Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Key Ideas of Open Theology - Part 4/5: "Sanders & Hasker"



Key Ideas of Open Theology - Part 4


Open Theism: Progress and Prospects

History

The term “Openness of God” became well known after the 1994 publication of a book with that title. However, the position is much older and there are non-Christian forms of it as well. In particular, the dynamic omniscience view was affirmed by Cicero and Porphyry in antiquity and by medieval Jewish and Islamic thinkers such as Ibn Ezra, Gersonides, and Abd al-Jabbar. The earliest known Christian proponent was Calcidius (fourth century). There were a few proponents during the Reformation but it is not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the view became widely discussed. Around 1730 Samuel Fancourt wrote two books promoting the view and Andrew Ramsay, an important associate of John Wesley, affirmed a variant of it. Dozens of books and articles were written for and against the position in the nineteenth century. The famous German theologian, Isaak Dorner, affirmed dynamic omniscience arguing that a consistent view of God working with us in history requires that God knows future free acts of creatures as possibilities, not actualities. Many Methodists debated it in print including American theologian Lorenzo McCabe, who wrote two lengthy books supporting the view in which he cites Dorner. 

In the twentieth century a number of significant theologians affirmed the view including Jürgen Moltmann, Paul Fiddes, John Polkinghorne, and Hendrikus Berkhof. Among philosophers of religion the position is quite widespread including luminaries such as Richard Swinburne, Keith Ward, Vincent Brümmer,Peter Van Inwagen, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The important Hebrew Bible scholar, Terence Fretheim, has numerous publications supporting the view.


None of these authors, to our knowledge, used the term “open theism” or any other distinct label to identify the view. In the nineteenth century the debate took place under the heading “divine nescience which fails to denote a distinct position.It was not until the publication of two different books with the same title, The Openness of God, in 1980 and 1994, that the position was named. The 1994 book was authored by Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice (who wrote the 1980 book), John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. The book helped spawn a significant body of literature on the topic of open theism including64 books, 253 journal articles and book chapters, 23 doctoral dissertations, and 15 master’s theses.


In January of 1995, Christianity Today, the flagship periodical of American evangelicalism, published four reviews of The Openness of God. The lead review was favorable but the other three were highly critical and dismissive. Despite this the book placed eighth in the Christianity Today book of the year awards. Three authors of The Openness of God subsequently published monographs on the topic: Basinger wrote The Case for Freewill Theism (1996), Sanders published The God Who Risks, the most thorough case to date of the biblical and theological support for open theism (1998), and Pinnock wrote Most Moved Mover (2001). In addition, Gregory Boyd published God of the Possible (2000). 

The primary opposition to the view was from Calvinist (not to be confused with Reformed thought) evangelicals who affirm theological determinism. According to this position God meticulously controls every event in the world in minute detail to ensure that only what God specifically ordains to occur is what happens. The titles of the publications indicate their disdain: Bruce Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: the Diminished God of Open Theism (2000), Norman Geisler and Wayne House, The Battle for God (2001), Douglas Huffman and Johnson, eds., God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God (2002), and John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Helseth, eds,. Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (2003). Gross inaccuracies and the inability to understand the openness model on its own terms are common problems in many of these works. More evenhanded are Terrance Tiessen, Providence and Prayer (2000), Millard Erickson, What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? (2006), and Steven Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow? (2006). During this same time period evangelical Calvinists attempted to revoke the membership of Pinnock and Sanders in the Evangelical Theological Society and to terminate Boyd and Sanders from their teaching positions at evangelical colleges. Of these attempts, only the one to force Sanders out of his college was successful. In addition, a few denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Evangelical Free Church modified their statements of faith in order to exclude open theism.

Despite the strong opposition, works supporting open theism continued to be published. InterVarsity Press, a leading evangelical publisher, asked Sanders to revise The God Who Risks (2007) by updating its arguments and responding to criticisms. The Openness of God continues to sell well and is in its nineteenth printing. Process theists and open theists engaged each other in John Cobb and Clark Pinnock, eds., Searching for an Adequate God (2000). Open theists were invited to dialogue with multiple perspectives in: James Beilby and Paul Eddy, eds., Divine Foreknowledege: Four Views (2001),Gregory Ganssle, ed., God and Time: Four Views (2001), Chris Hall and John Sanders, Does God Have a Future? (2003), Bruce Ware, ed., Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views (2008), Stephen Long and George Kalantzis, eds., The Sovereignty of God Debate (2009) and God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (forthcoming).

Open theists have applied the view to a number of topics. On evil and suffering see William Hasker, Providence, Evil and the Openness of God (2004) and The Triumph of God Over Evil (2008), Gregory Boyd, Is God to Blame? (2003), Terence Fretheim, Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters (2010), and Richard Rice, Suffering and the Search for Meaning (2014). Two edited collections of proponents using open theism to engage various issues in science have appeared: Thomas Oord, ed., Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science (2009) and William Hasker, Thomas Oord, and Dean Zimmerman, eds., God in an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism (2011). Other topics include Vaughn Baker, Evangelism and the Openness of God (2013), Sharron Harvey, Open Theism and Environmental Responsibilities: A Promotion of Environmental Ethics (2012), Robert Ellis, Answering God: Towards A Theology of Intercession (2005), and Roberto Sirvent, Embracing Vulnerability: Human and Divine (2014). In addition to the works already mentioned there are 116 articles and book chapters by open theists addressing various topics since 1994. A couple of works in German supporting open theism have appeared: Johannes Grössl,Die Freiheit des Menschen als Risiko Gottes:Der Offene Theismus als Konzeption der Vereinbarkeit von göttlicher Allwissenheit und menschlicher Freiheit (2015) and Denis Schmelter, Gottes Handeln und die Risikologik der Liebe: Zur rationalen Vertretbarkeit des Glaubens an Bittgebetserhörungen (2012).


A Philosophical Perspective

There are multiple routes to open theism, multiple ways in which various thinkers have been moved to take up this position. There is no doubt, however, that for many philosophers the impulse to adopt the position has come by way of the conviction that there is a logical incompatibility between comprehensive and infallible divine foreknowledge and free will for human beings. The awareness of this problem goes far back in history, but it came to the fore in recent discussion as a result of two seminal articles by A. N. Prior and Nelson Pike. Since then, the basic argument has been reformulated in many different ways, and there have been numerous attempted answers. Open theists, however, find all of the answers unsatisfactory, and conclude that the incompatibility is real. We shall consider here two versions of the incompatibility argument, as well as some attempted responses to it. 

First, however, it is necessary to say something about the conception of free will that is foundational to the argument, and to open theism itself. This is a libertarian conception of free will, not a compatibilist conception. According to compatibilism, a person has free will with regard to a given decision if it is the case that the person could have acted differently if he or she had so desired. A person who remains in a particular room lacks free will in this sense if the room is locked from the outside (like in a prison). If, however, there is no such obstacle to the person’s leaving the room, that person has free will with respect to that decision. What is noteworthy is that free will in this sense is perfectly compatible with there being elements in the situation that make it absolutely inevitable that the person will choose to remain in the room – for example, if there is someone else in the room he very much desires to meet and to converse with. In general, this conception of free will is consistent with there being factors that causally determine that the agent will act in a certain way, so long as those factors do not physically prevent a certain action from being taken (as in the case of the locked room). Thus the name, “compatibilism.” A compatibilist view of free will is congenial to varieties of theology that feature absolute divine predestination of all that occurs, a belief that is categorically rejected by open theists.

For libertarians, compatibilism does not provide a sufficient account of genuine free will. For a person to be free in making a decision, it must be completely within that person’s power either to make the decision in question as is actually done or to make some other decision, under exactly the same circumstances. There cannot, then, be prior determining causes of any kind either internal or external to the agent. This does not mean that actions are taken randomly or without reasons. There are reasons for our actions, but the reasons do not determine that the actions are taken in one particular way, for there are often countervailing reasons for taking a different course of action. A definition that captures this idea of free will is the following:


(FW)    N is free at time t with respect to performing =def It is in N’s power at t to perform A, and it is in N’s power at t to refrain from performing A.


The key idea behind this definition is that, if it is not in my power to refrain from acting in a certain way, I am not free in so acting. This seems hard to deny.

With this notion of freedom in hand, we proceed to the incompatibility argument. Like many arguments on this topic, it begins with a simple, mundane example; since there is nothing special about the example in question, the result can easily be generalized to actions in general.

  • It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Premise)
  • It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)
  • Therefore, God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 1,2)
  • If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise)
  • Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3,4)
  • It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one. (From 2)
  • Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5,6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free will.

