Just wondered if we lost all of our previous comments in the new format?

Unfortunately we did. All new conversations will be hosted here. We have a backup of the all the original Spectrum blog material, so hopefully some time in the future we'll transfer all the previous posts and conversations here. In the mean time, you can access all past blog material at the Spectrum blog's original location.

The issue here, I believe, is more of design (foreordination) than God's prior knowledge. Assuming there's an Intelligent Designer behind everything that happens, how involved is He with us? When seeking God's will, do we expect to find a future that's already there because God knew/designed it for us in advance? Or, are we not free, to some extent, to create the future? Either God planned our future and committed Himself to making it happen in the minutest detail that's why God knew; or God planned it so that we can choose to cooperate or not with God's overall purpose.

Tom

I think the Scriptures are clear on several points:

1. God's agenda is set.

2. Our is open to change.

3. God is willing to accept us as His Children as soon as we accept Him as our Father.

It was the son who wandered off and the father who patiently waited the son's return.

4. The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Sons make it clear that God seeks the Lost sheep because even though the sheep know he is lost he can not find the way back on his own.

God sweeps the floor to find the lost coin because the coin doesn't even know it is lost.

God waits for the son because the son knows he is lost and knows the way back.

The sad part of the story is that the elder brother didn't know he was lost so made not effort toward the Father. Tom

The new site looks great! Kudos to the Spectrum media team.

Are you guys planning to get RSS going for the blog again?

RSS is up. The feed for the blog is http://www.spectrummagazine.org/blog/feed

Thanks, I guess I didn't see the link to the feed.

Thanks for the three version of Romans 8 28. It's "good stuff". It is suggested though, that the meaning of this text must be taken to be consistent with the context in which it appears.

Through chapters six and seven of Romans Paul seems to be discussing the relationship of the believer to the law, and how, without Christ's grace and adoption, humankind including the believer is destined for condemnation under the Law.

In Rom 8:1 Paul assures his readers that "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus ..." and then considers the struggles, the issues and the failings of believers in this life as something that could draw them away from Christ and His offer of Life.

How reassuring then to be encouraged by the words of Paul when he writes, "And we know that all things (not only good things, not only bad things, not individual failures nor individual successes, but all things relating to the Christians' walk) work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

Regardless of which translation is used, for the believer, for the one accepting of Christ's gracious gift of life, we can be assured of Christ's close and intimate concern and care for His people, the work of His creation and redemption - a concept with which theistic evolution will have difficulty.

I recently submitted this comment to "Bible Questions, Adventist World-NAD/July 2007, Why Lucifer?", but alas it wasn't published.

Angel Rodriguez admits in the first paragraph that "This is a question which is practically impossible to provide a definite answer. ...any attempted answer will remain incomplete and to some extent will include an element of speculation." Therefore I offer this speculative answer. Absolute foreknowledge on God's part and absolute creaturely freedom are mutually exclusive. One or the other cannot be absolute. The key word here, of course, is absolute. God can have an absolute foreknowledge of future events or we creatures can have absolute freedom of thought and action but I speculate that both cannot exist simultaneously.
Cosmic history would seem to suggest, and I would prefer to think, that creaturely freedom is the one that is absolute as a result of God's deliberate choice to limit His knowledge in favor of creaturely freedom. When scripture speaks of God as "all knowing" I also speculate that it means knowing all that is inherently knowable.

How did Christ know that Peter would deny Him three times before the rooster crowed? Mt.26:34

Pat

By the same power Christ saw Nathanael under the fig tree.

Christ never surrendered His divine attributes. He said, I can lay down my life and take it up again. The Angel called Jesus forth from the tomb. Jesus came forth not by the power of the Angel but by His own divine power.

The issue is Calvinistic. Can God foreknow without foreodaining? I think He can by His choice. Rick Rice sees
a catch 22 in that stance. Tom

I think likewise Tom. He, unlike us, is both temporal and supratemporal. According to human reason that is also difficult but so is Mary conceiving of the Holy Spirit or God existing before the creation of this world.

pat

Thanks Pat,

It get lonesome out here. Tom

I agree with Alan.

There seems to me only two ways of trying to get round this problem:

1.The explanation is illogical and therefore no logical argument applies.

