Deu 29:29  “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. 

Ben writes:

Calvinists often appeal to Deut. 29:29 when caught in a theological dilemma. Ask a Calvinist how God can exhaustively determine all things and yet not be the author of sin and you might get an appeal to mystery and a quick reference to Deut. 29:29. Ask a Calvinist how God’s unconditional election doesn’t make His choice of some over others for salvation arbitrary and you will likely get more of the same. Yes, Calvinists love Deut 29:29 as it provides such a convenient theological escape hatch when they are called on to explain aspects of their doctrinal system which appear to be hopelessly contradictory. But have they carefully thought about the teaching of Deut. 29:29 and the problem it poses for their peculiar hermeneutic?

Doesn’t the passage teach us that the “secret things” belong to the Lord? Doesn’t this suggest that the secret things do not belong to us? If they do not belong to us then doesn’t that suggest that we should certainly not attempt to build our entire theology on those things which are “secret?” But isn’t that exactly what Calvinism does? Isn’t their entire theological system built on the foundation of eternal “secret decrees” which are nowhere to be found in the pages of Scripture?

It seems to me that Calvinists have put the “secret things” that do not belong to them before the “things revealed.” This is exactly the opposite of the message of Deut. 29:29…

Calvinists, of course, believe that they have gained insight into these secret eternal decrees by what the Bible reveals in passages which discuss depravity, election, and predestination. The obvious problem is that their understanding of these passages leads them to embrace a theology that makes “secret decrees” and “hidden” contrary intentions lurk behind so much that God has revealed (as in Jer. 13:15-17 above). Wouldn’t it be wise for them to carefully re-evaluate whether the secret should determine the revealed or whether the revealed should determine and control their theology? If we take the Lord’s words in Deut. 29:29 seriously the answer should be obvious. But perhaps there is some “secret” meaning hidden behind that passage as well. If that is the case we will need to wait until Calvinists reveal the secret to us, for it would seem that the “secret things” belong not only to “the LORD our God”, but to Calvinists as well.

Tim Challies lists three “chief concerns with open theism”:

1. A Denial of Omniscience. While men like Greg Boyd deny that open theism denies God’s omniscience, this is simply not true. Even if it is true that the future exists only as possibilities, something that is not adequately proven by open theists, we are still putting a limit on God’s knowledge when we state that He cannot know these possibilities. This view of God’s knowledge of the future is unique in that it is at odds with every other Judeo-Christian tradition.

Denial of omniscience is a false claim. Tim Challies falls for the fallacy of equivocation. He predefines Omniscience to mean his own definition, which mirrors Platonistic “active knowledge”. He ignores historical worldwide definitions of omniscience. He ignores just about every Open Theist being on record as believing in Omniscience. Tim Challies is being intellectually dishonest with this claim.

2. God’s goodness, greatness and glory are at stake. The God of the Open Theists is, in the words of Bruce Ware, too small. He is not the all-knowing, all-powerful God revealed so clearly in the pages of the Bible. Christians need to always be concerned that both they and God are making poor decisions based on inadequate information. Thus we cannot always count on God to do what is best, because even He does not always know what this is.

If God is depicted as “all-knowing” in the Bible (by which Tim Challies means that God has active, innate knowledge that originates in Himself and extends over all space and time) then the debate probably would never have surfaced. But Tim Challies’ weird Platonistic omniscience is not found anywhere in the Bible, nor are general claims of exhaustive knowledge of all the future.

Challies then relies on the moralistic fallacy to criticize Open Theism. He does not use intellectual generosity when he says Open Theism believes God makes “poor decisions based on inadequate information”. This is all ignoring the wide Biblical literature in which God repents, regrets past decisions, accepts input of prayer to change His plans, and otherwise engages in activities that Challies would label as “poor decisions”.

3. The Christian’s confidence in God is at stake. If open theism is true, the Christian cannot put his full trust and confidence in God. “The God of open theism will always want our best, but since he may not in fact know what is best, it becomes impossible to give him our unreserved and unquestioning trust” (Bruce Ware, Their God is Too Small, page 20. When hardships arise we will have to ask if God anticipated these, or if He is as shocked and distressed as we are.

Again, Challies relies on the moralistic fallacy. Challies’ idea is that he can form the perfect god in his own head, and that god will conform to reality. This is not a serious claim.

Furthermore, as will all moralistic fallacies, the knife cuts both ways. Maybe people will reject a stone, static, unchanging, and Platonically omniscient god as being evil, weak, and altogether meaningless. Far from being able to trust this static god, Ware’s claim (and by extension, Challies’ claim) is that all sorts of evil is God’s plan for maximum ultimate glory. What trust do we have in a God that hurts all sorts of people, without any volition, in order to glorify Himself. We trust this “god” to save us? Why? He has already shown that hurting people glorifies him. As the originator and father of all lies, the Calvinist god could easily just be lying to everyone.

Found in the comments of Leighton Flower’s excellent article You Just Don’t Understand Calvinism:

BRIANWAGNER
MAY 22, 2017 AT 5:51 PM
Then God is lying in Scriptures when He said He made some determinations after creation, since you say it only true that He made all determinations before creation. That is not hard to understand either, Troy! Both cannot be true statements, unless you want to believe that contradictory statement can both be true, which your free will can choose to believe… but we cannot have profitable conversations, imo, if you choose to believe contradictions are true.

TROY
MAY 22, 2017 AT 8:05 PM
Let’s get past all the assertions Brian. Give some examples of what you’re talking about from Scripture. Also you haven’t rebutted my last response to a previous comment of yours

BRIANWAGNER
MAY 22, 2017 AT 8:15 PM
Here you go Troy! –
God’s Decision Making After Creation

Calvinism has two main problems defending the premise that all things were predetermined by God before creation. First, they must admit words like determine, plan, and choose when used for God in Scripture must be anthropomorphic since they do not believe God does any sequential thinking required in the meaning of those words. But second, they must admit that God was not honest when in Scripture He says that He still makes choices, plans, and determinations after creation.

Deut. 12:5 (NKJV) 5“But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go. [To fit determinism it should read “God chose”]
2 Chr. 6:5-6 (NKJV) 5‘Since the day that I brought My people out of the land of Egypt, I have chosen no city from any tribe of Israel in which to build a house, that My name might be there, nor did I choose any man to be a ruler over My people Israel. 6Yet I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name may be there, and I have chosen David to be over My people Israel.’ [To fit determinism it should read “I have already chosen”]
2 Chr. 7:16 (NKJV) 16For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. [To fit determinism it should read “before creation I chose”]
Psa. 25:12 (NKJV) 12Who is the man that fears the LORD? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. [To fit determinism it should read “He has chosen”]
Psa. 65:4 (NKJV) 4 Blessed is the man You choose, And cause to approach You, That he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, Of Your holy temple. [To fit determinism it should read “You have chosen”]
Psa. 75:2 (NKJV) 2 “When I choose the proper time, I will judge uprightly.[To fit determinism it should read “Because I have chosen”]”
Jer 18:11 (NKJV) 11 “Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” ’ ” [To fit determinism it should read “I have devised a plan”]
Mic 2:3 (NKJV) 3Therefore thus says the LORD: “Behold, against this family I am devising disaster, From which you cannot remove your necks; Nor shall you walk haughtily, For this [is] an evil time. [To fit determinism it should read “I have devised a plan”]
Luke 22:42 (NKJV) 42…saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” [To fit determinism it should read “Even though it is not Your will”]
1Cor 12:11 (NKJV) 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. [To fit determinism it should read “as He had willed”]
Heb 4:7 [NKJV] 7…again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.” [To fit determinism it should read “He designated”]

TROY
MAY 23, 2017 AT 3:28 PM
Brian, out of all the arguments you’ve made since we’ve been in dialogue, this is, BY FAR, your WEAKEST argument heretofore. This demonstrates to me a sense of desperation on your part to cling to a presupposition that comforts the soul but not with truth. I must admit that my jaw dropped as I was reading the passages that you provided in support of your position because it reveals A LOT about HOW you approach the Scriptures. Let me respond to you in bullet points:

-First, you are imposing what you believe God SHOULD have said instead of allowing the text to speak for itself. Extremely dangerous approach to exegesis.

-The fact that God uses the present tense of a verb in time does NOT presuppose that He did not already plan His decision from before creation. He’s simply REVEALING His intentions to mankind IN TIME

-Here’s where your desperation really reveals itself Brian…[“To fit determinism it should read “I have already chosen”]
This is an example of you saying what a verse SHOULD have said. But you then split hairs by stating that the verse should have included “already” even though it was already in the past tense. WOW!!

-You commented, [To fit determinism it should read “before creation I chose”] First of all, the Bible was not written “to fit determinism”. It was written to reveal God’s message to mankind and to serve as a double-edged sword. Secondly, who are we to say how a passage should have been written? We are simply to bow to whatever God reveals in His Word. Also, the verse doesn’t have to include the words “before creation” to prove that God had already decreed His choice.

-The mistake you’re constantly making Brian is that when God says He’s choosing or doing anything in time, it’s only a revelation of His predeterminations brother. He’s just revealing to mankind what He planned to do all along sir.

-You quoted, “Blessed is the man You choose, And cause to approach You,” This verse doesn’t prove anything regarding predestination and God’s choosing in time. God will EVENTUALLY act (in time) on His predetermined choices. But the use of the present tense means NOTHING in terms of disproving a pre-creation decree.
[Side Note: Also we see in this verse that God has to “cause” man to approach Him. Another verse proving that God is in control of who will come to Him.]

Brian your anti-determinism argument is extremely weak. I would love to engage you (or any Traditionalist) in a formal debate on determinism now that I know how you defend your perspective.

BRIANWAGNER
MAY 23, 2017 AT 3:59 PM
Troy I dare you to talk to any grammarian or logician with a grad degree and ask them to read my argument about what Scripture says and how it clearly contradicts what Scripture would have to say for Calvinistic determinism to be true… and then to read your response… I would the love for you to tell me their response to you!

I only make the dare to hopefully prod you into a situation to learn from someone you respect that a Christian should not remain loyal to a premise that Scriptural evidence clearly contradicts. All the best!

TROY
MAY 23, 2017 AT 4:18 PM
I would absolutely welcome a formal debate with any person who uses your line of reasoning in refuting determinism. Cross examination would reveal a lot!!

BRIANWAGNER
MAY 23, 2017 AT 4:22 PM
We are debating… Troy. And debate is for the benefit of others who listen to it, which are more than you might realize on this page. You are always welcome, with my permission, to copy all of our complete conversations on a subject to post elsewhere for the benefit of others.

Zack Hunt writes an excellent Dear John letter to John Calvin. An excerpt:

You also have a tendency to talk out of both sides of your mouth. This isn’t good for a relationship because it means I can never really trust what you’re saying. F0r instance, in order to acknowledge the obvious reality of freewill while defending your hardcore understanding of divine sovereignty, you try to create a make believe difference between compulsion and necessity, as if just because we necessarily have to act in a certain way because God has ordained it so, we’re not actually compelled to do that. (2.3.5) John, that makes no sense. Likewise, you argue that even though everything is determined by God long before we even exist, we’re still responsible for out actions. (1.17.5)

Look, I get it, you’ve got a system to maintain and you need to make sense of sin and guilt. But, John, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either we freely choose to sin and are therefore responsible or God causes us by divine decree to sin and, therefore, God is ultimately responsible. Which leads us to the worst doublespeak of all in your book. You make is clear that God ordains evil, but isn’t the author of it. John, buddy, as you heard throughout your lifetime, if God is the source of and the one who ordains evil acts, then God is the author of evil. Which means your God isn’t really as loving and good as you would have us believe. In fact, your God is pretty stinking evil.

Paul Kjoss Helseth illustrates the peace in believing God controls all things:

Shortly after the Battle of Manassas in Ronald Maxwell’s film adaptation of Jeffrey Shaara’s historical novel Gods and Generals, a shell-shocked captain in the Confederate army asks Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson how he could remain so tranquil in battle when the fight was raging all around him. “General,” the young captain asks in an almost reverential tone, “how is it that you can keep so serene and stay so utterly insensible, with a storm of shells and bullets raining about your head?” Jackson’s response reveals his unshakable confidence in the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, including the seemingly random events that take place on the battlefield. “Captain Smith,” Jackson thoughtfully responds, “my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death; I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready, whenever it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live; then all men would be equally brave.”

Craig, William Lane; Craig, William Lane; Highfield, Ron; Highfield, Ron; Boyd, Gregory A.; Boyd, Gregory A.; Helseth, Paul Kjoss; Helseth, Paul Kjoss. Four Views on Divine Providence (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (Kindle Locations 379-386). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

What is interesting about this example is that Stonewall later is shot to death accidentally by his own men. He is shot, his arm has to be removed, and then he ultimately succumbed to pneumonia eight days later. The believe that God controls all things by necessity means that God has predestined all nonsense from before time eternal. Not quite a heartening idea:

Below is a letter to the editor of The Northerner, in response to Kristen Reuter’s article The God You Can Trust: A Response to Open Theism.

Dear editor,

I read with interest Kristen Reuter’s article The God you can trust: A response to open theism. She begins here article questioning Open Theist tradition and then comparing it to Socinianism. This is interesting for several reasons.

1. Ms Reuter seems to come from a Protestant background and seems unfazed by the relatively new break from the Catholic Church. It is odd that the Appeal to Tradition fallacy is used as an argument against Open Theists and not equally against Protestantism in general.

2. She links Open Theism with Socinianism, whose main features have very little to do with Open Theism and from which no Open Theist claims heritage. This seems to be a Poisoning of the Well, rather than a real argument. I would also like to assure Ms Rueter than most heretics throughout history have accepted her views of God’s knowledge.

3. Ms Rueter skips over historical figures that have accepted Open Theism on Biblical terms, such as L. D. McCabe (1878), William Biederwolf (1906), and Gordon Olson in the 1940s.

Ms Rueter then urges a return to the Bible, and I would suggest the same. Like any text we approach, we cannot import our theology onto the text. When reading Homer, Zeus is described as all-knowing, eternal, and controlling all things. Contextually, we understand this means Zeus has general surveillance of the world, is divine (although he did not exist eternally in the past) and that he reacts to events as he sees them happen.

It would be a huge mistake to import 16th century understandings of omniscience, timelessness, and sovereignty onto these ancient texts. Instead we need to look towards immediate context to understand how the authors viewed their own concepts.

When the Bible describes God as repenting His own actions (Gen 6:6), revoking eternal promises (1Sa 2:30), and expecting events that do not materialize (Isa 5:4), we ought not override those texts with appeals to vague prooftexts whose context does not suggest 16th century metaphysics.

When Ms Rueter references a quote by God’s enemy, Balaam (Num 23:19), to override quotes by Yahweh (1Sa 15:11), we ought to understand that God and narrators take precedence over quotes by characters in a story. Likewise, when we want to know the author’s view of God, the overall narrative takes precedence over chance phrases. Normal reading comprehension should be our guide.

And we should definitely not hedge our theology on militant definitions of adjectives or prepositions, both of which are largely fluid in meaning in any language and culture.

Ms Rueter seems like an intelligent, young lady. I just ask that she put aside her modern preconceptions when approaching ancient Semitic scriptures.

Christopher Fisher, author of God is Open: Examining the Open Theism of the Biblical Authors.

John R. Mabry writes:

Although Augustine professed to have denounced his former beliefs in the doctrines of Mani and wrote copious refutations of his heresies, the profound dualism espoused by his former teacher did not depart him. This became troublesome for Augustine, not only in the theory of Traducianism noted above, but in his conception of the Incarnation itself. Augustine could not conceive that the Spirit of Christ could actually join itself to the corrupt nature of the flesh. As he says, “For as the soul makes use of the body in a single person to form a man, so God makes use of a man in a single person to form Christ. In the former person, there is a mingling of soul and body; in the latter, a mingling of God and man… when the Word of God unites to the soul which has a body, taking thereby both soul and body at once… it ought to be easier to intermingle two incorporeal things rather than one incorporeal and the other corporeal.”48 So, in Augustine’s view, the soul was the middle man which enabled Jesus to be united in body and Spirit without the one having to be joined to the other (positively Gnostic!).

There seems to be a slight confusion of Manichaeism with Platonism. Dualism in Manichaeism is one in which eternal forces of light eternally battle eternal forces of dark. This is not Augustine’s belief, and the dualism in Augustine (the divide of the spiritual and the physical) was a Platonistic idea. Platonism held that there were three hypostasises: The realm of the One, an eternally unchanging perfection that cannot be related to anything else. The realm of the Intellect, a near perfection state in which the changeable is suppressed. And the realm of the Soul, which is made up of changeable mater.

In Platonism, the realm of the Soul is populated because of corruption of the Intellect. In this way, both the Intellect and especially the One cannot be associated with the realm of the Soul. Augustine takes an idea from Plotinus that bodies have spirit elements within them. But bodies, and all changeable matter, need to be ultimately discarded in favor of the unchanging.

Augustine’s ideas of the incarnation more accurately reflect Platonistic sensibilities than those of Manichaeism.

Triablogue states that he has made a compilation of quotes about the Bible that “support or [are] consistent” with Reformed theology:

I’ll quote Calvinists, Arminians, an open theist, and some scholars I don’t know how to classify. All the quotes will support or be consistent with Reformed theology. You might wonder why a non-Calvinist scholar would offer an interpretation consist with, or supportive of, Calvinism. One reason is that some commentators compartmentalize exegetical and systematic theology. They think you should interpret each book on its own terms, without shoehorning passages into a harmonious system of doctrine. Likewise, some scholars think some verses are more Calvinistic while others are more Arminian. They don’t interpret one in relation to the other. In addition, some liberal scholars don’t think Scripture has a consistent theological message.

Triablogue does not offer commentary on how the quotes that he does use can be considered supportive or consistent with Reformed theology, so each verse quote is a lesson in guesswork into Triablogue’s thoughts. The qualification that the quote might be “consistent” with Reformed theology seems to allow a broad brush. After all, commenting on Luke 2:1 by saying Caesar did decree a census is absolutely “consistent” with Reformed theology, but to pretend the commentary has anything to do with Reformed theology is a mistake.

Triablogue also seems to gloss over the areas in which his prooftexts counter Calvinism, opting to focus on points that support his premise rather than those that destroy it.

Triablogue quotes “K. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26 (B&H 2005), 2:813.” For his first prooftext:

Gen 45:5-8; 50:20

5 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.

God used their crime for his purposes, purposes they could not have anticipated. Here Joseph sounds forth the overarching theological conviction of the Joseph Novel: God’s purposes are not thwarted by human sin, but rather advanced by it through his good graces. The hand of God is seen, not only in clearly miraculous interventions and revelations, but also in the working out of divine purpose through human agency, frail and broken as it is. Joseph knows it to be true: “You sold me…” but “God sent me…”

Joseph does not deny their evil intent. But the word play, using the same verb with different idioms, highlights the way God has turned the evil intent of humans into an opportunity to accomplish his good purposes. They planned harm, but God reconfigured their evil and produced good from it…The brothers sold Joseph to Egypt with evil intent, but it was really God who brought him to Egypt in order to preserve life. B. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge 2009), 361,388.
God’s providence has directed everything, even the misdeeds of the brothers. It underscores the true purpose of the entire account of Joseph: God is the subject of the story, and he is moving all things to the end and goal that he has decreed (cf. 50:20). That goal is the preservation of a “remnant,” or seed on the earth.

Joseph again highlights the fact of the sovereignty and providence of God. He states emphatically that the true source of his coming to Egypt is not the brothers’ evil activity…Rather, it was the will of God that brought about the present circumstances: this opening statement clearly proclaims the doctrine of providence. It was God who placed Joseph in these various official positions.

Joseph simply believes that God even uses the sinfulness of humans to bring about his good purposes for the world. This theological concept is no stranger to the rest of Scripture (see Prov 16:1; 20:24; Ps 37:23; Jer 10:23). As Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but Yahweh directs his steps.” There is no stronger statement regarding the true meaning of the sovereignty of God in Scripture than what Joseph says here to his brothers. J. Currid, Genesis (EP 2003), 2:324-325; 397.

“But God sent me ahead of you” (v7a) reiterates Joseph’s interpretation of his travail in Egypt…Joseph viewed the families of Jacob as the surviving “remnant” of the world’s populations (cp. the Noah imagery, v5). If the Jacobites fail to survive, the whole of the human family will die without salvation hope. Joseph’s role as savior of the world from starvation typifies the salvation of the nations that the promises call for (e.g. 12:3).

A few things of note, just the text of Genesis 45:5-8; 50:20 negates Reformed theology on its own, much less the wording of the associated quote. The main issue is that Calvinists, Reformed, and often Arminians do not tend to talk about God as they actually believe God is. In Reformed theology, God is simple, outside of time, pure actuality. God cannot “do” things, but forever remains immutable. God cannot speak or interact with creation. God cannot be related to creation in any sense, for that would defy is transcendence and simplicity.

Does Genesis talk with this Reformed theology in mind, or does it talk like this Reformed theology is not even a consideration in the minds of the writers. Is God pure actuality or active and dynamic? Is God incomprehensibly transcendent, or does God interact with people? Let the verses speak for themselves.

The text of both Genesis and the quote depict God in a vastly different manner than Reformed theology. God “sends” (v 5). God takes precautions (v 7). God actively positions people into preferred places, as opposed to eternal decrees in which free actors are not a concern (v 8). God repurposes other people’s plans (v 20). None of these are actions of an immutable, simple, pure actuality God, not affected by creation and wholly transcendent.

The mere fact that the authors of Genesis have to point out this specific working of God suggests all listeners in the story do not automatically assume all things are the work of God. If they did, there would be no reason to attribute this specific action to God. Joseph and his audience are not Calvinists, but believe that God works within creation in specific instances to ensure success in His goals.

Likewise, the associated quote by Mathews is not a Calvinistic concept. God specifically acting in one instance to assure success is antithetical to Calvinism, which believes all things (no matter how minute) are the eternal decree of God.

Triablogue might not understand the logical fallacy of Composition, assuming something true of a part can be extrapolated to the whole. Yes, a car window is made out of glass, but this doesn’t suggest the entire car is made out of glass. Pointing out a car window is made of glass even suggests the entire car is NOT made out of glass or else it would be easier to just explain that the entire car is glass.

Yes, God might work a specific purpose in one instance, but that doesn’t mean God works every instance no matter how remote for some secretive purpose. God working to save Joseph from his brothers to make him powerful does not mean God gives children cancer for some sort of goal in mind. That is a terrible stretch of logic. The context does not even assume God controlled the intentions of Joseph’s brothers, much less most the actions in the story that worked counter to God’s plans. The point is that God overcame obsticles and used them to His advantage, and interesting action for a supposedly “immutable, impassible” God.

The Matthews quote affirms this; that God can use evil intentions for good results. If Triablogue wants to quote this as compatible with Reformed theology, he needs to ignore basically everything else being described in the text.

From 5 Reasons I’m a Calvinist. The first reason is unconditional election. Stephen Altrogge writes:

I believe in the doctrines of grace because they run throughout the entire Bible, like a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation. In the Old Testament, we see that God unconditionally chose Israel to be his people.

Deuteronomy 7:6-7 says:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples…

This theme, of God choosing a people for himself, comes up again and again, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. God clearly chose Israel to be his people, and that choice was not based on anything they had done. It was an unconditional choice.

Altrogge is prooftexting in an awful way. The face-value of the quote is not an “unconditional election”. It just states that God wasn’t picking a people based on strength. Just because God doesn’t pick on strength does not mean the choosing was not based on anything. Instead, the context explains that the picking was entirely conditional. The reason God picked Israel (the part of the passage that Altrogge conveniently forgets to quote) is that God had a longstanding promise to Abraham:

Deu 7:6 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
Deu 7:7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,
Deu 7:8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The picking in Altrogge’s prooftext is not referring to the Abrahamic covenant, but the liberation from Egypt. Moses claims that God is picking based on His previous promises to individuals.

Interestingly enough, God’s choice of Abraham/Israel was not unconditional. God relates how He knows Abraham is worthy of his calling and how He knows Israel will serve God:

Gen 18:17 And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do;
Gen 18:18 Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
Gen 18:19 For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. [KJV]

God did not choose Abraham for no reason, but because He saw in Abraham a kindred spirit. God even tests Abraham’s loyalty in Genesis 18, with Abraham passing the test. God’s expectations are that Abraham, a righteous man, will spawn a righteous nation. This expectation does not materialize within the Bible. God is thwarted. He time and time again wishes to kill all of Israel and restart due to failed expectations. Moses is confronted twice with this reality, in which God wants to destroy all of Israel but doesn’t because of Moses’ petition.

