American Idol 7 (IGB) - Shout to the Lord HQ

  

American Idol 7 (IGB) - Shout to the Lord HQ

New Book: "Letters to My Grandson," by Bruce Epperly

 

Letters to My Grandson:

Gaining Wisdom from a Fresh Perspective

by Bruce Epperly

Amazon link

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Energion Publications (September 17, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1938434757
• ISBN-13: 978-1938434754

Letters to My Grandson is a love story describing the relationship between a grandfather and his grandson. It celebrates the love of a family, including events of great joy and even grief. The author shares his revelation that the love of a grandson can grow into love for every child of this earth, a lesson taught by a child.

 

This is also a book of many adventures, common to us all but often overlooked in the frenetic pace of our everyday lives. Dr. Epperly, a self-professed “aging baby boomer” is finding renewal on his hands and knees as he crawls alongside his grandson, sings remembered childhood songs and looks at the world through those infant eyes.

 

Love grows wings and enables our hearts to soar in so many ways every day. Jewish wisdom says that there is an angel whispering “grow, grow” over every blade of grass. I am sure that an angel is whispering to my grandson Jack, “grow, grow.” Creative wisdom, moving well beneath his consciousness and mine, lures him forward moment by moment on this amazing adventure of becoming a child of God on this good Earth.

 

 

 

 

Thinking About the Quantum Mysteries of Life

From time-to-time I love to go "off-subject" and just "think aloud" about the inner workings of our universe. I love science. And especially anything that has to do with mathematics, chemistry and physics. And specifically anything that has to do with the universe, its evolution and inner-workings of the invisible quantum mechanisms at work energizing our daily routines and lives without are merest notice or appreciation. When I think about science I cannot help to then think about the broader implications of it all - of theology and philosophy, biological evolution and societal social dynamics, human vitality, and of the earth's vitality itself. It's all entangled. Primeval. Spiritual. And very human in an earthy-sort-of-way.

Like any potential theorist, we each like to conject and project, speculate and theorize, of possibilities and realities, of beginnings and endings, of things-to-come and things-yet-to-come, towards a future that is here, now, in all of its raw potentiality. And it may be here, within Michio Kaku's hour-long video discussion below, that we might re-discover life's rudimentary physics at work within our own inner worlds and inner workings. Between ourselves with that of other searching selves. And even within our very human imaginations and cathartic needs to amplify God's vibrancy singing through our vibrating lives. It may even cause our thoughts to soar towards all things pertaining to life and being, mystery and paradox, holiness and goodness. Towards all the many good possibilities that this life holds - and even promises to become - that is so lightly held within the grasp of our dying mortal hands and careless souls.

That at the last, by this most exquisite of all explorations we might better approach ourselves, each other, and even our Creator-Redeemer God of the universe with a raw, new, vitality gained from the very exploration itself. Which search might lay within us a more circumspect humbleness - perhaps even a closeness - to the vastness of the empty space that lives between ourselves and hoary time's grand privileging of life's resonating - and oft times, deeply disturbing - images of our poverty and thanklessness. That within this discovery we might perhaps discover the need to seek a more infinite, a more eternal life, wishing to be filled beyond our merest mundane aspirations, livelihoods, and moiling, restive governments. Which might conjoin our more primitive thoughts of mystery-and-possibility to the vaster seas of endless meanings-and-opportunities meant to recover the beginnings-and-endings of this divine life in which we live so thoughtlessly on our bravest days.

Which might instill a grander patience with each other. A more pervasive peace. And perhaps, a better relent of mankind's paucity, charged with protecting and enhancing all-these-many-worlds that we have been given. To nurture these worlds within the provise of our habitation whose darkened wildernesses is ours to remake-and-create by our faithful God's great wisdom and most willing provide. To reach beyond that single equation that would explain all of physic's grandest quantum searches to that single-most spiritual equation expressing all of life itself. To discover that that quantum spiritual equation is Jesus Himself who redeems, reimagines, and would renew all. Even ourselves. And even this old world we live so meanly within its vagaries, poverties, and destitutions. To know that Jesus is that Redeemer God who comes to re-create, heal, and make all things new. That it is in this kind of Resurrecting God who is the grandest equation to the quantum mysteries of this remarkable life we have been given to use or misuse, to complete or make incomplete, to refuse or bow before. Whether we understand it or not. Whether we would try or not. And there find a reclaimed peace that never before existed in our broken hearts until this very moment's grandest eclipse at the burst of that bright-and-morning-star of our existence. That star of David which was broken and bowed before our own brokenness wept until the everlast of days filled upon the risen dawns of new birth like a star burst upon my heart.

R.E. Slater

September 15, 2013

The Same Love
by Paul Baloche



You choose the humble and raise them high

You choose the weak and make them strong
You heal our brokenness inside
And give us life

The same love that set the captives free
The same love that opened eyes to see
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name
The same God that spread the heavens wide
The same God that was crucified
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name

You take the faithless one aside
And speak the words "You are mine"
You call the cynic and the proud
Come to me now

The same love that set the captives free
The same love that opened eyes to see
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name
The same God that spread the heavens wide
The same God that was crucified
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name

Oh oh...

You're calling You're calling
You're calling us to the cross
(Repeat 4x)

The same love that set the captives free
The same love that opened eyes to see
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name
The same God that spread the heavens wide
The same God that was crucified
Is calling us all by name
You are calling us all by name

You're calling You're calling
You're calling us to the cross
You're calling You're calling
You're calling us to the cross

Here Is Our King - David Crowder Band

(Chorus 2x)

Here is our King
Here is our Love
Here is our God who's come to bring us back to him
He is the one,
He is Jesus

(verse 1)
From wherever spring arrives to heal the ground
From where ever searching comes to look itself
A trace of what we're looking for
so be quiet now, and wait

(Pre-Chorus)
The ocean is growing
The tide is coming in
Here it is:

(Chorus 2x)
Here is our King
Here is our Love
Here is our God who's come to bring us back to him
He is the one,
He is Jesus

(verse 2)
And what was said to the rose to make it unfold
Was said to me, here in my chest
So be quiet now, and rest.

(Pre-Chorus)(Chorus 2x)

(Bridge 2x)
Majesty!
Finally!

(chorus 3x)(bridge 1x)

Michio Kaku: The Universe in a Nutshell

Published on Aug 15, 2012

       

The Universe in a Nutshell: The Physics of Everything
Michio Kaku, Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at CUNY

What if we could find one single equation that explains every force in the universe? Dr. Michio Kaku explores how physicists may shrink the science of the Big Bang into an equation as small as Einstein's "e=mc^2." Thanks to advances in string theory, physics may allow us to escape the heat death of the universe, explore the multiverse, and unlock the secrets of existence. While firing up our imaginations about the future, Kaku also presents a succinct history of physics and makes a compelling case for why physics is the key to pretty much everything.

The Floating University
Originally released September, 2011.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Kathleen Russell, and Elizabeth Rodd

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"

Is Doubt a Sign of Spiritual Weakness or Not?

Is Doubt a Sign of Spiritual Weakness or What?
(Two New Books about the Role of Doubt in Christian Living)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/09/is-doubt-a-sign-of-spiritual-weakness-or-what-two-new-books-about-the-role-of-doubt-in-christian-living/

 

by Roger Olson

September 12, 2013

Comments

 

When I was a kid growing up in church (how’s that for a stereotypical opening of a paragraph?) a favorite saying of pastors and evangelists was “Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs!” As if doubt (and here “doubt” will always be about God and the truth of revelation) is something you overcome by sheer will power. And as if doubt is necessarily something negative to be shunned rather than embraced or at least lived with.

