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In Paper #909, lines 5 and 6, this is written: "WHEREAS, the theology known as the ‘openness of God’ revises understanding of God’s attributes, particularly His omniscience," Here is where the misunderstanding of the Openness of God (more properly "Open Theism") concept begins: the belief that omniscience and other of God’s attributes are being redefined, which is not true.
Does God know absolutely everything, no questions asked, no exceptions made? Let's answer this question by addressing first God’s omnipotence (God can do everything). To affirm that God can do absolutely anything, no questions asked, we set ourselves up for a hard fall. Can God make square circles and married bachelors? Can God become evil? Can God cease to be God? Can God create another eternal God? Can God create a female God whom He can marry? Can God become finite? Can God decide to make our eternal security not so secure? And the proverbial skeptic's question, can God make a rock so big that even He cannot lift it?
These are not all illogical questions. After all, a rock is a real physical entity, and God is a real spirit being. So the question really is can a spirit make a physical entity so big that even that spirit cannot lift it? I think that is a valid question. Further, if I answer "Yes," than I am told that God is not omnipotent; He cannot lift the rock. If I answer "no," I am again told that God is not omnipotent; for He cannot make something so big that even He would be unable to lift it. But if I answer, "I could care less if God can or cannot make a rock so big He can't lift it because omnipotence is not defined by God being able to do absolutely everything, no questions asked,” then I am free from the skeptic’s trap! There absolutely must be, therefore, a qualification to the statement “God can do anything,” and that qualification is this: God can do anything that does not violate the nature of who and what God is.
If the definition of omnipotence, then, requires qualification, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that the definition of omniscience (God knows everything) may also require a qualification. Indeed, it must. After all, can God know that I am single if I am not? Can God know what it is like to be married? Can God know what's it's like to lie? Can God know what it's like to not be God? Can God know what it’s like to be finite? We can quickly see that there are many things God simply cannot know just as there are many things God cannot do. If God were able to do and to know absolutely everything, we would have a very mixed up and volatile God on our hands. No thank you!
The qualification, then, for defining omniscience is this: God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods. This is not a redefining of omniscience; it is the real facts of life about the meaning of the word. It captures perfectly the nature of who and what God is without violating both who and what He is. So it really isn’t a well-thought-out conclusion to declare that the Open Theist (someone who believes in the Open View) denies or redefines God’s omniscience. That simply is not true.
Open Theism is the doctrine that part of the future is yet to be decided; it is “open.” Why? Because of freewill. It isn’t that God could not have made a world that was fully determined (fully known), but our world is not that world. Because of freewill, every one of us has the ability to decide how some (not all, but some) of the future will turn out. We do this every day when we make choices. Our ability to choose makes it impossible for God (who created us this way) to know absolutely everything we will ever do, say, feel, think, pray, or what have you, for all of our future. For example, if the Lord appeared to you and told you, “I am the Lord, and since I know absolutely everything. I’m going to tell you exactly what you will do in the next thirty minutes, down to the amount of blinks, scratches and sneezes you will experience, down to every thought you will think and every word you will speak; I am the Lord.” All you would have to do is do something differently than what He told you. As a matter of fact (this is important), you couldn’t help but do or say differently some of the things you were told because you have freewill. This means that we can be assured that the Lord will never appear to any of us and declare He knows our futures as I described above. He made the world such that it is impossible for Him to know our futures as exhaustively settled. It would be a complete violation of who and what God is for Him to be able to know this kind of information in a freewill environment. Even Molinism cannot account for the impossibility of the Lord telling you your future as exhaustively settled. This does not mean that God does not know our thoughts, our minds, our hearts and, well, ourselves better than we know ourselves. But just because He knows these things we have no need, whatsoever, to insist that God knows absolutely everything or that our entire futures are exhaustively settled. The simple facts of life prove they are not.
Finally, God has determined how some of the future will go, and that cannot be changed. Further, Some things are going to be the way they are because they cannot be changed (e.g., God will always be God). And finally, God is never, ever at a loss because of our freewill choices, and neither is He ever without complete control of our world. No one is ever going to catch God off guard! He’s fully aware of everything, and He can never be found without the ability to run this world as only He can do. It’s like the often used chess analogy: Since God knows absolutely every combination of moves that can be made in the game, no matter what choices His opponent makes, that opponent can never win. In other words, God wins the game no matter what moves His opponent makes.