Altrogge’s prooftext about God’s unconditional election is in context of God choosing a people He regrets choosing and then attempts to kill. This is an odd concept for unconditional election. It sounds fairly conditional, conditional on Israel’s continued loyalty to God.

A Calvinists attempts to settle the “contradiction” between Matthew 22:14 and Romans 8:29-30:

That is a very good question. I would like to call your attention to a text in 1 Corinthians which, I think, clears up any misunderstandings of this issue.

“Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Cor 1:22-24

As this passage demonstrates, there are two types of calls: 1) the OUTWARD call of the gospel and 2) in INWARD call of the Spirit. We preach the gospel indiscriminately to all persons but, if you notice the above verse, the outward call is UNIVERSALLY rejected by both Jews and Gentiles because it is a stumbling block or folly to them … But “to those who are called” (through the gospel) by God’s Spirit, “the power and wisdom of God” i.e. there is salvation. The gospel must not only come in word, but in Spirit (1 Thess 1:4, 5). We can call people to faith in Christ till we are blue in the face, as we should, but outward persuasion is not sufficient to change a heart of stone to a heart of flesh by itself. Only God can do that (Ezek 36:26, John 6:63, 65) and He has chosen to do so through the proclamation of the gospel by the church.

This type of theology distracts from the context of all three passages. The context of Matthew 22 is God explaining the mechanics of what makes someone chosen. God tries and fails to entice followers from one group, and has to turn to another. Within that new group, those who are unwilling to conform to God’s standards are cast out. People are elect by their response.

The context of Romans 8 is that Paul is proclaiming the ultimate victory is God’s and God’s faithful will be rewarded. He states that believers will be killed, but they have the ultimate victory. Paul is not referring to people being unable to reject God. Paul is not even talking about people who were once Christians who recant their beliefs. The idea is the opposite, Paul is encouraging Christians such that they do not recant the faith.

The third text, 1 Corinthians, in context is about the different cultural mindset of Paul’s audience. The Jews are looking for a Messiah to bring about the Day of the Lord. The Hebrew mindset is relational and focused on world shaping events. The Greeks want to talk about metaphysics. Jesus is a stumbling-block to the Jews because he does not fit the Messiah for which they seek. Jesus is folly to the Gentiles because he does not fit their philosophy (the Platonism espoused by this Calvinist author, who quotes Paul without a hint of irony). This verse in NO way proves what this Calvinist would have it mean: that there are two types of calls (Outwards and Inward). It is not about that and the author fails to show his work.

In short, none of these verses contradict when read in context. They are not even about the same subjects in order to contradict.

1. HIS ABSOLUTE PERFECTION. This is the infinity of the Divine Being considered in itself. It should not be understood in a quantitative, but in a qualitative sense; it qualifies all the communicable attributes of God. Infinite power is not an absolute quantum, but an exhaustless potency of power; and infinite holiness is not a boundless quantum of holiness, but a holiness which is, qualitatively free from all limitation or defect. The same may be said of infinite knowledge and wisdom, and of infinite love and righteousness. Says Dr. Orr: “Perhaps we can say that infinity in God is ultimately: (a) internally and qualitatively, absence of all limitation and defect; (b) boundless potentiality.”[Side-Lights on Christian Doctrine, p. 26.] In this sense of the word the infinity of God is simply identical with the perfection of His Divine Being. Scripture proof for it is found in Job 11: 7-10; Ps. 145: 3; Matt. 5: 48.
Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology (Kindle Locations 1207-1214). . Kindle Edition.

Systematic Theologian, Louis Berkhof describes God’s infinite nature as “free from all limitation” and he says this “qualifies all the communicable attributes of God”. This is an interesting claim, as “limitation” is usually used in a subjective manner. Some individuals say the inability to “choose to know” is a limitation. Some say that “not knowing something” is a limitation. Some say that exterminating the inhabitants of the Promise Land was righteous. Some say that exterminating the inhabitants of the Promise Land would have been unrighteous (and is wrongly ascribed to God). Berkhof’s unqualified unlimited attributes do not exist.

These facts make one wonder if his prooftexts actually show what he is trying to claim. Job 11:7-10 reads:

Job 11:7 “Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty?
Job 11:8 They are higher than heaven— what can you do? Deeper than Sheol— what can you know?
Job 11:9 Their measure is longer than the earth And broader than the sea.
Job 11:10 “If He passes by, imprisons, and gathers to judgment, Then who can hinder Him?

This is a comment by Zophar the Naamathite, of whom God says “you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7). It is interesting that a prooftext is being quoted by someone God specifically condemns for wrong speech about God.

But, true, this verse reference is striking similar to other comments. Is the idea that is being peddled one of boundless infinite of the Platonic fashion, or is it one of God’s incomparable status (God is on a higher level than us). Notice the comparison language: Job cannot comprehend the boundaries of heaven and earth and the sea, how much more can not Job comprehend God?
Futhermore, is this about the infinite nature of all God’s “communicable attributes”? Did Zophar even comprehend the categories of “communicable” and “incommunicable” attributes to reference passively? Does the Bible ever speak in such abstract categories or define these concepts? Or, more likely, is Berkhof abusing text in order to prooftext his theology?

Consider also some implications of the open view of God for living the Christian life. While open theists claim that their view enhances the reality and genuineness of relationship with God, the truth is that the gains they propose are not real, while the losses incurred are tragically great. In a word, what is lost in open theism is the Christian’s confidence in God. Think about it. When we are told that God: can only guess what much of the future will bring; is relatively reliable only when predicting things close at hand; cannot be trusted to give accurate guidance on matters that are far into the future; constantly sees many of his beliefs about the future proved wrong by what in fact transpires; reevaluates the rightness or wrongness ness of his own past conduct based on what he learns moment by moment; even regrets at times that his own decisions or his counsel to those who have trusted him have actually resulted in harm instead of the good he intended-given this portrayal of God (and more- read on!), what happens to the believer’s sense of confidence before God? Can God be trusted to give accurate guidance or to lead us in a direction truly best in light of future developments? Can hope in God to fulfill his promises be founded without mental reservation or qualification? Can a believer know that God will triumph in the future just as he has promised he will? All this and more is greatly harmed and ultimately undermined by the open theism proposal.

Bruce A. Ware. God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Kindle Locations 143-150). Kindle Edition.

Notice the phrasing of this argument. Ware is concerned that belief in a God without omniscience of future events will give up emotional security to the believers. He sizes up positive and negative consequences of a belief, and then he makes some type of weighted evaluation of which is the nicer belief.

Nice beliefs do not create reality. It would be nice to pretend child bone cancer does not exist, but any such person who believed such nonsense would rightly be dismissed as Pollyannaish. They would be seen as out-of-touch with reality, allowing their feelings to override their objective evaluations of truth. Feelings do not trump facts.

Ware wants an emotional argument. He knows these types of arguments are fairly effective, especially to those prone to believe his position already. These people will tend to feel emboldened without realizing that the other side has equally legitimate and pressing emotional concerns. When arguments are based on feelings, there are plenty to go around.

Ware’s evaluation is noticeably one-sided as he does not address counter-arguments or phrasing that will point the reader to a more representative evaluation of those he criticizes. Emotional arguments tend to work in this fashion, trying to minimize the emotional phrasing of opponents, while maximizing the emotional phrasing of one’s own argument.

Bruce Ware gives an excellent case study of emotional appeals.

Steven Roy wrote a book How Much Does God Foreknow. He provides an online list of verse references. He explains what this is and what it proves:

In a comprehensive survey, I have identified a total of 4,017 predictive prophecies in canonical Scripture. Of these, 2,323 are predictive prophecies concerning future free human decisions or events that involve in one way or another such free decisions. In what follows, I will list these 2,323 predictive prophecies by reference only. Following this list, I will quote 300 representative prophecies, 157 from the Old Testament and 143 from the New Testament, to illustrate the number and variety and precision of such biblical predictions. Taken together, they form a strong quantitative argument for God’s foreknowledge of free human decisions.

Here is the problem. Yes, Roy lists out predictive prophesies, but he skips a step of logic. He assumes that by just listing out prophecies, that this proves his case. No, that does nothing of the sort. With this sort of logic, Nostradamus’ hundreds(?) of predictions are evidence that Nostradamus.

Roy forgets many things in his analysis. He doesn’t account for the specificity of the prophesy, or the optionality. But the main step of logic that he misses is verifying that the prophecy actually came true.

His very first prooftext is this:

Three Hundred Representative Examples of Biblical Predictive Prophecies Relating to Human Free Actions

1. Gen 15:13-14—The LORD to Abram: “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterward they will come out with great possessions.”

This decidedly never happened. Israel was never enslaved for 400 years. They were actually enslaved for more like 80 years, from the birth of Moses to their liberation. The text of Exodus is also very specific that the total time in Egypt was 430 years, not 400 years.

Exo 12:40 Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.

In Genesis 15 is a prophecy of the future, it is a failed prophecy. Roy has not used basic competency in evaluating his prooftexts, and his steps of logic.

Instead, Genesis 15 is estimation. Prophecy works by being flexible. Things happen and prophecy changes. The authors of the Bible do not have an intellectual meltdown, but record events accurately. To them, it does not matter if the details are off. The details were never important in the first place. Instead, what is at issue is the general idea of a prophecy.

If God had omniscience of the future, there should be no failed details. Timeframes should be exact. Prophecy should not be so vague as to be able to be fulfilled through multiple means. But even the prophet John declares that God’s promised to Israel can be fulfilled, even if all of Israel rejects God, because God can rise up new children of Israel from the rocks. This is how prophecy is fulfilled: innovation and power. Not crystal ball fortunetelling.

Without further work, in showing how all these “prophecies” came true as well as explaining why clear fortunetelling of the future do not come true, Roy’s list is just a fanciful conjecture.

Calvin writes on Amos 3:

Now as to the word repent, as applied to God, let us know, as it has been elsewhere stated, that God changes not his purpose so as to retract what he has once determined. He indeed knew what he would do before he showed the vision to his Prophet Amos: but he accommodates himself to the measure of men’s understanding, when he mentions such changes. It was then the eternal purpose of God, to threaten the people, to show tokens of his displeasure, and yet to suspend for a time his vengeance, that their perverseness might be the more inexcusable. But in the meantime, as this was without advantage, he sets forth another thing — that he was already armed to execute his vengeance. God then does not relate what he had decreed, but what the Israelites deserved, and what punishment or reward was due to them. When, therefore, God begins to inflict punishment on sinners, it is as though he intended to execute fully his vengeance; he however forms a purpose in himself, but that is hid from us. As soon then as he lifts up his finger, we ought to regard it as owing to his mercy, that we are not instantly reduced to nothing; when it so happens, it is as though he changed his purpose, or as though he withheld his hand. This then ought to be borne in mind, when the prophet says, that God created locusts to devour all the grass, but that he suppliantly entreated God to put an end to this calamity. He then adds, that it repented God, not that there was any change of mind in God, but because God suddenly and beyond hope suspended the vengeance which was near at hand. It shall not then be

In Amos 7:3, the context is that God wants to judge Israel for wickedness. God first begins forming locusts, but Amos intercedes (“please forgive!”), and God repents. Then God begins calling fire on Israel. Amos again intercedes (“please forgive!”), and God repents again. Then God shows Amos a plumb line (used for demolishing buildings), and declares against Israel. The chapter ends reading:

Amo 7:17 Therefore thus says the LORD: “‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.'”

The first part might have a period of time implied between pronouncements. It seems to be implied that Amos is recounting a history of his intercessions for Israel. God is described as having begun to build a judgment by locusts. God has started doing something, that according to Calvin, God knew would never happen. God then calls on fire, another judgment, according to Calvin, God knew would never happen. This is all to inspire repentance, again according to Calvin, that never occurs. God ends up judging Israel very harshly.

Calvin’s reading is a very confused reading of this text. God delays knowing full well the reasons for His delays will never be realized. The people are never assumed to have repented, and never do repent. God’s repentance is attributed to Amos’ intercessions, and never hinted to be due to Calvin’s secret reasonings. The text just is not written with John Calvin’s theology in mind.

Instead, the text is written showing God’s mercy due to intercessory prayer, and how futile God’s mercy had been in inspiring repentance. God’s subsequent wrath is more defensible, as God had given every chance of repentance. In this version of events, God is not beginning tasks He will never fulfill. God is not having Amos write in a misleading manner. God is not taking actions for reasons that He knows will never materialize.

From the article Luther on Free Will:

Commenting on Pharaoh’s heart being hardened by God, Luther wrote: “His [Pharaoh’s] evil will would not have been moved or hardened of itself, but as the omnipotent Agent makes it act (as he does the rest of his creation) by means of his own inescapable movement” (207). God did not merely “permit” Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened of itself. God “makes it act by means of his own inescapable will.” Furthermore, God did not simply look into the future and see what Pharaoh would do. God is the one who actually caused the hardening of his heart. On God’s foreknowledge, Luther wrote: “Had there been in Pharaoh any power to turn, or freedom of will that might have gone either way, God could not with such certainty have foretold his hardening” (211).

There are plenty of passages in the Bible were people make other people do things. In the example cited, Pharaoh’s heart is actually hardened in several passages by various actors:

God
Exo 7:3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.

Autonomously
Exo 7:13 And Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the LORD had said.

Pharaoh
Exo 8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not heed them, as the LORD had said.

The magicians
Exo 7:22 Then the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments; and Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the LORD had said.

The last passage is interesting. The wording suggests that God’s statement was predictive more than a statement that God was magically hardening Pharaoh’s heart. This understanding is well in line with normal modes of speech. Other people in the Bible are said to “make” third parties do things. For example, Jeroboam makes Israel sin:

1Ki 22:52  He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 

The idea is not that Jeroboam is magic. Instead the idea is that the people willingly followed Jeroboam’s leadership. This was not a violation of free will, as much as a willing following of a leader. Much in the same way, the Exodus account reads as if God is predicting rather than overriding Pharaoh’s will:

Exo 3:19  But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 

The text shows God finding an opportunity to use Egypt as an object lesson. It is reading too far into the text to see this has God overriding someone’s free will. That is counter to specific wordings in the passage and discounts what we know about normal standards of communication.

James White writes/says of Romans 9:

So there is the context. Here is the cathedral of Christian revelation in Romans chapter 8 and as soon as he says this it becomes very, very clear that the apostle Paul knows that as soon as he makes these over arching statements of God’s victory in Christ and the elect in Christ and the perfection of the salvation that immediately on of the first objections that’s going to be raised is “But Paul, don’t you realize that if what you’re saying is true and we look around us and we see the vast majority of the Jewish people reject your message, they reject Jesus is the Messiah, does that not mean that God’s Word has failed?” And so in Romans chapter 9 we begin “I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with. me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, {separated} from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the {temple} service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” I prefer the NIV or New King James at that point. “Who is God over all blessed forever” I think it is in reference to the deity of Christ but we’re not going to spend our time on that.

Paul is writing to believers. Paul is not writing to atheists. In fact, Paul is writing to a hostile Christian audience. We see all sorts of accusations that Paul’s audience was making against him (e.g. Rom 3:8). White would have people believe that Paul’s audience’s primary question is about God’s word failing due to mass rejection by the Jews of Jesus. Paul was writing to Jews who accepted Jesus. Why on Earth would they think the promise had failed? Why would that be their starting assumption? They were living proof of God’s promise.

Instead, Paul has just detailed Gentile salvation! Paul’s Jewish audience would take that as rank heresy. Their primary thought at this point would be “Paul, you are saying that all God’s promises to Israel have failed. You are wrong.” Paul responds with Romans 9, describing why and how God can change His promises. Paul’s own conclusion of Romans 9 is a defense of his theme:

Rom 9:30 What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith;
Rom 9:31 but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.
Rom 9:32 Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.

In a very bizarre article, Triablogue claims that Open Theism is a variant of Manichaeism:

All the various religions and philosophies past and present are variants on three basic worldviews: Calvinism, atheism, and Manichaeism.

For example, freewill theism in its various forms (e.g. Arminianism, open theism) is a variant on the Zoroastrian or Manichean outlook on life. Representatives of this viewpoint include Zoroaster, Mani, Arminius, Wesley, Roger Olsen, Clark Pinnock, and Gregory Boyd–to name a few.

The theology of the Arminian, Manichaean or Zoroastrian is essentially and radically dualistic. He may claim to be a monotheist, but he’s really a bitheist or ditheist. In his theology, “God” is a code word for the good God (Zurvan/Ahura Mazda) while “Satan” is a code word for the evil God (Ahriman/Angra Mainyu).

Triablogue’s reasoning seems to be that in Open Theism or Arminianism, Satan is an opposing force of evil against God’s good. In Manichaeanism, there are forces of good in conflict with more powerful forces of evil. If this is the only aspect one is looking at, much of Christianity seems like Manichaeanism. But how many Christians think that “evil” is an inherent part of the world, that is could not “not exist”? When this question is answered, a lot of perceived dualism fades into nothingness.

I wonder how this Triablogue’s bizarre views fit with the Arminian Michael Heiser (and like-minded Open Theists) who claims there is no Satan in the Old Testament. Rabbi Sacks, a Jew, would also counter this dualistic mentality. Good versus evil metaphysics is an invention of Christian theology. None of these people are atheists, Calvinists, or believe in dualism. Triablogue seems very uninformed both on what people believe (and the basics of Manichaeanism, for that matter).

Triablogue doesn’t show much intellectual integrity in his trinity of worldviews. Instead of Calvinism, he would do well to replace the word with Platonism, but this does not fit what he is trying to sell. He tries to sell with emotional appeals to security over the future, although in Calvinism God predestined unmitigated evil for His glory. How on Earth would this give someone security. Triablogue would also do well to do a preliminary reading of the Psalms. In the Psalms he will find all sorts of non-Calvinists with little future security. Apparently the Psalms were written by Manichaeans.

Gregg Cantelmo is well convinced that Open Theism has serious issues. He writes:

While it is viewed that open theism is a debate about divine foreknowledge, it is evident that open theism is a grand reworking of historic and orthodox theology. Only a handful of God’s attributes have been addressed thus far, but an historical and theological investigation of open theism shows that it is clearly a comprehensive and aberrant paradigm of God.

This is from his article An Examination of Open Theism. This article serves as a lengthy compilation of common criticisms and a good snapshot of the mindset of those opposed to Open Theism. The bulk of his criticism deserves a longer look. Cantelmo’s real arguments start with hermeneutics:

The hermeneutics of the open theists bring to the Scriptures their presumptions of what Scripture ought to teach and then proceed to teach it. Therefore it is helpful to understand the methods employed by open theists in interpreting the Bible.

This is an interesting claim, as it can be demonstrated that this is projection. The Classical reading of the Bible is founded on the principle of bringing one’s own theology to the text. Imposition of theology is the only way Classical theology is compatible with the Bible. Later in his article, Cantelmo appeals to “Progressive Revelation” as code that the Old Testament should be superseded and ignored, that is, except for vague prooftexts that he pulls from context to support his own beliefs. Malachi 3 is one such example of this textually abusive mindset. Here is a prominent Rabbi, Rabbi Sacks, detailing the textual abuse of Malachi 3:

Far from being timeless and immutable, God in the Hebrew Bible is active, engaged, in constant dialogue with his people, calling, urging, warning, challenging and forgiving. When Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change’ (Malachi 3: 6), he is not speaking about his essence as pure being, the unmoved mover, but about his moral commitments. God keeps his promises even when his children break theirs. What does not change about God are the covenants he makes with Noah, Abraham and the Israelites at Sinai.

The immediate context of Malachi 3 is about God changing in relation to mankind, yet a small phrase is taken out of context and given a metaphysical meaning. Nothing in the text warrants this, and if the text is taken in a metaphysical sense then this makes Malachi’s argument incoherent (“I the Lord do not change: thus you are not destroyed”). The Open Theist take on this text is in accordance with standard reading comprehension, whereas the Calvinist take is an imposition of theology. This is not an isolated example of this textual abuse, but will serve as just a prima facie case that Cantelmo engages in projection when claiming the Open Theists are the ones bringing their presuppositions to the text.

Cantelmo next surveys a few areas in which he believes that Open Theism is on faulty ground:

Narrative Priority. This means that those passages that describe what God does are given greater interpretative weight than those passages that describe what God is like. This means that those passages that describe what God does are given greater interpretative weight than those passages that describe what God is like. I agree with Erickson who says, “I would propose that the general rule to be followed is that the teachings about what God is like should be the explanation of what he appears to be doing in a given situation.

Cantelmo, and his sources, seem to invent two categories of texts to put in opposition of each other. Descriptions of God (“didactic” texts) are put in opposition to narratives about how God acts. These descriptions are given priority. But interesting enough, this is not how language works. General descriptions are usually broad, based on specifics, and have exceptions. If someone describes their co-worker Bob as “nice”, we are not to interpret every act of Bob through the lens of niceness. If we see Bob stealing candy from a child, we do not need to invent a story about Bob protecting that child from cavities. Instead, our minds instantly understand the statement in context. Perhaps the person describing Bob as “nice” has a different standard of niceness, or they were contextually referring to their own interactions with Bob, or they understand that sometimes Bob has lapses in his niceness but still can be labeled as nice, or they were misinformed. Inventing a niceness narrative to explain Bob’s actions is perhaps the last rational option available to a discerning observer, but in theology, it tends to be the first leap of logic (e.g. God’s continued repentance is reinterpreted in light of non-repentance).

Furthermore, because descriptions have some inherent subjectivity built into the descriptors, it would definitely be a mistake to impose our own standards of “niceness” on Bob. Perhaps someone believes in spanking children as discipline. Perhaps we do not. If someone says Bob is nice, it would be a huge mistake to automatically assume Bob does not spank his children. When we read about characters in stories, general descriptions only go so far. Specific examples of the character in action give a more accurate portrait of that character than general descriptors can ever accomplish. After all, no one approaches the same adjectives in the same way. Do we better know Bob if someone lists descriptors of Bob or tells us a story about Bob illustrating each descriptor?

Cantelmo, and those in his tradition, reverse everything we know about reading comprehension when approaching the Bible. Any description of God is taken in some sort of arbitrary, metaphysical way. The meanings are imposed onto the text. For example, with Malachi 3, God’s statement is not seen as limited to context or specifically about God’s promise to Israel. Instead, it is taken as a metaphysical absolute, encompassing everything in the being of God. This new reading contradicts the immediate context of the verse, which is about God’s repentance. The tension between the narrative and the descriptive texts is manufactured due to a fundamental mistreatment of the text.

Reading comprehension should be the standard; not some conflict between descriptive and narrative texts. When the Bible says “Nothing God proposes to do will now be impossible for Him” this is not about God’s sovereignty or power. When the Bible says “no secret is hidden from you” this is not about God’s omniscience. When the Bible says that God foreknew Paul from the beginning, this is not about eternal foreknowledge. When the Bible says God was and will be, this is not about being outside of time.

If this is denied by the reader, there is good evidence the reader is wrong. All these statements are in the Bible, but they are not about God (the subject was changed to illustrate the concept). All these statements are made about men or angels. Men can do anything they purpose. No secret is hidden from a king. The Jews foreknew Paul from the beginning. The beast was, is not, and will be. These are not didactic texts which teach us about the incommunicable nature of man or angels. To take them that way would be a sign of terrible reading comprehension.

Normal reading comprehension teaches us that hyperbole and generalizations are everywhere. Even in my last sentence, note that hyperbole is not literally “everywhere”, but no one misunderstands what I say because hyperbole is so common that it is virtually unnoticed. This common idiom or communication norm is rejected in texts about God by many Christians, even when there are clear counterexamples to general rules of thumb.

Normal readers, when approaching “didactic” texts, would not label them didactic and put them in opposition to other texts. In fact, normal readers see no contradiction. But when Calvinists and Arminians come to these “didactic” texts, it is often with forcibly imposed meanings. The texts, more often than not, have parallel texts about men which the same readers take as idioms without question. Even predestination texts have parallels in ancient writings that have nothing to do with Calvinist predestination. This just shows the disconnect between Classical reading of the Bible and the use of normal reading comprehension standards. Calvinism hijacks words, it hijacks concepts, it rejects common communication norms, and it imposes its own theology on the text without warrant. In a cruel twist of irony, it then accuses others of its own sins.

Cantelmo brings up 1 Samuel 15 to illustrate his point:

A common example of this poor hermeneutic is the open theist’s use of 1 Samuel 15. Open theists emphasize the narrative portions of this chapter involving God regretting that He has made Saul king (1 Sam. 15:11, 35) while marginalizing the didactic portion that clearly teaches that God is not like a man that he should change His mind (1 Sam. 15:29).