 

In that form of Christian life that encouraged a kind of super-spirituality (I found Francis Schaeffer’s little book on that subject liberating as an early twenty-something Christian in that spiritual environment) “doubt” was an enemy and having doubts meant a lack of faith which meant sin in life. So the solution to doubt was twofold: will power to overcome sin and waiting on the Holy Spirit for a new “infilling.” So, indirectly, at least, shame was heaped on anyone who struggled with doubt.

 

One of the reasons I couldn’t remain in that form of Christian life was that I couldn’t help having doubts; there was simply no “cure” for doubt—at least not that I could find. And I felt that doubt, not chronic, disabling doubt but simple human lack of absolute certainty, was not necessarily a sign of spiritual weakness but a normal part of being finite rather than infinite (or deified).

 

Now let me be clear, for those who easily misunderstand, that by doubt here I do not mean chronic skepticism let alone cynicism about the truth of revelation and about God. I mean simply that lack of absolute certainty, that awareness that one could be wrong, that nagging little feeling that what you believe falls short of absolute certainty and therefore could, at least theoretically, be false.

 

Because of the way I was raised, with even the slightest hint of doubt being interpreted as a sign of spiritual weakness if not at attack of Satan (!), I was afraid to admit it to any of my spiritual mentors or peers. I covered it up, hid it and pretended that I had absolute certainty about everything I was supposed to believe.

 

Eventually I was delivered from that bondage partly through a book by a wise colleague named Daniel Taylor. The book is entitled The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian and the Risk of Commitment. I found it liberating, not because it made me comfortable with doubt but because it gave me permission to be human and put the emphasis where it belongs—not on arrival at absolute certainty but on commitment in spite of doubts. (Taylor relied heavily on Kierkegaard.)

 

Around the same time I discovered an older book by British Methodist pastor Leslie Weatherhead—a prolific Christian writer of the mid-20^th century. It is entitled The Christian Agnostic. But, again, the theme is not chronic skepticism but learning to live with fallibility and therefore with doubt.

 

Around the same time (my mid-twenties) I read Paul Tillich’s The Dynamics of Faith. There Tillich describes doubt as a necessary element of faith. In other words, the two are not in tension but depend on each other. Without doubt, Tillich argues, faith would not be faith but sight.

 

All of these authors taught me that absolute certainty is eschatological. They taught me to be real about life here and now, “between the times”—not to embrace doubt as something to be proud of but to live with it as a real sign of finitude and even as something that, if accepted in the right way, can help faith, as commitment, become stronger.

 

I have to admit, however, that all of this remained somewhat abstract and intellectual. I read more books that bolstered this different view of faith and doubt. Books by Fredrick Buechner (“Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith; it keeps it moving”) and Lesslie Newbigin (Proper Confidence). I settled into it somewhat uncomfortably with the nagging feeling that, even though I felt it to be true intellectually, I still might be unspiritual for accepting doubt as normal and not striving harder to overcome it once and for all. I still worried that my spiritual mentors, the people who “brought me up in the faith,” would shame me for having doubts and learning to live with them.

 

Part of that uneasiness came from attending a church that reminded me of my superspiritual childhood and youth. It was a Baptist church, but the pastor’s sermons and Bible studies and much of the ethos of the church communicated to me (maybe not to others) that true faith, once really acquired, banishes all doubt. There, as in my later adolescent years, I suffered the cognitive dissonance of two conflicting feelings. On the one hand, Sunday after Sunday I was being told, indirectly if not directly, that faith overcomes doubt, so anyone who struggles with doubt must not yet have acquired true faith—which in that church was a matter of sheer will power. On the other hand, I sensed that many of the people of the church were pretending, living lives of unreality, putting on a mask when they came to church. It did not feel like a safe place to admit doubts and spiritual struggles.

 

Eventually we left that church and prayed that God would lead us to one where we could be real people. Where we would not have to put on masks and pretend to “have it all together” without flaws. That’s exactly what happened. The very first church we visited, after leaving the one we had been attending for eight years (and that I had been wanting to leave for four of those years!), was what we were looking for. That very first Sunday the pastor preached on doubt and gave the congregation permission to be human, including admitting that their Christian lives were not - and never would be - free of risk and commitment in spite of very real doubts. I believe finding that church at that time, so easily and quickly, was a “God thing.”

 

Also around that time I began watching and listening to gospel music videos (now DVDs) produced by Bill Gaither. (No, this is not an advertisement!) I will never forget the impact one of them made in me. It brought into my “inner man” (to borrow a concept from Pietist founder Philipp Jakob Spener) what I had appropriated from books and sermons into my theology. I don’t remember the title of the video, but it was filmed with a group of “old time gospel singers”—most of them not great musicians professionally but sincere and singing the music of my childhood—uplifting and inspiring music of my generation. Right in the middle of that session several of them began to share “testimonies” of their struggles with doubt—not before they became Christians or before they “received the Holy Spirit”—but recently, then and there, as “mature Christian believers” and “full time gospel evangelists.” It was shocking to me to hear their stories—not because they dismayed me but because they spoke powerfully into my life about what I had learned intellectually from books.

 

Then Gaither, who many consider a giant of Christian faith (author of numerous Christian songs sung in churches and recorded by Christian recording artists) sat at the piano and, unrehearsed, and in a very unpolished way, sang a song he wrote that never “caught on,” so to speak. “I believe; help Thou my unbelief. I take the finite risk of trusting like a child. I believe; help Thou my unbelief.  I walk into the unknown trusting like a child.” (Google it for all the lyrics. The specific performance that so touched me inwardly isn’t on youtube so far as I can find, but later performances of the song by Gaither and his “Vocal Band” are.)

 

It’s strange how something you’ve learned from books and accepted intellectually can still need to penetrate into your heart. That is what my new church and that song, sung in that particular way at that time, did for me. (Yes, I’m an unapologetic pietist! Partly, at least, because of experiences such as these.)

 

Recently two friends have published books about doubt and Christian faith and I recommend both highly. Both are filled with personal stories of life experiences by these Christian leaders, men looked up to by thousands because of their teaching and writing. These are not your typical conservative Christian “testimony books” like so many that crowd the shelves of Christian “bookstores.” (I put that in scare quotes because most of them sell very few books and the ones they do sell tend to be fluff.)

 

If you are someone who struggles with struggling with doubt, I recommend these two wonderful new books - and that you find a home church where you can be real, and not a Sunday “mask wearer” - someone who has to pretend to  have no spiritual struggles or doubts.

 

The books are: Gregory A. Boyd, Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty (Baker, 2013) and Daniel Taylor, The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist (Bog Walk Press, 2013). Neither one encourages skepticism or wallowing in doubt that avoids risk and commitment; both reveal how the authors and others came to real faith in spite of and perhaps even partly through uncertainty.

 

Unfortunately, so much American Christianity, perhaps especially conservative evangelical Christianity, is mired in inauthenticity. Authenticity is what Boyd and Taylor are talking about. Being authentic means being real; embracing the real and not pretending to be something we’re not and aren’t meant to be. Absolute certainty that banishes all doubt is unreal, inauthentic, a chimera, an illusion. And yet, so much conservative Christianity not only promotes it - but expects it - and shames people who dare to admit they haven’t arrived at that time and place when we will see face to face and know as we are known. There remains, for now, only faith, hope and love and these are enough.