2.God deliberately limits his/her/its power.

The first argument is less than satisfying, as there would seem no reason to believe in anything, due to logic being discarded. I might as well believe in the great invisible donkey in the sky - no need to verify as there is no logic to my belief.

The second argument has as a major plus; the ability for humans and God to have a meaningful relationship.

It does a flaw. It means that “evil” in the world has free reign also. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? Well, I think this comes down to each individual’s experience. Does good and evil effect everyone equally? Does God actually intercede? It is difficult to argue he does, due to circumstances where he does not. Consider the atrocities where he has not intervened, and the examples where supposedly does.

Not trying to stretch the point but to bring the discourse into sharp relief, I know someone who prayed for the sun to come out for their holiday (the cloud promptly shifted!), whilst the anguished cries of the staving child’s mother where left unanswered.

It is no good just saying we can’t understand, as the argument therefore becomes illogical and actually rests on point one rather than point two.

On Nov. 27 I posted this intro to a comment on "Open Theism"-
"I recently submitted this comment to "Bible Questions, Adventist World-NAD/July 2007, Why Lucifer?", but alas it wasn't published."
Well I just received the Dec. Adventist World and it is published. Thank you Adventist World.

All this talk of His Satanic Majesty (to quote Jagger & Richards) is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Why not do away completely with Lucifer/Satan (Accuser)/Devil/Demon, whatever you want to call him?

Yesterday when the fall of Adam & Eve was mentioned in church it occurred to me that God punished them for that one sin by taking away immortality, but he did not punish Lucifer and confederates in the same way. Why allow fallen angels to live for thousands (millions) of years yet take away humanity's immortality after only 100 or so years?

The minister preaching attributed the killing of the first living creatures (the animals that yielded the modesty-enhancing animal sins that Adam & Eve wore) to God. I dislike the thought of it. That would make God the author of those animals' deaths. How can the giver of life be the same one who is the first to take life?

God is a mystery in the same way that life is a mystery.

Lately I've been focusing more and more on the positive, life-enhancing promises and affirmations of the bible, and playing down any mention of a loving God killing animals, or ordering genocide of citizens in possession of land desired by the Israelites.

Is sin (rebellion against God) a reality then? Unfortunately. But how and why it started or persists is another mystery.

Perhaps it was humanity that started the concept of sin, and has to live with it--for better or worse--until our lives and our universe is so afloat in unequivocal and perfect grace, that sin will subside as mysteriously as it appeared.

Al Forquer (the former designer at the Review?, if so, "hi!").

Please explain to me one simple thing: How does foreknowledge of any event restrict the free will of the one whose actions are foreknown?

Cliff

Cliff

Great question. If you get a rational response please let me know. Tom Z

The foreknowledge is not what does it. The core issue is whether the universe is deterministic or not. Consequently the problem would exist even if there were no God. But we theists of course believe in God (by definition) and, according to classical theism, God's foreknowledge is considered to exhaustively see the future. And such a definition of foreknowledge, an open theist would argue, *logically* entails determinism. That is the point of the 'proof' by Nelson Pike I posted on Nov 13. In other words, if the proof is valid, then to hold the classical definition of God's foreknowledge forces us to logically deny free will - or violate the law of non-contradiction.

Now, maybe we have a paradox and both are true. But it is an extreme move to affirm a logical contradiction. That, I think, is why the rebuttals I've read try to disprove Pike's argument. But it is a non sequitur to try and make the foreknowledge itself the *cause* of the non-freedom.

Here's the thing: making a choice involves making something definite that was previously indefinite (for a choice to be a real choice, it *must* be indefinite until it is made, otherwise, it is not a real choice). If a choice is indefinite, it cannot be known. Something that is known with absolute certainty is by definition already made definite.

To say that a choice can be both entirely "free" (indefinite) and yet at the same time entirely foreknown (definite) is a nonsense statement akin to saying that God can create a rock so large that God cannot lift it. An option cannot be both indefinite and perfectly foreknown simultaneously. That's nonsense.

Here's another important point: We believe that God responds to our circumstances, that God feels with us what we feel, and that things that affect us also affect God. But in order for God to truly empathize with human suffering, and in order for God to truly "rejoice over a lost sinner who is saved", God cannot have absolutely foreknown the circumstances.