If I were tell my kids I was taking them to McDonalds, but then they started fighting, I might then change my mind. The kids might complain and beg me to take them once again. I might respond with “I am not your mom, that I will change my mind.” No reader with basic reading comprehension would think:

1. I am claiming to be immutable.
2. There is any contradiction with what I just did (in changing my mind) and declaring I will not change my mind.

Competent readers understand that context limits my pronouncement to me changing my mind about not bringing my children to McDonalds. The only way the statement becomes contradictory is if someone unwarrantedly assumes I am making some sort of claim about immutability (a far stretch). No one would think I am giving my children an impromptu lesson on metaphysics.

The Open Theist approach is not denying the didactic text, but understanding it in context. The funny thing is that often in the Bible God does make eternal declarations, but then God repents due to mercy or compassion or unforeseen rebellion. Sometimes God says He repents for His own sake. Repentance is such a strong character trait of God, it is included in actual didactic texts about how God operates (Eze 18, Jer 18).

When Calvinists quote people (who are not the narrator or God), and then reject God and the narrator who speak about God, this is not Biblical scholarship. Samuel is not giving Saul an ad hoc lesson in metaphysics. Do Calvinists really think that Samuel is pausing to teach Saul about metaphysics? How would the argument of “not changing” work if repenting of making Saul could be read in light of “not repenting”? How would Saul take any solid conclusions from Samuel’s pronouncements? How would a quick lesson on metaphysics help Saul? And does not Saul, God’s chosen, already not know about this very important concept of immutability?

If Samuel is teaching metaphysics, the metaphysics would override the point Samuel is trying to make (that God has decided to choose someone other than Saul). Reading comprehension demands that we understand that Samuel is giving a material point that enforces his overall argument. It is just downright atrocious how Calvinists treat 1 Samuel 15.

Note: Contrary to Cantelmo’s claims, Jonah and Amos teach didactically that repentance is an essential part of God’s nature. In Jeremiah 18, God teaches (through His own words) that He will not do what He thinks to do or said He was to do if the circumstances change. Why are these “didactic” texts ignored in favor of texts pulled out of context (e.g. 1 Sam. 15:29)?

Cantelmo next criticizes the Open Theistic Interpretive Center:

Interpretive Center. An interpretive center is the designating of one portion of Scripture as a basis for interpreting other sections of Scripture. A verse or concept is used as the lens through which all other passages are understood. The interpretive center used by open theists in defining their picture of God is 1 John 4:8 which says “God is love.”

No one could reasonably claim that the premier Old Testament scholar, who is an Open Theist, uses “love” has his interpretive center. Walter Brueggemann and other textually based Open Theists do not try to interpret everything in light of “love”. Cantelmo’s criticism is actually against a subset of Open Theists, and thus is not a good argument against Open Theism in general.

If one wants to treat every text with equal weight, we should take our cues from the Canonical Critics, secular scholars who try to understand Biblical theology in its final form. These scholars describe Israel’s theology in very Open Theistic terms. Secular biblical scholarship, who are not pushing metaphysical agendas, is on the side of Open Theism.

Cantelmo then references God’s questions about the future:

He also cites Numbers 14:11 and Hosea 8:5 where God asks questions about the future. Most commentators interpret these verses as rhetorical questions, but Boyd, after acknowledging rhetorical questions as a possibility, concludes that the questions God ask must reflect his lack of knowledge about the duration of Israel’s stubbornness.

What clues in the text lead one to believe these are rhetorical questions rather than real questions with added rhetorical effect? In Numbers 14:10, those faithful to God are threatened with death by those wanting to rebel. God becomes angry and states “How long will these people reject Me?” and threatens to kill all of Israel. God states that He will kill them all. God gives Moses His new plan: God will kill Israel and fulfill His promise through Moses’ lineage. Moses makes an impassioned appeal to God’s reputation among the pagans. God then repents of His plans and “pardon[s], according to [Moses’] word”. These events are is reminiscent of the events on Exodus 32.

What is more likely, that this question is only for rhetorical effect? Or that in context God is seeking to destroy Israel because He has been frustrated time and time again by Israel’s consistent rebellion. The text states that “all these men… have put Me to the test now these ten times”. God is legitimately wondering how many more times He has to endure Israel. Where are the indications that God knew the future? Where are the indications that this was planned? Where are the indications that God’s promise to destroy Israel was merely a ploy for rhetorical effect? Did God legitimately offer to destroy them all in favor of Moses’ lineage? The context does not lend itself in the least to ideas about omniscience or Calvinistic sovereignty (in which God controls all things).

But even if the question in Numbers 14:10 was rhetorical, rhetoric has a purpose too. Often these types of statements are used to vent frustration. In Calvinism, God cannot be frustrated. God is impassible and immutable. This is to be contrasted with the Bible, in which God makes emotional based decisions:

Eze 5:13 “Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am the LORD—that I have spoken in my jealousy—when I spend my fury upon them.

Elsewhere, Jeremiah wishes that God check His emotions before punishing him, because Jeremiah is likely to be killed by God:

Jer 10:24 O LORD, correct me, but with justice; Not in Your anger, lest You bring me to nothing.

Extreme emotion is attributed to God, a God said to be impassible by Calvinists. This just illustrates another reoccurring problem with Calvinist doctrine: their answers to problems often cause a cascading ripple of problems for their doctrine. Thomas Sowell, when applying this superficial thinking to non-economists, calls this Stage One thinking: not being able to think past the immediate results of an economic action. In theology, we can apply this to people such as Cantelmo, whose answers are only concerned about deflecting immediate concerns with consideration of second effects.

Cantelmo then accuses Open Theists of being selective:

He then continues to string together such passages, picking only the instances that support his case. Sanders does the same thing, only in more detail, as he selectively goes through Genesis.58 In doing this they simultaneously ignore the verses from this same block of material that seemingly contradicts the openness position.

Examples would have been nice in this section. Without Cantelmo pinpointing an example of an omission, it is hard to respond to this claim. On the blog GodisOpen.com, Calvinist strong points are specifically addressed in detail and in context. This ranges from the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, to Ezekiel 16, to Romans 9, to Deutero-Isaiah. I am unaware of any untouched Calvinist prooftext. If Calvinists have unaddressed prooftexts, they should be able to point to specific texts without vague and unspecific allusions to these “selectively” skipped texts.

Much more can be said in reference to the hermeneutics of open theism. There seems to be a lack of understanding the nature of progressive revelation in that they seem to attach greater weight to Old Testament passages then they do to New Testament passages. Obscure and infrequent passages are also given precedence over clear and recurring passages.

“Progressive Revelation” is code for rejecting Biblical Inerrancy. Ancient Israel is portrayed as simpletons, unable to grasp theology. And as such, is allowed, presumably, by God to persist in their wrong views about God without an attempt by God’s prophets to correct these views. This is incredibly dismissive of the Biblical text. This is not to mention the major assumptions Cantelmo imposes that the New Testament authors were in disagreement with the Old Testament authors. This is not the case.

Perhaps the New Testament occurs over a shorter length of time so records less of God’s own history and, as such, is referenced less by Open Theists. But even in the pages of the New Testament, God becomes flesh, John the Baptist explains how God can fulfill prophecy in spite of no cooperation of man, Jesus informs everyone the future can be changed, Jesus admits to not knowing everything, Paul describes the process by which information flows to God, Paul explains God’s contingency plan due to God’s failed plan to reach Israel, John describes the new Earth in which God dwells with man with Jesus by His side, etc, etc. There is nothing contrary to Old Testament theology, but Old Testament theology is reinforced and consistently used for allusions and the basis of New Testament theological arguments.

The admission of Cantelmo to believing in Progressive Revelation is an admission of blatant rejection of God described in the Old Testament. It is a telling statement that Cantelmo (and company) need to rely heavily on New Testament texts (taken out of context and used in opposition to the Old Testament). It is also an admission that he believes that God’s dealings with man for thousands of years withheld vital truths on which most Calvinists now claim salvation hinges. That is not a rational position.

Cantelmo then claims that Open Theists appeal to minor and obscure passages. The hypocracy is amazing, considering Calvinist prooftexts feature prominently in Malachi or are found within a quote from false prophets (Num 23). Open Theists appeal to major Biblical events including Creation, the Fall, the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the Exodus, the summations of the time of the Judges, the life and times of Saul and David, Jonah, the exilic prophets’ major claims, the incarnation, and the restored Earth. This is a veritable survey of every major Biblical event. Can Cantelmo name a major Biblical event that is not evidence for Open Theism? But Cantelmo already has discounted the major events in the Bible, by rejecting narrative. Cantelmo self-admittedly rejects larger stories in favor of fleeting statements.

There are some clear and reoccurring passages that Cantelmo forgets about. Repentance of God is a strong theme throughout the Bible. Here are a sample of texts which use the word “repent” in reference to God repenting, the same word the Calvinists reject when they say God is not a man that He should “repent”:

Gen 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for [repent] that I have made them.”

Exo 32:12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and [repent] from this disaster against your people.
…
Exo 32:14 So the LORD [repented] from the harm which He said He would do to His people.

[KJV] Deu 32:36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.

Jdg 2:18 Whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the LORD was [repented] by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.

1Sa 15:11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the LORD all night.
…
1Sa 15:35 And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.

2Sa 24:16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD [repented] from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

1Ch 21:15 And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the LORD saw, and he [repented] from the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

Psa 90:13 Return, O LORD! How long? [Repent concerning] your servants!

Psa 106:45 For their sake he remembered his covenant, and [repented] according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

Psa 135:14 For the LORD will vindicate his people and [repent concerning] his servants.

Jer 15:6 You have rejected me, declares the LORD; you keep going backward, so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you— I am weary of [repenting].

Jer 18:7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
Jer 18:8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will [repent] of the disaster that I [thought] to do to it.

Jer 18:9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,
Jer 18:10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will [repent] of the good that I had [said] to do to it.

Jer 26:13 Now therefore mend your ways and your deeds, and obey the voice of the LORD your God, and the LORD will [repent] of the disaster that he has pronounced against you.

Jer 26:19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him to death? Did he not fear the LORD and entreat the favor of the LORD, and did not the LORD [repent] of the disaster that he had pronounced against them? But we are about to bring great disaster upon ourselves.”

Jer 42:10 If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I [repent] of the disaster that I did to you.

Joe 2:13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he [repents] over disaster.

Amo 7:3 The LORD [repented] concerning this: “It shall not be,” said the LORD.

Amo 7:6 The LORD [repented] concerning this: “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.

Jon 3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God [repented] of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Jon 4:2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and [repenting] from disaster.

These are not even every verse in which God repents, but only in which the text explicitly attributes the Hebrew word from repentance to God (the New Testament uses Greek). God elsewhere repents of giving Eli an eternal house. God repents of killing Hezekiah. God repents of deciding to not physically travel with Israel in the Exodus. God repents of mandating that Ezekiel eat food cooked over human excrement.

The astounding rejection of the Bible, both narrative detailing how and why and in what measure God repents and texts that describe God’s general character, is evidence how contrary to the text modern “progressive” interpretation has become. God’s words are rejected. The narrator is rejected. The narration (sequence of events) is rejected. And even God’s prophets are rejected. This is in favor of a few fleeting statements demonstrably taken out of context.

Cantelmo’s next section deals with what he sees as a shortcoming in how Open Theists handle texts of the Bible. He starts with repentance prooftexts:

Open theists contend that these passages teach God’s limited foreknowledge because how could God feel sorrow for something if He knew in advance what was going to happen? The truth is that these two points are not necessarily connected as it is possible to know something in advance and yet still feel remorse when that event transpires.

Cantelmo completely glosses over the primary meaning of “repent”. It is not a change in emotion, but a change of mind. Just a survey of the above texts makes this clear. God says He will do something. God “repents”. Then God does not do the thing that God said He would do. One of the key advantages of omniscience, so Christianity is told by preachers, is that God can foresee events the outcomes of all things. God does not need to repent in Cantelmo’s view. This emotional crutch is often used against Open Theists! But this means repentance is just God acting schizophrenically or engaging in serial lying. God regularly says that He will do things, knowing full well that He will not do those things and never had any genuine intention of doing those things.

God’s constant reversal of doing things He says He will do also undermines another key emotional crutch of Classical Theism: that we can trust everything God says. Cantelmo’s dismissive reading of God’s pronouncements tells his listener that God can blanketly make an infinite number of false claims, only to be salvaged through complex technicalities. Open Theism’s answer is that God is acting in a manner consistent with rational reactions to new information. Trust only can come through consistency. Consistency with God and trust in His proclamations is something only Open Theism provides.

Cantelmo’s key complaint with repentance texts is that the word can be used for emotional sorrow:

It has also been suggested that word “repent” or “regret” in the niphal stem can carry the semantic meaning of “to experience emotional pain.

Cantelmo, without giving specifics about how this definition is to be applied to specific texts, is attempting to cast doubt on the word “repent”. This is the normal word for repentance throughout the Bible, one attributed often to man. The operation of God’s specific repentance is detailed in many of the above repentance texts. In these texts, the nature of God’s repentance is described, and it is often explicit in reversing former decrees. But this not the only problem with Cantelmo’s point.

Rehashing a key point: Calvinists engage in Stage One thinking. What is the reason God “repents” in some of these texts?

Gen 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Examine this text. Repent is used twice, one in a quote by God and once by the narrator. Both times God is repenting of His own actions. If repentance is anger/pain, then God’s own actions are making Him mad/sad. While man’s actions lead to God regretting His own decision, mankind’s evil is only secondary in the text. God is blaming Himself for what He sees. Likewise, 1 Sam 15 reads the same way. God is blaming Himself, not grieving over what He sees:

1Sa 15:11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the LORD all night.

That is why context is important. God is said to repent of His own actions twice (two instances and four verses) in the Bible (Gen 6:6,7 and 1Sa 15:11,35). In both these instances, God has done something in the past that He is now undoing. The text describes God’s subsequent actions to undo the thing He repents of. What combination of words would a Calvinist accept in the Bible to believe God repents? If the word is emotional pain, this does not solve the problem. What specifically in the text does the text say pains God? It is not Saul or man’s wickedness; it is God’s own actions. This type of compounding problem is typical with Calvinist responses.

This is also furthermore problematic for the Calvinists because their main prooftexts against God’s repentance use the same word for repentance that they try imply means “emotional pain”. In Making God in the Image of Man, Norman Geisler makes the absurdly wrong claim that a different word is used for repentance in 1 Samuel 15 verse 25 than in verses11 and 39. This is a false claim as anyone with access to basic Greek Bible software can verify. In verses 11 and 39 God is said to repent. In verse 25, the “God is not a man that He should repent” line is found. Why would Geisler want his false claim to be true to such extent that he puts it in print? It is because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants verse 25 to be about repentance, and verses 11 and 39 to be about something else entirely. But Calvinists cannot have their cake and eat it too. If they kill repentance they kill their prooftexts against repentance.

Cantelmo details a second group of prooftexts with which he finds issue:

The second group of passages involves God testing Israel (Deut. 8:2; 13:3; Judg. 3:4). Open theists contend that is was necessary for God to test the nation so that He could learn what they would do under certain circumstances. This is clearly bringing ones preunderstanding to the text. Keil and Delitizsch maintain that the test was actually for the purpose of Israel’s humbling rather than God’s learning. They contend that God was testing His people for the purpose of publicly revealing the genuine condition of their hearts.

Keil and Delitizsch seem to levy a huge imposition on the text. The Bible specifically tells us the purpose of the tests within the very verses which describe the tests:

Deu 8:2 And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

2Ch 32:31 However, regarding the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, whom they sent to him to inquire about the wonder that was done in the land, God withdrew from him, in order to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.

Jer 17:10 I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties;
Psa 139:24 And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.

The text is explicit about the purpose of the testing: to know. God tests to know (and to judge). When people override the text with their own purpose, this is not Biblical Scholarship. Often Biblical Commenters impose what they want a text to mean over what the text expressly states (ironically a claim Cantelmo makes against Open Theists).

Cantelmo’s third set of problem texts are those involving failed prophecy:

The third group of passages involves allegedly failed prophecies. Open theists argue that there are various predictions found throughout the Bible that were never fulfilled exactly as predicted… which calls into question the very nature of an inerrant Scripture.

If fulfilled prophecy of the future is often used as evidence of God’s absolute omniscience of the future, how is an unfulfilled prophecy not cancerous to any thought that God knows the future? God says something will happen, but then it does not happen, and if it does happen, then not in the way described. If this ever occurs, a rational person should instantly banish all thoughts that God knows the future in some sort of absolute sense. A fortune teller is no good if they only get broad details right, but miss all sorts of small details. Anyone can do that.

I might have personally made 100 correct prophecies about the future (who will win the presidential elections, what I will eat tomorrow, what days I will travel on vacation, if my job interview will go well, how someone will react to a specific joke, that Walmart will be open on a certain day, what exact time to the minute that I will post a certain blog post, etc). A million fulfilled prophecies about the future cannot stand for one failed prophecy. I might have been wrong about the gender of my latest baby. No one will claim I am omniscient because “I got a whole lot of things right, and just ignore my wrong prophecy about my baby”. If I am wrong once then no matter how many correct prophecies I proffer, no one will think this constitutes evidence of omniscience of the future.

God’s prophecy is often vague enough to allow multiple solutions, and even then is flexible enough such that the details do not have to be true. The reader should visualize what prophecy should look like if someone knows the future like a movie, and then visual what prophecy would look like if prophecy is just claims of what one will do in the future. These are not the same caliber of prophecy.

The type, quality, and specificity of a prophecy coupled with the type, quality, and specificity of fulfillment should inform the reader on God’s knowledge of the future, and how He knows it. If I say “someone on Earth will die tomorrow”, I am not some omniscient genius (instead I just have basic knowledge of the world). If I say “Peter will die tomorrow” and then I go kill him, I am not some expert soothsayer (I used my power to make my will a reality). If I say Mr Peter Hickelston, whom I do not know and will never have contact with, of 123, 3rd Avenue, New York, New York will choke to death at 8:47PM while eating chicken while his wife and family call 911 at 8:52, leading to an ultimately failed resuscitation. If this comes true, one might then believe I know a little something about the future, not omniscience, but something.

The vaguer the prophecy and the more ways in which it can be fulfilled the less it is evidence of the future being known. Conversely, the more specific and more detailed the prophecy, the more evidence that the individual had knowledge of the future. The less power the predictor has to force an event to come true, the more likely the prediction was based on knowledge of the future rather than just being a claim about what the person will do. Conversely, the more power an individual has to affect the outcome of the event, the more evidence that this prophecy is one of power, not knowledge.

If the prophecy fails, if details are given but not fulfilled, this suggests there never was any knowledge of the future in the first place. The alternative is that the prophecy was a bold lie. Sure, it might be a lie to inspire response. For example, I might lie to my children that the boogeyman will get them if they do not brush their teeth, but these types of lies cannot be considered admirable. Ends do not justify means, especially if an infinite number of means is available to me. If God knows the outcome of every event, might He not find a route that does not involve a bold lie on His part? If God lies to us in some ways, how do we distinguish lies from truth?

Cantelmo ties failed prophecy with “textual inerrancy”, which is a rich claim coming from someone who dismisses most of the Bible, including the major plot points. This is a willful misrepresentation of Open Theism, and the claim only stands if assuming major philosophical concepts on top of the Bible. Cantelmo is really claiming that the prophets and God are opponents of inerrancy, because they are the ones who unapologetically included these failed prophecies in the Bible. For example:

1Sa 2:30 Therefore the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the LORD declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

Is God proclaiming the Bible is errant? Is the author of Samuel questioning Biblical Inerrancy? In 1 Samuel 2, God changes a unilateral promise to a conditional promised because Eli’s sons acted more wickedly than expected. If God is reacting to unexpected events, there is no “error”. The only way that the Bible is errant is if God foreknew that Eli’s sons would rebel. In this case, God’s unilateral promise was a lie. God would make a promise, unconditionally, knowing full well He would reverse it to make it conditional. This lie by God would be recorded as scripture, and thus scripture would be errant. Cantelmo’s view is the one that questions the integrity of scriptures.

Instead, when the prophecy of Tyre fails, God offers Nebuchadnezzar a consolation prize of Egypt. When Nebuchadnezzar decides to turn back for personal reasons, Ezekiel’s prophecy that Egypt would be uninhabited and untouched for 40 years fails. This is how prophecy, which is contingent on human action, functions. No apologies are made. One has to wait until modern Christian notions of prophecy in order to find complicated and intricate defenses of these failed prophecy.

It is interesting Cantelmo does not mention Tyre or Egypt. Cantelmo focuses on a few key failed prophecies: that Paul would be bound, that no stone would be left on another, and Joseph’s dream. Cantelmo writes:

For both Gen. 37:9-11 and Acts 21:11 the Bible never says that these prophesies [sic] were not fulfilled exactly as predicted. Erickson points out that Scripture remains silent regarding how and when an exact fulfillment took place.

Cantelmo appeals to ignorance. Apparently there can be no prophecy that can ever be false because they are fulfilled off screen. This, of course, does not account for time specific prophecies and prophecies that explicitly state that they do not come true. Both types are found in Jonah. Nineveh is prophesied to be overthrown in 40 days, and 40 days later this does not happen. The specific reason given is that God repents and does not do what “he had said he would do to them” (something Cantelmo rejects as a possibility). God repents because the people repent. This is a literally fulfillment of the descriptions of how God regularly acts as found in Jeremiah 18: God will repent of what He thought He would do. God will repent of what He said He would do. And this is based on the actions of people. Cantelmo and Co just rule out Jeremiah 18 ever being fulfilled. God knows eternally everything that He will and will not do. There is no place for not doing something God thought He would do.

Other time specific prophesies that fail are:
-Israel’s 400 years under bondage in Egypt (their actual time in Egypt was 430 years as reported in Exodus and their actual time in bondage was 80 years as reported in Exodus 3).
-Israel’s 70 years in exile in Babylon (the actual time was 61 years)
-Hezekiah was prophesied to die in peace, but he died in war.
-Jesus’ hearers were prophesied to see the Day of the Lord. This prophecy is consistent throughout the New Testament. In fact, Cantelmo points to the prophecy of no stone left on top of each other. This prophecy was in the context of the Day of the Lord. It was never meant to be about Roman destruction, but God’s punishment of Israel during a time in which the angels would round up the wicked and kill them. The stones being left on top of eachother is irrelevant to the overall intent of this failed prophecy.

Cantelmo never addresses the fact that details of various prophecies never do come true. He embraces hyperbole for the stones prophecy, which is rational take. But he also assumes the Jews bound Paul at some unrecorded point, as if the prophecy given to Paul was not about the event that occurs in the temple in which Paul converts from free to imprisoned. His insistence that the Joseph dream is fulfilled off screen is humorous in that Joseph’s dream is often given as evidence of God’s omniscience.

If using Calvinist leeway given to God in fulfilling prophecy, Nostradamus could be claimed to be an amazing prophet. Any prophecy has wide latitude doesn’t have to be fulfilled exactly, can fail for “reasons”, and must have some unrecorded fulfillment if none can be found in history. Any prophecy that looks like it came true, did so, and is proof of Nostradamus’ predictive ability. The Calvinist use of prophecy is a classic case of special pleading.

This view of prophecy makes prophecy meaningless, because prophecy no longer has purpose. Prophecy is meant to inform people what would happen before it happens such that they know who did it when it finally does happen. This is how God describes how He generally works:

Isa 48:5 I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’

Amo 3:6 Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?
Amo 3:7 “For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.

If prophecy can fail at any moment and brushed aside, if prophecy can be fulfilled with infinite leeway, then how does it teach anyone that the prophecy is God’s work rather than the idols?

Cantelmo then turns to questions throughout the Bible:

The fourth group of passages involves situations where God asks a question. For example in Numbers 14:11, He asks, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?” Boyd contends that God asked questions of this nature in order to express his uncertainty regarding the future. Again this seems to impose ones preunderstanding upon the text. It would be more consistent with the biblical narrative to interpret this passage in a similar way as when God asked Adam in the garden, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). God was not playing hide-in-seek, but rather desiring Adam to acknowledge his sinful act and repent. In the same manner God asked the questions of Numbers 14:11 to elicit a response of repentance from the rebellious people of Israel.

Granted, questions do have a varied number of formats and uses. Context is key to determining the function of a question.