 

 

 

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 1: "Faith and Trust"

 

 

Week One's introduction didn't do much for me mostly because I'm pro-science and pro-Christianity and have written quite a bit about how science and the Christian faith have bisected my life and brought a fullness to it that without either would make each the poorer. However, within Philip Clayton's own context, he has encountered a lot of vitriol from Christians and their church denominations to his scientific paradigms for a Christian interpretation of the Scriptures... which means that he has received a lot of sarcasm from Christians, and gotten a lot of professional disregard by the atheistic elements of his science profession (what he calls the new atheism). This is regrettable because as week one's discussion has shown, Philip has taken pains to professionally bridge the gap between the two antithetical cultures, as his books and lectures have repeatedly shown these past many years by attestation.

 

For myself, I determined immediately from the onset of writing Relevancy22 that my philosophic direction would be one of integrating the science that I was trained in (through university) with the religion that I had learned and was also trained in. Most admittedly I had allowed the two to live in separate rooms (if not separate houses) of my mind and heart, disavowing any restriction by the one to the other. As such, I lived with a dualism of scholastic cultures that neither upset me nor conflicted me. I pretended there was no conflicted and lived happily within each purview giving to each one their fullest due.

 

But when I began blogging it became immediately apparent that I had to admit that my Christian faith was the more naïve for this outlook, and that my scientific outlook was built upon the beggarly foundations of an agnostic or a-theistic system. Each had much to recommend to the other but if left to separate dwellings it would be to my greatest folly and ignorance. Hence, as of this date, there are approximately 150 articles written, edited, or published in the area of science and the Christian faith. And it is left up to you, the reader, to discover each one as they might provide help or assist in this Area 51 between the Christian faith and today's scientific system.

 

 

Thus, it is from within this effort that I have tried to bridge the gap between the two areas of life that should never have been left so completely separate. My first admission was to the factual findings of biology, genetics, geology, and cosmology, and to finally agree that my understanding of it with the records of Genesis 1-3 were in great need of revisal. That if I were to admit to evolution than I must also admit that my hermeneutic (interpretation) of Genesis was not allowing me to see God's authorship in its design. Nor was my view of God's immediacy of creation realistically allowing me to see the paradoxical naivete of my limitation of God's greatness and wisdom by disallowing another kind of mediated (evolving) creation by this God that I professed. That He was bigger than the religious box I held Him within, and greater than the boundaries that I had philosophically restricted Him to. That at the last, it was myself that needed changing, and not my Bible, nor my faith, nor some purported fabrication of science.

 

As such, I have not only written about an evolutionary understanding of creation (sic, Evolutionary Creationism) but have also found that to make this effort likewise required of me to write of an expanded hermeneutic and theistic understanding of the God I once thought I knew, but in actuality knew very little of.... The strident voices of my fundamentalist (and lately, evangelic) upbringing required attention to the matters of the heresies it claimed... and when I did, it didn't do much for my personal or religious life amongst friends and family. For many, they lost trust in my Christian witness - which was unfortunate for I had endured much in life because of it. And they lost trust in my leadership to teach God's truth - which was equally unfortunate because I have become the richer for my belated explorations. Finding an amazing God beyond what I could have ever imagined!

But, like the prophets of the Old Testament, we each bear our burdens, and mine has been one of updating Christianity's secular modernism and anti-intellectualism into the 21st century's requisite embracement of post-structuralism, post-foundationalism, and post-modernism. Fancy words that basically say that by entering into this kind of Christian faith you must expect all your faith structures and foundations to be torn down and replaced with a surer foundation. One built on rocks instead of sand. And a foundation that both I, and Philip Clayton, will each aver is worth the cost, the mental pain, and the faith challenges. Thus Relevancy 22. And thus this journal of my experiences in lending a way out of the unenlightening wilderness which today's present Christianity has become lost within for too long.

 

Consequently, though I appreciated Philip's introductory session, my postmodernist, existentialist, Christian faith has moved beyond the dualistic kind of oppositional A-versus-B type of thinking found within my previously secularized, modernistic faith. Not that I don't utilize these pedantic structures, because for people like myself who are being led of God beyond the God of their imagination, I must provide some conceptual linkages to the past that might be helpful to those on similar journeys as mine own.

 

But I must also write to this generation's present Millennials who are not as conflicted as mine own generation of the 60s and 70s by science's more profound discoveries (Richard Leakey for one, in his discoveries of million(s)-year-old humanoid skeletal parts). Mostly, science now reigns supreme, and has become the philosophic anvil upon which all other religious faiths must fall, becoming either broken or sharpened. But to remain neutral to science is impossible. And lest the ancient faith of Yahweh become yet another religious shard upon the pile of mythological ruins it must be updated into the cultural times that we live.

 

And so, "Yes," science has become as disruptive, as dangerous, as anti-Christian (seemingly so) in our day-and-age as it was back in Copernicus and Galileo's day when the Catholic Church fought against it. But for the followers of Christ we must not run headlong into the age-old arguments of a Richard Dawkins who so easily dismisses Christianity, its God, and its Bible. We listen to these professing agnostics and atheists to try to understand how we have so admittedly failed in our understanding of God's Word, and to learn how we might re-work our paradigms, Christian culture, and attitudes, so that we might re-discover the God-of love behind the God-of-the Bible whom we thought we knew, and don't.

 

Sure, its fun to bash the "unbelievers" amongst our religious groups... those of us with Facebook accounts see this behavior daily, accusing one-another of a questionable faith, of a faith that is divisive, or even a faith that too easily gives in to the world around itself. But this does not drive the discussion forward. It simply uproots the "old man" within us to gleefully rejoice in another's perceived faults and imperfections without realizing the "plank" in our own eye, and the "needle-like" entrance we have laid for ourselves as we bow before the foreshortened walls of our own Mecca-like Jerusalem.

 

 

Pulpits have become strident instead of informative. Christian media lobs pejorative labels upon everything outside of its own fundamentalist, non-progressive structures. The newspapers, friends and family, stir up old ills by causing Christian believers to fight between one another. Our faith is judged primitive. Our spirituality judged religious. Our churches a vacillation between medieval barbarism and insignificance. Christianity has lost its epistemic humility, its sense of discernment, and its broader insight into the ways-and-workings of God our Savior. Rather than becoming spiritual creatives we have become spiritual viruses living off of 4th century creedal debates, a labyrinth of quixotic Christian traditions, and sincerely misled faith cultures. We make false assumptions about a scientific discipline we don't understand, or put our heads in the sand that would ignore the claims of vast discoveries that changes everything we thought we knew as good Bible students of God's Word.

 

Has the Christian faith become so absurd or, can we find within it a reasonableness to today's scientific certainties, without losing the God-of-our-faith behind those verities? Can we let go of the epistemological structures of certainty that we grew up with to allow in some paradox and mystery that has long fled our knowledge of God? Can we as the church of the 21st century find a place to reconstruct theology and to carry it forward beyond the mockery that it has become to the world at large? To understand that since the days of Paul, the church's best thinkers have  joined in the highest of this world's debates and philosophic discussions in attempts to rediscover a God endlessly challenged to His viability and interior claims of truth within our lives? That each Christian era has entertained its own challenges: from Judaism to Greek  Hellenism and sectarian gnosticism in Paul's day; from Aristotle and Plato to Medieval scholasticism; from the Enlightenment to today's era of Secularism; and so on and so on.

