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Rach
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2010
Total Posts : 2

Posted 9/29/2010 10:12 AM (GMT -6)

Hi everyone,
I'm new here so this is my first post. A couple of months ago my husband was critically ill in intensive care for five weeks (he's at home but still recovering now) During that time I had sooooooooooooooooooooooo much theology thrown at me by well meaning (but I would say often misguided) Christians. So I guess that kind of jump started me into the theological journey of exploration that I'm in right now. My faith in Jesus has never been stronger, but my theology has been shaken up. In exploring open theism, I don't feel like I'm looking at something totally new, but rather consolidating and trying to make sense of what I believe. I'm studying a theology course by distance learning, but I'm still fairly near the beginning with all of this, so I'm here to ask questions, to learn and to explore this issue further. I'd never heard of open theism before, but it does resonate a lot with what I think.

So far I've read "God of the possible" and "Is God to blame?" by Greg Boyd and I'm about half way through John Sanders "The God Who risks" Mostly it makes a lot of sense. However, I still don't really get how prophecy seems to fit into open theism. I guess I'm thinking both of old testament prophecy having been fulfilled in the New Testamant as well as modern day prophecy (if you believe that the gifts are still for today, which I do)

It seems from what I'm reading that there are different opinions even amongst open theists, is that right? Some consider that God is unable to know the future (or rather that he knows it as partly closed and partly possibilities) because the future doesn't exist and so is not there to be known (but then the only explanation for prophecy being fulfilled would surely be that God foreordained it; which may be the case sometimes, but I don't think covers every instance of prophecy) Others think that God chooses (or chose?) to limit himself in regards to the future (so does that mean that he could choose to know certain things that are going to happen without actually foreordaining them? Are there open theists that believe that?

I'm a novice with all this! I look forward to learning more........

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 9/29/2010 10:28 AM (GMT -6)

Welcome, Rach. I'll be praying for you and your husband.

I think all open theists would agree that God can unconditionally prophecy about events He intends to bring about by His own competent power. The difference of opinion tends to be about prophecies that sound unconditional at face value in the relevant texts but, nevertheless, don't seem to have been fulfilled yet. Some people just think that means the ultimate "fulfillment" of the passage has not yet happened.

E.g., Christ's exit from Egypt supposedly "fulfilled" the scripture that God would bring His son out of Egypt. The same kind of thing is applied to seemingly unfulfilled prophecies by certain open theists. Others just think that that to the extent that they seem somewhat "unfulfilled," they were contingent in those respects.

Rach
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2010
Total Posts : 2

Posted 9/29/2010 3:13 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks for your reply and for your prayers.

Are there open theists that believe that God can choose to know aspects of the future without actually foreordaining them? For example with Jesus having known that Peter would betray him. One explanation that I've heard for that from some open theists is that Jesus knew what Peter would do because God ordained that it should happen that way. But that sounds a bit calvinistic to me.... I believe that God does foreordain some things (that are necessary for his wider plan) but I guess I struggle with the idea that God would foreordain that Peter do that and then expect him to repent of it. I'm also not too convinced by the suggestion that because God knew Peter so well he could DEFINITELY (without a doubt) say he would react that way with no chance of being wrong. What if Peter had realised after two times and walked away? Did he have the free choice to do that and if so, how did God know he'd respond like that? I can accept God changing his mind about carrying out a prophecy (eg if there's repentence etc) but a God given prophecy being wrong I would find hard to accept.

I' m also questioning how it is that people receive prophecies from God which are fulfilled, if he doesn't know the future.... I'm doing a lot of wrestling at the moment! I guess I'd describe myself as someone who's very very "open to open theism!" but I'm not going to accept it without working through it properly. There are some things that don't quite make sense to me although I have to admit that so far open theism is making more sense to me that Arminianism (and Calvinism has never made any sense to me)

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 9/29/2010 6:21 PM (GMT -6)

Rach: Did he have the free choice to do that and if so, how did God know he'd respond like that?

Jeff: I tend to think that Peter had no real free choice to act properly in the matter, because the scripture tells us that Christ's deliverance to death was hidden from his heart. Consequently, he couldn't make rational sense out of what was happening. Therefore, what he did was quite predictable. The only thing that God needed to do was providentially affect the details as to conversation evolution, rooster crow times, etc.

Rach: I can accept God changing his mind about carrying out a prophecy (eg if there's repentence etc) but a God given prophecy being wrong I would find hard to accept.