In Numbers 14:11, Israel has rejected God. God speaks this rhetorical question to Moses, who has no need of repentance. Moses then argues that by destroying Israel that God’s reputation will suffer. God then repents of destroying Israel. If this is some sort of rhetorical device to get people to repent then it is not well played. The statement is not directed to the right actors and the people never do repent.

The Garden of Eden incident is very interesting. God is walking in the garden. The text describes the coolness of the day, as if God is taking a leisurely stroll. God then calls out for Adam. There is nothing in the text demanding that God knows where Adam is or knows what Adam has done. If this figure is viewed as a manifestation of Jesus, then this would be similar to Jesus’ explicit lack on omniscience in the New Testament. Forcing omniscience into the text is unwarranted.

Granted, the question could be a known-answer question. The purpose of a known answer question is to figure out if the person will admit to what they have done. In other words, the purpose of a known-answer question is to gather knowledge one does not have. In Cantelmo’s mind, however, the known-answer question is transformed from an information gathering technique into a mock call for repentance. God is the parent that calls their child “ugly” to inspire self-sufficiency. What effect does the question have? Does it inspire repentance? Not according to the text. So in Cantelmo’s mind, not only is it passive aggressive manipulation but it is also failed passive aggressive manipulation. Is that what the author of Genesis is trying to describe?

An interesting facet of the Genesis text is that Adam answers in a straightforward manner. His answers are taken on face value and responded to on face value. God does not treat Adam’s answers as if the question is a rhetorical device. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the serpent. God punishes the serpent. God punishes Eve for listening to the serpent. God then punishes Adam for listening to Eve. God treats each answer on face value. No hidden agendas are presented.

Cantelmo’s wordview describes God taking all sorts of actions that God knows will fail. God takes actions to passive aggressively nudge Adam to repent, but this fails. God takes actions to passive aggressively nudge Israel to repent, but this fails. Why is God doing things He knows will fail? This only makes sense in the context of a legitimate attempt (highlighting again that Calvinist answers multiple their problems). At several points in the Bible, God laments that His acts fail to produce any result:

Jer 2:30 In vain have I struck your children; they took no correction; your own sword devoured your prophets like a ravening lion.

Isa 5:4 What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

Jeremiah 2:30 and Isaiah 5:4 are voices of frustration. God is purposely frustrating Himself and doing things that are bound not to work, that is, if He knows the future. Alternatively, the frustration vented in Jeremiah and Isaiah are legitimate. In Isaiah, God is genuinely expecting to see His work pay off but encounters frustration. In Jeremiah, God expected that His punishments would work, but they failed.

The fifth group of passages used by open theists involves God seeing Israel’s idolatry and noting that it never entered His mind that Israel would behave in this manner. For example, Jeremiah 7:31 says, “They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind.”

This is an odd grouping of verses. Cantelmo takes three or four verses and considers it their own category of failed expectations. He fails to include plenty of verses in which things never do enter God’s mind that would fit this category well:

Isa 5:4 What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

Jer 3:7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

Jer 18:7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
Jer 18:8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I [thought] to do to it.

Interestingly enough, Cantelmo misses the real reason Jeremiah 7:31 (“Never entered my mind”) texts are not good evidence of God not knowing the future. These texts are better understood that Yahweh never thought to command child sacrifice to Yahweh. Apparently there was an Israelite Yahweh child sacrifice cult that started in Israel. God expresses shock and laments that this was never His intention.

Cantelmo takes these text much like Boyd:

Erickson states that God’s saying that their behavior did not come into His mind should be understood, not as a declarative sentence, but as an expression of rebuke. He says, “When one says, “I never thought you would do that!” it often is a means of indicating how “unthinkable” the action is.” The purpose of such language is to express outrage and scandal.

Cantelmo adds:

Another problem with Boyd’s interpretation of this passage is that hundreds of years earlier God has warned Israel against committing this specific evil act (Deut. 12:31). If open theists are correct in their reading of the Jeremiah passage, then not only is God limited in His foreknowledge and foresight, but He is also forgetful about what He has specifically forbidden in the past.

First of all, God can specifically forbid and action with the expectation that His forbiddance of the action will result in Israel never doing it. If I tell my child “never get into a running car without an adult present” then I might reasonably never expect my children to do such a thing. After all, I specifically told them not to and this corrects any action on their part through naivety. If they disobey me and go joyriding with a friend, I might accurate say “I never expected you do to this.” Boyd’s reading is not inconsistent with this type of senario. Granted, Boyd’s reading is not the best reading.

Second, Cantelmo’s solution does not work because it counters much of his other theology. God is making emotional exclamations. This is not conducive to immutability or impassibility. The context of Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5 and 32:35 is God’s extreme anger. In 32:35, God specifically references how the people provoke Him. The people are so wicked, they affect God’s emotional state:

Jer 32:32 because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger—their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Jer 32:33 They have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction.

In Jeremiah 32, God continually tries to correct, but His correcting is in vain. This is thematic in God’s history with Israel. God’s actions fail to produce the results He desires. When God sees His own people killing their own children, He lashes out in anger threatening to kill everyone. God is not timeless. God does not eternally endure this affront to His person. God is instead solving an immediate problem so that Israel provokes Him no more. None of this is conducive to Calvinism.

Cantelmo’s last section details with a positive case for omniscience:

Ehaustive Foreknowledge. The biblical passages that favor the classical theist position far outweigh those of the open theist. Of the 4,800 passages that bear upon divine omniscience and especially, divine foreknowledge, only 105, or 2.1875 percent, directly argue for the open theist position.

Cantelmo cites Millard Erikson, who cites Bruce Ware, who cites Steve Roy. What this indicates is that Cantelmo has not seen the source text and has zero familiarity with the basis of his claim. Excerpts from Steve Roy’s book What Does God Foreknow can be found on Google Books. The excerpts do not show a very fair and reading comprehension orientated survey of Biblical evidence. Here is Roy:

Christians have long affirmed the omniscience of God, the infinite perfection of His knowledge. This is an attempt to be faithful to the teaching of Scriptute which describes God as being, among other things:

Roy then lists some omniscience related prooftexts. But do they mean what he wants them to mean: that God has infinitely perfect knowledge such that God can never have a new thought and all the future is known to God. Recall that a pagan king was told that “no secret can be hidden” from that king. Is that evidence that the king is omniscient? A good reader will see how much theology Roy imposes on his prooftexts:

perfect (cf. job 37:16, where Elihu describes God as being “perfect in knowledge”)

It is probably a bad idea to quote one of Job’s friends, who gives terrible advice and is corrected by God on his generally inaccurate theology. Also, keep in mind normal modes of speaking. Other beings are said to be perfect. Jesus is said to know everything although elsewhere Jesus admits that he does not. Are the words being used as a generalization? Or is Elihu speaking pure metaphysics of the type embraced by Roy? How much theology should be taken out passing reference to God’s knowledge? And why is a quote by someone who is likely an enemy of God used as a prime prooftext of omniscience? This suggests the textual support is absent. Roy is building inverted pyramids on glancing phrases from unreliable witnesses. This is not good theology.

vast (cf. Ps 139:17-18, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I Were I to count them, I they would outnumber the grains of sand”)

If King David believed in omniscience, including omniscience of the future, he might more accurate say that God has all knowledge and all thoughts about all things that would ever happen. This is a Psalm of praise, and it is interesting how tame the statement is compared to the Calvinist idea of knowledge. Later in the Psalm, David challenges God to test him to find out what is in his heart. King David was no believer in exhaustive divine foreknowledge. King David, earlier in the Psalm claims that God knows him because God is watching (not some inherent knowledge from time eternal). Roy’s prooftext, in context, refutes Roy’s claims. Roy proffers a bad reading of the text with imposed meaning.

limitless (cf. Ps 147:5, ‘•Great is the Lord and mighty in power; I his understanding has no limit”)

This is about God’s understanding. It is about how God processes information. This is not about omniscience of having all knowledge. The generality principle applies here as well. Without more specific context detailing the meaning, Roy’s view of this verse is just wild speculation.

all-encompassing (cf. Job 28:24, “[God] views the ends of the earth I and sees everything under the heavens”; 1 Jn 3:20, ‘•God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything”; Heb 4:13, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account”)

Again, generalities cannot be ruled out unless the context is specific. It is not. Theological claims based on fleeting statements are speculative. The same omniscience claims could be said about the Prince of Tyre.

These texts also do not mention “how” God knows what He knows. As detailed earlier, God tests to know. How does God know something? He tests to find out.

Open Theists see these verses as evidence of current omniscience. Nothing is said about omniscience of all future events. For Roy to write an entire book of foreknowledge, perhaps he could cite one verse that details God’s omniscience of all future events. That verse does not rank in his top omniscience prooftexts, because that verse does not exist.

Roy has an interesting book, but his lack of critical thinking jeopardizes his findings. If his best verses do not mean what he wants them to mean, then it is guaranteed that he is taking extreme liberties with countless other verses as well. Gordon Olsen has a similar study, listing countless verses for and against future exhaustive omniscience. This study has a lot less bias, as evident in his attempt to categorize counter-examples. https://godisopen.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/goresearch.pdf

For Cantelmo to citing this study means very little. Perhaps he, like Roy, could start with a single verse that proves future omniscience of all events. Cantelmo does proffer Psalms 139, which is funny because the context rules out Cantelmo’s interpretation yet again:

An especially difficult passage for the open theist is Psalm 139, which declares God’s exhaustive knowledge of the psalmist. Verse 4 declares that God knows his speech even before there is a word on his tongue. This means that God is aware of the human contingency of the spoken word even before the human decision to speak takes place. In verse 16 the psalmist declares that God was aware of all of his days before one of them came to be.

Verse 16 is not about God foreknowing days. Here is John Calvin on the issue:

Some read ימים, yamim, in the nominative case, when days were made; the sense being, according to them — All my bones were written in thy book, O God! from the beginning of the world, when days were first formed by thee, and when as yet none of them actually existed. The other is the more natural meaning, That the different parts of the human body are formed in a succession of time; for in the first germ there is no arrangement of parts, or proportion of members, but it is developed, and takes its peculiar form progressively.

Cantelmo does not know this fact. Cantelmo does not consider it. Cantelmo is just not familiar with the Hebrew behind Psalms 139. Verse 16 is about fetology, not about knowing David’s future life.

Verse 4 is about God knowing David’s speech before he speaks. We do not have to guess how God knows what David will say before he says it. David is explicit: God watches David from afar. David’s point is that God knows him so well that God knows how David thinks. This would not be unlike me saying that “my wife knows what I will say before I say it”. It would be a huge mental failure to think I am claiming my wife is omniscient of all future events. My statement is not even a claim of present omniscience.

Psalms 139 is a personal Psalm, so nothing being said is meant to be generally exportable to everyone that exists. Cantelmo’s reading undermines the personal bond David is illustrating by claiming the reason God knows what David will say in advance is due to some sort of inherent knowledge. No, the knowledge is due to a personal relationship. In fact, David challenges God to test him in order to know what is in his heart:

Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
Psa 139:24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

King David was an Open Theist. Psalms 139 is an Open Theistic psalm, which is revealed by applying just a little critical thinking to what is being said. This is not evidence of omniscience of all future events, but evidence against such a strange position.

understanding psalms 139

Cantelmo also cites Isaiah 40-48. Cantelmo claims:

The text is repetitive in its message that the God of Israel is known as the true and living God in contrast to idols, and this is evident on the basis that the true God knows and declares the future before it occurs.

Cantelmo is wrong. The test is not one of knowledge, but of power. Isaiah is not about a trivia contest (“My God knows more than your god”). Isaiah is a power contest (“Let’s say what we are going to do before we do it to prove that we are powerful, and stop after-the-fact claims of power acts”). This is likewise poor evidence of future omniscience of all events. God knows what will happen because God makes it happen. This is not applicable to everything that happens, but just what God wants to do.

understanding isaiah 41

More can be said about Cantelmo’s prooftexts and further comments. But this will have to suffice for the time being. Cantelmo doesn’t treat Open Theism is a generous fashion. Cantelmo rejects reading comprehension standards when approaching the Bible. Cantelmo’s criticism are unfounded and do not stand up to scrutiny. Someone in good faith should see Cantelmo’s article for what it is: a standing testament to uncritical thinking.

William Lain Craig believes that a Biblical theory of time lies not with the theologian, but with the philosopher:

When we speak of God as eternal, then, we may mean either ‘timeless’ or simply ‘everlasting’. The question is: which understanding of God’s relationship to time is to be preferred? Taking sharp issue with Cullmann’s study, James Barr has shown that the biblical data are not determinative. He argues that Cullmann’s study is based too heavily upon etymology and vocabulary studies, and these cannot be determinative in deciding the meaning of a term apart from use.4 Barr thinks that Genesis may very well teach that time was created along with the universe, and that God may be thought of as timeless.5 Barr’s basic contention is that, ‘A valid biblical theology can be built only upon the statements of the Bible, and not on the words of the Bible.’6 When this is done, the biblical data are inconclusive: ‘. ..if such a thing as a Christian doctrine of time has to be developed, the work of discussing it and developing it must belong not to biblical but to philosophical theology’.7

Therefore, the issue lies in the lap of the philosopher, not the theologian. Are there, then, good philosophical arguments for preferring one of these competing notions of God’s eternity to the other? I think that there are.

Barr’s study, which is cited, is about etymology (the study of how words are used). Granted, language is fluid and not as precise as many theologians would hope. But words have context. William Lane Craig, through Barr, claims that Genesis can be taken as God creating time, but parallel texts do not show this.

The chapter begins with a temporal clause often translated “In the beginning.” This translation implies that what follows is an account of the ultimate origins of the universe. The reader of such a translation expects to hear of the first act in time: “In the beginning, X happened as the first act in time.” Thus many English translations read: “In the beginning, Elohim created the heaven and earth.” This is, however, a poor translation of the Hebrew. The Hebrew phrase in question is similar to the opening phrase in other Near Eastern cosmologies and is best translated “when Elohim began creating the heavens and the earth,” just as Enuma Elish’s opening phrase is best translated as “when on high.” This more accurate translation suggests that the story is concerned not to depict the ultimate origin of everything, but rather to explain why and how the world is the way it is. The full translation of verses 1– 2 is: “When Elohim began to create heaven and earth (the earth being unformed and void and darkness on the face of the deep and the wind of Elohim hovering over the face of the water) Elohim said, “Let there be light” (Hayes’s translation).

Hayes, Christine. Introduction to the Bible (The Open Yale Courses Series) (Kindle Locations 753-758). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Where are the claims that Enuma Elish depicts the creation of time? Where are the claims that Homer’ Iliad and Odyssey depict timeless gods? Where are the claims that the pagan gods depicted in the Bible are considered timeless by their adherents? So-called Biblical scholars intuitively know that the Baal worshipers were not worshiping a pure-simplicity, timeless, and immutable god. They bring a second, arbitrary, and unintuitive standard when approaching the God of the Bible. Instead, the narratives show God acting in time, creating, and experiencing. The Bible is filled with such stories in which God is treated like a genuine character in the events that happen. To pretend that God is not, and that a wholly new standard of reading the text applies exclusively to Him, and deny this standard to anything else we know, is not intellectually tenable.

Sherlock Helms, a budding YouTube Calvinist, produces this video on the Perseverance of the Saints:

In the video, Helms claims John 6:37-39 describes this “Perseverance of the Saints” in which people are magically stopped from turning away from God:

Joh 6:37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.
Joh 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
Joh 6:39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

But Jesus, in spite of John 6:39, Jesus did lose one. This is explicit in John 17:12:

Joh 17:12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

Did Jesus lose none that the father sent him, as per John 17:12? The answer is no. Judas was lost. The text explains why this one was lost, but it is still a loss. People “being kept” is not some sort of spiritual enabling that overcomes their human nature. Instead, it is something that can be undone.

So, what then does it mean “none of them is lost”? Contextually, it looks like none of Jesus’ followers were killed during his ministry. Contextually, this is a task for Jesus (“I kept them in your name”). This is not about keeping them spiritually for salvation. This is also not about some spiritual property that stops people from rebelling against God. Instead, this is an activity that Jesus did for his followers while he was on Earth.

In any case, John 17:12 is a fulfillment of John 6:37. There is no need to assume this is applicable to today, and no need to assume onto it any Calvinist notion of perseverance of the saints.

C. H. Spurgeon:

4. Yet again, God is unchanging in his promises. Ah! we love to speak about the sweet promises of God; but if we could ever suppose that one of them could be changed, we would not talk anything more about them.

1 Samuel:

1Sa 2:30 Therefore the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the LORD declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

C. H. Spurgeon:

3. Then again, God changes not in his plans. That man began to build, but was not able to finish, and therefore he changed his plan, as every wise man would do in such a case; he built upon a smaller foundation and commenced again. But has it ever been said that God began to build but was not able to finish? Nay.

Jeremiah:

Jer 18:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Jer 18:2 “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.”
Jer 18:3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel.
Jer 18:4 And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
Jer 18:5 Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Jer 18:6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
Jer 18:7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
Jer 18:8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.
Jer 18:9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,
Jer 18:10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.
Jer 18:11 Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’

Certain Calvinists attempt to use Daniel 2:21 as a prooftext in favor of the idea that God controls the rise and fall of all government. Daniel 2:21 reads:

Dan 2:21 And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding.

Just reading this verse does not suggest that God controls “all” governmental politics. Normal language would suggest that these are just things that God does sometimes. They are power acts that show the might of God’s decrees.

We can see similar language constructs in other kingly statements. The hedonist king Sardanapalus writes:

I was the king, and while I lived on earth,
And saw the bright rays of the genial sun,
I ate and drank and loved; and knew full well
The time that men do live on earth was brief.
And liable to many sudden changes,
Reverses, and calamities. Now others
Will have th’ enjoyment of my luxuries,
Which I do leave behind me. For these reasons
I never ceased one single day from pleasure.

We can notice the generalities and hyperboles just inherent in how language works. When the king “ate, drank, and loved” he did not eat everything ever, or drink everything ever, or love everything ever. Definitely Sardanapalus did cease from pleasure at least one day of his life. The statement is hyperbolic. These are just a characteristic acts of Sardanapalus. The intent is to show Sardanapalus’ hedonistic lifestyle.

In a similar way, when Daniel writes about God “raising Kings”, “changing seasons”, and “giving wisdom to the wise”, this is more a statement of God’s power. God regularly does these things that show how powerful God is. These are not universal and all-encompassing claims. The assumption needs to be against this sort of interpretation because that is not the natural assumption provided anyone was the subject other than God.

Tim Chaffey writes against Open Theism:

To the open theist, God is limited by time. The Bible teaches that God created time: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1: 1). It could only have been “the beginning” if time started at that point. Einstein’s theory of relativity also posits that time is a physical property of our universe. If there were no matter, there would be no time. Since there is matter then there is time.

This author seems to be unaware of basic Biblical scholarship on Genesis 1. The JPS translations states:

1 When God began to create heaven and earth—2 the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—3 God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

This translation mirrors the Hebrew punctuation in the Masoretic text.

The first verse is not a “first act by God” but rather a title or summary about what is to happen, or even listing pre-existing conditions. We find a parallel text in the second chapter during the second creation narrative:

Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

Both Genesis 1:1 and 2:4 serve parallel purposes. They set up what is to come. They are introductions to the stories. They are absolutely not about metaphysics and the nature of time. Even a generous reading of Genesis 1:1 has nothing to do with “time being created.” At most, the beginning could be limited to the beginning of the Earth. The angels are assumed to pre-exist these events. For Chaffey to presume his metaphysics onto the Bible (metaphysics nowhere described in the Bible) is a disservice to Biblical interpretation.

Tim Chaffey writes against Open Theism:

Open theists often construct a straw man to knock down at this point. They claim that God cannot look down the passages of time to see what an individual will freely choose to do. This straw man betrays their misunderstanding of God’s nature. God is not “in time” as we are. He transcends time. He is not part of His creation like the pantheist declares. He is outside of it (transcendent) but can intervene when and where He chooses. Since God is not physically bound to the universe, He is not affected by time. As such, God does not need to “look down the passages of time” to see the future. He sees the entire timeline at the same moment.

This paragraph is entirely philosophical. The irony is that not a dozen sentences before, Chaffey criticizes Open Theism as being “philosophically based”. Where in the Bible describes God as outside of time? We have plenty of passages about God experiencing things in time and even learning new things. What we do not have is Platonic timelessness as described in Plato’s Timaeus.

Being “outside of time”, in addition to not being Biblical by any stretch of the imagination, is a non-concept. How does a being exist apart of sequential events? How does a being exist in timeless immutability? And furthermore, how does that being interact with time? It is not conceptual.

If a being was “outside of time”, this would be no different than non-existence (which is fitting because Platonism tries to describe the ultimate being in purely negative ways). There would be no room for action, interaction, creation, change any time in any fashion. God would not exist. Timelessness was designed by the Platonists to be a non-concept, and that is exactly what it is.

Perhaps Chaffey can take his own advice, and discard philosophy when forming his opinions about God.

This meme seems to surface from time to time on Calvinist social media sites and on theological debate sites. It is often used by Calvinists to attempt to reinforce the Calvinist doctrine of election: that from time-eternal God chose some for salvation and not others based on God’s arbitrary grace. God spiritually regenerates some, but not others. Only the regenerates can be saved.

On face value the meme is absurd, which is quickly pointed out by non-Calvinists. The meme is in reference to Genesis 6:

Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Gen 6:8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Gen 6:9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

There are a few things to note about this text which counter Calvinist theology:

1. Noah is chosen to be saved, not arbitrarily, but because he is righteous and blameless. No one claims that Noah was chosen unfairly, because it is definitely fair to choose to save righteous people rather than wicked for salvation. This is, in fact, a major claim of Christian Non-Calvinist theology, in contrast to the arbitrary nature of Calvinist election. This is literally a story against Calvinism, so it is very odd that the Calvinists would make a meme about it.

2. In the text, there is not even the concept that Noah has ever sinned (this is assumed on the text). As such, there is no concept of regeneration.

3. Noah seems to be saved as an afterthought. God resolves to destroy the world, and then only afterwards decides to save Noah. David Clines writes:

No, God cannot have decided at one and the same time to destroy all that lived and to spare Noah and his family and the animals and so ensure that humans and animals alike would not be wiped out. That would have been a logical impossibility; there must have been two decisions, the second effectively cancelling out the first.

This suggests no eternal knowledge of the future, and illustrates God changing His mind (both about creating man and then about uncreating man). The text is very contrary to Calvinist ideas of immutability of omniscience of future events.

4. Noah’s family is saved due to Noah’s righteousness and not their own, suggesting that God’s regard for Noah was so great that God saved unrighteous people for Noah’s sake. There is no indication in the text of Noah’s family being righteous. A future commentary even suggests that Noah’s family was not righteous:

Eze 14:13 “Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast,
Eze 14:14 even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.

In this text, God declares that he will only save those who are righteous, and not their families. Noah is used as an example of one who would be saved but not his family.

This fact shows that God sometimes saves the unrighteous “unregenerate”, due to His concern for the righteous. This counters the entire idea of a saved elect (because the non-elect are being saved too).

5. The flood narrative is ultimately a story of failure. God wipes out man because they are evil. Then after the flood, God resolves to never again do the same thing although man will continue to be evil. In essence, God’s judgment changed nothing and God decides to forgo any future similar judgments. Clines writes:

It is indeed sometimes argued that 8.21 does not mean that Yhwh will not again curse the ground (with a Flood) because humans are sinful from their youth, but although humans are sinful from their youth…
Whether the sinfulness of humanity is the reason why another Flood will not occur, or whether another Flood will not occur despite the sinfulness of humanity, in both cases it is being affirmed that humanity is permanently sinful, both before and after the Flood.

This is a powerful theological statement. It reinforces the extravagant assessment of humanity in 6.5, but it also lets slip the fact that, according to the Flood narrative itself, the Flood changed nothing. The Flood was therefore pointless. It is not just that it achieved nothing, and that the world was no better off after it than before it. It is not a question of efficiency or effectiveness. More important is the moral issue at stake. It was bad enough to destroy humanity on account of its sins, but it was worse to do so when thereafter it is acknowledged that perennial and unrelieved sinfulness will never again be a reason for wiping out humanity. The failure of the Flood is fundamentally the deity’s failure.

The flood narrative is ultimately a major polemic against Calvinism. There is nothing Calvinistic about the text, and the actual story is quite shocking to Calvinist systematic theology.

In an article on the The Case Against Open Theism, Ron Nash writes:

The theory in question [that statements about the future are neither true nor false] seriously limits the knowledge of God and conflicts with the Bible’s account of God’s ability to predict the future. If propositions about the future are neither true nor false, it is logically impossible for God to predict the future. The belief that God does predict the future presumes that God knows what he is talking about.

