Open theism

Open theism, also known as free will theism, is a theological movement that has developed within Evangelical Protestant Christianity as a response to certain ideas that are a part of the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Several ideas within Classical theism (a designation which is not to be taken as inclusive of all of orthodox theism) state that God is immutable, impassible, and timeless. Classical Theists also believed that God fully determines the future thus humanity does not have libertarian free will, or if free, that freedom must be compatible with God's determining actions. These are ideas which open theists oppose.

Open theism claims that God is not immutable, impassible, nor timeless since they believe that these attributes are not consistent with the personhood of God and his relationship to man as presented in the Christian scriptures. According to open theists, the God of the Bible is a God whose actions are not timeless but historical. God is neither completely immutable nor impassible as He may change his mind and He may be affected by his creatures emotionally and in other ways. God does not practice meticulous sovereignty (determining everything) but practices general sovereignty that allows for free will in mankind and allows man to contribute to bringing about the future. The most controversial aspect of open theism is the claim of its proponents that the omniscience of God does not include foreknowledge of the outcome of individual free choices that have not yet been made. Open theists argue the existence of such knowledge is not consistent with the nature of the future that they believe is implied by free will and that such knowledge is not consistent with the belief that our prayers can make a difference to God with regard to his plans.

Historical Development

The first known mention of a concept similar to open theism with regard to the issue of foreknowledge is found in the writings of Calcidius, a 5th-century interpreter of Plato. It experienced a resurgence in the late 19th century when several theologians wrote in its defense, including Gustav Fechner, Otto Pfeiderer, Jules Lequier, Adam Clarke, Billy Hibbard, Joel Hayes, T.W. Brents, and Lorenzo D. McCabe. The term "open theism" was introduced in 1980 with Seventh-day Adventist theologian Richard Rice's book The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will. The broader articulation of Open theism was given in 1994, when five essays were published by Evangelical scholars (including Rice) under the title The Openness of God. Open theism is an alternative to some classical ideas about God, Classical Theism, stemming from a single crucial point of difference: Open theism asserts that the future exists partly in terms of possibilities rather than certainties. That is, there are aspects of the future that are indeterminate. This means that God's knowledge of the future, being perfect, would also consist largely of possibilities and not certainties. God has knowledge of some future certainties such as those things that He ordains, and He knows all future possibilities such as the possible free will choices of His created beings. This view of God, based on a libertarian view of free will and particular philosophical views on the nature of time and other metaphysical matters, is supposed to allow its advocates to 1) Attribute both power and wisdom to Him without suggesting that He ordains everything to His own glory, including evil (Calvinism) 2) Avoid what Open Theists regard as the inconsistency of suggesting that libertarian human freedom can coexist with foreknowledge and Divine Sovereignty (Arminianism).

This is not only a rejection of predestination as it is understood by Calvinism, but also of most accepted alternative versions. The writers in favor of free-will theism differentiate their views from those of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Arminianism, Eastern Orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, and Islam, all of which—differently from one another, but similarly over against open theism—assert that God has a certain knowledge of all aspects of the future.

Theologians of note currently espousing this view include: Gregory Boyd, Thomas Jay Oord, Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, and William Hasker.