Call this Argument A. Further elaboration is possible, but the argument as stated can serve as a basis for our discussion. That discussion will take the form of statements of, and brief replies to, two of the main objections that have been raised against the incompatibility argument. These objections, it should be noted, accept the libertarian conception of free will on which the argument is based. For compatibilists, the argument presents no problem since they already reject this sort of free will. The objections noted here, on the other hand, accept that conception of free will and seek to show that it is not after all inconsistent with comprehensive divine knowledge of the future.

The oldest, and most popular, objection to the incompatibility argument is that divine foreknowledge of an action cannot cause the action to be performed, and because of this it is not relevant to whether or not the action is done freely. Strictly speaking, this objection is irrelevant to Argument A, since that argument makes no claim about the causation of actions. Still, there is some plausibility to the idea that, if the action cannot fail to occur as it does, there must be something that causes its occurrence. Here Jonathan Edwards makes a crucial obser­vation: foreknowledge can very well show an action to be necessary even if it is not what makes it necessary. (Edwards was a compatibilist, and a theological determinist, who used the incompatibility argument against his Arminian opponents who affirmed comprehensive foreknowledge but wished to retain libertarian free will.) If we wish to know the cause of a foreknown action, there are plenty of possible candidates, beginning with Edwards’ own favorite, an efficacious divine decree.

Another classical objection to the incompatibility argument appeals to the doctrine of divine timelessness. God does not, according to this objection, know or have beliefs in the past about actions that lie in our future. Rather, God knows these actions timelessly, in the eternal present. And just as the fact that someone knows, right now, what you are doing now does not detract from your freedom in performing the action, so also God’s knowing in an eternal present what you do has no effect on the freedom of that action.

Since Argument A is formulated with a temporal view of God, it does not directly apply to the envisaged situation. However, a few changes will result in an argument against divine timeless knowledge that is equally effective. First, the premise affirming divine omniscience needs to be modified:

(2*)    It is impossible that God should believe what is false, or fail to believe eternally anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)

It follows that

(3*)   Therefore, God eternally believes that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow.

And now the crucial premise is

(4*)   If God eternally believes a certain thing, it is not now in anyone’s power to bring it about that God does not eternally believe that thing. (Premise)

One would be bold indeed to maintain that each of us has the power such that, given that God’s eternal beliefs are a certain way, we should now be able to bring it about that those beliefs are different than in fact they are. That just does not seem to make sense. But given (4*), the rest of the argument follows as before and we again reach the conclusion that Clarence’s eating the omelet is not a free action on his part. (Call this Argument B.)

What has been presented here is a mere sampling of the extensive discussions that have occurred surrounding the incompatibility argument. There exists a large literature on this subject but open theists are persuaded that none of the answers to the argument that have been proposed are successful.

The incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is the most distinctive philosophical view characteristic of open theism, but it is not the only one. Another important question concerns the nature of time, in particular the distinction between past, present, and future. The two most prominent alternatives on this topic are presentism and eternalism or four-dimensionalism. According to presentism, which is arguably the view of common sense, what really exists at any given moment is what exists now, at that moment: the past is the realm of what did exist, but exists no longer, and the future the realm of what does not yet exist, though it may come to exist. According to eternalism, in contrast, past, present, and future all exist together: there is, in fact, no such thing as an absolute present moment; rather, which moment is “now” is relative to the observer who so designates the particular moment he happens to occupy. In order to grasp the difference between these views, it helps to think of time-travel stories. It is obvious, if one thinks about it, that these stories presuppose that past, present, and future all exist together; otherwise, there would be nowhere for the would-be time traveler to go. It is claimed that eternalism receives scientific support from the theory of relativity, but this is controversial, and the debate about the alternative views in the philosophy of time remains active and intense.

It seems clear that open theism, and in general libertarian views of free will, presuppose presentism or some similar view, and are incompatible with eternalism. This is so because libertarianism requires a metaphysical asymmetry between past and future that eternalism denies. The future, for libertarianism, contains genuine alternative possibilities, different ways the future could be, as a result of free decisions that have yet to be made. The past, in contrast, contains no such alternatives: the alternatives may have been there once, but the opportunity for “the road not taken” is gone, never to return. For eternalism, in contrast, the future is fixed just as much as the past, although our cognitive limitations often preclude our seeing at a given time what may transpire at a later time. Eternalism is incompatible with free will – at least, with libertarian free will.

Closely related to the open theist affirmation of presentism is the conviction that God is not timelessly eternal, but rather undergoes a succession of states and thus is temporal. Argument B has shown that timeless divine omniscience is just as incompatible with free will as is temporal foreknowledge. And there is a further, decisive incompatibility between divine timelessness and a presentist view of time. If God is timeless, God cannot know tensed propositions. For presentism, there is an objective fact of the matter as to what is happening right now, and correspondingly about what has already happened and about what has not yet occurred. A timeless God, however, is completely unable to know truths of this sort. A timeless God can know, for example, that Jesus is born in 4 B.C. (or whichever the correct date actually is), but such a God cannot know that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have already occurred. In order to know those things, God would have to have changed: prior to 4 B.C. God would have known that these events have not yet happened, whereas after about 30 A.D. God would have known that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are now in the world’s past. But of course, change of this sort is impossible for a timeless God. Now it is unthinkable that God should be unaware of facts such as these; it follows that God is not, cannot be, timeless.

Divine timelessness is only one of the ways in which open theism differs from the “classical theism” exemplified by Aquinas. Open theists of course reject the theological determinism which many consider to be an implication of Aquinas’s view. They also reject the doctrine that God is “wholly actual,” that there is no distinction in God between actuality and potentiality. A straightforward implication of this view is that it is impossible for God to have acted in any way differently from the way God does in fact act. (If God could have acted differently, this would mean that God would have the unactualized potentiality so to act.) This would mean, for instance, that it was impossible for God to refrain from creating a world, or indeed to have created a world that differs in any respect from the world God actually created. This, however, implies a denial of divine freedom as well as a pretty severe limitation of divine power.

Another important respect in which open theism differs from classical theism is the strong doctrine of divine impassibility. Impassibility in the tradition means at least two different things. On the one hand, it means that God is never passive with regard to creatures, which is to say God is never affected by creatures in any way. Even God’s knowledge of creatures is derived solely from God’s internal awareness of his own intentions; no effect of the creatures on God is required. On the other hand, it means that God suffers no “passions,” no changing emotions, but is in a permanent and unvarying state of bliss. Open theism rejects both of these implications. God does indeed interact with the creation, which is to say God both affects and is affected by created beings. Creatures cannot, of course, harm God in the sense of endangering God’s being; it is God that keeps them in being from moment to moment, and this relation can never be reversed. But God does take account of what the creatures are doing; this is dramatized by the Old Testament depiction of God as changing plans because of what human beings have done. Furthermore, God can be pleased or displeased, can rejoice and suffer, because of what God learns in this way. Clearly, there are issues here concerning anthropo­morphism, but open theists will say that the classical theist doctrine of impassibility leans too far in the opposite direction in order to avoid this.

This last point, as well as others that have been made, underscores the fact that open theism views God in more human-like terms than we find in the more severe classical accounts of God’s nature. God is a being of infinite wisdom and power, yet God does not control events in such a way that everything that occurs necessarily corresponds to God’s wishes. Having gifted some creatures with genuine freedom, God interacts with them as free persons, respecting their free choices and self-determination even as God shapes human destiny towards ultimate divine purposes. God takes genuine risks in this process; not indeed the risk that God’s own existence will be imperiled, but the risk that God’s objectives for human persons, persons God loves deeply, will in some cases not be fulfilled. And when humans turn away from God, God is deeply grieved.

Isn’t all this excessively anthropomorphic? There is indeed a danger of a theology that goes too far in portraying God as human-like. But there is also an opposite danger, a danger which ought to be evident when we consider that Christian faith proclaims that human beings are created in God’s image. A conception of God that distances God too far from human concerns may be even more harmful than one that imports a few too many human-like characteristics into its portrayal of God. Eleonore Stump, who is no open theist, remarks that the God portrayed in the Hebrew Bible is “very human.” She also says, “Anthropomorphism is wrong-headed only if it is stupid. Philosophically literate anthropomorphism is exactly what one would expect of any worldview which affirms that human beings are made in the image of God.”

A corollary of the above is the fact that open theism embraces a robust metaphysical realism in its view of God and language about God. That is, it assumes that we can say about God what is genuinely true, though certainly not everything that is true about God. Traditional Christianity holds that God is a personal agent who loves creatures. This implies a limited degree of univocal predication in our speech about God in that there must be a being, God, who has personal relationships with creatures. The importance of analogy and metaphor is recognized, but these assume that God is an actual agent who has relations with creatures. It is important to realize that metaphors have entailments that speak truly of God, and that metaphors often hold a richness of meaning that is lost in an attempted literal translation. Open theism affirms a metaphysical realism helpful for the religious life, which is endangered by extreme apophatic views that place too great a distance between God and human beings.

