The Openness of God - Predestination, or Free Will? (Part 1)
The Openness of God
A different perception of God has arisen in Evangelical
Christianity that while not being new, has challenged the way we
have always thought about God's nature. This paradigm shift is
seen by it's authors to bring us closer to the biblical
conception of God. The book is called The Openness Of God and is
seen to be very controversial in it's perception of God and will
have sweeping effects on every other area of evangelical thought
and life.
The God shown in this book is not the immutable monarch
controlling human history and man's individual lives but rather
a loving and suffering Father who has chosen to allow man's
actions to affect Him in very real ways. At face value what they
propose looks like Libertarian process theology with a twist of
arminianism. But it seems it is actually much more. These
authors introduce us to a God who is with us in time through
self-limitation and does not know the future in absolute detail.
This new view of God is called "the open view of God,"
"creative-love theism," or "free-will theism." It is extreme
Arminianism, but stops short of full-on process theology.
Some definitions may be helpful at this point, there are two
main theological beliefs currently accepted by the mainstream
church, Armenianism and Calvinism. Arminianism is the belief
that God has given man the choice to accept or reject Him.
Predestination is conditioned by God's foreknowledge of who
would respond to the gospel. It is also possible for a believer
to fall from grace. Man can neither of himself nor of his free
will do anything truly good until he is born again of God.
Calvinism states that fallen man is totally unnable to save
himself, and that God's electing purpose was not conitioned by
anything in man. That Christ's atoning death was sufficient to
save all men, but efficient only for the elect. That God's grace
is irresistable to the elect of God and that they being
regenerated and redeemed will persevere in the faith.
Less commonly accepted, is Process Theology which is more
philosophically than biblically or confessionally based. Process
Theology is the belief that God is evolving with the universe
and does not know the future but is learning along with his
creation, He is confined to time and thus knows possibilities
and probabilities but He doesn't know actualities.
The Openness of God is not a new concept. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the Socinians made the same argument. "God
does not know, in such a way that whatsoever he knows will
surely come to pass." So in regard to human choices, God knows
future possibilities but not future certainties.
Both Calvanists and Arminians, along with the most part of
christendom affirmed God's foreknowledge of human choices.
John Calvin wrote,"[God] foresees future events only by reason
of the fact that he decreed that they take place." Jacob
Arminius wrote,"[God] has known from eternity which persons
should believe...and which should persevere through subsequent
grace."
Christian orthodoxy has never denied God's foreknowledge of
human choices. Both Arminianists and Calvinists ( the whole
church) do not agree with Open theology.
I believe that a defective doctrine of God would affect all
areas of Christian life and leadership as well as discipleship
to bring about an eroding of the glory due to God. Your theology
will directly influence your leadership style and the outworking
of your salvation. After all your conceptualisation of God's
nature is what is imitated and lived out in daily life.
Openness theology is not necessarily an extension of Arminianism
and neither is it the opposite of Calvinism, nor even a response
to the calvinist tradition. Instead it appears to be another
tangent in the quest to reconcile divine providence and human
freedom with a little input from Process theology.The followers
of this particular view are I believe genuinely concerned with
preaching the word of God and the work of discipling others in
Christ. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that openness
theologians lack adequate scriptural grounding and are outside
of the theological mainstream with regard to God's omniscience
and providence. Biblically, the future appears to be less open
than they propose.
Openness Theologians say that history is the combined result of
what God and His creatures decide to do. God is always walking
beside us, and experiencing intimately all that we go through.
God is omnipotent in the sense that He is the creator of all and
could control his creatures if He so wished but He chooses not
to control by coercion or force, instead His role is influential
and persuasive.
The argument of openness theologians is that God has been taken
hostage and held captive by classic theism where His
transcendence is overemphasised and His personhood as the
Trinity downplayed. They say this view of God is inconsistent
with the revelation of God through scripture, namely that God
can suffer, grieve and repent.
One would think that the opposite of the God of classical theism
would be the finite God of process theology, but the openness of
God is clear that God does intervene and will certainly bring
history to a conclusion in line with His will and purposes-with
or without the help of mankind.
Openness theology also teaches that any claims about the nature
of God that are logical contradictions cannot be accepted in
theology. It has to be all or nothing as in the case where one
says that God knows the future in absolute detail and with total
certainty but still leaves parts of the future open and
undetermined i.e. in the case of people's decisions regarding
their personal salvation.
Another tenant of Openness theology is that true freedom means
being able to choose between options without any
predetermination. This puts them in a position where neither
determination nor predestination are an option. Ultimately it
means that the creature assumes and requires a certain limited
independence from God. Whereas other evangelicals and Calvanists
in particular prefer to accept a more compatible idea of freedom
whereby for them, true freedom is being able to do what God
knows and has decided is right.Thus they choose to be totally
dependant on God, and independence from God is slavery.
For openness adherents this is very foreign, because it
ultimately places one in a position that seems to attribute the
authorship of both good and evil to God. It is a powerful and
persuasive book, but it does have some serious problems that
will prevent even sympathetic readers from embracing it as a
model for life.
For instance can a self-limiting God who rarely, if ever,
intervenes in the free choice and actions of man be assured that
the history of this planet will end in the way He desires. For
instance every decision we make can have hard hitting and
lasting effects in this cause and effect world. A good example
would be Peter's act of denying Christ three times. Is there a
chance after Jesus told Peter that he would deny his master
three times, that Peter would stay true to His master and not
deny Christ and God's prediction would thus be wrong?
If God's prediction was wrong, it would mean that God makes
mistakes, because God is right about Peter in this case does it
mean it was just a good guess or that God really does know the
future. The same goes for Jesus' prophecy of Judas as His
betrayer, the bible says in John 6:64,"Jesus knew from the
beginning..who it was that would betray Him." Whether Peter does
or does not deny Christ or Judas does or does not betray Christ
advocates of the openness of God are faced with a dilemma.
Still the real weakness in the openness view of God comes when
the authors distinguish between the infinite and the personal
attributes of God. This creates a tension that they cannot
reconcile so they drop the ball when it matters most They
embrace the personal God and lose sight of His infinite nature.
Believing that God must be finite or at least limit himself to
being as such, thus He does not know the future and cannot know
the future while still be personal. This is very selective and
the glory of God is lost in this model of God that they are
encouraging us to embrace. As a result they tend to take words
that mean one thing to us as mankind and finite and apply those
same words and actions to God who is infinite. Words such as
repent simply cannot be applied to an eternal God in the same
way as they may be applied to humanity...
This article is continued in The Openness of God (part 2)...
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