Reading this passage, one might see the author’s view of God as of one of a fortuneteller. God is a mystic and peers into the future to “predict” events that will happen. Where does God do this in the Bible? Usually, God’s statements about the future throughout the Bible are linked to God’s power. God will punish. God will judge. And sometimes these events that God “predicts” fail to happen, as is the case when God “predicted” that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days and that event never happened. Sure, there were “reasons” it did not happen, but the author of the article would treat God’s prediction as a false statement, if future events must have a truth value. If it is true that Ninevah would not be overthrown in 40 days, God’s prediction that it would be overthrown in 40 days (a prediction believed by all actors involved) was just a lie.

In the Bible, God is not a fortuneteller, predicting in a crystal ball what people’s future’s hold. Instead, we see God’s knowledge of the future woven with God’s power to act. God’s predictions are not so much “in 20 years you will find true love” but “in 20 years I will punish you for your wickedness.” Where we do see God’s predictions, often God wants His predictions to fail (Israel’s continued disobedience) and sometimes God admits His predictions of Israel’s actions do fail:

Jer 3:7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

Act 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,
Act 17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

The two most popular systematic theologies on Amazon.com comment on Acts 17:24-25:

Wayne Grudem:

Scripture in several places teaches that God does not need any part of creation in order to exist or for any other reason. God is absolutely independent and selfsufficient. Paul proclaims to the men of Athens, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25). The implication is that God does not need anything from mankind.

Louis Berkhof:

The universe is not the existence-form of God nor the phenomenal appearance of the Absolute; and God is not simply the life, or soul, or inner law of the world, but enjoys His own eternally complete life above the world, in absolute independence of it. He is the transcendent God, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. This doctrine is supported by passages of Scripture which (1) testify to the distinct existence of the world, Isa. 42:5; Acts 17:24;

Acts 17:24-25 is used as a prooftext to prove that God has no needs and is independent of the world. God is said not to gain anything from the world because then this would mean God would be dependent on the world, in some sense. If God can gain something He did not have through His relationship with the world, God is not self-sufficient. If God can gain, then God would not be perfect. The idea is related to impassibility, but touted as “self-sufficiency”. The Negative Theology connotations are different than what normal people would consider “self-sufficiency”.

If a man were to survive by himself in the woods, he would be called self-sufficient. But this does not mean he does not rely on other things, or derive pleasure from talking to other people, or cannot gain from having a wife. But this is not the Negative Theological idea of Self-Sufficiency, ultimately rooted in Perfect Being theology.

But this is not at all how Paul is using this statement. The statement is being made in the context of idols. The pagans would build temples to idols, house those idols, feed those idols. This is what Paul is discounting. God doesn’t have to rely on man’s service. Paul is not saying that God cannot benefit in a relational way by communion with man. Paul is not saying that God does not desire and crave worship. Paul is just saying we don’t build houses for God.

Contrasted to Negative Theology, God is often described as jealous and desirous of worship and loyalty. Within the Psalms, often people bargain with God. If God lets them die, then God will be forgoing praise. If God spares them, then they will praise Him and proselytize.

Leighton Flowers answers the oft asked Calvinist Question:

“WHY DID YOU BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, BUT YOUR FRIEND DID NOT? ARE YOU WISER OR SMARTER OR MORE SPIRITUAL OR BETTER TRAINED OR MORE HUMBLE?”

1) QUESTION BEGGING FALLACY:

… this is a game of question begging because it presumes a deterministic answer is required. It is tantamount to asking, “What determined the response of you and your friend?” As if something or someone other than the responsible agents themselves made the determination. The question presumes determinism is true and that libertarian free will (self-determination) is not possible. [2]

I believe that the cause of a choice is the chooser (or the cause of a determination is the determiner)…

GodsoLoved offers up a refutation of CARM on Free Will:

William Hasker (an open theist) defines libertarianism as the following: “An agent is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the agent’s power to perform the action and also within the agent’s power to refrain from the action.” (Opennes of God, p.136-137)

In contrast, CARM says of libertarian free will: “This is the position that a person is equally able to make choices between options independent of pressures or constraints from external or internal causes. In other words, the person is able to equally choose between any set of options.”

As opposed to the first definition I quoted from CARM on libertarianism, this definition is utterly unacceptable. All libertarians believe that all actions were caused, by either an event-cause or an agent-cause. It either shows a lack of research done by CARM or a deliberate intention to mislead readers on libertarianism and set up a straw man.

Leighton Flowers posts about the double standards in Calvinist theology. The Calvinist holds a double standard and criticizes those who point it out as “not knowing Calvinism”:

Looking at the quoted verses:

Deu 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

This verse does not say the children are not innocent. Instead, the more probable meaning is that sometimes children are targeted as further incentive for people not to make God jealous. That and it might illustrate how hot God’s jealousy burns. Note: Calvinists don’t think God has emotions (impassibility).

Piper wants to use this verse mechanically with the next quoted verse to prove children are not innocent:

Eze 18:20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Throughout Jeremiah God is said to target children. In Ezekiel, God is saying no longer will He do that but now He will distribute justice more evenly.

Ezekiel 18:20 seems like a reversal on God’s part. Note: Calvinists do not think God can change His mind (immutability).

In any case, the context of Ezekiel is to say that God will not kill innocent children, something that Piper denies is possible. Even if the children in Deu 5:9 were “guilty”, this hardly means all children are guilty and this hardly means that Eze 18:20 is saying that the children in Deu 5:9 were guilty.

From The Attributes of God by A.W. Pink:

Now the word “foreknowledge” as it is used in the New Testament is less ambiguous than in its simple form “to know.” If every passage in which it occurs is carefully studied, it will be discovered that it is a moot point whether it ever has reference to the mere perception of events which are yet to take place. The fact is that “foreknowledge” is never used in Scripture in connection with events or actions; instead, it always has reference to persons. It is persons God is said to “foreknow,” not the actions of those persons. In proof of this we shall now quote each passage where this expression is found.

The first occurrence is in Acts 2:23. There we read, “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” If careful attention is paid to the wording of this verse it will be seen that the apostle was not there speaking of God’s foreknowledge of the act of the crucifixion, but of the Person crucified: “Him (Christ) being delivered by,” etc.

The second occurrence is in Romans 8;29,30. “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image, of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called,” etc. Weigh well the pronoun that is used here. It is not what He did foreknow, but whom He did. It is not the surrendering of their wills nor the believing of their hearts but the persons themselves, which is here in view.

“God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew” (Rom. 11:2). Once more the plain reference is to persons, and to persons only.

The last mention is in 1 Peter 1:2: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” Who are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father? The previous verse tells us: the reference is to the “strangers scattered” i.e. the Diaspora, the Dispersion, the believing Jews. Thus, here too the reference is to persons, and not to their foreseen acts.

Now in view of these passages (and there are no more) what scriptural ground is there for anyone saying God “foreknew” the acts of certain ones, viz., their “repenting and believing,” and that because of those acts He elected them unto salvation? The answer is, None whatever. Scripture never speaks of repentance and faith as being foreseen or foreknown by God. Truly, He did know from all eternity that certain ones would repent and believe, yet this is not what Scripture refers to as the object of God’s “foreknowledge.” The word uniformly refers to God’s foreknowing persons; then let us “hold fast the form of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13).

AW Pink conveniently skips all the references in which this word is applied to normal people:

Act 26:4 “My manner of life from my youth, which was spent from the beginning among my own nation at Jerusalem, all the Jews know.
Act 26:5 They knew me from the first, if they were willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

Pe 3:14 Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless;
2Pe 3:15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,
2Pe 3:16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
2Pe 3:17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked;

If this word is applied normally to man’s foreknowledge, then by what standard can we make this foreknowledge to be some sort of inherent and absolute knowledge with God? Is it not more likely that the type of foreknowledge is the same, that people know because they observed or learned or planned?

By Christopher Fisher

On the 26th, William Birch posted on prayer in Open Theism using Psalms 139 as a prime prooftext against Open Theism. This post is particularly annoying, because I have personally had a conversation with Birch on Psalms 139 (a chapter that is here discussed in full).

The prior conversation seems not to have held in Birch’s mind, nor does it seem to have held on the internet either (as the thread disappeared abruptly and mysterious soon after he showed disapproval of my arguments). I am sure the reader can divine some thoughts on why it vanished. Needless to say, a blog post on GodisOpen is not quite as subject to the whims of people who might wish to misrepresent Open Theism.

As has been explained to Birch before, Psalms 139 just does not hold for the purposes in which he wishes to use the text.

Here is Birch:

When [Open Theists are] challenged by their opponents who quote the Psalmist, “Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely” (Ps. 139:4), the Open Theist retreats into a defense that we are not permitted to use the Psalms for theological purposes. Evidently, then, the Psalms are not inspired by the Holy Spirit, are not truth as God understands the real world, but are merely benign poetic verses without any real meaning or any genuine connection to the reality of God.

This seems to be a very disingenuous representation of Open Theistic beliefs, even my own which I have communicated to Birch. The Open Theist claim is not that the passage should be discarded or discounted, nor is the Open Theist claim that this verse is not of any practical use for “theological purposes”. No Open Theist would claim that. Instead, this verse is just not useful for Birch’s particular prooftext. Likewise Psalms 139:4 would be a terrible prooftext for God having created the world (something the Bible affirms elsewhere). Likewise, Genesis 1:1 (which is about God creating the world) would be a terrible prooftext for omniscience. One cannot just grab random verses and claim they are about theology they do not depict (and then claim that any disagreement means someone wants to discard a verse for “theological purposes”).

The Psalms verse is just not about concept of omniscience, and drawing those types of conclusions is not warranted (and countered) by the text. Birch assumes that denying his prooftext as a prooftext is equivalent to denying that the verse is useful, a tenuous and ungracious jump in logic. There are several of these tenuous jumps of logic in Birch’s post, so bear with them.

My specific claims about Psalms 139:4 verse are as follows (other Open Theists have other valid objections that fit their own theologies):

1. This verse may not be generally applicable (the fallacy of hasty generalization if Birch assumes it is). Much like a lot of what King David writes, this is more likely contextually only directly applicable to King David. Does Birch assume he has the same type of relationship with God that King David did? I should hope not. Does Birch think all of King David’s writing is applicable to all people on a 1-for-1, direct basis? I should hope not. We cannot just read other people’s mail as if it were for ourselves.
2. Even if this verse was worded to read how Birch claims it is worded, this verse may be hyperbolic (the fallacy of equivocation if Birch assumes his definitive meaning rather than possible others). Hyperboles are everywhere, leading people to not even noticing when they are used. As an example, the last sentence was a hyperbole (“everywhere”). Language is flexible, and we should do well to avoid claiming definitive meanings without strong contextual clues.
3. This verse appears to link God testing David to God knowing David’s words (as evident by verse 1), countering the claims Birch wishes to make about this verse. The direct context points against Birch’s claims.
4. Normal human communication allows people to make these types of statements about people they know (no omniscience necessary). Here is one Open Theist:

Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, my daughter knows it all. It’s uncanny. Almost like we have lived together so long she really knows me, who I am, and how I think. She will even say sometimes, ” I know what you are thinking.” And she is right.

Another point is that the entire context of the chapter is very clearly Open Theism. Here is my podcast covering the entire chapter of Psalms 139. God tests to know (found both in the first and the last verses of this very chapter!). King David does not believe in total omniscience of all future events:

Psa 139:1 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
Psa 139:24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Throughout the Bible, the consistent claim is that God tests in order to learn about people. Two prime examples:

2Ch 32:31 … God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.

Deu 8:2 And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

King David did not hold divergent theology from the rest of ancient Israel. King David believes God knows him because God tests him. The knowledge is mechanistic, not inherent! Psalms 139 is just not the prooftext Birch believes it is.

Fast forward to Birch’s second disingenuous (and frankly, inane) point:

Irrelevant, too, is the Psalmist’s conclusion: “You hem me in [like a fortress], behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.” (Ps. 139:5, 6) Obviously, God cannot “hem me in, behind and before,” since such fortress-like activity requires God to foresee what danger lay ahead, lest this Fortress be caught off-guard, and incapable of “hemming me in, behind and before,” and, thus, protecting me; nor can the benign fiction of Psalm 139:4 be considered “knowledge … too wonderful for me,” since that knowledge is not a reality, but mere poetry signifying nothing.

Normal people can protect other people. There is even an entire profession of human beings called “bodyguards” who literally get paid to protect particular people. They do not do this through omniscience of all future events, but using their own human minds they understand possible and probable risks in order to set up likely defense strategies. They tend to be good at innovation and reading events as they unfold, using their limited perceptions to gather local knowledge in real time.

Yes. God is not weaker than humans, as Birch assumes. Birch holds the very low opinion of God that if God could not see the future like a movie then God would be incapable of very basic tasks. This is just nigh nonsense. Throughout the Bible we see God performing all sorts of amazing tasks, and when Israel believes God is incapable (a belief shared by Birch) the counter argument is always pointing to God’s innovation and power (e.g. “God could raise up children to Abraham from these stones”, “God led you out of Egypt with a mighty hand”).

Birch would do well to quote an actual Open Theist who states that God’s protection in this verse is “poetry signifying nothing.” It seems more likely that Birch has no interest in understanding what actual Open Theists believe, and thus misrepresents them. What Open Theist does not believe God protected David?

Note: King David was anointed by God and literally had conversations with God about the best way to stay safe (such as the incident at Keilah). This is God’s protection in action, protection that David could have shunned. The context of King David’s life does not warrant Birch’s assumptions about the type and extent of David’s protection. Birch would be extremely amiss to believe the same protections God gave to David apply to his own life. Maybe Birch can recount for us the time God spoke to him to warn him of an impending betrayal.

Birch concludes this section with this strange takeaway:

We insist that the portrait of God the Open Theist proffers exists in a perpetual state of being disadvantaged because God cannot, simply, foreknow the future in toto. Seemingly, God understands what events He is capable of bringing into fruition, but that philosophical notion requires that God assumes knowledge regarding a future that does not exist. Now, the Open Theist will argue that we can only maintain genuine free will if the future is not foreknown by God, since that future does not yet exist. However, the Open Theist will also insist that God can foreknow certain events in the future, the events which He will, by necessity, bring to fruition.

Again, Birch assumes God is more incompetent then humans. Normal humans have fairly accurate and widespread knowledge of the future. Just the other day I told an Arminian that I was going to bring my son to his hospital appointment at 9AM, and everything happened as predicted. This is not unusual. Normal people say things like “I know my wife would not like that” or “I know that price controls will cause shortages” or “I know that the football game will be on at 5PM”. In fact, there are complex betting markets on future events, which turn out to be a fairly accurate way to predict major events in the future. This is not even counting the near infinite knowledge of even minor future events that humans possess.

Knowledge of the future is ubiquitous among human beings, without which it would be impossible for us to function. We all operate making countless invisible, true predictions of the future. After all, my knowledge that the roads will not dematerialize as I am driving allows me to drive without fear of plummeting into the void. Birch assumes God is so incompetent that He cannot have similar knowledge of the future. Open Theists reject this claim, and instead portray God as uber-competent.

In order for Birch to maintain his assertions, he must adopt a standard of knowledge which is alien to human communication norms. His idea of “knowledge” seems rooted in the Platonic theory of forms which maintains that eternal truths exist in some sort of absolute realm, perfectly. And that God has access to this realm (the Intelligible). When Open Theists entertain this Platonic idea of what constitutes “knowledge”, we are giving up the farm. Instead, a better standard of knowledge seems to be one of Justified True Belief (or some sort of variation). This is more in line with what common people understand as knowledge.

When we engage in redefining words to engage in theological discussion, we may become prey to what is known as the “worst argument in the world” in which the moral valuation of concepts are transposed onto technical but obscure understandings of those concepts. This allows Birch to appeal to emotions rather than focusing on the text at hand. God becomes “disadvantaged” in Birch’s mind, a prime example of Birch engaging in fallacious Dignum Deo theology (a subset of the moralistic fallacy).

This post is not meant to counter Birch’s post in full (even a brief survey of prayer from Adam to Paul needs a more dedicated post). Instead this post is meant to cover Birch’s misrepresentation of Open Theism, and, frankly, a surprising lack of integrity shown by his recent behavior. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he will come to the realization that he cannot misrepresent other’s views unchecked. Perhaps he might even adopt normal reading comprehension as the best way in which to read the Bible. At the risk of sounding trite, perhaps Open Theists should pray for Mr. Birch. After all, the Biblical response is to pray for one’s detractors because the future is not yet set and they still may come to the knowledge of truth.

Millard Erickson channels his inner Bruce Ware to argue that if God gives timeframes about the future, then the future does not have freewill choices:

Here again, however, a feature of the narrative presents a problem for the open theist position. Bruce Ware in particular points out that Jehovah does not just tell Hezekiah that he will extend his life. He is much more specific: his life will be extended by fifteen years. Ware says:

Does it not seem a bit odd that this favorite text of open theists, which purportedly demonstrates that God does not know the future and so changes his mind when Hezekiah prays, also shows that God knows precisely and exactly how much longer Hezekiah will live? On openness grounds, how could God know this? Over a fifteen-year time span, the contingencies are staggering! The number of future freewill choices, made by Hezekiah and by innumerable others, that relate to Hezekiah’s life and well-being, none of which God knows (in the openness view), is enormous. 19

Erickson, Millard J.; Erickson, Millard J. (2009-08-30). What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge (p. 24). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Erickson does not discuss any Open Theist counters to his point, but many can be easily imagined. Both “God’s protection” and “predictable probabilities” are two possible answers. A third that will be developed in this response is that often in the Bible a timeframe is given and that timeframe is only a loose estimate, sometimes off by decades. The pliability of predicted timeframes is both good evidence that the future is not known and good evidence that in the case of Hezekiah, that the timeframe did not have to be exact to still be fulfilled.

Two loose predictions that will be discussed are the Babylonian exile and the captivity in Egypt. In Genesis 15, God promises Abraham that Israel will be oppressed in Egypt for 400 years:

Gen 15:13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.

There is a specific and divergent number given in an Exodus text:

Exo 12:40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.
Exo 12:41 At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.

Here is Answers in Genesis trying to answer the problematic numbers (they attempt to start the 400 years of persecution with Ismael mocking Isaac!). Not very persuasive. It is more likely the numbers are ballparks and not absolute.
https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-long-were-the-israelites-in-egypt/

The next event at which we will look is the Babylonian captivity. Christine Hayes writes:

Notice that the decree at the very beginning in Chronicles — in the 2 Chronicles version — the decree is said to fulfill the word of the prophet Jeremiah. Now, you remember that Jeremiah prophesied that the Babylonian exile would last 70 years; he wrote a letter, he said settle down, this is going to last a while, plant plants and build homes. So he had prophesied 70 years for an exile. Well, from the time of the first departure of exiles in 597, maybe to the return in 538, 61 years — it’s close. If you look from the destruction of the first temple perhaps in 586 to the completion of the second somewhere between 520, 515, we’re not really sure, that’s about 70 years. Either way, it seems that in the eyes of the Chronicler it was close enough. This seems to have been a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prediction. That it would be about 70 years before they would return.

One site attempts to claim that the 70 years applies not to the judgment Israel but to a judgment against Assyrian. But to the author of Daniel, 70 years of desolation was applied to Israel:

Dan 9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans—
Dan 9:2 in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the LORD through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.

Either way, the Babylonian exile and the Egyptian captivity present major problems and inspire from apologists all sorts of clever ways to avoid the problems. Surely, if Hezekiah ended up dying in only 5 years, all sorts of similar apologetics would spring up (“Maybe the 14 years is counting from a time Hezekiah would have died if not for the foreknown repentance”). These explanations, much like the attempted explanations of the Babylonian and Egyptian captivities, stretch credulity.

In the Bible, prophecy is often not exact even when using precise numbers. This is because the future is not known, and leeway is allowed. These loose timeframes, contrary to being evidence against Open Theism, is evidence for Open Theism.

Bruce Ware objects that God’s test of Abraham just could not have taught God what Open Theism claims that it has taught God. Ware’s third reason for this:

Third, given the openness commitment to the nature of libertarian freedom, God’s test of Abraham simply cannot have accomplished what open theists claim it has.

…

According to these openness advocates, Abraham’s testing proved to God now that Abraham was a faithful covenant partner who, therefore, fore, could be trusted to be faithful in working with God in the fulfillment of God’s covenant purposes. But since Abraham possesses libertarian freedom, and since even God can be taken aback by improbable able and implausible human actions, what assurances could God have that Abraham would remain faithful in the future? One realizes how transient the “now I know” is for God. As soon as the test is over, another test would seemingly be required.

And notice, too, an interesting dilemma faced in the openness understanding of Abraham’s testing. At best, what God could come to know, on openness grounds, is whether or not Abraham’s passing the test demonstrated the continuation of a pattern of behavior that would render Abraham’s future faithfulness more probable. But of course, on the one hand, if Abraham’s passing of this test confirms further a pattern tern of faithfulness Abraham had already demonstrated in his life of trust and obedience, then it could not be literally true that in this test (i.e., the test of the sacrifice of Isaac) God learned now that Abraham feared him. On the other hand, if Abraham passed this test in striking contrast to a pattern of his previous unfaithfulness, why would God then conclude that Abraham would remain faithful in the future, even when he had passed this test, given his previous pattern of disobedience? Either way, whether Abraham had previously demonstrated a pattern of faithfulness fulness or not, the singular and transcient nature of this specific test demonstrates that what openness proponents claim God learned simply could not have been gained.

Bruce A. Ware. God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Kindle Locations 587-600). Kindle Edition.

Ware offers a double edged third critique:

1. God cannot have gained any certainty from the test.
2. God should have already seen the pattern.

Let the reader imagine a perhaps analogous scenario. A wife wants to know if her husband is faithful. She knows that he has been faithful in the past, but really wants to see if he holds true when presented with the opportunity. This will impart new knowledge: a new situation in which his faithfulness has never yet been tested.

She enlists a friend of hers to approach him. Her friend is attractive and seductive. She arranges for her friend to proposition her husband. After an attempted proposition, the husband declines. The wife then calls her husband, exclaiming “Now I know that you are faithful to me.”

Are Ware’s objections valid? Does the husband’s past faithfulness make this new data point obsolete? Or, is this a useful and necessary data point in understanding who her husband truly is?

Can one now object to the wife’s statement that “now she knows that he will be faithful” because he still has the free will to become (at some point of time) unfaithful. Or maybe she should not be able to make that claim because she just didn’t hit the right variables (maybe her husband prefers blondes over brunettes and the wife has to exhaust infinite numbers of test to truly know anything).

Ware’s objections seem unreasonable. Even with a history of data points, a new data point might yet be informative, especially when it is designed to cover a point that no previous data point has covered. Additionally, a specific test can act as both a proxy for other similar tests and as a proxy for true knowledge. That truth can be proclaimed as such.

See also:

https://godisopen.com/2016/03/17/apologetics-thursday-erickson-on-genesis-22/

Brad Jersak takes exception to the popular claims that Greek thinking is in contrast to Jewish thinking. He lists several “problems” with this type of reasoning. He starts with wondering “What Greek thinking” because Greek thinking incorporates a lot of various beliefs:

Which ‘Greek thinking’?

Not all Greek thinking is even close to the same. Much of this critique of ‘Greek thinking’ is based on faulty assumptions that come from reading the Greeks with Cartesian lenses (i.e. Enlightenment era rationalism that Plato would scoff at) and notions of dualism that are Gnostic but not Platonic in the least. So, what many critics of Plato are describing is actually Cartesian rationalism (Rene Descartes, early 1600’s) and then reading the entirety of Greek literature through those lenses. This shows how much we are conditioned to reading the Greeks through the very lenses we think they’re critiquing (in Plato for example). That is, it’s a projection of our own modernism that blinds us to Plato’s critique of rationalism and his actual epistemology, the core of which is contemplative.

The “What is Greek thinking” question seems more like a feigned ignorance than a serious question. True, not all Greek thinking is the same. But the Platonists are preciously what is being addressed. In his book “The Great Partnership”, Rabbi Sacks speaks out on the Platonism (and accompanying Negative Theology) that corrupted Christianity:

We owe virtually all our abstract concepts to the Greeks. The Hebrew Bible knows nothing of such ideas. There is a creation narrative – in fact, more than one – but there is no theoretical discussion of what the basic elements of the universe are. There is an enthralling story about the birth of monarchy in Israel, but no discussion, such as is to be found in Plato and Aristotle, about the relative merits of monarchy as opposed to aristocracy or democracy. When the Hebrew Bible wants to explain something, it does not articulate a theory. It tells a story.