One philosophical topic about which there is significant disagreement among open theists is the status of “future contingent” propositions – propositions making assertions about what will or will not happen in the future, when this depends on free choices (and possibly other undetermined events) which may or may not occur. The simplest and most obvious approach is to treat them like any other proposition, so that (for example), “John will come to dinner next Sunday” is true if John does come to dinner on Sunday, false otherwise. This has the merit of leaving the logical relations unchanged: bivalence still applies to future contin­gents, and where ‘p’ is a future contingent proposition ‘p’ and ‘not-p’ are contradictories, just like any other proposition and its negation. The metaphysics of the situation seem problematic, however. It is not merely that, when the statement is made, the event of John’s coming (or of his not coming) does not exist This after all is true also for statements about the past, but while some account must be given of the truth-makers for such statements, no one denies that they are in fact true or false. The problem, rather, is that the proposition is either true or false when it is uttered in spite of the fact that at that time it remains objectively undecided whether the proposition will be true or false. The truth-maker lies in a future which is not only non-existent, but indeterminate. And by now this is beginning to look like a rather peculiar sort of “truth.” J. R. Lucas refers to this as “valedictory truth,” meaning that it can be recognized as truth only in retrospect, once the event in question has occurred. This seems a strange situation, though not perhaps incoherent.

A second option is to treat all future contingent propositions as falseso that both “John will come to dinner next Sunday” and “John will not come to dinner next Sunday” are false until the decision has been made with regard to his coming. This retains bivalence for future contingents, but it means that ‘p’ and ‘not-p’ are not contradictories but contraries; both can be false, but both cannot be true. The contradictory of “John will come to dinner next Sunday” is not “John will not come to dinner next Sunday,” but rather “John might not come to dinner next Sunday.” An oddity of this approach is that even propositions with extremely high objective probability are treated as false. For instance “John [an average amateur golfer with a handicap of 15] will not shoot a round under par at Augusta National.” This proposition is false until that point when an under-par round is no longer possible (even a hole-in-one on each of the remaining holes will result in a score over par); at that point, it instantly changes from being false to being true. To say the least, this does not match very well with the way we treat such propositions in practice. This proposal in effect treats both ‘p’ and ‘not-p’ as having modal force, so that, for instance, “John will not come to dinner next Sunday” really amounts to, “It cannot be the case that John will come to dinner next Sunday.” But persons who assert future contingent propositions may deny that they intend their assertions to have such modal force; if we accept their assertion to this effect, what they say is not taken account of by the approach in question.

A third approach is simply to say that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, until the contingency is resolved by events. This of course requires a revision of truth-functional logic: either there must be one or more additional truth-values in addition to “true” and “false,” or we must adopt a system in which “truth-value gaps” are acceptable. While it creates logical complications, the metaphysics of the situation is clear and perhaps more plausible than either of the main alternatives.

These alternatives raise important issues in logic and the philosophy of time, but it is not clear that they will have a major theological impact on open theism. The option in which future contingents are straightforwardly true or false requires us to qualify the definition of omniscience by saying that God knows all true propositions that it is possible for a perfect being to know. This parallels a qualification standardly made in the definition of omnipotence: God is able to do, not anything whatsoever (for instance, God cannot create a square circle), but anything that does not involve a contradiction and is not in conflict with God’s perfect nature. Such a qualification concerning omniscience may be required in any case: arguably, there are “first-person propositions” known to each of us which cannot be known by another person, or even by God. (When someone has a toothache, that person knows the proposition, “I have a toothache,” but God does not know the proposition “I have a toothache,” since God does not have a toothache. God will, of course, know of the person in question that he or she has a toothache.) Theologically, it does not seem that any of the options concerning future contingent propositions either solves theological problems for open theism or creates new problems that did not already exist.


Theological Considerations

The discussions surrounding open theism have clarified a number of issues. One such issue is that classical theism and process theology are not the only two options. It is not simply a choice between divine power and divine relationality because open theism affirms both. Openness retrieves from the biblical texts, early church fathers, and the freewill tradition that some of God’s knowledge and actions are dependent upon creatures—God is receptive and not merely giving. The freewill tradition, for example, claimed to escape theological determinism by using views such as simple foreknowledge or timeless knowledge. They explained that the basis of God’s electing individuals for salvation was due to God’s (so-to-speak) “seeing” which people would trust in Christ and so God’s decision to elect them was logically dependent upon God’s knowledge of the human choices to confess Christ. The notion that any of God’s decisions are dependent upon creatures or that God receives any knowledge from creatures was rejected by classical theism. Instead, it considered God strongly immutable (cannot change in any respect) and strongly impassible (cannot be affected by anything a creature does). Proponents of openness noted that classical theism was not the only view in Christian theological tradition since the freewill tradition existed prior to the appearance of classical theism. Openness tapped into the freewill tradition which allowed for reciprocal relations between God and creatures. Proponents of openness argue that, to be consistent, the freewill tradition needs to hold that God is weakly immutable in that the divine nature cannot change but God’s knowledge and decisions can change. Also, it must affirm weak impassibility meaning that God can be affected by creatures such that God experiences changing emotional states but God is not incapacitated by such emotions. 

In addition, proponents of openness argued that in order for freewill theism to genuinely escape theological determinism it must reject exhaustive infallible foreknowledge as well as divine timelessness. In order to consistently affirm a genuinely relational deity who interacts with creatures, openness affirms dynamic omniscience and divine temporality. However, in contrast to process thought, proponents of openness did not arrive at these conclusions via a metaphysical system. Instead, they affirmed biblical teachings and the divine incarnation in Jesus to argue for a relational deity. Unlike process theology and Thomism openness has not hitched its theological wagon to a particular metaphysical horse. Of course, open theism has metaphysical commitments but proponents are free to draw from a wide array of perspectives, which we think is advantageous. 

The emphasis on divine relationality leads many open theists to affirm the social trinity (e. g., William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God, (2013)). There is no logical necessity to make this move since there are non-Christian and non-trinitarian forms of open theism. Yet, many Christian proponents find that it helps explicate how the economic trinity resonates with the immanent trinity. Furthermore, if one values relationality as an attribute of God, as open theists do, this will tend to make one receptive to the idea of personal relationships within the Trinity, as is affirmed by social trinitarianism. 

Another area that openness emphasizes is that what we do matters to God. Proponents of openness declare that God has decided not to control everything that happens and so relies upon us to cooperate with God in order to bring God’s intentions to fulfillment. How individuals and countries interact and what humans do to the planet matters greatly because God has granted us tremendous freedom and so depends upon us to carry out God’s purposes. Unlike some theologies that say it all depends upon God, even if we act irresponsibly, open theism holds that God has delegated tremendous responsibility to humans to care for one another and our environment. It is neither all up to us nor is it all up to God. The God who raised Jesus from the dead continues to work with us to bring about the divine goals. Openness affirms both human responsibility as well as hope in God. 

Related to this is the language of an “open future.” Open theists hold that what is called “the” future is not something that exits. Rather, the so-called future refers to possible events that might occur as well as some events that God has determined to happen. An open future is not a blueprint or script of the details of what will occur. Instead, it is multiple possibilities that depend upon both what God and creatures do. It is helpful to think of the future as a branching tree or “create your own story” book in which the participants contribute to determining what happens. God operates with general purposes and has open routes with flexible strategies, allowing God to respond to contingencies. The eschaton which God seeks to bring about is not a fixed reality with all the particulars set. Rather, the exact nature of the eschaton depends upon what God and creatures do. 

The freewill theistic tradition holds that some of God’s knowledge and decisions are dependent upon creatures. This approach produced the freewill defense to moral evil that was rejected by theological determinists. According to theological determinism, favored by many evangelicals, God micromanages each detail of every event to ensure that what occurs is specifically what God wanted to happen. This means that God never wants the world to be different than it is at any moment. Every act of genocide, rape, and economic cheating, is precisely what God wants to occur because it is part of the divine plan. Open theists have strongly criticized this approach. Open theists hold that God does not intend such evils but that they result from the divine risk God took in granting freedom to us. Open theists affirm the traditional freewill defense and note that instead of creating a world in which everything would turn out exactly as God foreknew it would, God created a “world type” for which God knew the possibilities but not the actualities of what would occur. God’s dynamic omniscience means that God did not know prior to creation that specific evils such as the Rwanda genocide would occur. This does not, however, get God completely off the hook for responsibility since open theists affirm divine omnipotence to act in earthly affairs. Many open theists hold that God never overrides the freedom of creatures even when great atrocities occur because God made a decision at creation to grant freedom and does not renege on it. Open theism makes some additions to the freewill defense regarding evil that help remove God from responsibility but proponents are aware that any position which affirms doctrines such as creation ex nihilo and raising Jesus from the dead leaves room to ask why God did not prevent a specific act of evil. 