Here's why: if God has complete foreknowledge, that by definition includes foreknowledge of God's own response to human circumstances. If God already knows (from all eternity past) how He will respond when a parent loses a child in 2008, then when that event occurs, God is not truly experiencing that parent's suffering alongside that parent. God's response has already existed forever. In fact, God's response to ALL human suffering has already existed forever, in the traditional view.

If God's response to all human suffering has already existed forever, then God cannot be truly moved by our circumstances here and now--God's response isn't based on our response here and now, because God's response already happened infinity ago.

Jared

"To say that a choice can be both entirely "free" (indefinite) and yet at the same time entirely foreknown (definite) is a nonsense statement akin to saying that God can create a rock so large that God cannot lift it."

I don't see the irreconcilable paradox there. Cannot God know beforehand all the possible choices a person could make, as well as the choice she will make, without restricting that person's freedom? I have thought long and hard about this over the years, long before I ever heard of open theism. Open theists seem to want to limit God's freedom in order to supposedly give us more freedom; they want to limit God's power in order supposedly to give us more. The whole thing strikes me as a finite attempt to limit the infinite, if you know what I mean? It's like, "Well, I can't figure this out to my satisfaction, therefore I'll have to put some strictures on God's knowledge" or the like.

How does God knowing beforehand that Harry will shoot his wife mean that Harry had no choice but to shoot his wife? If Harry, using his free will, wasn't going to shoot his wife, God's perfect foreknowledge would have known that fact as well. I think the problem is that we are hung up on the idea of God's perfect foreknowledge: God knows not only the endless number of potential choices we can make, He also knows which ones we will freely make (otherwise, what? Did Judas have no choice but to betray Jesus? God knew if all beforehand, thus Judas must not have been free to do otherwise because if he had changed his mind,then God would have been wrong>).

Suppose at the last nanosecond Harry changes his mind? Big deal. If God has perfect foreknowledge then he will know that at the last nanosecond Harry, using his free will, changed his mind.

Capiche?

I find Barths reframing of the doctrine of election from creation to the cross helpful. He says that God elected to be with humanity and that God constituted God in this decision; in Gods-self this decision is named Jesus Christ.

"The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all the words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in Freedom."

This may help us by shifting the weight of election from our choices to Gods choice. In addition to Jesus Christ I would add Jacobs wrestling with God as a key part of what I look to for guidance as I try to understand this issue more. I find Gen. 32:22-32 incredibly relevant. Barths suggestion is that when we look into the face of God we will never see anything other than the face of Jesus Christ.

Hi Cliff/Tom Z

Maybe this will help you in your understanding:

“How does God knowing beforehand that Harry will shoot his wife mean that Harry had no choice but to shoot his wife?……..”

The issue here is the fact that free will is hostage to cause and effect. God made the universe and all that is in it. He set in motion the events, which would lead to experiences and decisions. Freewill is not neutral. Genetics and environment play their part and are intrinsically linked to the past and ultimately to the first ever cause. Do I have complete fee will? I don’t think so. I have propensity to make decisions in certain ways based on my genetic heritage and experiences.

God’s perfect foreknowledge therefore saw the deterministic effect of his design (the original cause).

As I have said before, it seems the only way to square this circle is the idea of God limiting his powers in order for freewill to exist. There are problems with this idea also, but at least it offers a potential solution.

God created the world - Adam & Eve - and so on.
Complete with DNA, genetics, personality, character, etc...

If God knew for certain (before they were created) they were going to eat the fruit...this seems to bring an implication that God created them in such a way that would result in the exact choice they made.
If he knew what they were going to do before he created them, couldn't he have created them in a different way (dna, genetics, etc...) that would've led them away from sinning?
If God knew his very own creation would fall - before he created it - did he create the fall?

To me - it seems as though his prior-knowledge points to to his control over their actions - because he created the circumstances - their very being - in every detail (the hairs on their heads are numbered right?)

On the other hand - it seems that if he suspended his ability to know (or can't in fact know the unknowable [whichever is your fancy]), and created human beings with the same genetics, personality, etc... - he perhaps would have knowledge of all the possible choices and yet not know the exact choice they would make - and thereby would not have created them with 100% likelihood to make that choice.