And,

The fifth and most profound difference lies in the way the two traditions understood the key phrase in which God identifies himself to Moses at the burning bush. ‘Who are you?’ asks Moses. God replies, cryptically, Ehyeh asher ehyeh. This was translated into Greek as ego eimi ho on, and into Latin as ego sum qui sum, meaning ‘I am who I am’, or ‘I am he who is’. The early and medieval Christian theologians all understood the phrase to be speaking about ontology, the metaphysical nature of God’s existence. It meant that he was ‘Being-itself, timeless, immutable, incorporeal, understood as the subsisting act of all existing’. Augustine defines God as that which does not change and cannot change. Aquinas, continuing the same tradition, reads the Exodus formula as saying that God is ‘true being, that is being that is eternal, immutable, simple, self-sufficient, and the cause and principal of every creature’. 8

But this is the God of Aristotle and the philosophers, not the God of Abraham and the prophets. Ehyeh asher ehyeh means none of these things. It means ‘I will be what, where, or how I will be’. The essential element of the phrase is the dimension omitted by all the early Christian translations, namely the future tense. God is defining himself as the Lord of history who is about to intervene in an unprecedented way to liberate a group of slaves from the mightiest empire of the ancient world and lead them on a journey towards liberty.

So, one of the key differences between Platonized Christianity and Jewish religion is abstract thinking about the nature of God. This is a key and heavy element in Platonism (and other varieties of Greek thought), but it was the Platonists who really captivated early Christianity. Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, makes the absurd claim that Moses was the one to influence Plato. Anything that Plato taught was just rehashing of Moses! Augustine claimed the Bible is absurd unless it is read in light of Platonism. Augustine elsewhere suggests stealing Platonistic philosophy. Origin shares tutelage with the famed Neo-Platonist Plotinus.

And all the Church Fathers show this Platonic influence in their writings. They deal with undermining the text of the Bible in favor of the abstract, in favor of the immutable, in favor of Platonism. This is where Christianity and Platonism need to part. In the wise words of Walter Brueggemann:

What is most crucial about this relatedness is that Israel’s stock testimony is unconcerned to use a vocabulary that speaks about Yahweh’s own person per se. Israel has little vocabulary for that and little interest in exploring it. Such modest terminology as Israel has for Yahweh’s self might revolve around “Yahweh is holy,” but this sort of language is not normally used, and most often it occurs only in specialized priestly manuals. More important, Israel’s characteristic adjectival vocabulary about Yahweh is completely lacking in terms that have dominated classical theology, such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. This sharp contrast suggests that classical theology, insofar as it is dominated by such interpretive categories and such concerns, is engaged in issues that are not crucial for Israel’s testimony about Yahweh and are in fact quite remote from Israel’s primary utterance.

Matt Slick offers some reasons why evil exists. Here is his second possibility:

Second, God may be letting evil run its course in order to prove that evil is malignant and that suffering, which is the unfortunate product of evil, is further proof that anything contrary to God’s will is bad, harmful, painful, and leads to death.

Note the twisted logic here. God is attempting to prove something to creatures he could have just predestined the believe that same thing without all the fanfare. If God predestines everything, evil existing to prove a point or illustrate a concept becomes meaningless. After all, it would have been easier and less evil just to predestine that everyone just understand the concept of evil, rather than predestining evil to prove to people who are totally depraved something they could never believe unless predestined to do so. The sheer irrationality embedded in Slick’s number 2 possibility is countless.

Erickson writes in his What Does God Know and When Does He Know It concerning Genesis 22:

Note, however, exactly what is said here. God does not say, “Now I know what you would do in such a situation.” Rather, he says, “Now I know that you fear me.” While this may seem to be a small matter of difference, it will be worth bearing in mind. Apparently, Jehovah did not simply not know what Abraham would do. If one interprets this text in a literal fashion, then one has also established that, at least in this case, Jehovah did not really know the heart of the person involved. The problem comes from the fact that the open theists believe that God knows persons completely, all of the personality and character of each person, all of the thoughts of the heart. It is only on this basis that God is able to make the predictions he does of what persons will do.

Erickson, Millard J. (2009-08-30). What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge (pp. 24-25). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Erickson’s objection is a strange objection. Imagine a wife enlists one of her friend’s help in a plan to test her husband’s faithfulness. She has her friend proposition her husband in an intimate situation. Say that the husband passes the test. What is his wife to proclaim: “Now I know that you are faithful” or “Now I know what you will do in such a situation”? Erickson posits an entirely unrealistic narrative that the text would have to follow in order to be an Open Theist text.

But real life does not work the way Erickson posits. We test to gain general knowledge, not to gain knowledge of the specific. Gaining knowledge of the specific would completely defeat the entire point of the text! What good is a test whose results cannot be generalized to other areas? What was the purpose, then, of the test? To figure out within very narrow parameters how Abraham would act? That is not how character tests work.

Erikson’s second problem comes when he assumes the heart is knowable. He envisions the heart like a computer hard drive, all the coding is intact and various scenarios can be run with predictable results (that is, if one has access to the code). There is no indication this is a Biblical concept, and it entirely violates the natural Biblical assumption of free will. God often laments about His failed attempts to sway the people to Himself. Hearts do not work like input-output devices. Instead, knowledge of the heart is gained through testing. See how people respond to tests and then general trends can be known. Throughout the Bible, it explicitly states that God tests to know.

Erickson writes in his What Does God Know and When Does He Know It concerning Genesis 6:6, 1 Kings 15:11, and 1 Kings 15:35:

Perhaps the most we can say from a direct exegetical treatment of these passages is that they teach that God experiences emotional pain as a result of his having created humans and put certain ones of them in positions of leadership. Whether they teach that God changes his mind, and if so, whether this entails the idea that God must not have known antecedently what was to take place, remains to be decided.

Erickson, Millard J.; Erickson, Millard J. (2009-08-30). What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge (p. 20). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

This is a fairly odd claim. The repentance/sorrow/emotion is causes by something God did previously. God is showing sorrow, not over the events that occurred, but His own action. If His action was a rational and utilitarian best alternative, why the sorrow? Why then couple it with undoing the actions that made God sorrowful (in Genesis 6:6 this involves destroying the world and in 1 Kings 22 this involves revoking Saul as King). This is the normal word for regret and repentance, and only works in 1 Sam 15 as such (between the narrator’s statements, God’s statements, and the statement of Samuel). Erikson, irrationally, is forced to posit a shifting meaning of repentance in 1 Samuel 15.

These texts cannot be more clear about what is happening and the reasons it is happening.

Alternatively, I suggest there are no combinations of words that Erikson would accept as depicting God changing His mind up to an including a statement that says explicitly that God changes His mind.

In 1 Samuel 2, King Saul is hunting King David. King David is at the city of Keilah, and wonders what to do:

1Sa 23:8  And Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men.
1Sa 23:9  David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod here.”
1Sa 23:10  Then David said, “O LORD, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account.
1Sa 23:11  Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the LORD said, “He will come down.”
1Sa 23:12  Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the LORD said, “They will surrender you.”

David asks God two things. David asks if Saul is coming to attack him. God says yes. Then David asks if the people will turn him over to Saul. God says yes again. David is asking for insider knowledge from God. David does not know the disposition of the people and relies on God to inform him. The people are probably afraid of Saul (who kills priests for harboring David (1 Sam 22)), and they probably owe their allegiance to the current ruler of Israel and his armies. God sees this and warns David.

Negative theologians seem to take this verse as some sort of prooftext showing that God knows “all possible futures”. This features in the most popular Systematic Theology book sold on Amazon: Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine:

The definition of God’s knowledge given above also specifies that God knows “all things possible.” This is because there are some instances in Scripture where God gives information about events that might happen but that do not actually come to pass. For example, when David was fleeing from Saul he rescued the city of Keilah from the Philistines and then stayed for a time at Keilah. He decided to ask God whether Saul would come to Keilah to attack him and, if Saul came, whether the men of Keilah would surrender him into Saul’s hand. … And the LORD said, “They will surrender you.”

Likewise, other theologians make the same claims. Otherwise scholarly Michael Heiser states:

So in summary, with respect to actual events, God may or may not have predestined them, but he foreknows them all—and even foreknows events that don’t happen. And it is at this point that I am in disagreement with open theists who insist that God doesn’t know human choices ahead of time. That seems incoherent in that, if God foreknows events that don’t happen, why wouldn’t he foreknow what the possible choices were and which choice would be made? How can God foreknow a list of options that will not happen, but be unable to know the thing that does? This makes little sense.

The problem with this is that the prooftext proves too much. It takes a normal everyday occurrence (predicting people’s actions) and ascribes extraordinary conclusions. It is a non-sequitur. There is no link between God’s knowing the strength of people’s allegiances (what they will do when pressed) and knowing “all possible futures”. Probably any insider from the city would know the exact same thing.

In fact, plenty of instances in the Bible (and in modern life) show normal human beings making similar predictions. This is because it is easy for anyone to know what people will do just using common sense and present knowledge. In Genesis 12, Abraham (Abram at the time) predicts what the people of Egypt would do if Sarah (Sarai) did not pretend to be his sister:

Gen 12:11  When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,
Gen 12:12  and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
Gen 12:13  Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

Abraham is not “Omniscient”. Abraham did not know “all possible futures”. This is not a prooftext for a strange conception of Abraham’s knowledge. Instead, Abraham used his present knowledge to extrapolate on the motives of people he had never before met. This was not a hard prediction. Abraham’s suspicions seem to be true, evidenced in Pharaoh’s attempting to capture Sarah against her will.

There is no reason to make more of 1 Samuel 23 than it presents on face value. David is merely requesting that God inform him on the state of Keilah’s allegiances. This is doubly true considering that the same author wrote 1 Samuel 15 in which God regrets His own actions. Grudem seems to be stretching his theology to explain why a God who knows the future would think in conditional terms. This theological stretch just does not fit the entirety of the narrative of 1 and 2 Samuel.

In a paper entitled “Hellenistic Or Hebrew”, Michael Horton attempts to discuss the contrasting interpretations between Open Theism and Calvinism. In contrast to the paper’s title, throughout the paper the one thing that Horton forgets to address is the Hebrew method of interpretation. Horton seems to be under the impression that the Jewish method of understanding the Bible should be assumed to be his own.

This lies in stark contrast to what actual Jews have said on this matter. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments in his The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (pp. 64-65):

‘Who are you?’ asks Moses. God replies, cryptically, Ehyeh asher ehyeh. This was translated into Greek as ego eimi ho on, and into Latin as ego sum qui sum, meaning ‘I am who I am’, or ‘I am he who is’. The early and medieval Christian theologians all understood the phrase to be speaking about ontology, the metaphysical nature of God’s existence. It meant that he was ‘Being-itself, timeless, immutable, incorporeal, understood as the subsisting act of all existing’. Augustine defines God as that which does not change and cannot change. Aquinas, continuing the same tradition, reads the Exodus formula as saying that God is ‘true being, that is being that is eternal, immutable, simple, self-sufficient, and the cause and principal of every creature’.

But this is the God of Aristotle and the philosophers, not the God of Abraham and the prophets. Ehyeh asher ehyeh means none of these things. It means ‘I will be what, where, or how I will be’. The essential element of the phrase is the dimension omitted by all the early Christian translations, namely the future tense. God is defining himself as the Lord of history who is about to intervene in an unprecedented way to liberate a group of slaves from the mightiest empire of the ancient world and lead them on a journey towards liberty.

Rabbi Sack goes on to describe exactly who is the character Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible:

Far from being timeless and immutable, God in the Hebrew Bible is active, engaged, in constant dialogue with his people, calling, urging, warning, challenging and forgiving. When Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change’ (Malachi 3: 6), he is not speaking about his essence as pure being, the unmoved mover, but about his moral commitments. God keeps his promises even when his children break theirs.

From one of the most prominent Jews in the world, it would be hard to dismiss his understanding as flawed. The Hebrew idea of God is not one of the Greek philosophers. The Hebrew position starts with the face value testimony found in the Bible. This is echoed by Christian Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann and Secular Harvard Professor Christine Hayes. Both these individuals recognize that the Hebrew religion is in essence relational. Yahweh is not the timeless, immutable, and omniscient god of Plotinus, be relentlessly modifying His actions in response to human beings. This is the language of the Bible.

Yahweh began in earnest curiosity as mankind first budded onto the scene. This curiosity quickly morphed to regret as mankind fell into utter depravity. After a near universal destruction, God’s resignation towards a sinful creation allowed mankind to again replenish the Earth. Through dedication, God sought to reconcile the world to Him, choosing a man and a nation to act as His people. Through fierce anger, God punishes their oppressors. Through hope and mercy, God liberates them and brings them to their own land. In jealousy, God wants to destroy them time and time again for their rebellion. But through reason, God spares His wayward people.

This nation continually disappoints God. God grows frustrated and exasperated. God tries all types of blessings and curses to sway them, but they do not listen. God cycles through stages of sorrow, depression, anger, vindictiveness, and downright indifference. The world has at one time collectively failed God, and now God is suffering by fault of His own people.

Lastly, God sends His son to liberate His people once again. But once again this is met with rejection. A promise of a Kingdom on Earth is met with widespread disbelief. This results in a previously unseen mission to the Gentiles. Paul declares that God has made this people equal to the surrounding nations in a last ditch effort to provoke them to jealousy. After all these things are done, Yahweh will return to Earth and establish an everlasting Kingdom of God. Yahweh will rule from Jerusalem and all the nations will be subject to God.

Horton and his Calvinist kin (Ware, Piper, Sproul, Geisler) offer an alternative model. In this model, basically everything that is written in the Bible must be rejected because it does not fit their notions of God. Where do they get these notions if they are discounting the Biblical reference? They do not say. What makes their ideas about God true and others false? They do not say.

Instead, they start with the assumption that human beings cannot relate to the text of the Bible. Horton states:

All of God’s self revelation is analogical, not just some of it. This is why Calvin speaks, for instance, of God’s “lisping” or speaking “baby-talk” in his condescending mercy. Just as God comes down to us in the incarnation in order to save us who could not ascend to him, he meets us in Scripture by descending to our weakness. Thus, not only is God’s transcendence affirmed, but his radical immanence as well. Transcendence and immanence become inextricably bound up with the divine drama of redemption. Revelation no less than redemption is an act of condescension and grace.

In other words, the Bible must not be taken seriously except for in light of “transcendent” and “immanent” attributes that are presupposed. Why it is rational to believe that the authors of the Bible had this in mind at the time of writing is not explained. Why the authors would not use more accurate language and less language that contradicts Calvinist ideas of God is not explained. Why Calvinists condemn those who take the language seriously is also not explained.

Most importantly, how this is the “Biblical” interpretation technique is not at all touched upon. The fleeting verses that are referenced are referenced out of context to make points not being made by the authors. Besides, if the language of the Bible is not accurate, then how can a Calvinist claim to know the meaning of any single prooftext. This is not explained.

One very bad example of prooftexting is the use of Malachi 3:6. This verse is the same referenced by Rabbi Sacks as relating to God’s unilateral promise to Israel. Horton changes the meaning to cover all promises everywhere and to cover God’s nature:

The same is true in Mal 3:6: “For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.” Neither God’s nature nor his secret plan changes, and this is why believers can be confident that “if we are faithless, he remains faithful; he cannot deny himself ” (2 Tim 2:13).

This is not how Malachi 3:6 is being used by the author. This is only referring to the Abrahamic covenant, and this covenant will stand. When God wishes to kill all of Israel in Exodus 32, He plans to fulfill the covenant through the lineage of Moses. Moses convinces God otherwise on multiple occasions. John the Baptist states that God can rise up sons of Israel through the rocks (Mat 3:9). John is literally claiming that God can kill all of Israel due to their rebellion and still find a way to fulfill His promise. Paul claims that God can fulfill His promise to Israel although all of Israel is cut off. Paul states in Romans 9 this is because Israel can adopt Gentile believers. In other words, Malachi is about God being determined to fulfill one particular unilateral covenant and has built contingency plans in order to see it to fruition. This is not a text about immutability, but just the opposite. Malachi is about God changing and reacting to people’s decisions:

Mal 3:7 … Return to me, and I will return to you…

And then God challenges the people to test Him to see if what He says is true:

Mal 3:10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.

For Horton to take Malachi 3 as a prooftext shows with what little regard Calvinists show the text of the Bible. In short, the paper Hellenistic or Hebrew is filled with unfounded assumptions and faulty logic.

Episode page.

David Hunt posits that Open Theists fall afoul of the law of Excluded Middle:

This reason for embracing Openism flies in the face of both logic and common usage. Let’s begin with logic. Either I will call my mother tomorrow, or I won’t call my mother tomorrow. One or the other of these statements about the future must be true. The principle that either a given statement or its denial is true is called the “Law of Excluded Middle.” But this first brief on behalf of Openism requires that this law be abrogated. That’s a heavy cost, and the vast majority of logicians would decline to pay it.

Craig, William Lane; Copan, Paul (2009-08-01). Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Anwering New Atheists and Other Objectors (Kindle Locations 5283-5287). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Where David Hunt errors is that he does not understand the law of Excluded Middle. The law of Excluded Middle only applies to statements that describe reality. For example, is the following statement true or false: “This statement is false”. If this statements was false, that would mean it is true. If this statement was true, that would mean it is false. If Hunt would apply his “logic” to this statement, then it is obvious that his law of Excluded Middle runs afoul of the law of Non-Contradiction.

Instead, when statements are abstract, and not based in “what is”, then the law of Excluded Middle does not apply. Does Santa have a beard? Well, “Santa” is an abstract concept. There is no real answer, not unless it is tied to reality in some sense: “Did Saint Nicolas at any time ever have a beard?” or “Does Santa, as imagined by the Coke commercials, have a beard?” These answers can be true or false because they are asking about an aspect of reality. Not unless a statement can be tied to reality does the law of Excluded Middle apply.

For Hunt to say that the law of Excluded Middle proves that the future can have true or false statement, he must first assume that the future can have true or false statements. He is falling prey to the Fallacy of Begging the Question (assuming what he is trying to prove), this is in addition to the fallacy of False Dilemma.

Hunt continues:

Ordinary usage and common sense also reject [Open Theism]. We make claims about the contingent future all the time, and we assume that such claims are sometimes true. Consider the following:

1. This coin will land heads on the next toss.
2. My wife will vote for candidate X in tomorrow’s election.
3. The U.S. will elect its first female president in 2016.

The openist may object to taking such claims at face value on the grounds that the future is not yet real and that claims about it are therefore not yet true. But this objection would be received with bemusement by anyone engaged in the actual practice of making claims about the future.

Craig, William Lane; Copan, Paul (2009-08-01). Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Anwering New Atheists and Other Objectors (Kindle Locations 5287-5293). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Hunt moves from claiming that Open Theism flies in the face of “common usage” to claiming “ordinary usage… reject[s]” Open Theism. Hunt’s first statement might be correct; language is a good tool for showing how common people might intuitively understand a concept. But Hunt’s second statement is irrational. Language is filled with metaphors, hyperbole, figures of speech, and other linguistically shortcuts. “Language” does not “reject” anything. This is easily illustrated.

People talk about the “Sun rising”. This is even though, when questioned, basically everyone would admit that their concept of the “Sun rising” is that of the Earth revolving and spinning around a stationary Sun. The Sun rise imagery is a linguistical shortcut for all these people. When pressed, they will claim that the Sun really does not “rise”. The “Sun rising” is linguistical shortcut, and although it is a linguistical shortcut, it happens to a shortcut to a false concept.

Basically every astrophysicists knows that movement in space is relative. Phil Plait, the leading astrophysicist, has a good article on this. Movement is relative in space, and one can no more say that the Sun revolves around the Earth than the Earth revolves around the Sun. A reference point has to be arbitrarily picked. There are no “right” or “wrong” reference points.

Pretend Phil Plait adopted the reasoning of Hunt to make his case. Pretend he made the case that “ordinary usage” of language “rejects” the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. This would be an absurd claim. Linguistical features could tell us what ordinary people might find reasonable, but they in no way inform what accurately reflects reality.

That being said, “I was right” could easily be a linguistical shortcut to mean “what I predicted then happened to materialize”. In the same sense, one could easily claim “Santa has a beard” but actually mean “the commonly accepted image of Santa includes a beard.” Linguistical shortcuts are ubiquitous in human communication. Discounting them to try to score cheap theological points is not a good idea.

One could easily point out how the Biblical language “rejects” Calvinism in the use of language where people “choose” and God is consistently thwarted by those choices. And statements about time are always about past, present, and future, “rejecting” any timelessness. Hunt needs to rely on flexible language to maintain his Calvinism. Hunt’s arguments thwart his own beliefs.

Martyn McGeown offers, perhaps, the best evidence for God knowing the future exhaustively. If God can predict, accurately, future events that involve too many random variables for even a present knowledge to accomidate, then this is evidence for divine foreknowledge. McGeown quotes Bruce Ware to this effect:

Consider the vast array of attending circumstances God must know about in advance for this prediction to be given. At the time Isaiah prophesies this, God must already know about the fall of Assyria, the rise and fall of Babylon, the rise of Medo-Persia, the fall of Israel, the fall of Judah, the birth and naming of Cyrus, the life and growth of this particular king, his ongoing life into adulthood, his selection as king, his willingness to consider helping the Israelites, his decision to assist in rebuilding Jerusalem, and on and on. This list hits a very few of the most significant items. Within each of these items is hidden a multitude of free will choices that would affect everything about the outcome for that particular piece of human history. It simply is incredible that God can say through Isaiah such a long time prior to Cyrus’s reign, “It is I who says of Cyrus, He is my shepherd! And he will perform all my desire.”

McGeown adds:

It simply will not do for the open theists to claim that God “tweaks” man’s free will occasionally to accomplish specific purposes. The example of Cyrus (Isa. 44:28) alone shows that open theism’s entire thesis collapses like a house of cards.

McGeown believes this is the best example in the Bible of God predicting something so minutely that it suggests future foreknowledge. This is an event in which Isaiah predicts the name (and character) of a king (possibly 140 years in advance). While McGeown is finally offering rational arguments, his evidence is fairly shoddy.

Assuming the prophecy of Isaiah is not Deutero-Isaiac (a critical assumption that must be held to make this point), then one would still have to figure out how likely it is to accurately predict names (and characters). It cannot be ruled out that God was involved with the naming (and breading), as power acts are traditionally how God predicts future events (as evident in Isaiah 40-48).

Two examples of people being named are found in the New Testament: Jesus and John the Baptist. In the case of Jesus, God asks Mary (Jesus’ mother) to name her baby and she does. In the case of John, God makes Zacharias (John’s father) mute until he names the baby what God wishes. Presumably, God would have killed Zacharias if he named his son anything except John. One naming was a request and one was coerced. Both of these examples suggest the naming is not fated, but must be brought about by free agents.

Another point should be added: it is a stretch to jump from “God knows the name and character of a baby, 140 years in advanced” to “God knows all events, no matter how small, infinitely into the future”. That is not a rational conclusion. If I was able to predict a name and character of a baby 140 years into the future (like a modern day Nostradamus) no one would jump to the conclusion I know the future in its entirety.

If a baby is the key evidence of future exhaustive foreknowledge, Open Theists should be assured that there is not any strong evidence against Open Theism in the Bible.

A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 1 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 2 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 3 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 4 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 5 [link]

II. Open Theism’s Assault on God’s Attributes

In this section, McGeown starts speaking of omniscience. McGeown wants to focus on a word the Bible never uses and is usually defined by Greek philosophy (“omniscience”). In McGeown’s defense, many Open Theists use this word. But again, it is not Biblical argumentation in either case. And anyone concerned with Biblical theology should define attributes of God by standards found in the Bible. McGeown doesn’t seem to mind using extra-Biblical sources to define omniscience. He quotes Norman Geisler objecting that Open Theists define the word (again, a word that is not found in the Bible) to include all things knowable.

But, the Bible neither goes on a theological diatribe about God knowing every event that will ever occur or knowing all things knowable. Both statements are speculative. Instead, God is said to see all things in the context of knowing everyone’s hidden sins. When evil people throughout the Bible claim that God will not see their evil, God’s response is that He does see their evil and He will respond. God sees and searches to know (which, on its own, invalidates the traditional understanding of omniscience). There is no appeal to metaphysics. There is no appeal to God’s ‘omniscience’. The Bible is unconcerned with the extent of God’s knowledge over minutia.