Since God has not predetermined the exact events that will occur, open theists are not obliged to hold that each and every event, including even the worst apparent evils, are “all to the good” in God’s plan. Holding that even apparently evil occurrences are “all for the best” can provide comfort to some, but many times believers wear themselves out looking for the good that will supposedly result from even the worst of happenings. Rather, open theists focus on the general strategies God seems to follow in governing the world; strategies which result in enormous amounts of good even while they also sometimes allow serious evils to take place. 

A common criticism of open theism is that it departs too much from the traditional view of God and providence. How could Christians have been wrong for so long about providence or exhaustive foreknowledge? In response, proponents of openness make several points. To begin, it is simplistic to speak of “the” tradition as if it was singular. Consider that Christian communities developed multiple views regarding baptism and the Eucharist. Centuries ago Abelard wrote Sic et Non to show that there were multiple views on many theological topics. There is no single Christian view of providence. The early fathers affirmed freewill theism whereas Augustine developed theological determinism. These debates entailed different understandings of divine immutability and impassibility. Regarding exhaustive foreknowledge, the vast majority of thinkers have affirmed that God knows as definite all that will occur. However, open theists point out that many renowned biblical scholars, both Jewish and Christian, today hold that the biblical texts affirm dynamic omniscience and not exhaustive foreknowledge. Gregory Boyd argues that for many centuries there were philosophical assumptions in play that required exhaustive foreknowledge but those assumptions are now widely questioned. Also, it is important to note that though exhaustive knowledge of the future has been the commonplace view, theological determinists and freewill theists use very different means to get to it. For theological determinists, God knows the future in total detail because God determines what everyone will do. God, so-to-speak, writes the script and so knows how everything unfolds. Freewill theologians reject this and affirm that God somehow “observes” all that creatures will freely do in the future. According to the freewill tradition, God acquires knowledge of what creatures do by means of a noetic big bang prior to creation, but this does not, they maintain, mean that God determines what the creatures do. Unlike theological determinism, this means that God’s knowledge of what creatures will do is dependent upon the creatures. Open theism agrees with this theological tradition that God’s knowledge of what creatures do is dependent on creatures. 

Also, it is obvious that theological traditions can change. Just think of the view, common since the time of Augustine, that children who died unbaptized were damned to hell. Later, this was softened to claim that they went to Limbo, a part of hell without suffering. Today, one seldom finds support for this view. Proponents of dynamic omniscience acknowledge its minority status which is why they have sought to produce substantial biblical and philosophical arguments for it. In sum, theological traditions are more varied than some claim and open theists find harmony with some specific theological traditions. In this regard, openness is part of the ongoing tradition. 

Another criticism is that a temporal God is “in time” which makes God a finite being. However, to say something is “in” time construes time as a container into which entities are placed. Open theists do not accept the block theory of time or four-dimensionalism. Instead, we say that God has the potential for changing mental states so time, construed as changing events, is simply part of the divine experience rather than a “container” in which God is trapped. Open theists distinguish this sense of time from metric or clock time, the measurement of physical processes such as the rotation of the earth, which began with the creation. 

Along with this, open theists do not say “God does not know the future” because this suggests there is an ontological reality of which God is ignorant. Instead, we speak of events that are “indefinite” or possible to occur and events that are “definite” to occur because they are determined. Definite and indefinite future events are mental anticipations rather than an ontological reality. Hence, God knows the future as it actually is—as partly definite and partly indefinite. Originally, open theists called this “present knowledge” before Sanders coined the term “dynamic omniscience” as a more appropriate way to understand that God is always fully omniscient but God’s knowledge is dynamic in that what God knew as possible actions of creatures becomes knowledge of actual actions. 

A related issue is how predictions of future events in the Bible should be understood. Many evangelicals believe God gave biblical writers exact details of future events. These are used to prove the divine authorship of the Bible. Open theists point out a number of biblical predictions that did not come to pass as predicted (e. g., Ezekiel 26). Such texts are problematic for proponents of exhaustive foreknowledge. Openness holds that biblical predictions are usually statements about what God believes is likely to happen and sometimes about what God has determined to occur. A particular episode often cited as a problem for open theism is the prediction of Peter’s denial. Open theists have various explanations for this event. McCabe and Boyd say that God removed Peter’s freewill and so he was not morally responsible in this situation. Sanders takes a different approach saying that such predictions were conditional in the sense that it was possible for Peter to heed Jesus’ warning and not deny him. These explanations show that some open theists hold that God occasionally overrides human freedom in order to bring about some specific event while others maintain that God never does this.

Historically, it has been claimed that simple foreknowledge and timeless knowledge provide God with providential advantages. For instance, it is thought that God’s knowledge of all future events enables God to answer prayers and prevent specific evils. Open theists, however, argue that God cannot use knowledge of a future event to change what God knows will happen. What God knows, according to these views, is the event itself, not possible events. For example, if God timelessly knows that king David will commit adultery God cannot bring it about that David not do this. If what God knows is all future events then God cannot make changes to these events because that would mean that God did not know the actual future. In a series of journal articles between David Hunt and William Hasker, Hunt has sought to show that a modified version of simple foreknowledge has a few possible providential advantages while Hasker has rebutted these claims. What proponents of simple foreknowledge and timeless knowledge have failed to show is how God can use knowledge of the actual future to bring about changes to that same future.

Another topic raised in the debate is how God should be understood. Some believe that Anselm’s notion of perfection as whatever it is better to be settles the issue in favor of strong immutability and timelessness. Open theists observe that theologians have different intuitions of perfection and so it can be argued that a being who does not change in some respects lacks perfection. This relates to how language about God in the Bible should be understood. There are passages of scripture where God has emotional reactions, does something in response to prayer, and tests people to learn whether they will obey. It is common for theologians to classify such ideas as anthropomorphisms and less than perfect. Open theists agree they are anthropomorphic but argue that such texts help us understand the reality of God and are not “baby talk” compared to the “adult-talk” of theology. All of our language about God is anthropogenic (from human cognitive structures) whether we think of God as an agent with intentions or as being itself. All our understandings of the divine nature and God’s relation to creatures presume some sort of shared context with creatures so the real debate is which of these ideas we deem appropriate for understanding God (see John Sanders, Theology in the Flesh: How Embodiment and Culture Shape the Way We Think About Truth, Morality, and God, (2016)).

To conclude this section some differences among open theists are mentioned. There is disagreement about whether God would ever refrain from intervening beneficially in a person’s life simply because someone else failed to request that God do so. Some believe that in order to create communities that care for one another God might refrain from acting until prayer occurs. Another debate is whether God makes decisions as events occur or whether God has taken all the possible events into account and decided ahead of time that if event 1 happens then God will do A but if 2 occurs then God will do B. Boyd uses the “infinite intelligence argument” to say God has “predecided” all divine acts. Swinburne and Sanders hold that God decides as events occur.

Another difference concerns how natural evil should be explained. Among open theists two overall responses are discernable. Hasker and Polkinghorne use a natural law theodicy in which natural evil is understood to be part of the structures of an overall good creation. Boyd, however, believes this is insufficient and so holds that evils such as birth defects and diseases are often the result of demonic beings seeking to destroy God’s creation. Thomas Oord rejects both of these approaches and says that the God of open theism who voluntarily restrains the use of divine power is morally culpable for some evils. Oord seeks to develop a position in between open and process views in his The Uncontrolling Love of God (2015).


Conclusion

Open theists have constructed a cumulative case from the Bible, theology, philosophy, and Christian living in order to support the position. They present a view that is consonant with specific theological traditions and is faithful to biblical portrayals of God. They seek coherence with philosophical reasoning such as the incompatibility argument. The view addresses important theological issues such as the problem of evil and takes the stance that believers need not think that the evils which befall us are intended by God. It furnishes a scholarly model that accounts for the prayer and piety of millions of Christians around the world. The view is now affirmed by a significant number of theologians, philosophers, and biblical scholars and continues to foster scholarly work and new applications.



Key Ideas of Open Theology - Part 3/5: "IEP"

 


Key Ideas of Open Theology - Part 3



Open Theism

Open Theism is the thesis that, because God loves us and desires that we freely choose to reciprocate His love, He has made His knowledge of, and plans for, the future conditional upon our actions. Though omniscient, God does not know what we will freely do in the future. Though omnipotent, He has chosen to invite us to freely collaborate with Him in governing and developing His creation, thereby also allowing us the freedom to thwart His hopes for us. God desires that each of us freely enter into a loving and dynamic personal relationship with Him, and He has therefore left it open to us to choose for or against His will.

