 |
| 
Leila
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 93
| Posted 11/10/2003 8:57 AM (GMT -6) |   | Thought you all would be interested in knowing that the Washington Post ran a pretty big story on open theism this past weekend....
Redefining Omniscience Theologians Who Contend That God Doesn't Know the Future Face Fervent Criticism -- and Expulsion From Evangelical Group
By Bill Broadway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 8, 2003; Page B09
John Sanders began to wonder about God's intentions after his brother was killed in a motorcycle accident.
As a 16-year-old high school student, Sanders was a photographer for the local newspaper in Hoopeston, Ill., when he was sent to the accident scene not knowing the victim's identity. After seeing the horror before him,he turned to God and asked, "Why did you kill my brother?"
Sanders, now a professor of philosophy and religion at Huntington College in Indiana, said his confusion increased when well-intentioned friends said that his brother's death was part of God's plan -- and that the plan must be to help Sanders accept Jesus as his Savior.
"I asked, 'God killed my brother so I would become a Christian?' "
Thirty-two years later, Sanders, an evangelical Christian, still considers such arguments absurd and, over the years, has developed a view of God that he believes to be more realistic. He no longer asks whether God does terrible things to people, he said.
Instead, Sanders lays the responsibility directly on humans, arguing that they have the free will to make choices that determine events. God knows everything that happened in the past and is happening now, but God has no foreknowledge of events because the future has not happened, he said.
For promoting this view, called "open theism," Sanders and other evangelical scholars have been challenged through increasingly vehement criticism on the Internet, in seminary trustee meetings and at gatherings of the Evangelical Theological Society, a 54-year-old professional association whose members must affirm biblical inerrancy and the doctrine of the Trinity.
Critics have railed against open theism in chat rooms and on numerous Web sites, using such epithets as "pernicious error," "heresy," "divine mistakes" and accusing its proponents of creating "a crisis of unprecedented magnitude."
Trustees of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship school of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, weighed in last month by passing a resolution saying, "Open theism's denial of God's exhaustive definitive foreknowledge constitutes an egregious biblical and theological departure from orthodoxy and poses a serious threat to evangelical integrity."
Most of the attention, though, has focused on the Evangelical Theological Society, whose members have debated the issue for more than a decade. At its annual meeting two years ago, the society approved a resolution rejecting open theism and supporting the position that "God has complete, accurate and infallible knowledge of all events past, present and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents."
Last year, a majority of the members agreed that Sanders and Clark Pinnock, 66, professor emeritus of theology at McMaster College in Hamilton, Ontario, should be investigated and that their membership status should be reconsidered at this year's meeting, Nov. 19-21 in Atlanta.
This dispute among academics reflects a growing debate among evangelicals at large over such issues as the relationship between God and humans, the effectiveness of prayer and the significance of making moral decisions.
Open theists, in essence, say there would be no point in praying for a sick child if God already knew what the outcome of the illness would be. Why struggle over making the right decision, they ask, if God has decided for you in advance? And how can you love anyone, even God, if that love is forced on you or away from you?
"It's a fundamental incoherence to say we're determined, yet I love," Sanders said. If there is no free will, he added, "is God dancing with manikins?"
Leading the charge against the open theists has been Roger Nicole, 87, an internationally known theologian and native of Switzerland who advocates the predestination views of Swiss reformer John Calvin. As a "classical theist," Nicole believes that God knows everything that has happened or will happen and that God answers prayers before they are asked.
Yet prayer is still effective because the person making the prayer helps bring the result God intends, Nicole said. In the case of a sick child whose condition improves, he said, "God heals with my prayer."
As for making moral decisions, "God doesn't deal with us like we're pieces of wood," said Nicole, a founding member of the evangelical society and professor emeritus of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. "We are free agents responsible for our decisions."
What seems to irritate Nicole most is the open-theist position that God can change his mind, that prayer might sway him or that God makes mistakes.
"Can an errant God correct himself?" he asked in an interview. "I say the answer has got to be 'No.' If he corrected himself, he was either wrong before and corrected it, or right before and the correction is wrong. God has no business ever correcting himself."
Nicole, accompanied by Bruce A. Ware, senior associate dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, confronted Sanders and Pinnock on this point last month in Chicago during a special meeting of the nine-member executive committee of the Evangelical Theological Society. The committee met to consider the charges against Pinnock and Sanders and to make recommendations to convention delegates about whether to rescind the memberships of the two theologians.
Expulsion would require a two-thirds majority by the 500 to 800 members who are expected to vote at the convention.
The issue of expulsion centers on whether Pinnock and Sanders denied biblical inerrancy when writing books defending their theology, said society President David M. Howard Jr., professor of Old Testament at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.
For Pinnock, the committee's discussion focused on a footnote in his 2001 book, "Most Moved Mover," in which he cites seven biblical prophecies that appear not to have been fulfilled as described, including the destruction of Jerusalem in the 8th century B.C. (an event that instead occurred in the 6th century) and the Apostle Paul's prediction that the Second Coming was, in Pinnock's words, "just around the corner."
"We may not want to admit it, but prophecies often go unfulfilled," he writes. "God is free in the manner of fulfilling prophecy and is not bound to a script, even his own. The world is a project and God works on it creatively; he is free to strike out in new directions."