Jeff: Me too. That's why I tend to think that prophecies that sound non-contingent that have not been fulfilled per their original wording will yet be so. E.g., I don't think the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. is the fulfullment of Christ's prophecies about Jerusalem being trodden down until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Because that would seem to mean that the times of the Gentiles are over since Jerusalem is not seemingly being trodden down by anyone. Does that mean that Jerusalem will only be inhabited and/or trodden down by Israelites from now on? I wouldn't think that follows from the context.

Keep thinking it through. There are coherent ways to make much better sense of open theism than its competitors in my opinion.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 9/29/2010 9:03:47 PM (GMT-5)

Starkman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 9/30/2010 3:22 PM (GMT -6)

Hi Rach,

Probably the most overlooked and most basic matter Christians ignore when it comes to God's foreknowledge is the practical and simple common sense of the matter. For instance, it's not that we have any evidence or reason to believe that God knows absolutely everything everyone will ever think, say or do, it's just that we think we are suppose to believe this because...well, if, after all, God doesn't know absolutely everything...EVERYTHING...we will think, say and do, then He wouldn't be God. But I believe that nothing could be further from the truth.

The practical, common sense of it all (a little thinking being required here!) is that it just doesn't make the slightest sense in the world to say that you, Rach, have the freewill choice to choose to do among the many things that you can choose to do today, and then say that God knew from eternity past that you would do what you did. How can that be true, you ask? Simple. Just ask God to tell you what you will do in the next, oh, say, ten minutes, and then try to explain how it is that you will just go out and think, say and do what He said you would do...to the tee, exactly as He said you would (the exact amount of blinks, the exact movements, the thoughts, etc.) Reality says that this doesn't even make sense! It's not possible for humans to pull that off.

In other words, common sense and simple logic—the tools of the way life works, as God has set this world up—make it impossible for God to know everything you will ever think, say and do (and I mean absolutely everything you will ever think, say and do, no exceptions, for their can be no exceptions if this were the kind of knowledge God has). The second God told you supposedly what you will do in the near future, you would be able to change all sorts of things He said you'd do, which would only prove that God doesn't have that kind of knowledge. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible for you NOT to change something, because it's just not the way life is; we can't be told or shown EXACTLY what we will think, say and do and then go do those things in the exact way we were told and shown. That's simply not reality.

Anyway, it's God who has made the world this way. It's God Himself who has made it such that He Himself cannot know absolutely everything we will ever think, say and do. And you know what? He's not the least bit worried about it! Why? Because you'll never catch God off guard. The reason is because what God DOES know is every "possibility" that can happen. If it can happen, God is completely well aware of it and well planned for it. He'll never be caught off guard by anything that we think, say or do.

As for Peter...

Let's go with the simple, common sense of what was going on between Jesus and Peter. Here they are having a heart-to heart talk. Peter, always Mr. "I'm there for ya, dude," is bent on convincing Jesus that there's no way in God's green earth that he will ever deny Jesus. Obviously Jesus disagreed. He even went so far as to give Peter some (scant, but some, nevertheless) details about Peter's time when he would deny Jesus.

So what's going on here? Is Jesus showing that so-called foreknowledge where God knows absolutely everything (EVERYTHING!) Peter will ever think, say and do, or could it just be that Jesus simply revealed to Peter a bit more about Peter's heart than even Peter knew about his own heart? I believe the latter is what was really going on: Jesus knew Peter's heart better than Peter knew his own heart, and Jesus was simply calling it for what it was. Plain and simple, Jesus knew what was really in Peter's heart and was telling Peter "Yes, you love Me, Peter, but not like you think you do. You will love me that way one day, but that day is not today."

As to the details Jesus gave Peter about the denial to come, it was no problem at all for God to orchestrate circumstances so that Peter would get boxed in and the truth would come out (God deals with all His children like this in order to sharpen their faith). It's really that plain and simple. Further, there isn't a reason on God's green earth that it was impossible for Peter to have repented, acknowledged his heart before the Lord and at that time to have completely changed the course of the actions. In other words, he could have done what was needed to do in order to avoid denying Jesus, but he chose not to. He wouldn't listen to Jesus and thought instead that he knew his own heart better than Jesus knew it. THAT'S what got him in trouble. There was no need for Jesus to now anything more than that in order to work out circumstances in Peter's life to box him in.

So, just staying within the bounds of the way God made the reality in which we live, there isn't a chance possible that everything all of us will ever think, say and do can be foreknown. It's not even necessary for God to know that information, as I stated above. Further, God could have made the world so that He would know everything everyone would ever think, say and do, but He would have had a bunch of robots for friends!

Thanks,

Starkman

Post Edited (Starkman) : 9/30/2010 3:28:01 PM (GMT-5)

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