While Open Theists affirm that God knows all the truths that can be known, they claim that there simply are not yet truths about what will occur in the “open,” undetermined future. Alternatively, there are such contingent truths, but these truths cannot be known by anyone, including God.

Even though God is all-powerful, allowing Him to do everything that can be done, He cannot create round squares or make 2 +2 = 5 or do anything that is logically impossible. Omniscience is understood in a similar manner. God is all-knowing and can know all that can be known, but He cannot know the contingent future, since that too, is impossible. God knows all the possible ways the world might go at any point in time, but He does not know the one way the world will go, so long as some part of what will happen in the future is contingent. So, Open Theists oppose the claim of the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina, that God has “middle knowledge.”

Open Theists believe that Scripture teaches that God wanted to give us the freedom to choose to love or reject Him. In order for each of us to genuinely have a choice for which we are morally responsible, we must have the ability to do otherwise than we do. This is the distinctive necessary condition of what has come to be called libertarian freedom. God may intervene in the created world at any time, and He may determine that we act in ways of His choosing. But He cannot both respect our libertarian freedom and guarantee that we will do specific things freely. Thus, Open Theists believe that God has created a world in which He takes the risk that many of us will reject Him and act in ways opposed to Him, in order to give us the opportunity to freely choose to love and obey Him.

Table of Contents

  1. History of Open Theism
  2. The Biblical Witness
  3. Philosophical Considerations
  4. Theological Implications
  5. References and Further Reading
    1. For Open Theism
    2. Against Open Theism
    3. Multiple Views

1. History of Open Theism

Open Theism has been a significant topic in philosophy of religion and in evangelical Christian circles since the 1994 publication of The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God by Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. Philosophers of religion such as A. N. Prior, J. R. Lucas, Peter Geach, Richard Swinburne, and Richard Purtill had advocated Open Theism in their writings prior to this date, though not under that name, and Rice had published a work initially entitled The Openness of God in 1980. (It was later republished as God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will.) But the 1994 book’s attempt to systematically explicate the relational view of God that its authors labeled the open view clearly marks the beginning of increased discussion and debate over Open Theism’s tenets.

Since the publication of The Openness of God, there has been significant debate about not only the philosophical and theological merits of Open Theism, but also its orthodoxy. In 2003, The Evangelical Theological Society considered whether to remove Clark Pinnock and John Sanders from its membership for implicitly disavowing the inerrancy of Scripture in their writings by suggesting that some Biblical passages traditionally understood to be prophecies have remained and may continue to remain unfulfilled. While Pinnock agreed to revise the most objectionable passage in his book Most Moved Mover, Sanders continued to maintain that God does not infallibly predict or prophesy what will contingently occur in the future, and he maintained that Biblical passages may initially appear to predicate divine foreknowledge and/or unconditional prophecies by God of what will contingently occur but these passages must be interpreted differently (more below). The charges against Pinnock and Sanders were not sustained, but this was just barely the case for Sanders.

Proponents of Open Theism allow that their view is at odds with the great majority of the Christian tradition in rejecting both meticulous providence and divine foreknowledge of what will contingently occur. However, they argue that the tradition, guided by neo-Platonic philosophy in its formation, had difficulty reconciling beliefs about the implications of God’s perfection with the Biblical witness to a God that cares deeply about His people and how they respond to Him. Many of the early Church Fathers affirmed elements of the Open Theists’ relational view of God, in tension with their beliefs in divine impossibility. Then Saint Augustine, whose Confessions tell us that his faith partially resulted from a careful study of neo-Platonism, forcefully argued for an emphasis on God’s perfection and otherness from His creation that precluded genuine responsiveness on God’s part to our actions. The (Western) Christian tradition subsequently became largely identified with an Augustinian understanding of providence. The early Church Fathers’ idea that God’s foreknowledge is conditioned by human actions did not receive significant consideration again until Jacob Arminius in the sixteenth century and John Wesley in the eighteenth. And it is only recently, in light of philosophical considerations of the nature of freedom, that the full reciprocal relationality of Open Theism has been affirmed, with its concordant denial that God knows what will contingently occur.

Open Theists suggest that when the testimony of Scripture is considered together with philosophical reflection on the conditions necessary for free and morally responsible action, the view that results is theirs. An emphasis on God’s conditioned relationship to His creation is clearly present in the early Church, in the Eastern Church, and in developments during and in response to the Protestant Reformation. This emphasis is largely absent from the theology of the Middle Ages, but the giants of theology from Augustine to Aquinas were clearly attempting to understand God and His relationship to the world in light of the best secular philosophy available to them. While Open Theists acknowledge that their view is in important respects at odds with the Christian tradition, they also maintain that their view is not as dissonant from that tradition as might be thought; it is just that the emphasis on God as a perfect being who does not change in any respect, which is neither clearly taught by Scripture nor obviously compatible with God’s loving relationality, must be rethought.

2. The Biblical Witness

Open Theists suggest that there is a strong Biblical case to be made for affirming a God who respects our moral responsibility while inviting us into a loving relationship with Him. They argue that the most plausible reading of the Bible reveals a personal God who genuinely interacts with human persons and accepts that His desires and projects are dependent on that interaction. As discussed below, Open Theists read the Bible as showing that God desires to be in relationship with the people He has created, that He sometimes changes His mind as a result of dialogue with His people, and that He seeks to accomplish His goals for the world in concert with human agents. They also point to passages that attribute to God the learning of information as evidence that God’s knowledge is not settled, and does not include foreknowledge of the occurrence of contingent events.

Critics of Open Theism offer alternative interpretations of the passages frequently cited by Open Theists, and bring forward their own proof texts that the Biblical God is one whose sovereignty over creation includes exhaustive foreknowledge and ultimate control over each and every aspect of His creation. In any consideration of how well Open Theism accords with the teachings of Scripture, it is important to note that one’s philosophical understandings of freedom and moral responsibility necessarily inform one’s hermeneutic. One cannot fully appreciate the Biblical cases made for or against Open Theism without also appreciating the philosophical considerations to be considered in the subsequent section. Open Theism is most plausible if the dignity and responsibility of an agent require the freedom to do otherwise; if this is so, then texts that attribute responsibility to persons seem to clearly require that God does not also determine the humans’ actions. If foreknowledge is also incompatible with the ability to do otherwise, then neither can God know what we will do. But if our responsibility is consistent with either or both of divine foreknowledge and God’s sovereign determination, then the force of these passages is not nearly as great, and there is no need to seek a more nuanced reading of passages that on their face seem to attribute to God unconditioned knowledge of contingent events in the future.

Open Theists argue that the God revealed in the Bible clearly desires to be in relationship with the people He has created. From the beginning, we have been created in God’s image and given responsibility to care for His creation (Gen. 1:26). God’s relationship to His creation is clear throughout the narrative of the Old Testament. Both Abraham and Moses, among others, speak, and indeed argue, directly with God. Abraham questions God about how His promises will be fulfilled (Gen. 15), and prevails upon Him to spare Sodom if only ten righteous people can be found living there (Gen. 18). Immediately after Abraham shows himself faithful to God by his willingness to obey God even to the point of sacrificing his son Isaac, God states that it is because of Abraham’s obedience that He will maintain His promise to bless Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 22:15-18). Abraham questions God, dialogues with God, affects God’s decisions, and his actions of obedience are credited by God as at least partly responsible for Him fulfilling the promise of blessings that He has revealed to Abraham. Moses speaks with God, and because He lacks confidence to speak to his fellow Israelites, God appoints Aaron to speak for Him (Ex. 4: 1-18). God reveals His law to Moses, and when the Israelites turn their backs on their Deliverer, Moses reminds God of His promises and asks Him to relent from His anger and spare His people (Ex. 32: 9-14). It is clear throughout the Pentateuch that God speaks to chosen leaders of His chosen people, and that He not only commands them, but also listens to their concerns, often adjusting His original plans in light of His dialogue with them.

In both the Old and New Testaments, God presents Himself as working with human agents, and as being disappointed in His hopes for them, rather than as compelling them to act in prescribed ways. This is clear throughout the narrative of Israel, and in passages such as Is. 65:1-2, in which the Lord bemoans the stubbornness of those who will not call on Him, despite His many revelations to them. The Bible teaches us that we can thwart God’s desire that we freely return His love. This is suggested by passages such as Mark 6:5-6, in which we are told that Jesus could not perform many miracles in his hometown because of the lack of faith of its people, and it is explicit in Luke 7:30, in which we are told that the Pharisees rejected God’s purpose. God asks us to follow and obey Him; He does not compel obedience. Nor should every calamitous event be assumed to be divine punishment for disobedience (Job, Lk. 13:1-5, Jn. 9:1-3).

