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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/26/2001 6:05 PM (GMT -6) |   | NaveySealed
11/07/00 9:09 AM
How did you come to the "open view"?
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I'm interested in hearing how those who hold to the "open view" came to embrace it. There may be a pattern, maybe not, but it should be interesting to look at the ways each of us has come to this place.
I first came to the recognition that the future is partly open on a Wednesday morning during a Bible study in Huntington, IN. We would go over the first reading to be read on Sunday morning and the reading for that following Sunday contained Exodus 32:9-14. We read through the reading three times. I was stupified. I could tell that the others were a bit uneasy with the reading also. I had been confronted with an historical demonstration of the TRUE and LIVING God and I had to make a choice. Would I go with my preconceived ideas about God that were based on my feelings and popular Christian evangelists (mostly radio ministries)? Or would I take this passage seriously and explore the possibility that even God recognizes possibilities and is able to change His mind? I chose the latter.
Soon after choosing to go with the word of God over my feelings I got hold of a tape series put together by Bob Enyart. The series was titled, "Genesis: The Fall", and contained a sub-study on predestination & freewill within the 12 tape series (tapes 4-11). Bob so thoroughly destroyed the arguments and scriptural interpretations used in support of Calvinism that within 2 months I was thoroughly convinced that the open view was the view of God that agreed with the God portrayed in the Bible.
About a year later in Lansing, MI I attended a debate between Bob and 5 point Calvinist Brian Schwertley. After the debate (which Bob won convincingly) I recognized the title of a book that one of the audience members had brought with him. I remembered reading a short review of this book, The God Who Risks, in The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne's evening paper). I looked at the book and it said on the back cover that the author, John Sanders, taught at Huntington College just 25 minutes from where I live! I contacted John immediately and asked him if I could come to Huntington and see him teach a class or two. He gave the O.K. and ever since then we've been working together to promote and defend the open view
Sealed
Luke 13:6-9
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
NaveySealed
11/09/00 3:11 AM
RE: How did you come to the "open view"?
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Hellloooo! Is anyone out there on the boards?
Is everyone able to post on this forum?
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
sparkleylight
11/09/00 9:16 AM
RE: RE: How did you come to the
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Hello Navey,
I didn't want you to get bored so here are my thoughts....
I came to OV Theology interestingly through the 'back door' it seems.
For about 7 years I have been involved in counter cult ministry. I've always tried to be straight forward with truth that is absolute, factual, and concrete. However, in the gray and abstract areas, I turn to fervent prayer and study. In the past, people have asked me questions I couldn't answer (within the classical view), so I sought God on their behalf..
I never had a label on it, but as I received my answers from the Word, (many different translations), and prayer they later matched up with this OV Theology.
One illustration that appeared in my search was in the children's book
'Because I Love You' by Max Lucado. In this book he paints the picture of an old man who owns a village full of children....this man builds a wall around the village to protect the children from the evil forrest outside. BUT (here is the key to the story) since He loves them SO much...HE PURPOSEFULLY leaves a hole in the wall just large enough to get out. When confronted with this by one of the children He replies....I HAD to leave it OPEN even though it hurts me...to allow you choice...'because I love you'. He does not FOREKNOW if the children will go out, but is ready if they do...
The more I thought about this, I realized that if God allows complete free will, He would HAVE to NOT foreknow ALL, BUT COULD STILL BE the God 'all knowing' (everything there is to know), that I have always trusted!! Does that make sense??
This was a revelation for me, because it made God (as the man in the story) all THE MORE LOVING.....
Since then there has been much much more. I am inclined to say that I 'hold' the open view, however, I'm always in process so I don't like labels
sparkle
ps. I am very busy these days so please excuse grammar and run-on sentences....."I ain't no mephi!"
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
Lee-Eddy
11/09/00 7:32 PM
RE: How did you come to the "open view"?
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Greetings all, How did I come to Openness? Hmmm, well it's like this:
I do a lot of reading. Lots. I'm studying for a degree in Literature and Writing Studies and I'm also directing Youth (Junior and Senior High) Programs at a local church. I grew up going to a school run by a Christian church but we (my family and I) did not go to church. By the time I hit high school (by this time - public school) I was living for ME. I knew (or thought I did) what Christianity was about and I declined.
