The God of the Open Theist

A couple of years ago, I heard one of my friends tell me and my wife about a conversation he had with someone about the matter of God’s knowledge. The classic debate involved two opposing views within the realm of Christianity: Calvinism and Arminianism. Without boring some of you who have better things to do than to listen to theological squabbles, let me briefly state that Calvinism has to do with the belief that God has unconditionally elected to save some people from before the foundation of the world and those He elects will believe in Jesus Christ, and Arminianism sets forth the opposite conclusion that God has conditionally elected to save all people who believe in Jesus Christ. As you can imagine, it is a lot more complicated than that and each side of the equation has its own objections and problems, and there are also variations in each camp. But my purpose here is not to talk about Calvinism or Arminianism (at least at this point), but to bring to your attention something that was said (now back to the conversation).

My friend Jobob (whose name has only and thankfully been changed to protect his innocence) was arguing from the Calvinistic vantage point that God orchestrates the events of history to fit his ultimate purpose. The other person could not fully agree with this conclusion and in the course of the conversation began to purport the view that God does not in fact know the future. Well my friend and their spouse began to have spasms, realizing that this person had stepped pretty far outside the circle of what is biblically acceptable within historic Christianity. They began lovingly to pummel the person in the name of the all-knowing Christ, subjecting him to all manner of cruelty and suffering until he was willing to recant. Seriously, they did say that it appeared that he had just thought up the argument during the conversation to try to throw them for a loop. That it did.

The reason I bring this to your attention today is because as novel as that may have sounded (and it is fairly novel), there is a movement that is taking some of our Christian people by storm called “open theism.” Open theism stems from a lot of “free will” thinkers who believe that God has given all of us the ability to choose totally free from any divine coercion. That means basically that creatures can only be morally responsible if they are really free. Therefore, it involves not only the ability to choose to do what is actually done, but to have the ability to have chosen differently. Open theism takes a step further, and says that since God has given us totally free choices to make, then he is essentially a God who does not know the future, since all of those stupid, free choices we are yet to make are unknown to God, because He has nothing to do with planning the events of the future (I mean, how can He if He does not violate anybody’s free choices?).

Okay, then, I know this has been a mouthful. The truth is that this issue is not just another spat where people can just smile, pat people on the back, and say, “Well, shucks, brother, we are just not going to agree with one another.” This is a very serious threat to a right view of God, because it undermines His glory. This view has been spawned from a desire to make God more compatible with who we are. Since God has created us in His own image, they say, God must be like us. In actuality, the reverse is true: we are like God. As one writer says, “As the image in a pond depends entirely upon the object casting the image, so we depend completely upon God who casts the image we are. Likewise, the glory of the pond is but a shadow of the object’s glory, so whatever glory we bear as the image, only derives from the glory of God who cast the image.” He goes on to say that our relationship with God, therefore, is both similar and different.

The reason I wanted to talk about this is not to publish a bunch of arguments against open theism, but just to make some of you aware of the issue, because it is gathering steam, and has quite a few authors supporting its fallacy (probably the most popular book is called The Openness of God, by Clark Pinnock). I would also like to recommend a book critiquing the movement, called Beyond the Bounds, edited by John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth. There are myriads of other books in favor of and against you can find for yourself on the web, but you can also check out desiringgod.org on the web and find some stuff, too. For now, you can wake up and turn off your computer, because my blog is done. As for the open theist, I think his God might still be asleep, too, since he is just like us.