The above passages suggest that God desires to be in relationship with His created people in a manner that respects their freedom to respond to Him in various ways, and that He is genuinely responsive to our concerns. There are also passages in Scripture that more directly suggest that the future is open, and that not even God has foreknowledge of what will contingently happen. Genesis 22:12 records God as stating, “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” The emphasis on “now” knowing “because” of Abraham’s action clearly points to this being a genuine test of Abraham’s faith, where even God could not be sure of Abraham’s response to the test. Jeremiah 3:7 and 19-20 quote God as saying that He thought Israel would return to faith in Him, but that she had not. Mark 6:6 emphasizes Jesus’ amazement at the lack of faith of those in His hometown, a reaction that only makes sense if He had had an expectation of greater faith. These passages suggest that God can genuinely learn new information.

Of course, the above is meant only to be suggestive of the kinds of considerations that Open Theists emphasize in reading the Bible. These several texts are among those that suggest that God desires to be in a relationship that respects our freedom to respond to God in a variety of ways, and that He has thus left the future open to determination through our actions, at least in part. But critics of Open Theism interpret the same data differently. For instance, Classical Theists may suggest that an incarnational theology’s emphasis on the revelation of God in Christ is misguided if it does not give sufficient weight to the idea that God veiled His glory in becoming human (see Jn. 17:5). And they cite other texts that are arguably more suggestive of the traditional view of God as providentially in control of all that happens, such as Isaiah 40-48, Romans 9, and Ephesians 1:11.

Any reading of the Bible must seek a consistent hermeneutic, and must acknowledge that certain texts must be given readings that are not initially obvious. “Prophetic” texts are read by Open Theists as either decrees of what God has decided to do, conditional predictions about what will happen if certain conditions (such as repentance) are not met, or forecasts based upon God’s exhaustive knowledge of the past and present. None of these interpretations require God to have exhaustive foreknowledge of future events, but responsible readers of the Bible may well disagree about the plausibility of these interpretations as applied to specific passages. Open Theists also argue that plausible readings that accord with Open Theism can be given of “pancausality” texts such as those alluded to in the previous paragraph, and that this is preferable to dismissing as merely anthropomorphic the overwhelming sense of the Bible that God is in dynamic relationship with His creation.

3. Philosophical Considerations

Many theologians in the Christian tradition have maintained both that we are free to choose how we act, and that God foresees our choices. Many lay Christians likewise think that this is the obvious way to reconcile our freedom with God’s omniscience. So long as God does not pre-determine that we act in the ways that we do, but only “sees” what we do, what is the problem? Why does Open Theism insist that the future is open in such a way that God’s foreknowledge of contingent events must be denied?

There are two primary ways of understanding the nature of human freedom. The “compatibilist” view of freedom is that so long as one is acting in a manner that accords with one’s desires or can be otherwise identified with one’s character, one acts freely. Our freedom is compatible with our actions being determined, so long as we are acting in the way we want. We are free so long as were we to desire otherwise, we could act otherwise, and this is so even if we could not desire otherwise. If this is the right view of our freedom, then God might predetermine all of our actions while they are yet free, so long as they are consistent with our character.

The alternative account of the nature of freedom is “libertarian.” This account maintains that unless one is genuinely able to do otherwise than one does, one is not free. So, if one’s character is formed in such a way that one will certainly act in a particular way, and if one has no control over one’s character, then one is not really free, since one cannot act in a manner otherwise than one does. Importantly, one may remain morally responsible for one’s action if one’s character has become thus through one’s earlier free decisions. (Alternatively, one might be said to be free in a derivative sense if one’s character was freely chosen in the past.) If as a result of our sinful nature we cannot choose to do good, then we are not genuinely free to do otherwise than sin. We must really be able to either accept God’s invitation to love Him or to reject it, if we are free with respect to this choice. And if we are not and have never been libertarianly free with respect to this choice , then we are not morally responsible for our choice of whether or not to love God.

Open Theists affirm a libertarian view of freedom. From almost the beginning of Western philosophy, philosophers have been concerned with whether such freedom is compatible with prior truths about what one will do. Aristotle famously argued in his De Interpretatione (book 9) that prior truth is incompatible with future contingency. His argument there may be represented as follows:

  1. It is true that it will be white.
  2. If it is true that it will be white, then it has always been true that it will be white.
  3. If it has always been true that it will be white, then it is impossible that it will not be white.
  4. If it is impossible that it will not be white, then it is necessary that it will be white.
  5. It is necessary that it will be white.

An obvious implication of this argument is that if it is now true that one will act in a particular way, then it is necessary that one will act thusly. But it is not immediately clear why one should accept premise 3. Why should one think that something’s always having been the case entails the impossibility of its ever being otherwise?

One plausible reason for thinking this is based on the idea that one cannot change the past. If a proposition was once true, can one now act in such a way that it is no longer true? If not, then the prior truth of a proposition about what one will do seems enough to rule out one’s doing otherwise, and thus rule out one’s being libertarianly free with respect to that action. The same type of consideration applies to God’s prior knowledge of what one will do. Consider the following argument given by William Hasker in The Openness of God:

  1. It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Premise)
  2. It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)
  3. God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow. (From 1, 2)
  4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise: the unalterability of the past)
  5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3, 4)
  6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one. (from 2)
  7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5, 6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free choice. (From the definition of free will.)

If premise 4 is true and if we have libertarian freedom, then it is not possible for God to know what we will freely do before we do it.

Whether one finds Open Theism plausible largely depends on whether one finds the intuition underlying premise 4 plausible. Philosophers have debated whether all of the past is comprised of “hard” facts fixed in this way, or whether there are “soft” facts that might be conditional upon our future actions. Proponents of the compatibility of human libertarian freedom with divine foreknowledge have argued that facts about God’s prior knowledge of our future actions are conditional on our subsequent choices. To use Clarence as an example, were he to choose to have a bagel tomorrow, it always would have been true that God knew that he would so choose, rather than that he would choose to eat an omelet. Since there is no reason to think that Clarence’s choice is determined by prior causes, divine or otherwise, one may affirm that he is free to have an omelet or not even while maintaining that God knows he will have an omelet. Clarence has what has been termed “counterfactual power” over the past: the power to act in such a way that were he to so act, the past always would have been different than it in fact is. Proponents of counterfactual power over the past can thus agree that Clarence does not have the power to change, or alter, the past, since were he to eat a bagel, it never would have been true that he would eat an omelet tomorrow.

Philosophers have not come to an agreement over whether one might have counterfactual power over the past, or whether the past is instead fixed in a manner that rules out this power. On this topic, basic intuitions about freedom and the fixity of the past differ from person to person, and largely determine how they view the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with human freedom, and thus how they view the plausibility of Open Theism.

It is important to note that even if foreknowledge and freedom are compatible, it is not clear that simple foreknowledge — foreknowledge that is not based on middle knowledge (see below) — could be of any aid to God in providentially ordering His creation. If God knows what will actually happen, He cannot also use this information to arrange for something else to happen, for then the contents of what He “knows” would not comprise knowledge. Foreknowledge is of the actual occurrence of future events; once the occurrence of these events is known, it is “too late” to prevent them (or to bring them about). Doing so is incompatible with their occurrence being infallibly known by God. Simple foreknowledge, if God has it, allows Him to know what will occur without having to wait for the future occurrence of events, as He must for contingent events according to Open Theism. But His knowledge is no less conditioned by the occurrence of the events; He has no greater control over their occurrence based on foreknowledge than He does if Open Theism is true.

Once it is realized that simple foreknowledge does not offer any providential advantage to God, one may wonder what reason there is to affirm it, aside from an assumption that it is more perfect for God to have such knowledge than not. One might think that foreknowledge would provide an explanation for the accuracy of prophecy. But it does not. If God has “at once” complete foreknowledge of all that happens, He “sees” what will happen including whether or not He instructs persons to prophesy that events will happen. Given knowledge of what will occur, God is not free to do otherwise than He foresees He will do. Perhaps God could “look” at a little bit of the future at a time, make decisions about how He will react to the events He foresees, and then “look” a little further to see how His creation reacts to these actions. But this would offer no greater help for predicting future events. Suppose that God foresees the course of the world until the end of 1935. Could He then decide to warn persons on January 1st of 1936 that the holocaust is about to occur? Not in any infallible way. For assuming that the holocaust was still avoidable in 1935, and assuming that God has not yet “looked” beyond 1935, He does not yet know what will occur in the next ten years. He can decide to make probably accurate but possibly mistaken predictions on January 1, 1936, based on the tendencies present at that point, but this is no more than He can do given Open Theism.