Some years later, I wrestled with God's gentle drawing and finally turned around whereupon he greeted me with joy. I was saved! Now I didn't want to be told what was right and okay to believe - I wanted to pick and choose for myself. Well, mercifully that didn't last long. I realized that I was a person of the book - the Bible - and began to study it. I had recently changed churches and felt a part of the body of Christ for the first time.
Our local library had the book 'Tracking the Maze' by Clark Pinnock. While I don't remember him talking about the Openness View in the book - his writing intrigued me nonetheless. I then borrowed (from my pastor) the Four Views on Predestination and Free Will (edited by the Basingers with an Openness defense by Pinnock) I read that and was shocked! No way, I thought. Couldn't be. My pastor asked me what I thought when I returned it to him and I said something about definitely not being a Calvinist but that some folks go too far! So I continued to read. And at some point, I began to check the scriptures for what they said about the future and God's relation to it. I read more articles by Pinnock, Greg Boyd's 'Letters to a Skeptic', articles by Dennis Bratcher (at cresourcei.org), articles at revivaltheology.com (McCabe) and I suddenly saw things a very different way. And when I read scripture, I understood it much better. The dryness in the story was gone - and it became much more applicable to my life. My prayers became lively and joyous and they began to matter. I went fully 'Openness' (as i understand it). I found opentheism.org and the bgc discussion and Greg Boyd's site. I read his 'God of the Possible' and 'God at War' and John Sander's 'God Who Risks.' And yet I was fairly quiet about my views, other than to shrug when someone asked me a 'Calvinistically'loaded question.
Then it dawned on me that my elders in the small fellowship I was in were also quiet Openness believers. They didn't blare it from the rooftops yet it undergirded their convictions and practices. One night after Bible Study, a few of us began to discuss it. The young people who made up the Bible Study had discussed it without me and asked my opinion (not knowing where I stood) My wife inhaled and looked at me, excitedly. And I erupted joyfully, sharing what my life was like now. It answered so many questions for me personally. My going back and forth to God in my younger years, why bad happens to good people. We don't all agree on this - but it has changed us for the better. About half of us are quiet but firm Openness believers and the other half are traditionalists - now I'm at a new church and I am somewhat quiet about it yet it undergirds all my basic convictions and practices.
I came to it because through it I grew.
Lee Eddy
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
GregBoyd
11/10/00 6:46 PM
RE: RE: How did you come to the
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People have trouble believing it, but I was a Calvinist for several years while in grad school. I never LIKED it, but for a variety of reasons (all of which I now judge to be misguided) I felt I had to conclude this. (I always tell Calvinists I can understand the exegetical reasons they have for arriving at their conclusions, but I'll never understanding how they think this view of God is "beautiful." The majority are damned for the glory of God!) In any event, my mind began to change in the mid-80's, maybe earlier. Several books were important to me. I think the first time the idea that the future could be partially open occured to me was when I read Peter Geach's book PROVIDENCE and EVIL. Charles Hartshorne's arguments for liberterian freedom began to convince me that the idea that creatures could be self-determining wasn't ludicrous. And then, one night reading the Bible, 2 Kings 20 just sort of jumped out at me. God told Hezekiah through his prophet, "You shall die." Hezekiah prayed, and God changed his mind, "adding" 15 years to his life. It just occurred to me that if God truly ADDED years to Hezekiah's life, and if God was speaking his intentions when he told Hezekiah he was going to die, then it couldn't have been certain all along that God WASN'T going to end Hezekiah's life. This started me on a rather lengthy Bible study that eventually led me to the conclusion that, while the future is partially settled by God and by other factors, it is also partly open. I can't say that this insight immediately changed my life. I did find myself praying with greater urgency. I was much more at peace with the problem of evil. And I found that I took greater responsibility for things I had the power to affect. (I hadn't realized how much my Calvinism had led me into a sort of stoic, passive state of resignation). But actually, I've learned more about the significance of the Open View over the last 4 years -- because of how its been attacked -- then I did the previous 12 or 13 years I believed it.
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
stainlessoneeye
11/13/00 4:52 PM
RE: How did you come to the "open view"?
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I haven't yet embraced the Open View, but I first noticed it's existence when a man named Obadiah gave a brief overview of the main concepts of it at theologyonline.com. That got my attention enough to search the web for more info, at which point I was led to this site (the only site, really).
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
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