I pray that the Council give serious thought before tossing the Open View off into heresy. Open Theism does not violate any doctrine that is foundational to the Christian faith. It would show the Council’s prudence and wisdom to think this matter through thoroughly and thoughtfully.
Sincerely,
K
P.S. For whatever reason, this post has run all my sentences together. I apologize that I do not know how to correct this.
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In reguards to the omnience of God, in that He is all-knowing. I believe He is all-knowing, but not in the sense that He knows that you are going to scratch your nose in 5 seconds.
I believe that He is all-knowing in the sense of things that relate to man's future.
The Bible code that has been discovered is evidence that God is all-knowing of future events because they were encoded in the Bible, and God knew that one day man would be able discover the code.
I believe too, that if God was all-knowing as to every aspect of our lives, and he controlled us like puppets, He would never have put the the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." in the Garden of Eden.
So, there must be an understanding of what God's omniesence is.
Posted by: C
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Open theism (openness of God) tries to make a case that God is unknowing of the future (according to Wikipedia). This theology runs contrary to the Scriptures. If we accept openness theology, I believe we have to discount Revelation 13:8, which says the "Lamb has been slain from the foundation of the world." God doesn't have future knowledge, openness theologians would say, so He can't have known from before the foundation of the world that a Lamb would be needed!
I also believe we would have to discount the fact that God announced through the prophet Isaiah that He chose Cyrus to free the Jews from Babylonian captivity, 150 years before Cyrus was King of Persia (see Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1-7). How can we say that He sometimes knows, but not always? He sits above time, my brothers and sisters in the Lord! He gives us free will, but He sees all time at once, from His heavenly perspective. We must remember YHWH's words, from Isaiah 46:8:
"Remember this, and be assured, recall to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying 'My purpose will be established, and I will accompish all My good pleasure.'"
Posted by: S
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Greetings all,
This post is to the Council, though I am addressing S's recent post.
S begins her post (above) with, "Open theism (openness of God) tries to make a case that God is unknowing of the future (according to Wikipedia). This theology runs contrary to the Scriptures." If this is what Wikipedia states, than I whole-heartedly agree with S, since the Open View does not try to make the case that God is unknowing of the future. How foolish that would be!
S closes her post by quoting Isaiah 46:8: "Remember this, and be assured, recall to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying 'My purpose will be established, and I will accompish all My good pleasure.'" Again, Open Theism supports this verse, for God is God and there is no other; He declares the end from the beginning and will accomplish His good pleasure. No disagreement or contradiction here between the Bible and Open Theism.
S quotes Revelation 13:8 to support her conviction that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Once again, Open Theism supports this, for God did know the Lamb as slain from the foundation of the world. How foolish it would be to think that God didn't think of the Lamb until the Fall!.
In further consideration of S's concerns, Open Theism has no conflict with God calling Cyrus before He was born to save the Jews. Further, when S rhetorically asks, "How can we say that He sometimes knows, but not always?" Open Theism is in complete agreement; one cannot say that God sometimes knows but not always.
There are two statements S made that are problematic. One of them is when she said,"God doesn't have future knowledge, openness theologians would say, so He can't have known from before the foundation of the world that a Lamb would be needed!" This is not at all what Open Theism teaches, and if any Open Theist does claim this, consider that teaching erroneous. That person has gone into some unknown territory that is not at all Open Theism. The second problem S creates is one of plain and simple logical contradiction when she said, "He gives us free will, but He sees all time at once, from His heavenly perspective." One simply cannot claim that we have freewill and yet at the same time claim that God knows everything from eternity past (EVERYTHING!) that will ever happen.