Simple foreknowledge has no utility for God’s providential governance of the world, nor can it ground infallible predictions of future events. (It should also be reiterated that Open Theists believe that there are less instances of such predictions in the Bible than is thought by those who affirm a traditional meticulous view of providence.) If one wants to affirm that we have libertarian freedom and still maintain a traditional view of providence according to which God directs the course of the world rather than merely witnessing how it unfolds, then affirming foreknowledge is not enough.

The most plausible view of how human libertarian freedom might be compatible with a traditional view of providence, and thus the greatest competitor to Open Theism, is a view called “Molinism,” named after a sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina. Molina predicated “middle knowledge” to God and explained God’s providential determination of what will occur in terms of this knowledge. Middle knowledge is knowledge that lies between (in an explanatory sense, not a temporal sense) God’s “natural” knowledge of all the possible ways the world might go and His “free” knowledge of the one way the world will go based upon His creative decree. Natural knowledge is pre-volitional knowledge of necessary truths, including all the possibilities for creation. Free knowledge is post-volitional knowledge of contingent truths, including all future contingent truths. And middle knowledge is pre-volitional knowledge of contingent subjunctive conditional truths of the form: if such and such were the case, then so and so would be the case. God’s middle knowledge includes all the facts about how the world would go given various antecedent conditions. These facts, because they are known before God wills anything, are outside of His control.

Through middle knowledge, God might have known that were he to place Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in just the way He did, then they would sin by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And He might have known that if they did this and He subsequently kicked them out of the garden, events would unfold in a certain way. God’s middle knowledge would include all the true subjunctive conditionals about how the persons He might create would act in the various circumstances He might place them. These subjunctive conditionals have come to be called “counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.” Based on this exhaustive middle knowledge, God would have known how events would unfold given any creative action He might decide to perform. And on the assumption that libertarian freedom is consistent with knowledge of how one would act in various circumstances, our freedom would remain intact. Molinism promises to uphold both our libertarian freedom and God’s ability to providentially decide exactly what occurs in His creation.

There are two primary objections to Molinism that Open Theists have advanced. If the argument that foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian freedom is valid, then a similar argument can be made against the compatibility of middle knowledge with libertarian freedom. If it has always been true and known by God that I would act in such and such a way if I were in such and such circumstances, then do I have the power to bring it about that this fact has never been true, or never been known by God? Do I have counterfactual power over this past truth and God’s past knowledge of it? I must, in order to be libertarianly free. The same intuitions about the fixity of the past are brought into play. The other objection to Molinism given by Open Theists, termed the “grounding objection,” is based on the status of the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. These are truths that, though contingent, are not under God’s control. God “finds Himself” faced with these truths, similarly to the manner in which He “finds Himself” faced with the fact that 2+2=4. But why are certain subjunctives true and certain ones not? The grounding objection is that there seems to be no reason that some particular counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true rather than others. There is no ground for their truth or falsity. If one believes that all truths, or all contingent truths, must have some underlying ground or “truth-maker,” then one will reject the idea that there are counterfactuals of creaturely freedom available to God prior to creation.

The most important philosophical argument for Open Theism is based on the idea that God’s foreknowledge of one’s actions is incompatible with those actions being free because one does not have the power to bring it about that God has never known something that He does in fact know. But it is important to note that foreknowledge alone is of no help to God in providentially directing the course of His creation. The real competitor to Open Theism as an account of God’s providence is Molinism. Open Theists object to Molinism because they view as implausible the counterfactual power over the past that Molinism requires, and because they believe that there are insufficient grounds for the contingent truth of the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that Molinists believe God knows via His middle knowledge.

4. Theological Implications

In considering any theology, it is important not only to evaluate the Scriptural and philosophical arguments for and against the view, but also to consider how it might be incorporated into one’s lived faith. So, this article ends with a consideration of the practical implications of Open Theism – for how one views evil, for prayer, and for how one understands the responsibility for salvation.

The traditional view of divine providence holds that each and every event occurs according to God’s will. The implication that the most horrendous evils are thus intended by God has troubled many persons. One of the advantages of Open Theism (and any other view that denies meticulous providence) is that the responsibility for evil is much more clearly removed from God and placed upon our free choices. Because God desires that we freely choose to love Him, he has given us the freedom to reject Him as well, and our acts of rejection take all kinds of horrible forms. The responsibility for the evil that we freely perform is fundamentally ours. While God gave us the ability to do evil things, He does not in any sense intend that we do them. Rather, He grieves with and comforts the victims of our sins.

If God’s will for the world is inviolable, then we must have faith that each instance of evil serves some greater good that God has purposed. On the other hand, if much of the evil in the world is due to our free choices, then there is significant gratuitous evil that serves no further purpose. To those who believe that much of the evil in the world is indeed gratuitous, Open Theism provides an understanding of God’s general project that explains why He allows us to exercise our freedom in ways that sadden Him. He does this because He must do so in order to also allow us the freedom to reciprocate His unfailing love for us.

Not everyone finds this kind of free will defense against the problem of evil comforting. If Open Theism is true, then there is no guarantee that everything will work out as God wants in the end. Open Theists may trust and hope in God’s wisdom and power, but they recognize that there are limitations on what God can effect if we stubbornly refuse to aid Him. Some persons find it easier to have faith in an inscrutable secret will of God that is furthered by the evil we witness. This response to evil also has the advantage of applying to natural evil as well as evil events that result from our actions. While Open Theists may point out that much of the “natural” evil in the world is exacerbated by our poor stewardship of the earth, they must also seek additional explanations for God’s allowance of the devastation and suffering brought about by natural disasters.

Just as one’s views of freedom and of whether the past is fixed in such a way to rule out counterfactual power over it are good predictors of whether one finds Open Theism plausible, one’s reaction to evil is also a reliable indicator of how one thinks of Open Theism. If one cannot imagine that a good and loving God would intend that genocide, torture, rape, and other horrendous evils occur for some inscrutable good, then one is likely to find a free will theodicy, and Open Theism, comforting. If instead one cannot imagine that God would allow us to perform such horrible acts, or allow the massive suffering caused by natural disasters, without there being some very great good that they serve, then one is likely to put one’s faith in the mysterious but certain goodness of God’s meticulous governance of creation.

One of the advantages of Open Theism against any theology that affirms divine foreknowledge or foreordination is that prayer can genuinely influence God’s decisions. Because the future is open and not yet determined, we may pray that God will exercise His influence in ways we desire. We may ask that He will aid ourselves or others. We may easily make sense of James’ assertion that “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” (Ja. 4:2b) In contrast, if God determines the occurrence of each and every event, then He also determines whether and how we pray. On a traditional view of God that affirms His meticulous sovereignty, our prayer is ultimately brought about by God; it cannot persuade God. And even if God merely foreknows our prayers as part of His exhaustive foreknowledge, rather than bringing those prayers about, He also foreknows His response to those prayers, so that there is no greater room for our prayers to influence God’s decisions. Only if the future is open does prayer that God will act in certain ways make sense. Since we often pray in this way, this is an important consideration in favor of Open Theism.

However, proponents of more traditional views of sovereignty can attempt to minimize the purported advantage that Open Theism has for understanding prayer by asking what essential role prayer plays in God’s decision-making, even if Open Theism is true. Since God knows everything about the past and present, and the probabilities of what might occur in the future, can prayer really inform God of anything? He already knows our every thought and desire, and whether our wants are likely to be good for us. Given this, should we think of God as waiting for us to pray to take whatever action seems best for those for whom we pray? Perhaps. It may be that the action of making a request is important – perhaps we do not really understand what it is we would ask, until we bring ourselves to ask it. It also may be that God sometimes grants requests that we make, even though He believes that they are ill-advised, because He believes that we will learn important lessons from pursuing the course of action we desire. Open Theists may respond to the above line of criticism in various ways, but it should be clear that the advantage that Open Theists have for understanding prayer as a means of influencing God is not as great as it initially appears.

The critical questions about how our prayers might influence the actions God chooses to take in the world do not apply in the same way to prayers for divine guidance. Here too, Open Theists have the advantage of a view that allows God to genuinely guide and advise His followers, because the future is not determinate. We may pray that God would guide us in important choices that we must make, trusting in His greater knowledge of the possible and probable effects of these choices. This too is an important kind of prayer that we often exercise, and so the advantage of being able to understand how God might genuinely guide us in response to prayers that He do so is an important benefit of affirming Open Theism. Molinists may say that God chooses to create a world in which He always knows that and how we will pray, in which He knows how He will respond to these prayers, and in which He knows how we will respond to His “guidance.” But assuming that Open Theists are right to deny counterfactual power over the past, God’s responses to prayer given Molinism cannot constitute advice that one may take or not, as it does given Open Theism, precisely because Molinists view the future as determinate and known by God once God has willed His initial creation.

