowledge, and Process Thought (Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7591-1006-9) applies process theology to one variety of contemporary Paganism.

See also

• Conceptions of God
• Existence of God
• Names of God
• New Thought Movement
• Open theism
• Postmodern Christianity
• Theopoetics
• Theodicy

References

1. ↑ Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York, 1984), 20-26.
2. ↑ John Cobb and David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 14-16, chapter 1.
3. ↑ Hartshorne, 32-36.
4. ↑ C. Robert Mesle, Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1993), 65-68, 75-80.
5. ↑ Mesle, 101.
6. ↑ Mesle, 106.

External links

• The Center for Process Studies
• Process and Faith
• Anderson-Whitehouse Process New Thought—a synthesis of New Thought and process theology

Reference works

• Donald Viney, "Process Theism," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• John B. Cobb, Jr., "Process Theology," Religion-Online
• An encyclopedic-type article

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What is Open Theology?

http://www.enc.edu/history/ot/what.html

Open Theology Affirms That

1) God and creatures enjoy mutually-influencing relations, 2) the future is open and God does not fully know or settle it, and 3) love is uniquely exemplified by God and is the human ethical imperative.

Historical Overview

For some time now, scholars of religion and theology have discussed various ideas at the core of open theology. Many of these ideas are found in ancient Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus and Plato. Most present-day open theologians, however, argue that the themes and stories found in the Bible contain authoritative material for open theology.

Although affirming that their theological ideas are derived primarily from Christian scripture, open theologians typically contrast their views with the theological formulations of St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin and many of their heirs. In these classical or conventional theologies, God is often not open. Rather, these conventional theologies portray deity as wholly transcendent, a predestiner, unrelated and wholly nontemporal, and a “sovereign king.” How often have we heard that “God is outside time?”

In addition to appealing to scripture, reason, and experience, open theologians draw from a less-emphasized theological tradition. This tradition is evident in, for example, the 16th century Christian theologian James Arminius’ rejection of divine predestination and emphasis upon creaturely freedom. It is found in the 18th century theologian John Wesley’s emphasis upon love as God’s primary attribute and a crucial basis for theological formulation.

A growing number of contemporary Christians find open theology both existentially and intellectually satisfying. In 1994, a quintet of evangelical scholars published, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. This work caused, and continues to cause, an uproar within Christian evangelical circles. Several formal and informal internet discussions, for instance, reveal that participants discuss open theology more than any other topic. The issue has been the lead story in several prominent evangelical journals and magazines, such as Christianity Today, as well as a feature story in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Open theologians in evangelical traditions acknowledge that their thought enjoys some affinities with process theology. But they are also quick to note important differences. Because of these similarities and differences, a scholarly conversation has grown between process theologians and evangelical theologians. The conversation is challenging both as it pertains to substantive issues and for what it signifies to critics who identify with more conventional theological perspectives. Clark Pinnock expresses well these challenges:

Let’s be honest – there is risk for [both process and openness theists] in this dialogue. The conservatives will undoubtedly say: “There, we told you so – the open theists are talking with the process theists! Did we not warn that they are covert processians who aim to smuggle these process ideas into evangelical thinking?” And certain liberals and modernists will say: “Why do you process theists bother with fundamentalists? Why do you lower yourselves to appear in print together with them? Where is your self-respect? Are you so desperate to find acceptance in the mainline?” Together we say to the critics – we will not allow ourselves to be led by such fears (Searching for An Adequate God, xii).

Themes Typical of Open Theologies

While important differences of opinion exist among open theologians, the following statements comprise core themes that the majority, if not all, would affirm:

• God’s primary characteristic is love.
• Theology involves humble speculation about who God truly is and what God really does.
• Creatures – at least humans – are genuinely free to make choices pertaining to their salvation.
• God experiences others in some way analogous to how creatures experience others.
• Both creatures and God are relational beings, which means that both God and creatures are affected by others in give-and-take relationships.
• God’s experience changes, yet God’s nature or essence is unchanging.
• God created all nondivine things.
• God takes calculated risks, because God is not all-controlling.
• Creatures are called to act in loving ways that please God and make the world a better place.
• The future is open; it is not predetermined or fully known by God.
• God’s expectations about the future are often partly dependent upon creaturely actions.
• Although everlasting, God experiences time in a way analogous to how creatures experience time.