After explaining that [most] Open Theists hold to a view of omniscience in which God knows all things knowable, McGeown objects to this understanding with a claim that if the future is Open then Satan might win:

The problem of this position, as John Frame rightly explains, is this: “If God has really left the future completely open, he has left open the possibility of Satan’s victory.”

This statement is riddled with fallacies. Number one is the moralitstic fallacy. What we would prefer to be real has zero effect on what is actually real. We can claim all we want that millions of people have not died in infancy. This might sound nice, but our nice thoughts have no effect on reality. Reality is not optional. It “could” be the case that Satan might ultimately win (why else would he rebel if he had no hope of some sort of victory). What if God just decides to withdraw and give Satan the victory? If God “cannot” do that, then Open Theists redefining omniscience is the least of McGeown’s problems. He would have just said that God is not omnipotent; God cannot do something man can easily do. Maybe McGeown would like to spend some time building the Biblical case that Satan will not and cannot win (two different things). McGeown has not shown that this is not a possibility but is relying on emotions to fuel his arguments (a second fallacy).

Fallacy number three is that McGeown and Piper cannot conceive of an open future in which Satan has no possibility of winning (this is a non-sequitur). I am free to jump at any height I wish. I might choose to jump 1 foot or 2 feet into the air. There are open possibilities. But the limitations of physics do not allow me to leap over buildings. I have near infinite possibilities for my jump, but they are still constrained by the limits of my strength and by gravity. Openness does not mean that reality is tossed to the wind. By McGeown’s logic, he might as well make the absurd claim that “If God has really left the future completely open, he has left open the possibility of my cat, Boots, becoming the supreme ruler of the universe.” The statement is a non-sequitur.

The fact that McGeown proffers this first argument is curious. Does he believe he is making a legitimate point? Did he not think through, not only the logic, but the common Open Theist responses to this sort of argument? This point is evidence that McGeown has not properly understood his opponents and has not thought through his own arguments.

McGeown then addresses the fact that Open Theists claim that God’s predictions sometime fail. He uses the case of King Saul as an example. McGeown then forgets to explain how that example is not a case of God’s failed predictions. McGeown just assumes the idea does not merit response. The first Biblical point in McGeown’s article is ignored by the author! Again, McGeown is presenting a thoroughly Platonistic argument and not a Biblical argument.

Predictably, McGeown then begins to defend omniscience with quotes. McGeown quotes, not the Bible, but a bunch of theologians. He quotes Bavinck, Dabney (using a moralistic fallacy), Reymond, Shedd, and Geisler. It is after this that McGeown first quotes a Bible verse. McGeown turns to Isaiah 41. The context and the meaning of those verses are obvious to those not involved in prooftexting; God can predict things because God is powerful and the idols are not. McGeown wishes to assume Yahweh is challenging the idols to a trivia game, as if God is trying to impress Israel with His knowledge. But it is competence, not knowledge, that is the source of Yahweh’s information. Yahweh is impressing Israel with His ability to bring His prophecy to pass.

McGeown waxes skeptical. He does not understand how if the future is free can God bring about things with certainty. Perhaps McGeown should take stock of his own life and how well he is at predicting the behavior and actions of others. Does McGeown ever assume that when he sets out to go to the store that the store owner will refuse to exchange his money for goods? I would wager that McGeown has never thought twice about his unspoken and accurate predictions of the actions of free people. McGeown would have the reader believe that God is less competent than every human alive, who makes countless accurate predictions on a daily basis.

McGeown would also like to think that counterexamples in the Bible do not abound. Twice, God is said to regret His own actions. Both times it is a quote from God, Himself. Quite a few examples can be given of God’s word not materializing, but in these cases McGeown would either like to claim God’s word was “conditional” (talk about having one’s cake and eating it too) or that in some weird and incomprehensible way the words came true. God tells Nineveh “40 days are you will be overthrown” and this time specific prophecy of Jonah did not come to pass. Jonah tells the reader exactly why: because one of God’s main attributes is repentance. God responses when conditions change. This is all in the context of a dialogue between Jonah and God, and in the larger context of a detailed story. To dismiss God’s thoughts, actions, and words is to dismiss the story as fable.

A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 1 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 2 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 3 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 4 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 5 [link]

A response to Closing the Door on Open Theism

Martyn McGeown wrote a high profile article against Open Theism. The goal of this series is to examine his claims and give a response. McGeown breaks his article into five parts. He begins with an introduction:

I. Introduction

Christians have traditionally understood God in terms of three classic perfections, each with the prefix “omni” or “all”: omnipresent (everywhere present), omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing). These three attributes were until recently accepted by all orthodox theists. Today, theologians can take nothing for granted. God’s most fundamental perfections are under attack. One such assault on God’s perfections calls itself “open theism,” a movement within evangelicalism which denies that God knows the future choices of His creatures. God, according to open theism, has exhaustive knowledge of the past and of the present, but He does not know with certainty what will happen in the future. The future is “open” because history is not, as has traditionally been understood, the outworking in time of what God has decreed in eternity, but a historical “project” in which God and men decide together what the future will be. God has determined the general parameters of history, but He has left much of the future open to allow men to exercise their free will. Because men often choose in ways which disappoint, frustrate, sadden, thwart or even surprise God, He is forced to deviate from what He previously planned to do; but God is flexible and resourceful, and despite many setbacks, we are told, He will accomplish His final goal. Open theism is a radical denial of God’s sovereignty in favour of man’s so-called “libertarian free will.”

…

We shall see that open theism is a fundamental denial of the omniscience, the sovereignty and the immutability of God, and therefore a denial of the God of Scripture, and the worship of a strange god who has been created in man’s image. As such it must be condemned as idolatry.

Critical scholarship has long pointed out that this preoccupation with the omni’s (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) and im’s (immutability, impassibility) is not a feature of early Jewish and Christian theology. Instead it is a reliance on 2nd and 3rd century Neo-Platonic thought. Augustine candidly admits that he believed the Bible was absurd until he read it in light of Platonism. Augustine had to be convinced to abandon the Bible in order to become a Christian. It is telling that much of McGeown’s thought processes owe allegiance to Augustine’s theology. But the Bible stands in stark contrast to these Greek categories.

Here are three scholars (an atheist, a Jew, and a Christian) saying as much:

Christine Hayes (Yale Professor):

Those who confuse the biblical character Yahweh with the “God” constructed by classical western theology may be troubled by the fact that Yahweh is presented in his interactions with humans in the Pentateuch as neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Unacquainted with the god constructed by western theology many centuries later, the biblical narrator( s) felt no such confusion, asserting the great power of Yahweh on the one hand and the absolute freedom of humankind on the other.

Rabbi Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth):

The fifth and most profound difference lies in the way the two traditions understood the key phrase in which God identifies himself to Moses at the burning bush. ‘Who are you?’ asks Moses. God replies, cryptically, Ehyeh asher ehyeh. This was translated into Greek as ego eimi ho on, and into Latin as ego sum qui sum, meaning ‘I am who I am’, or ‘I am he who is’. The early and medieval Christian theologians all understood the phrase to be speaking about ontology, the metaphysical nature of God’s existence. It meant that he was ‘Being-itself, timeless, immutable, incorporeal, understood as the subsisting act of all existing’. Augustine defines God as that which does not change and cannot change. Aquinas, continuing the same tradition, reads the Exodus formula as saying that God is ‘true being, that is being that is

But this is the God of Aristotle and the philosophers, not the God of Abraham and the prophets. Ehyeh asher ehyeh means none of these things. It means ‘I will be what, where, or how I will be’. The essential element of the phrase is the dimension omitted by all the early Christian translations, namely the future tense. God is defining himself as the Lord of history who is about to intervene in an unprecedented way to liberate a group of slaves from the mightiest empire of the ancient world and lead them on a journey towards liberty.

Walter Brueggemann (premier Old Testament scholar):

What is most crucial about this relatedness is that Israel’s stock testimony is unconcerned to use a vocabulary that speaks about Yahweh’s own person per se. Israel has little vocabulary for that and little interest in exploring it. Such modest terminology as Israel has for Yahweh’s self might revolve around “Yahweh is holy,” but this sort of language is not normally used, and most often it occurs only in specialized priestly manuals. More important, Israel’s characteristic adjectival vocabulary about Yahweh is completely lacking in terms that have dominated classical theology, such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. This sharp contrast suggests that classical theology, insofar as it is dominated by such interpretive categories and such concerns, is engaged in issues that are not crucial for Israel’s testimony about Yahweh and are in fact quite remote from Israel’s primary utterance.

When Martyn McGeown starts his criticism, it is telling that he begins his criticism entrenched in Neo-Platonistic thoughts (notice his adherence to “perfections”, a highly Platonic concept). Where do the Bible authors make similar defenses of Yahweh? We have ample evidence throughout the Bible that plenty of individuals in Israel denied God’s omniscience (they denied God’s present knowledge of situations). Where do the prophets offer a metaphysical defense of God in which God knows all that will ever happen? Wouldn’t that be a primary counter-argument if this was the case? Instead the Bible records an impassioned plea from the authors to convince the people that their hidden sins are known to God. God sees, and thus God knows.

Furthermore, McGeown seems very interested in what Roger Olson points out is an idiosyncratic definition of sovereignty. McGeown has hijacked the word and twisted it beyond any normal use of the word:

There is no “sovereignty” in human experience like the “sovereignty” Calvinists insist we must attribute to God in order “really” to believe in “God’s sovereignty.” In ordinary human language “sovereignty” NEVER means total control of every thought and every intention of every subject. And yet it has become a Calvinist mantra that non-Calvinists “do not believe in God’s sovereignty.” I have a tape of a talk where R. C. Sproul says that Arminians “say they believe in God’s sovereignty” but he goes on to say “there’s precious little sovereignty left” (after Arminians qualify it). And yet he doesn’t admit there (or anywhere I’m aware of) that his own view of God’s sovereignty (which I call divine determinism) is not at all like sovereignty as we ordinarily mean it. That’s like saying of an absolute monarch who doesn’t control every subject’s every thought and intention and every molecule in the universe that he doesn’t really exercise sovereignty. It’s an idiosyncratic notion of “sovereignty.”

McGeown is showing his cards. He is not interested in using precise language to communicate intelligibly with others. Instead, he is interested in a strange theology which has to gain emotional appeal through appropriation of words that have a very opposite meaning. Perhaps the term “micro-management” would have been a better choice of words (or “fatalism”). But there is no appealing word to describe God exerting minute control of all things, because the idea is repulsive. On the same note, the idea is not found in the Bible.

Lastly, the idea that God is immutable is also not found in the Bible, not by any stretch of the imagination. Yahweh is constantly active and calling out for people to respond. Yahweh’s very sharp emotions are detailed in countless texts. God changes His mind, God tests people to see what they will do, God even revokes eternal promises due to unforeseen actions. God literally satisfies His wrath through righteous punishment. The Bible is filled, cover to cover, with God’s changes in emotions, processes, and plans. The claim that the God of the Bible is immutable is not a serious claim.

Rabbi Sacks puts it best:

Far from being timeless and immutable, God in the Hebrew Bible is active, engaged, in constant dialogue with his people, calling, urging, warning, challenging and forgiving. When Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change’ (Malachi 3: 6), he is not speaking about his essence as pure being, the unmoved mover, but about his moral commitments.

A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 1 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 2 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 3 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 4 [link]
A Detailed Response to Closing the Door on Open Theism – Part 5 [link]

John Piper writes Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity:

Speech characterizes God and man, not animals. Adam recognizes this when on the sixth day he speaks names for the animals while learning God’s lesson that he stands far above the animals.

To John Piper, the reason that God calls the animals to Adam is to teach Adam a lesson. What is interesting is that the Bible gives an actual reason why God called the animals to Adam. This is to “see what Adam would call them”:

Gen 2:19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

Piper discounts the Biblical reason God called the animals to Adam and invents his own because the Biblical reason runs counter to his private theology. This point is literally found in a book subtitled: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity. Irony.

Camden McAfee (affiliated with John Piper) writes of the most recent school shooting tragedy:

Many of us know the power of Romans 8:28, but less of us are familiar with Genesis 50:20. In Romans, we read, that for those who love God, and are called according to his purposes, “all things work together for good.” But in Genesis, it gets even more pointed. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

It doesn’t say, “God used it for good.” It says, “God meant it for good.”

From the example of Genesis 50:20, McAfee draws the conclusion that every evil happens by God’s will and for God’s purposes. Generalizing based on one example is particularly poor thinking. This would be like using 1Sa 15:11 to claim that God always regrets all His actions:

1Sa 15:11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the LORD all night.

Occasionally, God does regret His actions. We see this throughout the Bible, but this does not mean this this God’s normal state or that God regrets all His actions. Specific examples can only go so far.

In the case of Joseph, Joseph was a patriarch from a special people with God’s particular attention. It would be odd if God didn’t repurpose evil acts against him into providential good. Examples are much more suspect when the example is of an extraordinary figure. This would be like trying to generalize a day in the life of the president of America onto all people. The comparison just does not hold on its own.

Also note that God does not kill Joseph. In the school shootings, Christians were asked to self-identify as Christians and then executed. These Christians were not being preserved for some plan, as was Joseph who was saved for death. These Christians died. Where is the parallel?

McAfee’s last point that it says “God meant it for good” instead of “God used it for good” is a red herring. First, languages generally are fluid in the how words are used. There is no practical difference even in the English language between “meant” and “used”. In the Hebrew, the word being used is “weaved” or “plotted” or “contrived”. The Hebrew language is clearer than the English that God is repurposing the plans of evil men. There is every indication that God did this in real time, as the brothers of Joseph were fashioning their plan to harm Joseph, God was fashioning His plan of salvation.

Notice how the text reads:

Gen 50:20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

How is it in Calvinism, where God decrees all that is to happen, that God has to bring about events in order to bring about results? Cannot God just bring about those results without in intermediating event? Instead, this reads like God is being a tactician. God is maneuvering in order to bring about things that would not otherwise happen. God is using His resources to make sure the things that He wants actually happens.

As to McAfee’s overall point, there is no indication that God is using a school shooting to bring about some other plan. Much like the Tower of Siloam that Jesus references, this is a purposeless evil.

From Bruce A. Ware. God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism:

Consider especially the force of the concluding statement in verse 21. God says, “I know their intent which they are developing today, before I have brought them into the land which I swore.” God knows their future rebellion, for he specifically predicts it with certainty and in some detail before it occurs. Furthermore, this passage helpfully illustrates a point made earlier: that God can know something fully in advance and yet express the appropriate emotion and ethical response to that situation when it actually arises in its historical unfolding. Knowing something in advance does not preclude real relational interaction. action. God knows fully what Israel will do and he enters fully into intimate mate relationship with them, hot with emotion and deeply involved in response to the wickedness of their sin.

This is a quote in a book written against Open Theism, leading a reader to believe Ware would be using prooftexts meant to convince Open Theists of the errors of their ways. Deuteronomy 31:21 is a particularly bad verse to use as exhaustive knowledge of all future events. Pretend the phrase “I know their intent which they are developing today” was absent (notice also how Ware crops the word “for/because” from the start of the quote). Any Open Theist would predictably answer the charges that not only can God know the future because He knows people’s general tendencies, but God also has direct and current knowledge of Israel’s present state. The interesting thing is that this is exactly how this section is worded. God predicts a lot of things in the future and then claims He knows that future because of His present knowledge (“for I know their intent which they are developing today”). Ware’s prooftext is evidence of Open Theism.

Calvinists often make the case that Genesis 45 is a solid prooftext for God controlling all things (or engaging in compatibility actions with free will). Here is one such Calvinist which does that. Here is the Genesis text:

Gen 45:4 And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.
Gen 45:5 But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.
Gen 45:6 For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.
Gen 45:7 And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Gen 45:8 So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
…
Gen 50:20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

So God takes credit for Joseph’s journey to Egypt and ascension to the throne although plenty of free will actions were involved in this plan. From this text Calvinists conclude that everything that happens then happens in some sort of compatibilistic sense. But this is not the case. Often God’s plans are thwarted by mankind. God appoints King Saul, but the regrets making Saul the King because Saul has failed Him. God appoints Eli’s sons to serve before Him forever, but God revokes that promise when Eli’s sons turn out wicked. God promises that Israel will conquer the Moabites but Israel retreats (2Ki 3:27).

In the Bible, God has plans and uses people’s actions to accomplish His plans, but this does not lead to any general sense of compatibilitic action. Calvinists cannot just point to one or two examples and then ignore the counterexamples. This is especially true when counterexamples abound everywhere in the Bible. God can use wicked people, but often wicked people thwart God.

From a Youtube video comments. Open Theist Christopher Fisher leads:

Mr Course,

Talking about John 3:16. The context is that Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus how to be saved. Jesus illustrates how to be saved with lifting up a serpent in the wilderness. John 3:16 is in parallel to this. Explain how saving only a few select individuals who are pre-chosen is consistent with Moses lifting up the serpent to save whoever chooses to look on the serpent.

Course, the Calvinist responds:

The conversation didn’t start at vs 16…. way earlier Jesus already said ” You must be born again”. And when asked how that happens Jesus says it’s like the wind…you cannot control it or predict it. That’s how the new birth is….. it’s not something you control.

//Jesus illustrates how to be saved with lifting up a serpent in the wilderness.//

No, he makes only 1 parallel… the serpent was lifted up ( for people in Israel) and He would be lifted up for people from all nations (the world).

Arminian responds:
+Mountain DG I don’t think Jesus’ point about the wind was “you cannot control it or predict it,” as if to tell Nicodemus he might get lucky and he might not get lucky to have the wind blow his way. The wind was there for Nicodemus, but Nicodemus wanted something the natural mind could understand—and that’s the real point of the wind illustration, that it was something he would have to accept not knowing how it works. It’s really reading a theology into the text to make the wind match determinism and Nicodemus simply unable to make any choice at all about what Christ was saying apart from Christ’s deterministic decree.

Christopher Fisher, Open Theist responds:

//No, he makes only 1 parallel… the serpent was lifted up ( for people in Israel) and He would be lifted up for people from all nations (the world).

That is not actually true:

Joh 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
Joh 3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

What does “that” mean? Doesnt it denote the purpose or the result? And then who does “whosoever” refer to? In the parallel, Moses lifts a serpent so that anyone in Israel who looks will be saved. In the same way, whosoever turns to Jesus will be saved. Right? You think Jesus is saying “only the elect” by whosoever? In contrast to the parallel in context?

The parallel is the saving action and that is the primary parallel. And what is Jesus communicating to Nicodemus? Is Nicodemus entertaining a rant about chosen elect being saved… and this in response to Nicodemus’ question on how to be saved? You actually believe this?

What would Jesus have to say to make you believe that he was referring to all mankind (or at least all Israel)?

From Bruce Ware’s Their God is Too Small: Open Theism and the Undermining of Confidence in God:

In Isaiah 41:21-29, God challenges the false gods, the idols of the nations surrounding Israel, to prove that they are gods. And what is the test he puts forth? God declares, “Let them bring them [these imposter gods], and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods” (Isa. 41:22-23a, emphasis added).

The full passage is what follows:

Isa 41:22 “Let them bring forth and show us what will happen; Let them show the former things, what they were, That we may consider them, And know the latter end of them; Or declare to us things to come.
Isa 41:23 Show the things that are to come hereafter, That we may know that you are gods; Yes, do good or do evil, That we may be dismayed and see it together.
Isa 41:24 Indeed you are nothing, And your work is nothing; He who chooses you is an abomination.

Ware has neutered the purpose of Isaiah 41:22-23 by extracting the key components of the test. God is not challenging the false gods to a knowledge test, but to a power test. This test is under the same line as power tests throughout the Bible (see 1 Kings 18 for a prominent example). God is asking the false gods to give examples of previous power acts that they have completed to prove that “their work is something” to prove that “they can do good or evil” which can “dismay the observer”. Isaiah is not challenging the false gods to a trivia contest.

The judges are Israel who will evaluate if Yahweh is more powerful than the false gods. They are not evaluating if Yahweh just has more information that the false gods, but they are interested in seeing if Yahweh is powerful and can do the things that He says. The point of knowing the purpose of past acts is not just to have working knowledge, but being able to point to a purpose and a plan that is being worked out.

If the false gods cannot provide consistent and powerful acts that can be attributed to them, but Yahweh can, then Israel should take note and then decide to serve Yahweh. Notice the underlining assumption of free will in this passage.

This passage immediately moves into an example of God telling His purpose behind a power act He is working at that very moment:

Isa 41:25 “I have raised up one from the north, And he shall come; From the rising of the sun he shall call on My name; And he shall come against princes as though mortar, As the potter treads clay.
Isa 41:26 Who has declared from the beginning, that we may know? And former times, that we may say, ‘He is righteous’? Surely there is no one who shows, Surely there is no one who declares, Surely there is no one who hears your words.

What is God “declaring from the beginning”? It is that God is “raising up a savior” into order to save Israel. This is not game of trivia.

From Their God is Too Small: Open Theism and the Undermining of Confidence in God by Bruce Ware:

Two features of 1 Samuel 15:29 deserve brief mention. First, notice how the author links together the ideas of “will not lie” and “[will not] have regret.” Since it is true that God never lies (2 Tim. 2:13; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18), and since these ideas are connected in 1 Samuel 15:29, is not “God never lies and never regrets” the most natural way to understand this passage?

Bruce Ware claims the “natural way” to understand the text of Samuel is by importing questionable interpretations of texts written centuries after the passage being examined. It is important to notice this Calvinist mindset. Understanding passages in their textual context is not a primary importance. Forcing the text into some sort of broader systematic theology is the focus. This mindset is so ingrained that they believe it is the “natural way” to understand the text (nevermind that all of Israel did not have the overriding prooftexts for centuries). How did those Israelites read the text? What was their natural understanding. Possibly, like any reader of any text anywhere, they had to look towards the immediate context. That was their natural way to understand the text. And in context of God revoking His eternal plans, Calvinism was the least of their interpretation of the text.

Triablogue writes:

iv) Perhaps I’m insufficiently well-read in current open theism literature, but to my knowledge, when open theists lay out their exegetical case for their position, there’s a conspicuous omission of passages like Ezk 16. Yet that seems to be custom-made for open theism, in terms of how open theism typically interprets and infers God’s nature (i.e. emotion, passibility, mutability) from the OT. It presents a limiting-case for open theist prooftexting.

He adds:

vi) Given open theist hermeneutics, the God who emerges from Ezk 16 is a terrifying God. And terrifying in a particular respect: he lacks emotional self-control. He loses his cool, lashing out in fury. A God with a short fuse.

It’s like a Mafia Don who adopts the daughter of his late brother. He raises her with great affection and kindness. But if his ward betrays his love, his love turns to hate. He becomes vindictive. He’s wonderful to you as long as you don’t cross him. But if you get on his wrong side, if he feels betrayed, then you will find yourself on the receiving end of omnipotent revenge.

It is clear from Triablogue that he believes Ezekiel 16 is some sort of allegory (that’s the word he uses). What he seems to mean by this is that the story is meant to engage the audience’s passions and has little semblance to God’s actions with Israel. But the problem with this is that the story explains what it means as it is told. The metaphor is interwoven with real events. Instead of suitors, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans are named. The acts ascribed to Israel are idol worship and child sacrifice.

Israel is said to be the woman and God is said to be God. There is no hint that God is representing Himself with a puppet character that in no way resembles Himself. Instead, God uses the first person to tell this tale. The actions are directly attributed God and the woman’s actions are directly attributed to Israel throughout the story. If this is an “allegory”, it is a not a very well written one. Instead of an allegory, this serves more like an extended metaphor interwoven with real history. This is not a cute tale of morality, but an illustration of God’s extremely emotional relationship with Israel. That Triablogue attempts to divorce the text from God’s anger, jealousy, wrath, and vindictiveness is to reverse the intent of the story.

So, what is so disturbing about the story?

Ezekiel 16 tells a story. In the story, Israel is a girl abandoned by the world. God adopts and raises this girl:

Eze 16:6 “And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’

The man raises the girl and eventually falls in love with the girl. He marries the woman (so far, sounds like the plot of Jane Eyre):

Eze 16:8 “When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord GOD.

The man lavishes the woman with gifts of the finest sort. She becomes very popular as a result. This attracts other men and she becomes involved in numerous affairs:

Eze 16:15 “But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it.

God then rejects His whoring wife (and the whoring is described in great detail). He abandons her:

Eze 16:27 “Behold, therefore, I stretched out My hand against you, diminished your allotment, and gave you up to the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior.

So God abandons His cheating wife. Men move in to fill the power void. God then rounds up Israel and condemns her to death (the Biblical penalty for adultery):

Eze 16:38 And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged; I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy.