For me - it seems God as creator matters in this discussion as 'andrews' has suggested. Because He set it all in motion.

I just re-watched Stranger Than Fiction, a little-known film from last year (with a great review by Marc Wagner up on the home page right that prompted me to watch this film again, even though I really should be buried deep in my final paper due next week). I'm glad I did though. It's a great film--terrifically intelligent, just quirky enough, full of charm, and profound. And it make me think of this thread that I've been watching attentively.

It's basic premise is that an IRS auditor, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), suddenly becomes aware of a voice in his head, narrating his life (turns out to be a writer writing about his, supposedly fictional, life). He quite literally discovers his maker, his creator, and the story takes off from there. The kicker is that "little did he know" he had just set off a chain of events that would result in his imminent death. The climax comes when he confronts the writer, his creator, and pleads with her not to kill him, even though it's the way the story is supposed to end.

I couldn't help but think of this conversation while watching this film. It brilliantly treats many of the deep themes and questions brought up on this thread. I'd highly recommend putting it at the top of your Netflix queue.

Yes, Hi Clifford this is the Alan Forquer.
In reply to Pat and Clifford: The main point is an attempt to get God off the hook for creating Lucifer. Did God know only that possibly Lucifer would turn to be evil or did He know absolutely that he would turn out bad? We can’t have it both ways. Either God’s foreknowledge is ‘this is possible” or “this is absolute”. If the latter then we have a serious issue with God.
We now know how it all turned out. So if God’s foreknowledge is absolute, then He knew then what we know now. Would any of us create a Lucifer knowing absolutely what we know now? If God knows absolutely how my life is going to turn out why do I have to go through all the misery? Just give me the get home free card. The operative word here, I must emphasize again is “absolute”. I don’t think “Open Theism” suggests that God doesn't have a lot of knowledge about the future. It’s just not “absolute”. Absolute foreknowledge, Clifford, means knowing that this is the way things are going to turn out --absolutely. Even we humans, Pat, can at times predict the future based on knowledge of human nature and trajectory of events. Peter, it seems, may have been an easy read.

Thanks, Alan, for defining the problem so clearly. This is pretty much exactly what I remember asking my parents when I was 10 or 11 and it suddenly struck me in Sabbath School class why I had a problem with God if he had indeed known how Satan would turn out. Seemed like an awfully mean experiment if the whole charade was just to teach the rest of the universe how loving God was--didn't seem loving, when my 10-yr-old mind thought about it. Still doesn't!

Cliff,
I think a more careful reading of Jared's comment, and Rick Rice's book, highlights why we can't have it both ways - and that has to do with how we understand creaturely freedom - and whether or not the language we use to talk about this, in the end, turns out to be coherent. (For example - the false dilemma of "Can God make a rock too big for God to pick up" - which turns out to be not a paradox at all, just a nonsense statement). If free will, as Rice suggests, is actually the ability to take something that is indefinite and make it definite, then once we say God knows the future in all of it's detail, it is indeed definite. Why open theism poses no practical "problem" for God (as Alan points out so well) is that God knows all of the possible futures and is perfectly prepared to respond to any eventuality in love. In this sense God is not surprized by or unprepared for the future, but may indeed, at least on some levels, experience genuine suspense. God's experience continues to be dynamic and real as God interacts with the world God has created. We can feel secure in the future, not because God knows all of the details of how things must turn out because He already knows (which makes it set), but because He is perfectly prepared for whatever combination of choices and events could occur. While there may indeed be some choices that God will not experientially "know" until they are actually made, there are no choices that can be made that God is not fully prepared for. But all of this it to rephrase what Rice so carefully articulates in the book.

Ken C.

Alan.

You stated, "Even we humans, Pat, can at times predict the future based on knowledge of human nature and trajectory of events. Peter, it seems, may have been an easy read."

But why 3 times, why not once or four times? Knowing ones dispositions does not entail that type of knowledge.

Hi Alan,

You commented, "Even we humans, Pat, can at times predict the future based on knowledge of human nature and trajectory of events. Peter, it seems, may have been an easy read."

That is true but our understanding of human nature does not say 3x's you will deny me. Maybe once...why not twice or 4x's?
The third time he went out and wept.