And so where does this leave Science and Religion today? Christian scientists are discounted, their views resisted by both sides of the discussion, and our faith made a mockery from Hollywood to the Halls of Academia. Trust has been lost by today's non-Christian cultures, and with it we have witnessed Christianity's rapid devolution into the world's claims to its religious mythology. Rightfully so have philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Tillich, Bultmann, Barth, and Caputo, leapt in to recover this most ancient faith refusing that "all the facts belong to science, and all the emotions, beauty, and poetry belong to religion." Nay, they wished to speak a more constructive theology in their day even as we do today. Refusing antithetically opposed statements that "Science has disproved God even as Faith distrusts Science." To not rest within oppositional elements but to show a synergy of admission to each that would allow both viewpoints a marriage out of agreement and not by necessity.

 

How? To begin with, by stating that "my faith isn't absurd, but neither can it prove all things." To rest in the knowledge that we don't know. That we don't have the answers. To not demand of our faith that it must prove all things for it to be believed and followed. For myself, it began by admitting that the ancient author(s) of Genesis utilized the science of their day - that of the predominant Babylonian belief in their cosmological constructs of heaven-and-earth as a refractory beginning to describing their own Creator God of the Hebrews. Or, by jettisoning the arguments of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) for perhaps Wolfhart Pannenberg's creatio continua (creation from something that always was). To think through what it means for humanity to have a soul as distinguished from the animal kingdom that seemingly did not inherit its own consciousness in evolutionary development. Or, how homo sapien man might be unique from the evolutionary hominids before him. Or, how one might describe a biblical miracle in today's scientific understanding (cf. synchronicity, miracles, virgin birth herein). Or, the ethics of our ecology and environment. Or even, the implications of how our faith might be practiced differently with this knowledge.

It is at this point that we must admit that this is a journey of reconciliation that must be made, even as it is one that cannot not be made. To know that all must change within us if we are to begin such a journey. That like Abraham of old, living amongst the Chaldean's of Ur, we must trust God to leave our faith's homelands for the more challenging homelands of faith beyond. That we will stumble, fail, and even run into our own disbelief, but throughout this journey of separation God is our God and will be with us guiding, protecting, blessing. It can be so. We must only allow it to be so.

 

R.E. Slater

September 13, 2013

 

 

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"






 

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 1: Recap - "Unequal Playing Fields"

 

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/09/11/highgravity-religion-and-science-wk-1-questionsdiscussion-forum/

by Jonnie Russell
September 11, 2013
Comments

Our six-week live online has begun and the week one lecture/discussion video is up for free on HBC as well as mission soulutions.  If you haven’t watched and are in the high gravity group (or the in-the-flesh Claremont group), do it! If you haven’t signed up and want a free taster with this first week, by all means give it a try, see the goods and where we’re going and join in here.

 

As I said in my prep post last week, this is intended to be your time: a forum for you to get my brief recap of the week's happenings and give the beginnings of what might be some conversation starters. What has perked my interest may very well be completely different from what interested or puzzled you, so by all means, feel completely unbound to responding to me and my thoughts. Your reactions (this will be up both here and the high gravity group site) will be studiously followed by Tripp and myself, so as to cull the reactions into a list and throw them back at Philip to make him answer, assuage, unravel, or puzzle along with us. We might not get to all of them each week, but we will definitely be able to cover a good smattering of the issues that arise. So…weigh in! My format will be simple: Recap and React.

 

Recap:

 

This week kicked off with Philip giving us a broad picture of the past and present situation between religion and science. He began by asking “what’s at stake?”  In the context of the New Atheists, the best-selling militant posse of public (pseudo?) intellectuals who claim that God is beyond passé (and more a vicious poison), is there a conversation to be had that does not collapse into a snarling fundamentalism? It is precisely this road that Philip wants to walk. Accordingly, what is at stake in this conversation in our age is the very intellectual credibility of  Christianity (a good question for yourself: is it for you? do you feel that way?)

 

Past and present entries into the religion and science discussion have varied widely. Some looked for a spot to slide God into the science, a continued attempt to save a seat by offering various “God filling the gaps” answers. Others have argued that they inhabit different spaces or different orders (Gould’s magisteriums), a way to insulate each with their own purview, a tactic that often leaves the religious with the heart and heaven. Still others, reject the conversation or validity of the other wholesale, a polarized fundamentalism. None of these will work. We must face the conversation more frontally, oppose the binary with a more gracious and open-handed approach.

 

Why? Because important concerns arise. Culturally, science fear (perhaps a deep envy of its cultural authority) pervades many of the religious. Strident defensiveness of one’s purview is just ugly. Demographically, huge shifts in recent generations to spiritually indie (…but not religious, etc.) show the end/death of Christian ownership of western culture. No longer is it the default outlet for the religious impulse.  No longer is it the default merchant we run to. Constantinianism and its mercantilism are waning, if not dead.  Existentially, it’s good to grapple [as Christians with scientific discoveries and understanding]. [A] constructive theological project (our project in these weeks) necessitates that we [then] grapple well.  As Philip showed, this has always been happening with people of faith. A[n] [ancient] scientific model informed the [ancient] biblical authors. Hubble’s findings in the 1920′s effected a change in thinking about the universe’s beginning and cosmology, etc. “Not to grapple [with science] is to make a mockery of our heritage.” Well said Dr. Clayton!

 

In the last bit before the discussion time, Philip ended by detailing nine themes to be covered in coming weeks.  The attentive will notice that about four of those correlated almost exactly with some of my own outline of key themes that I’ve found in my own work. [Questions] of the soul, human uniqueness, divine action, and environmental/ethical issues will be discussed, plus more!

 

React:

 

-This is going to be really fun!

 

-Perhaps it’s my upbringing rearing its formative head, but even after years of interest in science and religion discussions, and a decided willingness to let scientific finding and research effect my theological and philosophical reflection, I still struggle, or worry, that the playing field is unequal–that to ‘let the best knowledge of our day’ have its way with my thinking will inevitably end up one-sidedly submitting theology to (i.e. under) the scientific.  Is this merely because I’ve only seen poor examples or is it something more fundamental–something related to science being more rigorously norming, more fundamental?

 

-Philip, you mentioned how entering into this exciting journey of open-handedly exploring science and religion has been a wild ride, one that (so far) has “cost” you a form of divine action among other things. I take you to mean some form of interventionist divine action. Are there examples of things your religious experience, beliefs, knowledge, commitments have caused you to give up (or,costed you) scientifically?  In other words, is the dynamic of costing asymmetric or reciprocal? Does it go both ways? Are there any examples from your own [professional, or personal,] development?

 

*What are you (fellow participants and general readers) feeling or thinking after the first week? Any questions, excitements, worries, or housekeeping questions?

 

*[Does] the broad brushed history - and current context of the engagement between Religion and Science - make sense?

 

*Did Tripp or Philip say anything exceedingly heady that we should pester them to flesh out more or clarify?

 

Next week we dive into the quantum and the cosmic!
 