Of course, God’s guidance is limited to His knowledge of how things will probably go if one thing is done rather than another. He cannot know what will happen as a result of our decision so long as the effects of that decision will be influenced by other free decisions. And the further in the future we consider, the less certain that even God can be of what will occur. So while God’s advice about what to do is certainly much better than any other person’s, it is no guarantee that everything will in fact go well. Furthermore, the idea of praying for guidance is most easily understood on a dialogical model, in which we speak with and hear from God. If one does not feel that God usually communicates with us so directly, then it is harder to understand how He might guide us in any precise way. It is important to note that seeking “signs” of God’s will for us is not likely to be particularly reliable if those signs could also be brought about or blocked by other free agents.

In light of the above discussion, we may conclude that Open Theists can understand the efficacy of prayers that God will act in certain ways and prayers for divine guidance in decision-making. In contrast, those who affirm meticulous providence or exhaustive and settled foreknowledge of what will contingently occur plausibly cannot understand this efficacy, since there seems to be no room for our prayers to affect God or for His response to them to affect our decisions, if the decisions of both God and ourselves have always been foreknown, and perhaps foreordained. But we have also seen that what initially seems to be a clear advantage for Open Theism is tempered by questions about how exactly we might influence God, and about how exactly He might communicate His advice to us in response to prayers for guidance.

The final theological implication of Open Theism that requires discussion is the degree to which we have a greater responsibility for our salvation if Open Theism is true. Traditionally, Christians have emphasized that we are constrained by our sinful nature in such a way that we cannot respond favorably to God without additional grace given by Him. If this grace is both necessary and sufficient for a “salvific” faith, then the ultimate cause of whether one is saved or not is God’s giving or withholding of that grace, rather than any “choice” one makes. Open Theism claims that it is essential that the choice for or against God that determines our salvation be genuinely up to us. We must be free to choose to love or reject God, in order for our choice to love Him to be genuine, and giving us that genuine choice is the reason that God has given us libertarian freedom.

To what extent is God’s glory diminished by His giving us a greater role in our salvation, that of genuinely choosing whether or not to follow Him? While some opponents of Open Theism have argued that any attribution to human persons of an ability to determine a necessary condition of salvation impugns God’s sovereignty, it is not at all clear that this is so. If Open Theism is true, we are still dependent on God’s gracious and freely-given invitation to us to love Him and thereby be saved. Open Theists may even affirm a doctrine of sin that predicates to us an inability to respond favorably to God without further enabling grace. But they claim that God has extended this enabling grace to all persons through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The only thing that we do is decide whether or not to accept the greatest gift imaginable. There is no cause for pride on our part in making the right choice. If we truly appreciate God’s glorious sovereignty, rather than requiring that His sovereignty be understood in particular ways, then the only appropriate response to God’s invitation involves humility.

The debate over whether Open Theism correctly portrays God’s relationship to His creation involves a complicated web of Biblical data, philosophical arguments, and reflection on the practical theological implications of the view. Certain points of contention clearly divide those who might consider Open Theism from those who will not: a belief that libertarian freedom is essential to moral responsibility, a belief that the past is fixed in such a way that we do not have the ability to bring it about that it was always different, and a belief that evil should be attributed to our imperfect human decisions rather than to a secret inscrutable will of God. Of these three beliefs, it is the second that divides Open Theists from Molinists, who also affirm libertarian freedom but attempt to do so in concert with meticulous providence. Even if one affirms all three of these beliefs, however, there remains the hard work of slowly working through a detailed examination of Scripture and reflection on the Christian life. This is the case for any theology, and it is perhaps especially so for a relatively young theology such as Open Theism.

5. References and Further Reading

a. For Open Theism

  • David Basinger, The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996).
    • A brief consideration of freewill theism generally, and open theism specifically, especially as applied to the topics of omniscience, evil, and prayer.
  • Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000).
    • A brief and easy to read consideration of the Biblical case for Open Theism.
  • Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
    • A study of the use of metaphors in describing God in the Old Testament, and a case for predicating suffering, and thus genuine responsiveness, to God.
  • William Hasker, “Foreknowledge and Necessity,” Faith and Philosophy 2, no. 2 (April 1985), 121-157.
    • An extended argument that foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian freedom.
  • William Hasker, God, Time and Knowledge, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).
    • A book length exposition of the philosophical case for Open Theism. Also a good place to start to get a sense of the philosophical debate over the relationship of freedom and divine foreknowledge.
  • William Hasker, Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God, Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2004).
    • A consideration of the strengths of Open Theism in comparison with Calvinism, process theism, and Molinism, especially with regard to the problem of evil and the question of divine action within the world.
  • Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001).
    • An exposition of Open Theism in terms of the controlling metaphor of God as love that treats in turn: the Scriptural foundations for Open Theism, the development of traditional Christianity influenced by Hellenic philosophy, the philosophical case for Open Theism, and Open Theism’s adequacy to the practical demands of living one’s faith.
  • Clark H. Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994).
    • The book that began the extensive debate over Open Theism. A series of five essays that consider Biblical and historical considerations in favor of Open Theism, what a systematic openness theology amounts to, the philosophical case for this view, and its practical implications. An appropriate starting point for anyone interested in learning about Open Theism.
  • Richard Rice, God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004). Previously published as The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1980).
    • An early argument for the present-knowledge or open view of God.
  • John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).
    • The best exposition of Open Theism to date, especially with respect to the Biblical case for the view, and in systematically setting out openness theology. Also an excellent source of additional references to texts related to Open Theism.
  • Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
    • A penetrating philosophical case for understanding theism in a manner that accords with Open Theism’s view, made prior to the widespread use of that term.

b. Against Open Theism

  • William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000).
    • An argument for the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human libertarian freedom based on Molinism’s attribution to God of middle knowledge of subjunctive conditionals about what free agents will do in particular circumstances (counterfactuals of creaturely freedom).
  • Millard Erickson, What does God Know and When does He know it?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003).
    • An extended argument against Open Theism that also calls for greater moderation and civility in the debate over the topic.
  • Thomas P. Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
    • The most thorough explication of Molinism, with critiques of both orthodox Thomistic and Open Theistic views of divine providence.
  • John Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2001).
    • A critique of Open Theism based on a Reformed reading of Scripture.
  • Norman L. Geisler and H. Wayne House, The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal Publications, 2001).
    • Calling Open Theism “neotheism,” this work argues that Open Theism is dangerously far from traditional Christianity, and seeks to explicate the orthodox view of God’s attributes.
  • Paul Helm, The Providence of God. Contours of Christian Theology, (Downers Grove: IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994).
    • A systematic explication of God’s providence as risk-free meticulous sovereignty.
  • Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, edited by John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003).
    • A series of essays arguing that Open Theism is unorthodox and not an acceptable form of Christianity.
  • Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000).
    • A series of essays explicating and defending the classical view of divine sovereignty.
  • Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2001).
    • An argument, primarily based on his reading of Scripture, that Open Theism is false and its consequences are dire.
  • R. K. McGregor Wright, No Place for Sovereignty: What’s Wrong with Freewill Theism (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996).
    • An attempt to show what’s wrong biblically, theologically, and philosophically with freewill theism, both in its contemporary (Open Theism) and historical forms (Arminianism).

c. Multiple Views

  • Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, edited by David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986).
    • Essays in favor of foreordination (John Feinberg), foreknowledge (Norman Geisler), God’s self-limited power (Bruce Reichenbach), and God’s self-limited knowledge (Clark Pinnock), with responses by each author to the other essays.
  • Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, edited by James Beilby and Paul Eddy (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).
    • Essays in favor of Open Theism (Gregory Boyd), simple foreknowledge (David Hunt), middle knowledge or Molinism (William Lane Craig), and the Augustinian-Calvinist view (Paul Helm), with responses by each author to the other essays.
  • God and Time: Four Views, edited by Gregory Ganssle (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).
    • Essays on divine timeless eternity (Paul Helm), eternity as relative timelessness (Alan Padgett), timelessness and omnitemporality (William Lane Craig), and unqualified divine temporality (Nicholas Wolterstorff), with responses by each author to the other essays.
  • Christopher Hall and John Sanders, Does God Have a Future?: A Debate on Divine Providence, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003).
    • The product of a year’s dialogue via email between Hall, who affirms a classical theism, and Sanders, an Open Theist, about divine providence and foreknowledge.

Author Information

James Rissler
Email: amf@atlantamennonite.org
Oglethorpe University
U. S. A.