Reading these many comments could almost be laughable: speaking as if we know God and all his reasons and actions is so childish; in addition to being completely irrational and illogical.

The ONLY thing we know about God is either through our imagination or reading what people have written about him in their imaginations. The idea of a god didn't originate with the Hebrew people, although Christians have taken what they wrote ABOUT him as though it were accurate and true. Even a cursory reading of the Bible will show that there are multiple ways that God has been described, some totally contradictory. Yet we argue about what he does, thinks, sees and judges, emulating an omniscience that no human has.

Christians have deified the Bible and made it the last word; but the problem is that there is no general agreement about what that word says.
It's an exercise in futility but concentric, as there will never be a human answer, merely person speculating. God must laugh at our contortions in assuming that we understand and know his reasoning.

Why are we insisting that God can't have it both ways? Just because human logic won't permit it? Are we insisting that we can know the mind of God? Don't get me wrong, I'm convinced God wants us to use our brain cells to their utmost capacity--reason, imgination & faith. But who are we more willing to limit in this debate, God or our logic?

Gerhard,
Certainly we would not want to insist that God is limited to our understanding. However, we have to work with what we have, otherwise we can't really say anything meaningful. We can only express ourselves in as accurately and meaningful a way as our language, logic, understanding of reality will allow. We don't necessarily enhance our understanding of God by simply attributing to God things that don't make sense to us, rather we take what we find in scripture, prayfully think and pray about it, and then speak as carefully and coherently as possible. When we are done, we will certainly fall short of fully describing God, and some things will always remain a mystery. As C.S. Lewis suggests, God cannot be shrunk down to the size of our arguments. But saying we cannot know everything, or maybe even anything in all its fullness, is not quite the same as saying we can know nothing. What Rice suggests in his book is simply a way to speak more coherently about what we do have in scripture in a way that both honors God's Sovereignty and genuine creaturely freedom. The result is not to limit God to human logic, but simply to try to make whatever form of reasoning we use to think about God as consistent and accurate as we can - creaturely limitations granted.
- Ken C.

The poet said it long ago: "Presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man!" Tom

Way back on the "Old Spectrum Blog" I addressed a question to those who resist "open theism" and hardly anyone responded. So here it is again:

How would your daily walk with God change if you accepted "open theism?" How would it affect how you pray, read Scripture, participate in the life of your congregation and attempt to serve others?

I sense a great resistance to this way of thinking about God that seems to flow from some strong spring of true spirituality. But I don't know what it is.

Can anyone help me understand? Thanks!

Dave

Dave

It seems to me that the concern with Rick's hypothesis is that Open Theism leaves God either eternally vulnerable or
capricious.

How does Open Theism square with: "The same yesterday, Today, and forever?" Hardly sounds like "always open"--almost like no plan at all.

One would have to agree that God has many more options that man can comprehend. There is no dead-end for God.

Tom

Hi Dave,

Never heard back from you either on your definition of "theocratic" as relates to church and state...i.e why rules regarding personal moral behavior(religious right) might be more "theocratic" than those involving say "progressive social activism."

To your subject...perhaps a question with a question.
How would your "daily walk" with God change if you accepted "open theism" rather than the "traditional" Arminian view of God's exhaustive understanding of the future?

That might give us content for discussion as this is not a "soundbite" issue as you know.

How could anyone possibly know whether his prayers were answered? Which brings the inevitable question: Why pray? What do we expect when we talk to God? How will we know when he answers?

The Bible records many who experienced God talking to them, even acceeding to requests, and more.
Is God the "Great Santa Claus" in the sky to whom requests and petitions should be addressed?

"To walk humbly with God" could mean that we work toward justice and mercy and less on correct doctrinal interpretation--a lost cause when attempted.

Ken: Your response is well put and very helpful. I don't read in the Bible and don't believe that God ever asks me/us to abondon our minds and reason. But in addition He also invites me/us to live by faith. In that way we can have it both ways; something which my good athiest friends refuse to at least sample.
Now I'm off to read the book. thanks,

A warning: If you play around more and more with Open Theism you might eventually find yourself believing in a God that is very much like yourself: one who doesn't have all the answers. Such a realization will either warm your heart when you recognize yourself in the divine or force you to live this life with greater relish.