 

Index to past discussions -

 

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

 

 

 

 

 

Open Theism's Historical Precedents and Timeline

Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czeck Republic




Click to Enlarge

produced by Thomas Lukashow, April 2013
Click here to go to originating chart site

 - To the list above should be added the name of I.A. Dorner -


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Who has affirmed dynamic omniscience and the open future in history?

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http://www.opentheism.info/index.php/john-sanders/who-has-affirmed-dynamic-omniscience-and-the-open-future-in-history/

John Sanders
Updated April 2013

Briefly, the position is that God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and the present and knows as possibilities and probabilities those events which might happen in the future. God could have created a world in which he knew exactly what we would do in the future if God had decided to create a deterministic world. Consequently, God cannot know as definite what we will do unless he destroys the very freedom he granted us. Vincent Brümmer writes: “God knows everything which it is logically possible to know. But God knows all things as they are, and not as they are not. Thus he knows the future as future (and not as present, which it is not). He knows the possible as possible (and not as actual, which it is not).”1 God does not possess exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) of future contingent events.

Aristotle put forth the problem of the truth value of future contingent propositions (De Interprtatione 9), claiming that they could be neither true nor false. There were questions about how to interpret Aristotle’s remarks which led to lively debate among those who discussed this question. The issues involved in divine foreknowledge were much discussed by philosophers after Aristotle.

The dynamic omniscience view was affirmed by several non-Christian writers such as Cicero (first century B.C.E.) Alexander of Aphrodisias (second century C.E.) and Porphyry (third century).2  Cicero  argued that if God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) then humans cannot have libertarian freedom so Cicero denied EDF.3

For the reasons used to support belief in an exhaustively definite future in both secular Greco-Roman thought and in Christianity see “Motivations for Ascribing Foreknowledge to God” by Gregory Boyd on this website.

Commenting on the work of Aristotle, Boethius and several medieval theologians held that statements about the future lack truth value yet they also held that God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF).4 Also, Boethius (see Consolations, 5.4), Augustine (City of God, 5.9.37-9), Bonaventure and Aquinas are familiar with the dynamic omniscience position of Cicero (see W. Craig, Problem of Divine Forekowledge, 59). Boethius also knows about Alexander of Aphrodisias who produced an argument similar to Cicero’s. Boethius and other Christians were more concerned to deflect the charge that Christianity implied fatalism rather than about Aristotle’s question regarding the truth value of future propositions. It was charged that if the God of the Bible predicts some future events, then the future must be determined.

These authors produce an array of solutions to the problem and those after them critique these answers and either modify them or offer new proposals. Most seem aware of the dynamic omniscience view but think that it either (1) fails to explain biblical predictions or (2) would imply that God has changing knowledge which would undermine their understanding of divine immutability. The great Aquinas (thirteen century) argues that if God is temporal (experiences changes of any kind) then the only options are determinism or dynamic omniscience. He says that a temporal God can only have EDF (exhaustive definite foreknowledge) if all is determined from prior causes. This is why he rejects the simple foreknowledge view because he thinks it removes human freedom. Another factor, for Aquinas, is that “the future does not exist and is therefore not knowable in itself” because it lacks being (Summa Theologica 1.89.7.3). For Aquinas, the simple foreknowledge view of the church fathers (the same view what will become dominant in Arminian and Wesleyan circles) is deterministic. He believes that if God is temporal and humans have freedom then one should affirm the dynamic omniscience view. However, Thomas argues that since God is timelessness God can know an exhaustive definite future without it being determined. The important point here is that Aquinas thought the dynamic omniscience view was a legitimate option and he thought it should be affirmed if God is temporal and humans are free.

After Boethius, the mighty river of EDF followed the channel of divine timelessness though there were a few other channels such as divine determinism. However, in recent Christian philosophy the flow in the channel of timelessness has been seriously reduced in favor of dynamic omniscience and middle knowledge.

The earliest Christian proponent thus far found is Calcidius (late fourth century).5 He wrote several books one of which is against fatalism and determinism (this work did not become well known until the middle ages). In it he says that since God knows reality as it is he knows necessary truths necessarily and future contingent truths contingently.6  Some Medieval Christian writers anticipate and seem to affirm an open future: Peter Auriol (thirteenth century) and Peter de Rivo (fifteenth century).

Some Islamic scholars affirmed dynamic omniscience: some in the Qadarite school (eighth century) and Abd al-Jabbar, an important figure of the Mu’tazilite school (tenth century).7 In Judaism the view has been widely held. God’s statement to Abraham “Now I know that you fear me” (Gen 22:12) was much discussed by Medieval Jewish theologians, a number of whom affirmed dynamic omniscience and the open future including the renowned Ibn Ezra in the twelfth century and Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson) in the fourteenth.8

John Miley claims that some of the Remonstrants (Dutch followers of Arminius) advocated it in the sixteenth century.9 The Anabaptist Fausto Socinus affirmed it though he, unfortunately, also denied many traditional Christian beliefs such as the deity of Christ and the trinity.10  If one tries to discredit open theism because a heretic affirmed the same view of omniscience then should the Reformation be discredited because this same heretic affirmed several of the key tenets of Calvin?

In the early eighteenth century, Samuel Fancourt published several works defending the dynamic omniscience view including Liberty, Grace and Prescience and latter, in 1730, What Will Be Must Be. He argues that the issue is not about the scope of God’s knowledge but about the nature of reality: are contingencies real or not? Andrew Ramsay (1748) put forth a variant of this position, claiming that though the future is knowable and so God could know it, God has chosen not to exercise this ability in order to preserve human freedom. John Wesley (1785) reprinted Ramsay’s material on this in Wesley’s Arminian Magazine.11

The position became much discussed in Methodism from the latter eighteenth into the twentieth century.12 In the early nineteenth century the well known Methodist biblical commentator, Adam Clarke (1831), defended it as did the well-known circuit preacher Billy Hibbard (1843).13

Hibbard says that he learned of the view from an article in a Methodist magazine but he develops the position much more than the Methodists before him. In the latter nineteenth century Lorenzo D. McCabe, a Methodist theologian, wrote two large, detailed works covering every biblical text relevant to foreknowledge (for example, Peter’s denial) as well as numerous theological arguments.14 According to McCabe, dynamic omniscience was widely affirmed by British and German theologians of his day and he cites other Methodists who held the view. In America, McCabe’s publications sparked a significant discussion in Methodist circles that lasted several decades.15 John Miley, an influential Methodist and contemporary of McCabe, speaks highly of McCabe’s work in his Systematic Theology (which was widely used well past the middle of the twentieth century). Though Miley affirmed prescience (foreknowledge) he recognizes a key problem that he does not know how to answer: How can God interact with us in reciprocal relationships if God has prescience? He says that if belief in an interactive God is contradictory to prescience then he will give up prescience. He goes on to say that belief in dynamic omniscience would not undermine any vital Methodist doctrines and would, in fact, free Methodism from the perplexity of divine foreknowledge and human freedom.16

Quite a number of articles and books affirming open theism from people in various denominations appeared in the nineteenth century (see the “Open Theism Timeline” chart). These folks affirmed traditional Christian orthodoxy and were generally evangelical in orientation. Edward Pearson (1811). Verax (1818), James Bromley (1820), John Briggs (1825), James Jones (two books 1828, 1829), Onesimus (1828), John Bonsall (1830), Richard Dillon (1834), Robert Bartley (1839), Joseph Barken (1846), William Robinson (1866), James Morison (1867), William Taylor (1868), Hans Martinsen (1874), J. P. LaCroix (1876), J. J. Smith (1885), Thomas Crompton (1879), Isaiah Kephart (1883), B. F. White (1884), J. J. Miles (1885), Joseph Lee (1889), J. S. Brecinridge (1890), W. G. Williams (1891), H. C. Burr (1893), William Major (1894), S. Hubbard (1894), J. Wallace Webb (1896), D. W. Simon (1898), and H. J. Zelley (1900).

