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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 12/27/2002 2:37 PM (GMT -6) |   | I recently finished reading the book "End Times Fiction" by Gary DeMar. In the book he makes a number of criticisms of Tim LaHaye's pretribulational eschatology and he defends a broadly preterist position. While I am not ready to say I 100% agree with DeMar, I think he makes a pretty respectable case for preterism, the view that most of Revelation, the 70th week of Daniel, and most of the Olivet Discourse pertain to events that have ALREADY happened, having been fulfilled in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
The questions I want to pose for discussion are these:
What are the eschatological implications of open theism?
Do some eschatological positions (e.g., preterism) fit better with open theism than other positions?
My questions have nothing to do with the exegetical details, so please don't use this thread to argue for your favorite eschatological scenario (start a new thread if that's your interest). The issue here is the RELATION between open theism and any of the various eschatological scenarios, not whether this or that scenario is the best interpretation of Scripture.
That stated, here's my line of thought:
One of the commonest objections to open theism concerns its ability to handle predictive prophecy, especially prophecies that make detailed, long-term predictions. Open theism says that the future in many respects remains to be settled because the shape of the future hinges to a significant degree on the choices of God's free creatures. As we move further and further into the future, therefore, we should expect less and less to be settled, and thus the future should be less and less predictable. That being so, it seems to me rather difficult (or awkward to say the least) to reconcile open theism with the idea that Bible contains detailed predictions about end times scenarios 2,000 or more years prior to the events occurring. On the other hand, it seems to me easier to reconcile open theism with a view like preterism, which says that almost all of these prophecies were fulfilled in the first century, within 40 years or so of the predictions. Such a view leaves the future much more "open" because there are not many specific predictions yet to be fulfilled.
Any thoughts appreciated.
Alan
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 12/27/2002 5:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey Alan,
You said, "As we move further and further into the future, therefore, we should expect less and less to be settled, and thus the future should be less and less predictable. That being so, it seems to me rather difficult (or awkward to say the least) to reconcile open theism with the idea that Bible contains detailed predictions about end times scenarios 2,000 or more years prior to the events occurring.
It isn't the least bit difficult for God to predict how He's going to bring things along 5 years or 2000 years from when He speaks. What you've said is probably one of the larger obsticles for people when dealing with the open view. What happens is that the minute the understanding of the mind grabs the concept of the open view, one shrieks at the idea because it must mean, then, that God couldn't possibly control the future THAT well if He doesn't completely know what's to come. And there it is; the real truth about how much the person really believed in God's omnipotence; not as much as one thought!
Now, I'm not saying you don't believe in God's omnipotence, and I'm not saying you doubt God. What I am saying is that do we really think it's "harder" for God to do something 2000 years later than, say, 5 years later? It isn't "harder" because there isn't an "easier". It's no more work for God to control things for 5 minutes or 5000 years. THAT'S power and control!
You then said, On the other hand, it seems to me easier to reconcile open theism with a view like preterism, which says that almost all of these prophecies were fulfilled in the first century, within 40 years or so of the predictions. Such a view leaves the future much more "open" because there are not many specific predictions yet to be fulfilled.
Well, I just dealt with that, but there's one more thing: many, many prophecies are several hundreds of years before Jesus' life or John's vision of the Apocalypse. Some are over a thousand years old; Promises to Abraham, for instance. And John, for the most part, merely piggy-backed off Daniel and others in the OT. So, it's not like he was giving a whole lot of new information to us.
The open view isn't affected by nor does it affect God's omniscience and omnipotence in regard to the time duration of the giving and fulfillment of prophecy. The "iffy" stuff is when God changes His mind because of man's sin or something like that. (Ah, sleep doeth beckon me, it doeth! "KEITH, YOU LOOK DOPY; get some sleep!" Yeah, it's time to go to bed! We'll chat more!
For the duration of time and prophecy,
Starkman
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 12/27/2002 11:13 PM (GMT -6) | | "Openness and Eschatology" sounds like a great book to write Alan. When are you starting? 
I agree that the open view more easily fits a preterist position. Both are more open ended.
I'm not convinced yet that the open view couldn't account for a premill understanding. Well, historic premill anyway. I'm not sure. Open theists need to tackle more of these issue in writing.
What's the Spectrums book say on this?
Tom
"When you mix things up they get messy" Fred
Edited by - TGB on 12/28/2002 04:14:02 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 12/29/2002 11:04 AM (GMT -6) | | The Spectrum book doesn't say anything about this.
I think Alan (in contrast to Starkman) is right: If one takes the "snap-shot-into-the-future" view of Revelation, then we have God predicting not only what HE'LL do, but what other agents will do. Now, its not impossible, especially since most of Revelation concerns the devil, and I have reason to think the devils resolved character makes him very predictable. Still, I think that the preterist view fits most easily.
But the idealist view of Revleation (which is, arguably, the most traditional view), is also perfectly compatible with Openness. In this view the book of Revelation symbolically presents epochal realities that are to some degree true of all times and all places. It has a long established history in the Church, especially (ironically) in Reformed Dogmatics.
Blessings
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 12/30/2002 3:56 AM (GMT -6) | | Doc said, "I think Alan (in contrast to Starkman) is right: If one takes the "snap-shot-into-the-future" view of Revelation, then we have God predicting not only what HE'LL do, but what other agents will do.
Just to clarify, I wasn't taking a snap-shot into the future perspective. I was only saying that God can prophecy an event to take place within a person's life (Peter is to be crucified, Paul is to suffer much) or He can prophecy about very distant things (the book of Daniel); neither is more challenging than the other to God in regard to His ability to control events to bring said prophecies to pass.
Starkman
Edited by - Starkman on 12/30/2002 08:59:58 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 12/30/2002 1:34 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
It isn't the least bit difficult for God to predict how He's going to bring things along 5 years or 2000 years from when He speaks. ... It's no more work for God to control things for 5 minutes or 5000 years.
I agree, Starkman, as long as we're talking about matters that are COMPLETELY UP TO GOD. But the minute other free agents get in on the mix the whole picture changes. The reason is that there's always some uncertainty in how a free agent will act until the choice has been made. Now some choices set up the conditions for other choices. So there's a compounding of uncertainties. The further out we go, the more uncertain things will necessarily become.
God has considerable power to influence the decisions of free creatures, so that he can control to some extent the probabilities, but still the father out we go, the less certain things have to become insofar as they depend on a compounding of free choices. It's a basic rule of probability theory that the joint probability of independent events equals the product of probabilities of those events, Prob(A&B) = Prob(A) × Prob(B). Omnipotence doesn't help here, because the only way God can GUARANTEE that his creatures will follow a certain course is to so constrain their choices as to negate their freedom.
So, IF the Bible is to be seen as making detailed predictions about events that involve a succession of choices by genuinely free agents, then the further out the predictions go, it seems that they less certain they would have to become. One counterpossibility is to point out that human society is much more predictable than human individuals. So if these long-term predictions deal with large groups of people instead of specific individuals, then the probabilities won't degrade quite so fast.
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