For some reason Ian Anderson's strange words came to me when reading some of these Open Theism comments today.

For whatever it's worth, I include them here:

1. In the beginning Man created god:
and in the image of Man created he him.

2. And Man gave unto god a multitude of names.
That he might be lord over all the earth when it was suited to Man.

3. And on the seventh millionth day Man rested and did
lean heavily on his god and saw that it was good.

4. And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground.
And a host of others likened unto his kind.

5. And these lesser men Man did cast into the void.
And some were burned,
And some were put apart from their kind.

6. And Man became the god that he had created
and with his miracles did rule over all the earth.

7. But as all these things did come to pass,
the spirit that did cause man to create his god,
lived on within all men,
even within Aqualung.

8. And man saw it not.

9. But for C_____’s sake he’d better start looking.

Wasn't it George Bernard Shaw who said that "God created man, and man has returned the favor."

Can anyone show that man has NOT created the idea of God in his own mind?

Elaine

Elaine,
Epistemology is the concept of how we know. When I first got into computers I bought an unformatted disc and tried to load information into it. The results...as you know ...nothing. Who formatted our brain to receive information...mere chance?
I think not.

God created us to seek after Him. We could not find Him so He found us...and that is Grace!

"Can anyone show that man has NOT created the idea of God in his own mind?" . . . seems like an odd question. I don't suppose there is anything we regard as real that we could not say that we created the idea of it in our mind. The real question is whether or not there is something real that promps us to reflect on it, and results in us developing ways (ideas) for describing or better understanding it. The realization that we may "create" ideas about God is not quite the same thing as saying we "create God."
Ken C.

Finally I get to respond to some of the above:

Pat:

If I were to become some kind of closed theist, the concept of God would be less coherent for me, it would be difficult for me to make sense of much of Scripture, I would have more difficulty than I already have in coping with the problem of evil, my impression that my choices can really alter things would become less clear and vivid, and, worst of all, I would regret that God cannot enjoy music because it depends upon experiencing a succession of sounds whereas God, according to closed theists, experiences past, present and future without temporal distinction.

Changing topics, I think we should have as few laws as possible but as many as we need. Mill strucks me as right: every citizen should have the maximum amount of freedom consistent with the same kind and amount of freedom for others.

Elaine and Ken

I agree that we create our concepts of God just as we create our concepts of everything else. The question for me is which of the concepts of God we have so far comes closest to the way things actually are, all the relevant evidence considered. I take it that we have the same challenge with all our other concepts.

I attended the Living Conversation series with David and Rick at Julius's house and found much their presentation very appealing, emotionally as well as intellectually. At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder if their account of open theism in fact requires that we remain closed to some live alternatives on the basis of what may be false dichotomies and fairly rationalistic set of assumptions that in fact limits rather than opens us up to the possibilities of who God as God can be.

David writes, for example, "the Christian moral life is not primarily a matter of submitting to God's commands" but is about "the joy of responsively and responsibly interacting with God in bringing about in each situation as much flourishing as possible." It is not at all clear to me, though, why obedience and joyful "interacting" should be presented as being antithetical or in tension. In the Jewish theology, at least, isn't there the sense that it is a delight to do what God commands? And what are we to make of all of the passages in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that emphasize obedience to God, including Christ's obedience to the point of death on a cross when his existential experience was one of God's complete abandonment?

Another question that arises in my mind is what open theists make of the fact that modern physics presents a cosmology in which the laws of the universe--including the very dimensions of time and space--themselves appeared, by all signs ex nihilo, at a particular moment in time. If God is entirely bound by the laws of the universe than logically of course He cannot have foreknowledge of what humans will do with their freedom. But what if God stands not only in time but outside of time? Rather than attempting to reconcile all of the antinomies in a rationalistic sort of way, would it not be more intellectually honest to confess that we simply cannot comprehend what it is like to be a being outside of time and space and that this is the God that both Scripture and Christian tradition attests to?