In the mid nineteenth century, the great German theologian, Isaak Dorner, argued that “the classical doctrine of immutability” is inconsistent with Scripture, sound reason, and spiritual living because it rules out reciprocal relations between God and creatures. He argues for dynamic omniscience saying that a consistent view of God working with us in history requires that God knows future free acts of creatures as possibilities, not actualities.17

In 1890 Joel S. Hayes published The Foreknowledge of God, a lengthy volume examining the scriptural evidence and theological arguments for foreknowledge and concluded that dynamic omniscience was a superior explanation.18  In the opening chapter, he writes “The design of this treatise is to deny and disprove the commonly received doctrine that God, from all eternity, foreknew whatsoever has come to pass. This doctrine, it seems to me, is contrary to reason and Scripture, and is in the highest degree dishonoring to the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity.” T. W. Brents of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement dedicated a chapter of his “biblical” theology to the defense of dynamic omniscience. His book was influential in the Churches of Christ for many decades.19

In the latter nineteenth century many people defended the view including Rowland G. Hazard and the Catholic writer Jules Lequyer.20 Proponents also include less orthodox thinkers such as Gustave. T. Fechner, Otto Pfleiderer, William James, and Edgar S. Brightman.21

Theologians include Jürgen Moltmann, Paul Fides, and Michael Welker.22 Contemporary Dutch Reformed theologians such as Vincent Brümmer, Hendrikus Berkhof and Adrio König affirm it as do the American Reformed thinkers Nicholas Wolterstorff and Harry Boer.23 Other theologians include Thomas Finger (Mennonite), W. Norris Clarke (Roman Catholic), Brian Hebblethwaite, Robert Ellis, Kenneth Archer (Pentecostal) Barry Callen (Church of God), German theologian Heinzpeter Hempelmann and perhaps Albert Truesdale (Nazarene).24 Major Jones claims that the position is well known in the African-American tradition.25

The dynamic omniscience view is exceedingly popular among analytic philosophers who affirm orthodox Christianity. Quite a number of the luminaries among Christian philosophers assert it: Richard Swinburne (Oxford), William Hasker, David Basinger, Peter Van Inwagen (Notre Dame), J. R. Lucas, Peter Geach, Richard Purtill, A. N. Prior, and Keith Ward.26  It is also affirmed by Nicholas Wolterstorff (formerly of Calvin and Yale) and Vincent Brümmer (Dutch Reformed).27 Several philosophers contributed to a book on open theism and science: Dean Zimmerman, Robin Collins, Alan Rhoda, David Woodruff, and Jeffrey Koperski.28  Timothy O’Connor (Indiana University) also affirms the openness model.29 Though there remain defenders of both theological determinism and simple foreknowledge, it seems that the majority of Christian philosophers who publish on the subject today believe that the main options are middle knowledge and dynamic omniscience.

Acclaimed physicist and theologian, John Polkinghorne, holds it as does mathematician D. J. Barholomew and physicist Arthur Peacocke.30

For those interested in biblical support for the dynamic omniscience view, the most important work is by Hebrew Bible scholar, Terrence Fretheim, who has over a dozen publications that document in detail the biblical support for this view of omniscience.31

John Goldingay, professor of Old Testament at Fuller Seminary, has defended it in his Old Testament Theology.32 The work of Boyd and Sanders also contains biblical support.

A number of theologians, philosophers and writers have affirmed the position. Clark Pinnock, Gregory Boyd, Richard Rice, and John Sanders have produced several volumes on the topic.33

Other notable scholars include Dallas Willard, Gabriel Fackre, William Abraham, Paul Borgman, Henry Knight III, Alan Padgett, Tom Oord, and Peter Wagner.34 Researchers and popular writers include Michael Saia, William Pratney, H. Roy Elseth, Gordon C. Olson, Madelline L’Engle, and Brother Andrew.35

The position is affirmed by many YWAM leaders and leaders of the Ichthus church movement in England. Many Pentecostals are supporting it.36 Some leaders in a couple of denominations have spoken in favor of it: the Evangelical Covenant Church and Independent Christian Churches. The organization, Evangelical Educational Ministries, publishes copies of the works of L. D. McCabe and Gordon Olson: http://www.eeminc.org/prodserv.html.

In sum, the dynamic omniscience view was held by a smattering of people until the nineteenth century when serious scholarship begins to be published on it.37

In the latter twentieth century the number of proponents and the amount of quality works setting forth the position has grown exponentially. In part, the view is increasing in popularity in the freewill tradition due to its ability to better explain the biblical texts and give greater intellectual coherence as to how God relates to us.

Some evangelicals do not embrace the open view of omniscience but do arrive at views that have great similarity to it. Gilbert Bilezekian, professor of theology at Wheaton and theological pastor at Willow Creek (he has been Hybels mentor since college) puts forward a view similar to the open view. He claims that God can know what we will do in the future but decides not to know. See his Christianity 101 (Zondervan). Arminian theologian, John Tal Murphy (Taccoa Falls College), interacts with open theism and suggests that though God knows all that will occur in the future God has the ability to “block out of his consciousness” knowledge of what will happen. God can, in effect, “forget” what he knows is going to happen. God does this in order to enter into genuine dialog and interpersonal relations with us. See his, Divine Paradoxes: A Finite View of an Infinite God (Christian Publications, Camp Hill, PA 1998), pp. 49-56. Though I see problems with the views expressed by Bilezekian and Murphy, I am pleased that they understand the problems with simple foreknowledge and, as evangelical Arminians, attempt to find a plausible solution that arrives, for all practical purposes, at a position quite similar to the open view.

In addition, the evangelical Arminian theologian, Jack Cottrell has recently affirmed a temporal version of incremental simple foreknowledge. This view, in my opinion, arrives at precisely the same practical implications for divine providence as the open view. See John Sanders “Is Open Theism a Radical Revision or Miniscule Modification of Arminianism?” Wesleyan Theological Journal 38.2 (Fall 2003): 69-102.

Footnotes:

1. Brümmer, What Are We Doing When We Pray? A Philosophical Inquiry (London: SCP, 1984), p. 44.

2. Cicero, De Divinatione (On Divination), 2.5-8. See my “Historical Considerations,” p. 68. On Alexander see R. T. Wallis “Divine Omniscience in Plotinus, Proclus, and Aquinas” in H. J. Blumenthal and R. A. Markus eds. Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought (London: Variorum Pub., 1981), pp. 223-5 and J. Den Boeft, Calcidius On Fate: His Doctrines and Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1970), p. 54. On Porphyry see ibid., p. 56.

3. Amonius came close in that he distinguished between definite and indefinite truths about the future. However, he seems to claim that the indefinite truths are only so for humans. Hence, they are indefinite only in an epistemic sense, not ontologically. Greg Boyd has suggested to me that Proclus emphasized the idea that God’s knowledge must be defined by the nature of divinity rather than by the nature of what is known (this allows God to know future contingents as necessities). Those after him, such as Augustine, presume that divinity must have exhaustive definite foreknowledge. Also, they assume that if one denies exhaustive definite foreknowledge then bivalence is denied. But there are ways to affirm bivalence without affirming exhaustive definite foreknowledge (see my The God Who Risks, revised edition, pages 335-6 note 133).