After Israel is judged (after all, Israel is not one person to be killed and to live no more), God’s jealousy will subside:

Eze 16:42 So I will lay to rest My fury toward you, and My jealousy shall depart from you. I will be quiet, and be angry no more.

God then returns to Israel and re-establishes His covenant:

Eze 16:60 “Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.
Eze 16:61 Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed, when you receive your older and your younger sisters; for I will give them to you for daughters, but not because of My covenant with you.
Eze 16:62 And I will establish My covenant with you. Then you shall know that I am the LORD,

Why is this story shocking to Triablogue and to feminists? God was abused by His wife and as a result withdraws His gifts and protection. What? God is to embrace His cheating wife and celebrate her infidelity? God should celebrate adultery? What? God is obligated to protect His cheating wife from the rapists (such activity that she has actively paid to receive)? They kill her and God should have saved his adulterous wife? Why is it that nothing in this story would make God evil unless it is being read by a modern moral relativist?

Triablogue does not believe God can act and relate in ways the story depicts, so he must reject the text. In fact, Triablogue is disturbed by the actions that are depicted, actions that are ascribed to God! Humorously, Triablogue offers his own analogy (what is wrong with the metaphor the Bible uses?), but Triablogue fails to capture the story. This is not some petty slight, but a major action of wanton adultery with countless lovers within the context of marriage. Really, the entire point of this story is that God has been hurt emotionally by Israel to an incurable extent. This is not a story which is remotely compatible with immutability or omniscience of all future events. This is not a nice object lesson to Israel, misrepresenting everything God says and does. This is God pouring out His heart to Israel. God is emotionally devastated. Christians would do well not to make light of this fact.

Christine Hayes, hostile to an inspired view of scriptures, writes:

More important, however, is the existence of sources that hold opposing views of the institution of kingship. Some passages are clearly antimonarchic; others are promonarchic (or at least report neutrally on the selection and installation of Saul as king).

…

Some have argued that while the editors who compiled the text preserved the promonarchic perspective of their sources, they chose to frame the promonarchic passages with their own antimonarchic passages, with the result that the antimonarchic passages provide an interpretive framework and are dominant. The implication is that despite positive contemporary evaluations of Israel’s kings, from the perspective of a later period, the institution of king-ship was considered a disaster for Israel, and that negative assessment is introduced by the Deuteronomistic redactor into the account of the origin of the institution. Others feel that the promonarchic and antimonarchic views were contemporaneous and equally ancient perspectives. Whether one view is older and one later, whether both are ancient or both late— the end result is a complex narrative that includes various views of monarchy in ancient Israel, views that defy easy categorization and that lend the book an air of complexity and sophistication.

A third perspective, one of an inspired scripture and one that only works in the context of Open Theism, is that the conflicting promonarchic passages and antimonarchic passages represents God’s struggles with Israel rejecting God’s Kingship over Israel. Israel has failed God throughout the book of Judges. Every man is doing what is right in their own eyes rather than submitting themselves to God. In God’s preferred system, there is no king except God, but this system has failed due to the people’s rejection of God. This failure is heightened by God’s cycle of blessings and punishments meant to correct Israel and to guide Israel. Israel has rejected all attempts by God to reform them.

The change to a human king represents God’s acceptance of a new strategy, a strategy which is adopted begrudgingly and which has several hiccups throughout the lifespan of this strategy. The entire process shows God’s frustrations in dealing with Israel. God enters the monarchy jaded. This, very well, can explain the conflicting promonarchic and antimonarchic passages within the Bible without need to resort to dual authorship.

By Christopher Fisher

It is often claimed that knowledge of counterfactuals proves that God knows all possible futures. God knowing all possible futures is a strong belief held in many Open Theist circles, so it is not necessarily an argument against Open Theism. But if false, it definitely counters most Arminian and Calvinist interpretations of God.

Interestingly enough this claim surfaced recently on a thread on the GodisOpen Facebook page in which a Classical Arminian guest alluded to Paul to make this point:

1Co 2:8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

The claim is that not only does God know the future, but that God knows all possible futures that could exist as well. The commenter believed that God must have communicated secretly to Paul that the rulers of his age would not have killed Jesus if they knew God’s plan.

It is not clear Paul’s meaning: would the rulers have tried to thwart God’s plan if they had known, or would they have become Christians had they have known? Probably Paul is thinking that the rulers would have done everything in their power to retain power and attempted to thwart God’s plan. But, wouldn’t that be common knowledge? Would that require special revelation to Paul to accomplish? Paul is most likely using counterfactuals in the same manner and with the same rhetorical sense that normal people communicate.

Elsewhere Jesus engages in counterfactuals:

Mat 11:23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

Jesus is engaging in a deliberate insult toward Capernaum. He is calling Capernaum less savable than Sodom! This is right after Jesus attempts to convert them and fails:

Mat 11:20 Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.

So is this a case of Jesus knowing all possible futures? It does not seem that way. Jesus did not see the future, assumedly, where he attempts to convert Capernaum and fails. If Jesus knew the exact moment one city would repent, why did he fail to convert Capernaum? Why is the entire Bible filled with stories of God’s failed attempts to convert Israel to Him? The more reasonable answer is that Jesus is being deliberately insulting, pointing out that Capernaum is worse than Sodom. Jesus is most likely using counterfactuals in the same manner and with the same rhetorical sense that normal people communicate.

So why should we reject God knowing every possible future?

1. It is a mechanism that is not derived from the Bible and invented in order to salvage some philosophical notion of omniscience. Throughout the Bible, God is very unconcerned about His knowledge as a defining characteristic. When contrasting Himself to the pagan idols, the ability to smell comes up more than having knowledge of things. God prides His ability to act more than His knowledge of things. In fact, praises of God’s knowledge throughout the Bible (the rare times they occur) often are centered on the here and now, have nothing to do with counterfactuals, and are intimately related to the speaker (see Psalms 139).

2. God often claims not to know certain things or expect certain things.

Gen 22:12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

Jer 3:7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

Deu 8:2 And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Isa 5:4 What more could have been done to My vineyard That I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes?

While it is understood that the claim that God knows all possibilities does not negate God being surprised at what possibilities are chosen (the claim is almost falsifiable), the Bible just does not read as if this is the theology of the writers. Instead, this is imported onto the text without hint in the text of such theological understandings.

By Christopher Fisher

Quoted from The Dangers of Open Theism:

Richard L. Mayhue wrote an excellent critique of Greg Boyd’s God of the Possible. Since Boyd is at the forefront of open theism, Mayhue’s essay summarizes the theological errors of the entire movement. In “The Impossibility of God of the Possible” Mayhue lists eight reasons why Boyd and open theism fails:

1) The history of orthodox Christian doctrine declares against, not for, Boyd’s position.

2) God of the Possible depends upon philosophy, not theology, to prove its point.

3) This volume deifies man and humanizes God.

4) Boyd discards the unknown, mysterious dimensions of God in his discussions.

5) The book is built with an aberrant methodology.

6) God of the Possible dismisses the literary device of anthropopathism (ascribing human emotions and feelings to God).

7) Boyd’s position diminishes the Almighty’s deity.

8) The author downplays determinative biblical texts.

1) The history of orthodox Christian doctrine declares against, not for, Boyd’s position.

The protestant reformation overturned the entire history of orthodox thought. Calvin and Augustine overturned the history of thought of Free Will. The modern church is nowhere near as apocalyptic as the very early church. Any modern Christian revolts against historical orthodoxy on some level.

The use of the Church Fathers is to help understand what early Christians understood as Christian doctrine. But these views need to be taken with a grain of salt. Most of these writings originated in Greek converts coming from Platonistic backgrounds, some of whom, like Augustine, denied the Bible in order to accept it. Is Mayhue willing to call the Bible absurd unless viewed through Platonism, like Augustine did?

2) God of the Possible depends upon philosophy, not theology, to prove its point.

There are plenty of good works that are Biblically based. Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament is a prime example of textual, and not philosophically based, Open Theistic views.

3) This volume deifies man and humanizes God.

Man was made in the image of God. On some level, man resembled God. Mayhue wishes to sever this important link which is thematic in the Bible.

4) Boyd discards the unknown, mysterious dimensions of God in his discussions.

Unknown and mysterious should not be confused with self-contradictory. Appealing to mystery when faced with contradictions is a logical fallacy, and should not be entertained by rational people.

5) The book is built with an aberrant methodology.

This is a subjective claim. One can equally claim that making up a concept like anthropomorphism/ anthropopathism (which is alien to normal human communications) and using it to discard any problem texts is an “aberrant methodology”.

6) God of the Possible dismisses the literary device of anthropopathism (ascribing human emotions and feelings to God).

When figures of speech are used, they have meaning. When someone is called the “hand of the King”, that means they have power and support of the King. What does God repented mean? What does God became angry mean? The Bible is replete with these descriptions of God. Mayhue would have them have no meaning, the opposite meaning of what concept they depict. This is a claim that the Bible is filled with speech alien to human conversation and filled with lies. So, yes, anthropopathism is as bogus as Open Theists making up a word petamorphism to explain away any problem texts.

7) Boyd’s position diminishes the Almighty’s deity.

Mayhue engages in Dignum Deo theology, which is fallacious thinking. One cannot just make up attributes they think God should have and then expect reality to conform to that image.

8) The author downplays determinative biblical texts.

Unlike anthropopathisms, hyperboles and generalizations are used all the time in human language. Even in the last sentence “all the time” is a hyperbole (or generalization). They are used so frequently that readers do not even catch each figure of speech. The Old Testament concept of God is one in which an array of specific acts by God are examined and then are generalized into attributes.

From Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament:

Israel’s testimony, however, is not to be understood as a claim subject to historical explication or to philosophical understanding. It is rather an utterance that proposes that this particular past be construed according to this utterance. For our large purposes we should note, moreover, that such testimonial utterance in Israel is characteristically quite concrete, and only on the basis of many such concrete evidence does Israel dare to generalize.

Declaring that certain general texts are “determinative” is bad theology. The determinative texts are the longer narratives about God’s thoughts and actions.

By Christopher Fisher

A Calvinist website attempts to list out proof of Calvinism from texts other than Romans 9. From Triablogue:

Ps 33:10-11,15

10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.

…

On the other hand, the counsel and the purposes of the Lord endure forever. Here we find the verb “stand firm, endure” repeated. As the Lord’s creation stood firm at his decree (v9), so his counsel stands firm forever (v11). It cannot be shaken or interrupted by the antagonistic plans of the world. As the sage says, “There is no counsel, no wisdom, no plan against the counsel of the Lord” (Prov 21:30).. And to make his plan stand, as the psalmist says, “He brings to nothing the plans of the nations.” The certainty of the plan of the Lord is not temporary–it is eternal. This is stressed by “forever, to the farthest time,” and reiterated in the parallel colon that affirms that the purposes of God’s heart are “until endless generations.” The plan of the Lord can be trusted completely because it is carried out in faithfulness.

The first thing of note is that three verses are skipped in the middle of the quoted text. Interestingly enough, two of these verses are wholesale rejected by Calvinists:

Psa 33:12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.
Psa 33:13 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.
Psa 33:14 From the place of His dwelling He looks On all the inhabitants of the earth;

In Psalms 33, the psalmist presents God as dwelling in the heavens, watching men, looking down on men to see what they are doing. The idea being presented is that God actively watches mankind. In this regards, God sees what men are planning and God thwarts them (v10). The idea that God is actively monitoring and responding in real time to ensure His work is not destroyed is not a Calvinist theme.

Later, the text explicitly states that God gives special protection to those who worship God. God is said to save them from death and keep them alive in trying times:

Psa 33:18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy,
Psa 33:19 To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine.

This is also not a Calvinist theme. If God had planned out eternity from before time began, from what death are people being saved? No, the concept is that when God sees His children in trouble, God intervenes and saves them. The entire section of Psalms 33 is about God’s dynamic relationship to mankind. God has plans and purposes. God will fulfill those plans. Thus God monitors human beings such that they do not thwart those plans.

This is a very Open Theistic text.

From Facebook:

Of course God is all-knowing. He wouldn’t be God if He wasn’t.

A reply by Christopher Fisher:

Chris Fisher What would He be then? If the God of the Bible did not know all future events then… atheism is correct?

From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

The definition of God’s knowledge given above also specifies that God knows “all things possible.” This is because there are some instances in Scripture where God gives information about events that might happen but that do not actually come to pass. For example, when David was fleeing from Saul he rescued the city of Keilah from the Philistines and then stayed for a time at Keilah. He decided to ask God whether Saul would come to Keilah to attack him and, if Saul came, whether the men of Keilah would surrender him into Saul’s hand. David said:

“Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, the God of Israel, I beseech you, tell your servant.” And the LORD said, “He will come down.” Then said David, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the LORD said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. (1 Sam. 23:11–13)

Wayne Grudem claims that God knows all things possible. If there is an option that I can choose to eat a ham sandwich or a turkey sandwich, God then knows each of those alternatives and the butterfly effect of those independent actions. For evidence, Grudem cites an instance in the life of King David where God tells King David what would happen if King David stayed in the city of Keilah.

Whether or not God knows “all possibilities” is besides the point. The evidence given is amazingly weak. If someone told me not to do something because something would then happen, my instant reaction would be to think that they hold additional present knowledge that I do not have. Assuming that they know “all possibilities” and all future chains of events would be a terrible leap of logic. It is not a rational conclusion.

The mere fact that in a systematic theology book this evidence is one of three evidences presented to defend “God knowing all possible futures” is reason to discount the statement as having serious Biblical evidence.

The other two evidences is Jesus insulting crowds saying that Tyre and Sodom would have repented with the evidence presented to his listeners. Even if this was not a biting hyperbole meant to insult the crowd, it still does not require infinite knowledge of all possibilities. Certainly God could survey those two cities to know their general demeanor.

When taking these texts against other texts that suggest some things never entered God’s mind, we should tread lightly on the over-inflating the scope of our evidence.

By Christopher Fisher

Nathan Patterson declares he is leaving Open Theism. Although he was wavering for some time, he chose the Arminian route. He will be missed as an advocate. He provides a lot of thoughtful comment. He does come closer than many at not misrepresenting Open Theism.

He leaves the fold with a few prooftexts, which he represents as God having concrete future plans:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5, NKJV)

This text is about Jeremiah. God, throughout the Bible, chooses people from birth to be advocates for him. King David was convinced about this. Isaiah was convinced of this (Isa 49:1). One fallacy is to take special people in the Bible and then export their experiences to all of humanity. Not everyone is King David or Jeremiah. This is the logical fallacy of composition.

But even God’s calling doesn’t always go as planned. In Numbers 18, God gives Aaron and his sons the priesthood. But in Leviticus 10:1, Aaron’s immediate sons quickly sin and God puts them to death. They have failed their calling and have failed God.

In 1 Samuel 22, the same thing happens. The sons of Eli sin. God kills them, revokes his promise to Aaron’s lineage, and then promises to raise up a faithful priest instead:

1Sa 2:30 Therefore the LORD God of Israel says: ‘I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever.’ But now the LORD says: ‘Far be it from Me; for those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.

Notice the revocation of God’s promise. If God has foreseen the revoking of His promise, then His promise was a lie. The more natural reading is that although God raised up Aaron’s lineage to be a priest nation, they ignored God’s guidance, and God changed His mind based on their actions. God chooses to raise up a new priest:

1Sa 2:35 Then I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My anointed forever.

The very next chapter starts with God calling to the boy, Samuel. Samuel was called as a boy, not from before birth, and only because of the failings of Eli’s sons. But Eli was called young, because God raises up people from birth. Sometimes they are a plan B, as with David who receives Saul’s kingdom after God wanted to give Saul an eternal kingdom but then Saul failed. Sometimes God’s chosen fail God.

“Remember this, and show yourselves men; Recall to mind, O you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’ Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.” (Isaiah 46:8-11, NKJV)

Amos 3:7 is a parallel thought to Isaiah 46:

Amo 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

If someone wanted to make the case that God doesn’t do much, because a lot of things happen on Earth without being first made known, then this is the verse to use. But when reading the Bible, common sense has to be used. The idea is that God specifically tells people what He is going to do before He does it. That way people will know God was the one to do it.

Isaiah 46, likewise, is not talking about “everything” God does. Really, the context is limited to His visible power acts meant to show people He is the living God. The false prophets had all sorts of power claims for their false gods. God points out the striking difference: God not only predicted what would happen, but why it would happen. God then made it happen.

God is explicit: “I have spoken it; I will bring it to pass.” This is all in a desperate attempt to get Israel to believe in Yahweh, something which historically has failed. In Isaiah, God wonders “what more could I have done for Israel to make them believe?” (Isa 5:4). Even Isaiah 40-48 is written from an Open Theist perspective:

1. God is desperately trying to convince people to believe in Him.
2. God is not given some sort of clairvoyance of the future, but instead works to make His word into reality.
3. God is said to know things through mechanisms for knowing. God knows the volume of water on Earth because He counts it (Isa 40:12).
4. God said he tried to punish Israel and it failed to have the affect He wanted. This made God mad. (Isa 42:25)

Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. (Acts 2:23-24, NKJV)

God had a plan and God accomplished this plan. This is a working out of Isaiah 46, as quoted above. God’s plans coming true do not require clairvoyance. There is no reason to think God’s foreknowledge was more than a plan, whose details could have varied.

Jesus, himself, represents the crucifixion as not a fixed event (Mat 26:53). In that respect, Jesus did not think that even a purposed and foreknown event necessarily would happen. This is everyone’s experience. Sometimes we foreknow things and plan things, but then circumstances change. There is no reason to attach Negative Theology to this verse and ample reason to avoid doing so.

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30, NKJV)

Romans is all about group status. The Jews are cut off, the Gentiles are grafted in, and remnant is created. When Jews thought about election, it was always corporate and it was always people groups. The “chosen people”, a “chosen nation”, a “priest nation” are Biblical terms. Likewise, one belief Paul had to constantly fight was the idea that Jews were saved by virtue of being Jewish. This was the strong corporate ideology found in 1st century Judaism. Romans is not about individual election.

Instead, Romans details God’s extreme measures to insure that He gets His own people group which He had been attempting to craft since Abraham. Paul’s solution to this that God is now trying a hybrid elect, a remnant (Rom 11:5), consisting of Gentiles and Jews who accept Jesus as Christ. But Paul warns them too, God will cut them off if they too fail Him (Rom 11:21). God is open to trying new and innovative things to build an elect people.

Romans reads like an Open Theist manifesto.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8, NKJV)

God made the world and will destroy it. God is the beginning and the end. This is a fitting verse to include in a book about the end of the world. God always was, God is, and God always will be. There is nothing in this verse that suggests anything that Open Theists do not believe.

By Christopher Fisher

Skeptics Annotated Bible lists “contradictions” between verses where God “knows all things” and God is shown lacking knowledge. The standard Open Theist response is that God knows all knowable, just that events in the future are not able to be known. This answers most objections, but not all.

Alternatively, this response will be from an extreme Biblical Open Theist worldview, claiming God does not know some present knowledge.

SAB lists the following verses for God “knowing everything”:

No thought can be withholden from thee. Job 42:2

The better translation comes from the ESV or the NKJV, “no purpose of God can be thwarted”. This is a general rule of thumb saying that people cannot use their power to overthrow God’s purposes. This does not mean people cannot change God’s mind or God can’t change His own mind based on new developments.

In any case, if Job was talking about God knowing people’s minds (the phrase does not seem uncharacteristic of what Biblical authors could claim about God), the Biblical Open Theists would claim that God has mechanisms for figuring out the minds of people. Specifically, Romans talks about the spirit studying people to know their minds and Proverbs speaks about “eyes” watching people to know their minds.

For he knoweth the secrets of the heart. Psalm 44:21

The Biblical Open Theist claim is that God has mechanisms for knowing. God knows because God sees, God tests, and God does. In this particular psalm, the mechanism to which the author refers is God’s ability to see people’s hidden behaviors. That is the author’s point. God has abandoned His people, and this is perplexing because God can see that they have not abandoned God.

The writer of Psalms 44 is using the entire psalm to stir God to action. The context of the statement is that God would know if Israel had turned to other Gods, and the author claims that Israel has stayed true to God. The author did not assume the future was fixed, but that he could influence God to act. The writer implores God to awake and arise:

Psa 44:23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Psa 44:24 Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

Reading the psalm shows that the author did not have the same conceptions about God as the Augustinian Christians.

Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. Psalm 139:7-8

This verse has more to do with God’s special watchfulness over King David than general applicability.

The eyes of the Lord are in every place. Proverbs 15:3

Eyes of the Lord are could mean general surveillance, but it would not be unprecedented for “Eyes of the Lord” to mean “angels”. Angels who report back to God are continually watching you.

For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes. Jeremiah 16:17

A general and reoccurring theme in the Bible is that God can see what man does. Man cannot hide from God, and even in secret places can God see what man is doing. God is saying here that He knows what these individuals have been doing. There are plenty of mechanisms to generate this knowledge. Statements like this case been easily taken as strong rules of thumb, and the language need not be extended to knowing ever single detail of ever single second ever.

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? Jeremiah 23:24

See above.

Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men. Acts 1:24

See above.

God … knoweth all things. 1 John 3:20

The critical reading steps should be followed on this verse before determining general applicability. The question becomes “in what way and in what context does God know everything.” The context of the quote deals with God knowing if our heart is condemning Christians for not acting more humanely. In the text, God knows our history and actions and therefor can better judge over us.

By Christopher Fisher

J Ligon Duncan “disproves” Open Theism in two stanzas:

It occurred to me, as we were singing last night, that the first two stanzas of this hymn are all you need to refute “open theism” or at least all you need to know that “open theism” is unbiblical. If you understand what we sang then, you have all you need in order to know that open theism is wrong.

Listen to Dr. Boice’s lyrical rendering of Romans 11:33 and following. “Give praise to God who reigns above for perfect knowledge, wisdom, love. His judgments are divine, devout. His paths beyond all tracing out. No one can counsel God all wise or truths unveil to His sharp eyes. He marks our paths behind, before. He is our steadfast counselor. Come lift your voice to heaven’s high throne and glory give to God alone.”

Two points. The first point is that normal reading comprehension must make allowances for figurative, idiomatic, and hyperbolic speaking. Hyperboles are everywhere in normal conversation. Notice that the last sentence is itself a hyperbole (“everywhere” is not a literal descriptor). Hyperboles are so common that people do not even realize when they are being used.

Imagine that I say of a boss at work:

“Sam knows everything. He is also kind, generous, and his decisions are always fair.”

An honest reader would understand these as rules of thumb. They would not be wooden understandings, but dynamic and with leeway. Pretend now that the context of this statement is relating to Sam just firing an employee, Bob (Romans 11 is in the context of God revoking His promise to Israel):

“How can you question Sam’s action (knowing he is good, kind, generous, and fair)? You have no right to do so. It was Sam’s choice to hire Bob in the first place. Bob is not entitled to that job.”

Obviously, if the context is a firing then the specific statements are not normally read as generalizations. To then think that Sam’s actions are always unquestionable, is contrary to reading comprehension. Moses certainly questioned God’s intended actions on Mount Sinai, which resulted in God changing His mind. Instead, the descriptors are best understood as loose and flexible, specific to the instance in question.

When people are being described, it is usually in complete use of hyperboles. “My wife is kind, intelligent and truthful.” This would not mean that my wife never was mean, or never said something absurd, or never told a lie. Normal human communication describing people is filled (another hyperbole) with hyperboles. In fact, the Calvinist reading attempts to discount human communication (which is odd, considering the entire Bible is written for humans).

When Calvinists read verses, they often discount the most natural reading in favor of their theological take. They then discount all other possibilities.

The second point is that no Open Theist would refrain from making the same statements about God as listed in Romans. If Duncan wishes to disprove Open Theism, he might want to examine what they say about his specific prooftext.

Yes, no one has taught God “morality” or “justice” (although King David successfully moved God to judgment multiple times). No one has fully understood God’s power (although King David knew what God was capable of accomplishing). Note: King David was an Open Theist poet.

This does not mean that no one has ever swayed God, as David in the Psalms and as Moses did on Mount Sinai. The Mount Sinai event is documented thoroughly throughout the Bible. Paul was well aware of this event, believed this event, and still wrote his words. Is it more probable that Paul was using normal communication techniques? Or is it more probable that Paul was writing some theological code that overwrote Biblical stories with strange metaphysics. The normal reading comprehension of text should always be preferred over the theologically tainted.

The Calvinist reading is wholly unnatural and should be rejected as absurd.