Arguments

Proponents of open theism assert the following, with some variation:
* The concepts of omnipresence and immutability do not stem from the Bible, but from the subsequent fusion of Judeo-Christian thought with the Greek philosophy of Platonism and Stoicism, which posited an infinite God and a deterministic view of history.
* The God described in the Bible is the most powerful, most knowing, most loving, and most unchanging in his nature, but not omni-everything. In scripture, he changed his mind and plans [1], voluntarily limited Himself in power, was surprised by events on Earth , was hurt [2], and paid attention to the pleas of men and angels [3].
* According to the classical view, God's foreknowledge is exhaustive. This leads to a number of apparent inconsistencies, such as the problem of prayer (of what effect is our prayer if God already knows what will happen before we pray?), the problem of evil (why would a God permit evil to exist when he knows everything, can do anything, and wants only good?), the problem of sin (if God set the universe in motion in such a way that we would inevitably sin, how can we be punished for the sin he planned and we could not avoid?), the problem with omnipotence (can God change the future? Can God create something never imagined before? Can God create a creature who's future he doesn't know?).
* The God of open theism is supposed to resolve some of those apparent inconsistencies. Prayer has meaning, because we can influence God's decisions in an undetermined future. Evil exists because there are other powers in the universe besides God's. Sin is punishable because we sometimes make decisions contrary to God's will, and deserve punishment.
* A minority of open theists believe that God is not yet omnipotent, but someday will be when the victory is won, as the only use of the word "omnipotent" in scripture is in Revelation 19:6, a picture of God's future victory. Open theists believe that by His power and through His Church, God will ultimately overcome evil, sin, and death and reestablish His reign on Earth. They frame this not in terms of a historical necessity or a predestined fact, but in terms of Faith and Hope that God will rescue this struggling, desperate, and confused world in time. Most open theists believe that God is omnipotent, but not able to do what is logically contradictory, and never choosing to do what is inconsistent with His own divine character.
* The more popular view in regard to God's omnipotence such as God's future victory and other certain future events is that THESE are a historic necessity and a predestined fact, but only these specific things and certainly not everything (especially related to individual's choices). If God prophesies that something will happen, it is often because He will cause it to happen. (Isaiah 46:10).

Opponents of open theism respond with the following points:
* The more theologically traditional position asserts that open theism denies the omniscience of God, because it denies that God knows all of the future. Most open theists reject this characterization, commonly espousing one of two counterarguments. Open theists following Greg Boyd (God of the Possible, Baker Books, 2000), argue that the parts of the future that are unknown to God are not merely unknown or unknowable, but are simply not yet determined in any way, and therefore not "there to be known" by even an omniscient entity. One way to put this would be to say that God knows all facts, but parts of the future (those parts involving free human actions) exist only as a set of possibilities and are not yet factually determined. Boyd says that it would make no more sense to require an omniscient God to know the undetermined aspects of the future than it would to require an omniscient God to know how far you could sail before you fall off the face of the Earth. The Earth is round, so there is no knowledge of this sort to be had, and the future is partially undetermined, so there is no complete knowledge of the future to be had either. A minority of open theists follow William Hasker (God, Time, and Knowledge, Cornell Univ. Press, 1998) in saying that God knows all that it is logically possible for him to know. Hasker would say that we don't expect an omnipotent God to be able to create a rock so large he can't lift it, because such a feat would be logically impossible. In the same way, we can't expect an omniscient God to know what is logically impossible for him to know. This logical impossibility arises from status of the facts about future free actions as "soft facts". Unlike "hard facts", it is within some entity's power to change the truth value of soft facts. Since God's knowledge can never fail to be wrong, he cannot know the truth value of soft facts. Opponents counter by saying that these involved explanations of omniscience amount to redefining the term to mean less than is Biblically acceptable (e.g. Bruce Ware, God's Lesser Glory, Crossway Books, 2000).
*According to G. Boyd in Is God to Blame? God's limits are the consequences of decisions he has made in creation, i.e. they are self-imposed, to create a world that supports love of God and fellow man through creaturely freedom. By contrast, the limits proposed by Process Theology are characteristics of God -- God can only woo, but cannot impose his will. Thus, any similarity between these two views is not supported by their underlying ideas.
*Proponents of the classical view argue that open theism diminishes God by limiting God's attributes, which is contrary to the beliefs of many of the world religions.
*There are many objections to Open Theism relating to its views of time and God's timelessness or lack thereof. Many believe that God must necessarily be timeless if He is to be the creator of the universe. Others view the whole idea that the future must be indeterminate to allow for libertarian free will as based on poor philosophical arguments and severe misunderstandings that have been refuted time and again. Others object to the idea that the future is indeterminate based on broader philosophical considerations concerning the nature of time and many take such a view to be either incredibly implausible or even contradictory. Considerations from logic, science, metaphysics, language, and even ethics are often brought into consideration here.
*Many object to the denial that God foreknows exactly what free creatures will do because they believe that such a denial is based on a misunderstanding of both what free will and the nature of foreknowledge involves combined with certain mistakes common to almost all accusations of fatalism (or at least so they say). Others object because they believe such a view is in conflict with what the Bible says concerning God's foreknowledge of future free actions.
*Classical views defend themselves from Open Theist objections in a number of ways. They believe the Bible to use more anthropomorphism in speaking of God than Open Theists will often allow and some even accuse Open Theists of inconsistently picking and choosing which texts to take as literal and which to take as anthropomorphic in order to support their own views but not to fall into any particularly distasteful view. Classical theists often also claim that making sense of the Biblical accounts, even if taken literally or very nearly so often is not as difficult on a classical account as Open Theists make it out to be. Classical theists often accuse Open Theists of misunderstanding what Classical Theism and related doctrines really entail.
*One confusion classical theists have accused open theists of making is mistaking God's foreknowledge or the future's determinateness with some form of determinism or imposition of necessity on the future or what occurs in time. Once these things are properly understood, they argue, many of the problems open theists accuse classical theists of simply disappear or are at least rendered quite a bit less effective.