4. Gregory Boyd argues that both non-Christian and Christian thinkers on this issue were shaped by widely held assumptions about the nature of truth and divination. See his “Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustive Definite Foreknowledge to God: A Historic Overview and Critical Assessment.” Religious Studies 45 (2009): 1-19.

5. Erickson, What Does God Know?, pp. 111-2, claims that Celsus, a Greek philosophical critic of Christianity, and the Christian heretic Marcion held to dynamic omniscience. This is not the case, however. Erickson cites Origen’s book, Against Celsus, 2.20, to prove that Celus rejected foreknowledge. In this text Celsus critiques what he considers to be an incoherence in Christian teaching. He argues that Jesus was not able to turn Judas and Peter from their wicked acts by forecasting what they were about to do. Surely, a true God could accomplish that. Elsewhere Celsus asks why God became a human. “Does he want to know what is going on among men? If he does’t know, then he does not know everything. If he does know, why does he not simply correct men by his divine power?” In Celsus on the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, R. Joseph Hoffmann trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 76. His point is that a true God would both know and be in control. Celsus believes in providence, but not the sort that interacts with creation. Rather, God orders the universe for the good of the whole (Celsus, p. 85). He says (p. 103) that a true God is strongly immutable in all respects (that would include no change in knowledge), impassible (no sorrow or change of mind as the Christians hold), and is anonymous, beyond predication and human knowing. Celsus was a Middle Platonist for whom God was beyond being. For him, the Christian assertions regarding God’s involvement in history are grossly anthropomorphic. He rejects Origen’s notion that God “sees ahead” what we will do and then takes appropriate action not because he rejects foreknowledge, as Erickson claims, but because that way of thinking is beneath the grandeur of God. As for Marcion, Erickson cites Tertullian’s Five Books Against Marcion (2.5). Tertullian says that Marcion raised the traditional problem of evil: Can God be good, omnipotent and omniscient if evil exists? Tertullian then proceeds to argue that God is indeed completely good, prescient, and all powerful even though evil exists due to the freewill of humans. God, prior to creation, saw that humans would sin and so God made preparations in response. In this and the following chapters Tertullian argues against Marcion’s claim that God cannot be involved in the world the way the Old Testament describes. Marcion said that Yahweh (the God of the Jews) was a screwed up deity who was either capricious or lacked foreknowledge (2.23). For Marcion, a true God has prescience but Yahweh lacks it. Tertullian seeks to explain biblical texts where God is said to change his mind in a way that avoids Marcion’s criticism and thus affirm that Yahweh is the true God. Also, note that the Gnostic text, The Testimony of Truth, argues that the God of the Old Testament lacks foreknowledge and so cannot be fully divine. The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 412.

6. See Boeft, Calcidius, pp. 52-6. Calcidius’ works did not become well known until the twelfth century.

7. See Michael Lodahl, “The (Brief) Openness Debate in Islamic Theology” in Thomas J. Oord ed., Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science (Pickwick, 2009), 55, 59.

8. On Ibn Ezra see his Commentary on Genesis 22:1 (I am grateful to Marc Brettler for his translation). On Gersonides see Feldman, Seymour. “The Binding of Isaac: A Test-Case of Divine Foreknowledge.” Ed. Tamar Rudavsky. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives (Boston: D. Reidel, 1985), p. 114. See also, Richard Purtill, “Foreknowledge and Fatalism” Religious Studies 10 (1974): 319.

9. Miley, Systematic Theology (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1892), vol. 1 p. 181.

10. On Socinus see Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, eds. Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 225-227; and Joshua Toulmin, Memoirs of the Life, Character, Sentiments and Writings of Faustus Socinus (London: J. Brown, 1777), pp. 230-1. Some evangelical critics of open theism attempt to smear us by calling our view “Socinianism.” There is no historical linkage between open theists and Socinus. A more likely historical link is with McCabe.

11. Andrew Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1748).

12. See Randy Maddox “Seeking a Response-able God: The Wesleyan Tradition and Process Theology” Bryan Stone and Thomas Oord eds., Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologians in Dialogue (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), pp. 111-142.

13. Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes (London: J & T. Clarke, 1810), his comment on Acts 2:47 is in his Christian Theology, Arranged, with A Life of the Author by Samuel Dunn, (New York: Lane and Scott, 1885), 69-74; and “Some Observations on the Being and Providence of God,” in Discourses on Various Subjects Relative to the Being and Attributes of God, and His Works in Creation, Providence, and Grace, (New York:  B. Waugh and T. Mason, 1832), 298. In his survey, Erickson fails to mention any of these passages from Clarke and so erroneously concludes that Clarke did not affirm dynamic omniscience. See Maddox, “Seeking a Respond-able God,” for a discussion of the controversy surrounding Clarke’s views in Methodism. Billy Hibbard, Memoirs of the Life and Travels of B. Hibbard, second edition (New York: Pierchy & Reed, 1843), pp. 373-5. Erickson chides open theists for mentioning little known figures such as Hibbard. Erickson scoffs that he was unable to locate the book. I had no trouble finding it. The point in listing these people is to show that there has been a minority tradition among even orthodox Christians on this topic.

14. McCabe, Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882) and The Foreknowledge of God (Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1887). For reprints of these works see http://www.eeminc.org/prodserv.html).  For a summary of McCabe’s arguments see William McGuire King, “God’s Nescience of Future Contingents: A Nineteenth-Century Theory,” Process Studies9 (Fall, 1979): 105-115 and Tiessen, David Alstad. “The Openness of Model of God: An Evangelical Paradigm in Light of Its Nineteenth-Century Wesleyan Precedent.” Didaskalia (Spring, 2000):77-101. The most thorough study of McCabe and the discussion in latter nineteenth Methodism is the, as of yet, unpublished paper by George Porter, “Things That May Be Only? Lorenzo Dow McCabe and Some Neglected Nineteenth Century Roots of Open Theism in North America” (available online: http://www.opentheism.info/index.php/george-m-porter/things-that-may-be-only/. McCabe says that Isaak Dorner wrote him a letter affirming McCabe’s thesis. Divine Nescience, p. 29.

15. See Maddox, “Seeking a Respond-able God.”

16. See his Systematic Theology, vol. 1 pp. 180-193.

17. Dorner, Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration, Robert Williams and Claude Welch trans. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), pp. 149-153. Dorner also set forth this position in several other publications. Lengthy quotes from several of Dorner’s other publications appear in Lornzo McCabe, Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882), pp. 27-29, 285-7.

18. Joel S. Hayes, The Foreknowledge of God (Nashville: Publishing House of the M[ethodist] E[piscopal] Church, South, 1890).

19. T. W. Brents, The Gospel Plan of Salvation first edition (Cincinnati: Chase & Hall, 1874), pp. 92-108.

20. Rowland G. Hazard, Freedom of Mind in Willing (New York: Appleton, 1865), chapter 12. On Jules Lequyer (name is sometimes spelled differently) see Donald Wayne Viney, “Jules Lequyer and the Openness of God,” Faith and Philosophy 14, no. 2 (April, 1997): 212-235 and Hartshorne and Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, pp. 227-230.