Scripture in fact presents us with numerous paradoxes that cannot be resolved in any kind of rationalistic way: God is both human and divine, God's strength is revealed in weakness, God conquers death by dying, God is three in one. To these paradoxes--if we take the witness of Scripture seriously--I think we must add the view that God is both in time and outside of it. The only possible answer to some of the questions David and Rick raise, it seems to me, is therefore an honest confession of ignorance that allows for a certain amount of unresolved tension and even contradiction in our theology...a confession that refuses to surrender either human freedom or orthodox views of God's soverign power and knowledge.

Has now been several years ago when this “openness” question was resolved for me. This thread reminds me of my own working through of this enigma. And reading Ron Osborn’s flowing words and keen mind sort of inspires me to revisit my own thoughts.

I marvel at the observation that failure to accept God’s complete foreknowledge (which I define as God’s knowledge of not only what could happen, but will happen) somehow “limits” Him. As if I could “limit” the rising of the Sun tomorrow morning (or? the rising of the Son?!) by keeping my head buried under the pillow. One does not limit God; but rather limits his own perceptions. And for me it is “limiting” to think of God as knowing all that will happen. Limiting and irrelevant.

Within this sort of discussion, I find it fascinating to consider how we conflate the ideas of time and space and talk about time as if it is a place. This clearly indicates that our ability to conceive of both concepts (and their interconnectedness) is extraordinarily rudimentary. Yet for me, I realize I’ve been doing something like this in my mind since I was a boy as I tried to imagine the logistical difficulties for God meeting ALL these people, where THEY live, at the same TIME. Will there be Disney like lines in heaven waiting to meet with Him?

So why not start with a fact; that while GOD may exist outside of time and place, that’s not where I live. I live here (a place) and now (time: now as opposed to then). And, thanks be to God, that’s exactly where and when He meets ME. What He does on His own “time” and at His own “place” is none of my business. And thus, is irrelevant to me. But of this I can be certain; I don’t NEED to know anything about God and how He behaves in that future. For I already know this. He behaves no differently that He does withIN the revelation of His person through the Christ which happened in both time and place.

What I’d like to suggest is that the need for a God who knows the precise future is an idolatrous obsession; an unhealthy infatuation with God’s “power categories”; and as such is a detractor from THIS moment (all we have IS the moment -- the way it’s currently set up) with Him. I think this belief is irrelevant and unwise because God never asked us to join Him in that future; which is why He became Immanuel -- God with us. Condescending to OUR time and OUR place. How might we know the God of the future is trustworthy? Because He has been (historically) and is -- in the present -- just that way. The insistence for a God who owns and knows the future is (to my way of thinking) an expression of dissatisfaction for the God who is with us NOW. It is a grasping for that which He has not given us. (Did not Eve also grasp for that which was not given?)

When God is spoken of as knowing the future as it WILL happen, there is really nothing which distinguishes it from being like the ways WE know the past. And the past is unchangeable. If the future is likewise unchangeable it means it too is as “set” as the past. And if the future is so “set” I’ve got a huge problem; because by definition I do not live there! (see how time and space “blur”?) So the question is, who then is that impostor there making decisions FOR me? If God wants to wander ahead on the path of time that’s His business. But He has not invited me -- or you -- along. He is there by Himself -- as is His right if He so chooses. This concerns me not in the least for I’m confident He will be just as glorious, His character just as life-giving in that future (to which we WILL arrive some day) as He is now.

We celebrate, this season, God’s promise of just that -- for He IS with us.

Ken C.

While the concept of God existing outside of time, and the whole space-time continuum thing for that matter, is a fascinating thing to think about - I am not sure it really speaks much to the heart of the issue. The concept of free will, in order for it to me meaningful in the sense that something not yet definite becomes definite, within the limitations of my thinking anyway, doesn't make any sense if the future is fixed in all of it's detail - whether I am there yet or not - or however time is conceptualized. Nor do I really know what it means to live outside of time, or whether or not that is a place or state God is in. Perhaps one could say that God inhabits all possible futures? But in the end, I think what it comes down to is whether I find the classical greek idea of a static, unchanging God (classical theism) a better way to conceptualize God than a God whose being, love and character does not change (God is the same yesterday, today and forever), but whose actual expereince with the creator order remains dynamic(open theism).