External links

*The Open Theism Information Site
*God vs. God a February 2000 editorial in Christianity Today
*Did Open Debate Help The Openness Debate? a February 2001 article from Christianity Today
*ETS Membership Challenge the record of the unsuccessful 2003 attempt to remove open theism proponents Clark Pinnock and John Sanders from membership in the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)
*Online written Open Theism Debate between Knox Theological Seminary's Associate Professor of New Testament and the pastor of Denver Bible Church moderated, in ten rounds
* Open theism (Theopedia - includes audio resources)

See also

* Theism
* Corporate election
* Conceptions of God

Books

Pro

The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will, Richard Rice, 1980, Review and Herald Pub. Association, ISBN 0812703030
* The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, Clark Pinnock editor, et al, 1994, InterVarsity Press ISBN 0830818529, Paternoster Press (UK), ISBN 085364635X (followup to Rice book includes contribution from him)
The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence, John Sanders, 1998. InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0830815015
God, Time, and Knowledge, William Hasker, 1998, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0801485452
* God of the Possible, Gregory A. Boyd, 2000 reprint, Baker Books, ISBN 080106290X
Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (The Didsbury Lectures), Clark Pinnock, 2001, Baker Academic, ISBN 0801022908
Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God, William Hasker, 2004, Routledge, ISBN 0415329493

Con

* God's Lesser Glory, Bruce A. Ware, 2000, Crossway Books, ISBN 1581342292
* Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (editors), 2000, Baker Academic, ISBN 0801022320
* Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism, Douglas Wilson editor, et. al, 2001, Canon Press, ISBN 1885767846
* No Other God: A Response to Open Theism, John M. Frame, P & R Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-87552-185-1

Multiple views

* Divine Foreknowledge: 4 Views, James Beilby and Paul Eddy (editors), et al, 2001, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0830826521
* God & Time: Four Views, Gregory E. Ganssle (editor), et al, 2001, InterVarsity Press, ISBN 0830815511
* Predestination & Free Will, David and Randall Basinger (editors), et al, 1985, Intervarsity Press, ISBN 0877845670
* Searching for an Adequate God, John Cobb and Clark Pinnock (Editors), et al, 2000, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 0802847390

Related work

* God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, John Martin Fischer (editor), 1989, Stanford, ISBN 0804715807
* The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human, William Lane Craig, 2000, Wipf & Stock Publishers, ISBN 1579103162
The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Linda Zagzebski, 1996, Oxford, ISBN 0195107632
* Eternal God : A Study of God without Time, Paul Helm, 1997, Oxford, ISBN 0198237251
* Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time, William Lane Craig, 2001, Crossway Books, ISBN 1581342411
* Time and Eternity, Brian Leftow, 1991, Cornell, ISBN 0801424593
* Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time, Robin LePoidevin, 2003, Oxford, ISBN 0198752555
* The Ontology of Time, L Nathan Oaklander, 2004, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1591021979
* Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Theodore Sider, 2003, Oxford, ISBN 0199263523
* Real Time II, Hugh Mellor, 1998, Routledge, ISBN 0415097819
* The Suffering of God, Terence E. Fretheim, 1984, Fortress Press, ISBN 0800615387