21. See Hartshorne and Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, for Fechner (243-254), Pfleiderer (269-270), James (335-350), and Brightman (358-362). Brightman, The Problem of God (New York: Abingdon, 1930), pp. 101-3. Brightman belonged to the school of thought known as “Boston personalism,” which tended to affirm dynamic omniscience.

22. On these scholars see their chapters in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, John Polkinghorne ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001). Though most of the contributors in this volume endorse dynamic omniscience I have not listed those from a process theology persuasion. Fiddes’, The Creative Suffering of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) is a first rate work discussing passibility and conditionality in God.

23. Brümmer, What Are We Doing When We Pray?, pp. 43-5; Berkhof, Christian Faith, trans. Sierd Woudstra (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979); König, Here Am I (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1982); Wolterstorff, “Unqualified Divine Temporality,” Gregory Ganssle ed. God & Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press), p. 188; and Boer, An Ember Still Glowing (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990).

24. Finger, Christian Theology: An Eschatological Approach, 2 vols. (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 1989), 2.481-508; Hebblethwaite, “Some Reflections on Predestination, Providence and Divine Foreknowledge,” Religious Studies 15.4 (Dec. 1979): 433-448; Clarke, God Knowable and Unknowable, p. 65; Ellis, Answering God: Towards a Theology of Intercession (Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster, 2005), pp. 187-9; Archer, “Open Theism View: Prayer Changes Things,” The Pneuma Review 5.2 (Spring 2002): 32-53; Callen, Discerning the Divine :God in Christian Theology, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004). Though Callen does not fully endorse the view in his book, he has informed in me in a letter that he does affirm it. Heinzpeter Hempelmann, Wir haben den Horizont weggewischt Die Herausforderung: Postmoderner Wahrheitspluralismus und christliches Wahrheitszeugnis (Wuppertal 2008).  Albert Truesdale speaks approvingly of the view though it is not clear if he himself affirms it. See his “The Eternal, Personal, Creative God,” Charles Carter ed., A Contemporary Wesleyan Theology: Biblical, Systematic and Practical (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983), 1.126.

25. Jones, The Color of God: The Concept of God in Afro‑American Thought, (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), p. 95.

26. Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Hasker has published an enormous amount on the subject, see Providence, Evil and the Openness of God (New York: Routledge, 2004) and God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Hasker and Basinger have chapters in The Openness of God; Basinger has collected a number of his essays in The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment (Downers Grove, Ill.: 1996); Van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God.” Ed. Thomas Morris. Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); A. N. Prior (“The Formalities of Omniscience,” Philosophy 32 (1962), pp. 119-29); J. R. Lucas (The Freedom of the Will, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970, and The Future:  An Essay on God, Temporality, and Truth, London:  Basil Blackwell, 1989); Peter Geach (Providence and Evil, Cam­bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Richard Purtill (“Fatalism and the Omnitemporality of Truth,” Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988), pp. 185-192); and Keith Ward Divine Action (San Francisco: Torch, 1991). Frederick Sontag also affirms the view though he is significantly less orthodox than the other philosophers in this list. See his “Does Omnipotence Necessarily Entail Omniscience? Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34 (1991): 505-8.

27. Wolterstorff, see his essay in God & Time: Four Views, p. 188 and his “God Everlasting.” Brümmer see Speaking of a Personal God  (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and What are We Doing When We Pray? A Philosophical Inquiry (London: SCM, 1984).

28. Each of these persons has an essay in God In an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism, eds. William Hasker, Thomas Jay Oord, and Dean Zimmerman (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).

29. Timothy O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

30. Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Realilty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 108-9; Barholomew, God of Chance (London: SCM, 1984), chap. 7.

31. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation. (Abindon, 2005), The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Fortress, 1984), The Book of Genesis in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Abingdon, 1994), Exodus (John Knox, 1991), “Divine Foreknowledge, Divine Constancy, and the Rejection of Saul’s Kingship.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 47, no. 4 (Oct. 1985): 595-602, “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 10, no. 1 (June 1988): 47-70, and “The Repentance of God: A Study of Jeremiah 18:7-10. Hebrew Annual Review  11 (1987): 81-92.

32. See vol. 1 pages 136-8, 60-4, 168 and 98.

33. Their key works are: Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001); The Openness of God; Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000) and God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), Rice, God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Freewill (Eugene, Ore.: WipfandStock, 2005), Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, revised ed. (IVP, 2007).

34. Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), pp. 244-253. Willard does not elaborate on whether he means (1) that God could have determined all future events (no libertarian freedom) and thus had exhaustive foreknowledge of them (what proponents of dynamic omniscience believe) or (2) that God could know the future actions of creatures with libertarian freedom but somehow chooses not to.  Fackre, The Christian Story, rev. ed. in three volumes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984), 1.257-8; Abraham, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985); Borgman, Genesis the Story We’ve Never Heard (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Knight, A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology in a Postmodern World (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), pp. 168-179; Padget, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), and Tom Oord, The Nature of Love (chalice, 2010) .

35. Saia, Does God Know the Future? A Biblical Investigation of Foreknowledge and Free Will (Fairfax, Virginia: Xulon Press, 2002); Pratney,The Nature and Character of God (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1998); Elseth, Did God Know?: A Study of the Nature of God (St. Paul, Calvary United Church, 1977); Gordon Olson, The Foreknowledge of God and The Omniscience of the Godhead  (Arlington Heights, IL: The Bible Research Corporation); L’Engle, Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation (28-30). and Brother Andrew And God Changed His Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Chosen Books, 1999).

36. See the Pentecostal, Kenneth J. Archer, “Open Theism View: ‘Prayer Changes Things’,” The Pneuma Review vol. 5 no. 2 (Spring 2002), 32-53).

37. Millard Erickson (What Does God Know? p. 131) claims that the dynamic omniscience view stems from “the tradition of Celsus, Marcion and Socinus” (a non Christian and two heretics) rather than from the “orthodox” tradition. However, Erickson misreads Celsus and Marcion since they did not affirm dynamic omniscience. Even if they did, however, the position could just as well stem from the tradition of Cicero, Calcidius, and McCabe (a respected non Christian and two orthodox Christians). Several articles have been written giving evidence that McCabe is the main historical source for the contemporary openness movement (see the paper by George Porter on this website’s Information page). The dynamic omniscience view is a minority tradition among orthodox Christians and is widely accepted today. It is disappointing that Erickson fails to mention the contemporary theologians and philosophers cited above and that in his chapters on the biblical material fails to engage the detailed biblical studies of Terence Fretheim. Instead of dealing with the evidence Fretheim amasses Erickson simply casts aspersions on Fretheim’s credibility. He casts proponents of dynamic omniscience alongside “heretics” and “liberals” in order to claim they are outside “the mainstream of orthodox Christian thought” (131). Does he really want to say this about people such as Dallas Willard, Jürgen Moltmann, John Polkinghorne, Peter Van Inwagen and Barry Callen? Why does he not mention these and other proponents of dynamic omniscience? Does he want to make it seem that only a few people, from a suspect heritage, affirm it? Erickson ignores the connections between open theism and the freewill tradition. For him, “the God of traditional theism” is the Calvinist God who exercises meticulous control. Hence, “traditional Christian theism” means the no risk tradition of Augustine and Calvin. That is indeed a tradition in Christian thought but so is the older freewill tradition.

for further info -

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_theism