This is not a choice between the God of scripture and Open Theism, but rather a choice between ways of thinking about the God we find in scripture, and the significance of the relationship between God and God's creation. I can't think of any particular reason that the greek conception needs to be where we stop. While reality is surely far more complicated than any of our attempts to explain it, some explanations seem to provide ways for more of the pieces to fit than others - which is what makes open theism such a persuasive option. It may not be the end of the conversation, but, for me at least, it takes us further down the path toward an understanding that accounts for more rather than less.
Ken C.

I agree, Ken, that there is a grave problem with any theology that conceives of God in Platonic or Aristotelian terms as a sort of unmoved mover detached from all tellurian affairs and dwelling in cold and lofty splendor. The God of Scripture is clearly a moved mover who enters history, is filled with pathos, and is capable of being emotionally affected by human choices. This is one of the reasons why much of the language Dave and Rick are using appeals to me. Ironically, though, the God of open theism, on closer examination, appears in many ways to be precisely an unmoved deity! Aren't Dave and Rick the ones arguing in fairly syllogistic terms, after all, that experience and reason rule out a God who directly intervenes often (if ever, for Dave) in history but who instead lets human freedom and the laws of nature simply run their course? Yes, we are told this God intervenes all the time...in the hearts and minds of people. But the "open" God I detect in much of the conversation strikes me as being a great deal like an unmoved mover--a sort of divinity of logical necessity or theological nostalgia whose main advantage over the Aristotelian model is that He (She/It?) also happens to get verklempt.

Notice, too, how language is being used to control the debate and, at least potentially, limit not only the possibiltiies of who God as God might be but also who we as Christian thinkers can be. "Open theism" is an appealing term. Who doesn't want to be "open"? But the implication that those who don't fully subscribe to all that goes under the self-appointed title of "open theism" are therefore guity of CLOSED theism is one I think we need to resist. I have argued that there are paradoxes and tensions in the Bible that maybe cannot be resolved and need to preserved if we are going to maintain a healthy faith. Another way of stating this would be to say that perhaps open theists need to have their ideas challenged and tempered by orthodox theologians just as much as orthodox theologians need to be unsettled and tested by those who describe themselves as open theists. But it isn't at all clear to me (Dave, correct me if I'm off the mark) that Dave and Rick are entirely OPEN to fellow Christians who believe in a God who, for example, takes a very active, intervening role in the circumstances of their daily lives. So just how open is the open theology afterall? Clearly open theism is not simply adding new insights to Christian theology--it is asking us to leave some ways of thinking and practicing what it means to be a Christian behind. So if one is going to be an open theist in good and regular standing, to what must one become closed?

Ron, I appreciate your last paragraph about how some of us (and I still haven't done my reading/study yet to know whether I could totally be classified as an "open" theist--I'm a fairly happy Arminian of the compatibalist variety at this point, I think) want to limit how others talk about God and think about how he acts in their daily lives.

I confess I'm often frustrated/irritated by people who constantly talk about God's intervention in their daily lives--it is the WAY they talk about it, I think, and some of the implications of that, which bother me.

And your paragraph provided a needed corrective--the Spirit's reminder to me--of my own arrogance regarding how people should experience or understand God. I do think damage can come from some ways of understanding God. But I'm way too sure of my own thoughts about God without remembering that His thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways aren't my ways and that perhaps these other people have insights I don't. I'm too ready to freak out about the potential "fallout" that I think their "bad" theology might have. Let God be God (in their lives as well as mine)....

Thanks for the gentle prodding to be "open" to others as well as God. Because I think God is pretty "open" Himself to our pitiful reachings toward understanding him....

"No man has seen God." Yet we try to second-guess an idea in our minds. Who will admit to seeing God? What can we claim to "know" about a concept we create?

We have accepted ancient men's writings as certain (only if found in the Bible), and yet no other contemporary accounts are given such certitude. With many writers one is confronted with contradictory descriptions. Who can be believed? On what basis?

We should humbly confess: ALL that man can know about a god is a conception of his mind. Faith in an idea of a god or gods is as old as humanity; yet all claim to be the correct and true belief.

What about "No man has seen God" is believed? Yet man continues to offer descriptions of God's behavior and much more. Why isn't any person's idea equal? All one has is man's description in the Bible and they are as varied and contradictory as the writers.

Risk is a virtue. Ben Carson's recent book suggests this, and open theism does too.