During the committee hearing, Pinnock said, he argued that his views were consistent with an inerrant reading of the Bible. He said he was asked to revise the footnote for future editions of the book, which he did -- twice.
In the second, approved revision, Pinnock says: "We may not want to admit it but prophecies can be fulfilled in surprising ways . . . . I see God as free in the fulfilling of how his own prophecies are fulfilled, and not bound to a tight (i.e., overly literal, precise) script; the world is God's project and he works creatively with it. He is free to do new things and free to strike out in new directions -- within his overall plans, of course."
The "retraction of certain problematic language" resolved the differences over inerrancy between Pinnock and the committee, Howard said in a letter to members. The committee voted unanimously that the charges "not be sustained," he wrote.
A separate meeting with Sanders ended "without mutual understanding" and "was a source of sadness and frustration to all present," Howard wrote. On a 7 to 2 vote, the committee recommended Sanders's expulsion.
Sanders said that he and the committee, which focused on his 1998 book, "The God Who Takes Risks," reached an impasse over the question of whether the Bible includes passages indicating that God changes his mind after prophecies are made. A key example comes in the book of Jonah, in which God commands Jonah to tell the wicked people of Nineveh that they are going to be destroyed.
At first, Jonah refuses to carry out the command because he says he does not believe God will do it: "For I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentenst thee of evil." Although angry, Jonah goes to Nineveh with God's warning, but in the end God shows pity on the town.
Sanders says that God's promises are always conditional, in much the way a parent promises to take his children to the movies but cannot do it because a grandmother gets sick and the parent needs to rush her to the hospital. The conditions do not have to be spelled out every time, he said.
Sanders argues that his reading of the Scripture is just as valid -- and inerrant -- as Nicole's because he is finding the truth within the text. That God vacillates on some issues is a lesson also, he said, and because it's a biblical teaching, "we are obligated to follow it."
The bond between God and humans is similar to the relationship between relatives or friends, Sanders said. It's the give-and-take, the sharing, that gives people hope, whether they are looking for a job, facing a crisis or trying to find ways to make a positive impact on the world, he said.
"The God of Christianity is a vulnerable God who seeks to bring the good out of you," he said. "When evil occurs, God seeks to change it [with human help] to bring good out of it."
Roger Nicole's charges against John Sanders and Clark Pinnock, and their rebuttals, are available on the Web at www.etsjets.org.
| | Back to Top | | |
 |
Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 11/10/2003 11:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks, Leila, for the info.
My only comment is that the article evidences a common misunderstanding of open theism. Open theism does not, as the title states, say that "God doesn't know the future." Rather, open theism affirms that God knows the future, and knows it perfectly. What open theism denies is that the future is now exhaustively settled. Since the future is not now exhaustively settled, God, who is omniscient, must know it as such.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
|
streetpreacher
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 16
| Posted 11/10/2003 12:41 PM (GMT -6) | | "God has complete, accurate and infallible knowledge of all events past, present and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents."
Does no one on the committee see the contradiction here (of course I know they do, relying on theological sophistry)?
As for making moral decisions, "God doesn't deal with us like we're pieces of wood," said Nicole, a founding member of the evangelical society and professor emeritus of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. "We are free agents responsible for our decisions."
Okay, so now Nicole is arguing for the Open Theist perspective?
"God has no business ever correcting himself."
Ummm... guess not. So much for God's sovereignty.
Today Lucifer is probably surveying the church just as Bonaparte did China. One can almost behold the fear in his eyes as he thinks of the Church's unmeasured potential and growls, "Let the Church sleep! If she wakes, she will shake the world." Is not the Church the sleeping giant of today?.... - Leonard Ravenhill | | Back to Top | | |
|
streetpreacher
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 16
| Posted 11/10/2003 7:06 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd
Should Open Theists grant that "God does not know the future"?
Alan is right. We should not. The future can mean "what lies before us" or "what shall come to pass." In the OV., God exhaustively knows BOTH. Our disagreement with the classical view is that we hold that SOME of what lies before us are possibilities, and hence only some of the future can be characterized as "what SHALL (definitely) come to pass." God knows it all. Its just that "all" includes possibilities.
He knows the future exhaustively. The Post article is wrong.
Doc
Do you think this is why Sanders is having trouble with ETS as opposed to Pinnock? As far as I know, Sanders denies that God knows all possibilities, including the idea that Christ's death on the cross was not a contingency in God's mind in case man fell into sin (which IMO, would eventually have HAD to happen). Does anyone know how he reconciles this with "Christ being slain from the foundation of the world?" Or am I mischaracterizing his position?
Also, your assertion that God knows the future exhaustively; have you been saying this all along? Most open theists I know use the statement "total exhaustive foreknowledge" to characterize the position of the other side. Given your definition of Foreknowledge = Possibilities, you are certainly within rights to say that.
Man, I can't wait to tell my Calvinist friend in a very pious voice, "God has exhaustive foreknowledge." I might even get accused of being orthodox for once.
Today Lucifer is probably surveying the church just as Bonaparte did China. One can almost behold the fear in his eyes as he thinks of the Church's unmeasured potential and growls, "Let the Church sleep! If she wakes, she will shake the world." Is not the Church the sleeping giant of today?.... - Leonard Ravenhill | | Back to Top | | |
|
Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 11/12/2003 1:41 AM (GMT -6) | | | http://www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1146 | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:40 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|