Council, brothers and sisters, and S, think about this very, very carefully. If God knows everything (and I mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING) you will ever say, do, think, feel, if He knows every prayer you will ever pray, every tear you will ever cry, every conversation you will ever have, every step you will ever walk...everything, then it is settled forever that you will do all that He already knows you will do. Now think about what that means. It means that there is no way you could change a thing (not an iota) if God ever told or showed you any of your future. You would HAVE to do everything as you heard and saw it. Now I ask you, is that reality? No, not in the slightest. Reality is that we not only can and do make choices, but we couldn't help but change things that anyone, including God told us would be done exactly (I mean EXACTLY) as we were told. What does all this mean? It means that God, who created the world like this, is never going to be foolish enough to try to tell anyone all of their future (I know, "their" - plural pronoun with a singular verb. Oh well!).
God could have made the world such that He would know everything that everybody would ever do, but this can never be once He interjects freewill into the world. It is simply a contradiction to the facts of life as we live them to say that we have freewill (the ability to choose in many different situations) when it is supposedly already known what we will do. Amazingly, even all Calvinists (Arminianists and, yes, Free Methodists as well) live their daily lives as if the Open View is true, as if part (not all, but some) of the future is yet to have been decided and that that part is thus unknown. Just try for a minute to imagine the opposite of how we live, a world where everything...EVERYTHING you will ever think, say and do is already known! When you pray, God would say, "I already know every word you will say, and every word I will say in return - you're entire prayer life is as if it's already been recorded." Maybe this is the reality of some other world God has created, but it sure isn't our reality.
Please, my brothers and sisters, Council and S, study carefully what the Open View is. Ask questions, and please don't listen to the cock and bull that's out there adding only confusion to the matter. The View is very, very simple. It's nothing more or less than this: Part of the future is "open," meaning that God has made this world such that neither He nor we can know that part of the future as exhaustively settled and final until we get to that time in the future or sometime near it.
It is "the nature of the future" that we are talking about, not God's omniscience. Many Calvinisists believe that absolutely everything is determined. Arminianists believe God has Simple Foreknowledge, meaning He just knows absolutely everything that will ever happen. Neither of these is sufficient, however, to explain how we daily exercise freewill. Again, I ask us, if the Lord appeared to us and told us that He was going to tell us or show us our future (everything!), how is it not true that we would NOT have to say or do everything we saw and heard? For that matter, how would we not even be able to stop ourselves from saying or doing things differently than what He told or showed us? You couldn't help it. You'd do something differently, I can tell you that! exactly as we heard and saw it! This is why the Lord will never be foolish enough to attempt this feat, since He's the one who has made it impossible for anyone, including Himself, from being able to tell anyone ALL of their future EXACTLY as it will happen, step by step, prayer by prayer, thought by thought, word by word. I really hope the reality of all this is hitting home here. Freewill is God's way of ensuring that we will have a choice and say in many matters (not all, but many), and it is His way of protecting anyone from ever taking that away from us.
And, again, I stress that Open Theism whole-heartedly affirms that God is in complete control, and those things He has determined will happen just as He said. He is never caught off guard, and He's always one hundred percent aware and knowledgeable of everything at all times. He knows everything...EVERYTHING that is not in violation of who and what He is (see my first post in this blog).
There are many books on Open Theism on the shelves, but most of them are from a theological or philosophical perspective. This makes it difficult for many of us to follow closely the contents of those books. So I decided to write a book in plain and simple English on the Open View from the perspective of reality as we live it daily. This is not to put a plug in for my book, but to alert many of you that I know how easy it is to misunderstand the Open View, and I wish to do something about this. Even well-respected scholars are to blame for not thinking more carefully and obtaining a more accurate perspective of what the View is before they condemn it. The book will be called "The Open View in Plain English," and will, hopefully, be published soon. In the interim, please consider well what the Open View is and what it is not.
Sincerely,
K
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It is important that we, as children of God, understand that God has given us free will, but that, because He sits above time, everything that ever was has already happened; that is why He is able to have foreknowledge regarding Cyrus being appointed King of Persia. Imagine how many free will decisions had to be made between Isaiah's prophecy and the placement of Cyrus on the throne! But God saw that, and sees everything that ever will be, through all of eternity. As I quoted from Isaiah, He knows the end from the beginning. Here is a quote from Theopedia, another resource, on what open theism is: