Christian Living

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A different perception of God has arisen in Evangelical Christianity that while not being new, has challenged the way we have always thought about God's nature. This paradigm shift is seen by it's authors to bring us closer to the biblical conception of God. The book is called The Openness Of God and is seen to be very controversial in it's perception of God and will have sweeping effects on every other area of evangelical thought and life.

The God shown in this book is not the immutable monarch controlling human history and man's individual lives but rather a loving and suffering Father who has chosen to allow man's actions to affect Him in very real ways. At face value what they propose looks like Libertarian process theology with a twist of Armenianism. But it seems it is actually much more.

These authors introduce us to a God who is with us in time through self-limitation and does not know the future in absolute detail. This new view of God is called "the open view of God," "creative-love theism," or "free-will theism." It is extreme Armenianism, but stops short of full-on process theology.

Some definitions may be helpful at this point, there are two main theological beliefs currently accepted by the mainstream church, Armenianism and Calvinism.

Armenianism is the belief that God has given man the choice to accept or reject Him. Predestination is conditioned by God's foreknowledge of who would respond to the gospel. It is also possible for a believer to fall from grace. Man can neither of himself nor of his free will do anything truly good until he is born again of God.

Calvinism states that fallen man is totally unnable to save himself, and that God's electing purpose was not conditioned by anything in man. That Christ's atoning death was sufficient to save all men, but efficient only for the elect. That God's grace is irresistable to the elect of God and that they being regenerated and redeemed will persevere in the faith.

Less commonly accepted, is Process Theology which is more philosophically than biblically or confessionally based. Process Theology is the belief that God is evolving with the universe and does not know the future but is learning along with his creation, He is confined to time and thus knows possibilities and probabilities but He doesn't know actualities.

The Openness of God is not a new concept. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Socinians made the same argument. "God does not know, in such a way that whatsoever he knows will surely come to pass." So in regard to human choices, God knows future possibilities but not future certainties.

Both Calvanists and Armenians, along with the most part of christendom affirmed God's foreknowledge of human choices. John Calvin wrote,"[God] foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place." Jacob Arminius wrote,"[God] has known from eternity which persons should believe...and which should persevere through subsequent grace."

Christian orthodoxy has never denied God's foreknowledge of human choices. Both Armenianists and Calvinists (the whole church) do not agree with Open theology.

I believe that a defective doctrine of God would affect all areas of Christian life and leadership as well as discipleship to bring about an eroding of the glory due to God. Your theology will directly influence your leadership style and the outworking of your salvation. After all your conceptualisation of God's nature is what is imitated and lived out in daily life.

Openness theology is not necessarily an extension of Armenianism and neither is it the opposite of Calvinism, nor even a response to the Calvinist tradition. Instead it appears to be another tangent in the quest to reconcile divine providence and human freedom with a little input from Process theology. The followers of this particular view are, I believe, genuinely concerned with preaching the word of God and the work of discipling others in Christ. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that openness theologians lack adequate scriptural grounding and are outside of the theological mainstream with regard to God's omniscience and providence. Biblically, the future appears to be less open than they propose.

Openness Theologians say that history is the combined result of what God and His creatures decide to do. God is always walking beside us, and experiencing intimately all that we go through. God is omnipotent in the sense that He is the creator of all and could control his creatures if He so wished but He chooses not to control by coercion or force, instead His role is influential and persuasive by His indwelling.

The argument of openness theologians is that God has been taken hostage and held captive by classic theism where His transcendence is overemphasised and His personhood as the Trinity downplayed. They say this view of God is inconsistent with the revelation of God through scripture, namely that God can suffer, grieve and repent.

One would think that the opposite of the God of classical theism would be the finite God of process theology, but the openness of God is clear that God does intervene and will certainly bring history to a conclusion in line with His will and purposes - with or without the help of mankind.

Openness theology also teaches that any claims about the nature of God that are logical contradictions cannot be accepted in theology. It has to be all or nothing as in the case where one says that God knows the future in absolute detail and with total certainty but still leaves parts of the future open and undetermined i.e. in the case of people's decisions regarding their personal salvation.

Another tenant of Openness theology is that true freedom means being able to choose between options without any predetermination. This puts them in a position where neither determination nor predestination are an option. Ultimately it means that the creature assumes and requires a certain limited independence from God. Whereas other evangelicals and Calvanists in particular prefer to accept a more compatible idea of freedom whereby for them, true freedom is being able to do what God knows and has decided is right.Thus they choose to be totally dependant on God, and independence from God is slavery. For openness adherents this is very foreign, because it ultimately places one in a position that seems to attribute the authorship of both good and evil to God.

It is a powerful and persuasive book, but it does have some serious problems that will prevent even sympathetic readers from embracing it as a model for life. For instance, can a self-limiting God who rarely, if ever, intervenes in the free choice and actions of man be assured that the history of this planet will end in the way He desires? For instance every decision we make can have hard hitting and lasting effects in this cause and effect world. A good example would be Peter's act of denying Christ three times. Is there a chance after Jesus told Peter that he would deny his master three times, that Peter would stay true to His master and not deny Christ and God's prediction would thus be wrong?

If God's prediction was wrong, it would mean that God makes mistakes, because God is right about Peter in this case does it mean it was just a good guess or that God really does know the future? The same goes for Jesus' prophecy of Judas as His betrayer, the Bible says in John 6:64,"Jesus knew from the beginning...who it was that would betray Him." Whether Peter does or does not deny Christ or Judas does or does not betray Christ advocates of the openness of God are faced with a dilemma.

Still the real weakness in the openness view of God comes when the authors distinguish between the infinite and the personal attributes of God. This creates a tension that they cannot reconcile so they drop the ball when it matters most. They embrace the personal God and lose sight of His infinite nature. Believing that God must be finite or at least limit himself to being as such, thus He does not know the future and cannot know the future while still be personal. This is very selective and the glory of God is lost in this model of God that they are encouraging us to embrace. As a result they tend to take words that mean one thing to us as mankind and finite and apply those same words and actions to God who is infinite. Words such as repent simply cannot be applied to an eternal God in the same way as they may be applied to humanity.

The Openness writers have also failed to take into consideration the profound implications of the difference between the created and the uncreated. That is, a word must mean for God, the exact same thing as it does for a human, forgetting that human words are subject to God and not God being subject to human words. That is, we must not think that we can impose our creaturely limitations onto God who made us as though we had made Him. This is otherwise known as creating God in your own image.

The fact that we still do not understand the mysteries of the Godhead, does not mean that we can just impose our own reason and understanding onto God thinking that He will adjust to our thoughts of Him. Instead we are called to have the mind of Christ and adjust our thinking to God, not Him to us. What a pathetic God He would be if He was restrained by our measly reasoning. We cannot limit God by what we are able to understand. In this way the writers deny one aspect of God (His sovereignty) in favour of another (our human responsibility). One without the other is God in our own image, for God by nature is both. Sadly not much can be taken seriously in their writing for this very reason.

We need to affirm God's infinite power and His sovereign love. In openness theology, prophecy is reduced to divine wishful thinking without any real guarantee that what God says is not a divine mistake in His calculations of future probabilities! It is also then an "oops theory" as it means that if plan A doesn't work God needs to turn to plan B and thus this leaves them no grounds to deal with eschatology that good will win over in the end. But the "open God" can never guarantee that it will!

This view of God is very far off the awesome, holy, unsurprised and yet always surprising God that I know and love. I applaud the authors of this book in their endeavour to make God more accessible to us in this day and age, but it seems they have devised a rather user-friendly God instead of just letting God be God. It seems to place God in a box of time, in which He is limited to the past and knows nothing of the future or even in fact the present where future decisions are constantly being made. If God does not know the future how are we to understand Romans 8:28, how can God possibly work out all things for our good if he cannot know the future or the present and can only make calculated guesses of the future? The answer is that He can't.

The reasoning goes like this, within the limits set by God, an individual may choose to do things that are totally opposite of God's will and purpose. Thus when one person hurts or kills another, we cannot look for the purposes of God in that event. That person is morally responsible for the killing or hurting of the other, but how can God work it out for our good if he decided to act outside of God's intended purpose. Foreknowledge is needed, in fact required for the working out for our good.

Hebrews 12:3-11, the teaching of this passage seems to be that the persecution of Christians is a necessary discipline that God turns around for our good, teaching us and training us in Christ for a purpose. Nothing we go through is meaningless or unredeemed of God unless you disregard foreknowledge and accept death and pain as a result of the erroneous exercising of anothers will. Instead (Hebrews 12:5 says of hostility by sinners) "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every Son whom He recieves. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons." And for what purpose? (vs.10-11) "[God] disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

God is so supremely in charge of this world that all that happens to Christians are ordered in such a way that they serve our good. Tribulation and distress and persecution and famine and nakedness and peril and sword all work together for the good of those who love God. So the hope of the believer is not that we will escape these things but that God will be faithful within them. "You meant it for evil," Joseph said to his brothers who had sold him into slavery,"But God meant it for good."

In openness theology, God's knowledge is "dependant upon the creature." So God cannot possibly know the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they in turn create their decisions. This does not seem all that open when compared with the mainstream Christian belief that "In God's sight all things are open and manifest, His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent of the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain." The first statement limits God and makes a more "open" reality for man. The second statement makes God limitless and yet still leaves man with a free will with a moral obligation to God and to his fellow man. The first is primarily about us, the second is primarily about God.

It seems that the openness of God is an attempt to humanise God and deify man. The idea that man can ever be free of God and His will at work in the world is an idea that is not supported by either history or scripture. Yes man has a free-will, but it is not free of ultimate accountability to God. Nothing can separate us or give us autonomy from the love of God which is expressed in Christ Jesus, not even an idea that God is guessing at the future as much as we are.God's foreknowledge of the future is an intrinsic part of His glory. We seek guidance from God precisely because we believe He has a firm grasp on the future. We don't pray to change God's mind, we pray to gain His mind. Prayer and meditation is being attuned to God not trying to help Him see things our way! In Isaiah 41:22-23 God challenges the other false idols of the age by saying,"Announce to us what is coming; declare the things that are going to come afterward, that we may know that you are gods." In this verse God is equating His ability to know the future with His divinity and the difference between false idols and demons and Himself. Satan is a created being as we are and knows neither the future nor the present decisions being made. Why would we want to bring God down to Satan's level unless it was to edify ourselves?

Isaiah 46:9-10 "Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure." Now the argument could be made that God knows His purposes but does not know the purposes of man or demons. But this assumes that there are two classes of future events, those that God predestines and foreknows and those that He cannot know are coming, those that arise from human and demonic choice.

But if this were true then why does Isaiah not separate what God is planning to do and what man or demon will choose to do.Virtually all of God's judgements and deliverance's involve choices that humans would make as instruments of God's plan, see the examples above regarding Peter and Judas.This is also where the first chapter of Matthew comes into play. The genealogy of Christ is proof that God has foreordained the birth of Christ and is directly involved in every aspect of it throughout all the world and every generation. One wrong choice in any of these generations and Jesus could never have fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. Even the prophecies of the Old Testament show God's knowledge and foresight to be conclusive.

Within God's plan there is still free-will and moral accountability. Jesus' absolute knowledge that Peter would deny Him, how often he would do it, where he would do it and that he would repent never removes Peter's moral responsibility in the least, which is made plain by the fact that Peter weeps bitterly WHEN he remembers the words of Jesus' prediction. Peter didn't say,"Well you predicted this sin, so it had to take place, and so it can't have been an act of my free will, so I am not responsible for it!!" Instead he wept bitterly. He was guilty and he knew it. Jesus was glorious in the prediction, and Peter was guilty. This is why Jesus said before in John 13:19, "I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am." This was His glory, and therefore a denial of Christ's foreknowledge would also be a denial of His deity.

The other belief held in the openness of God is that God did not foreknow the fall of man, or of angels and so could not know the great things which would coincide as a result of these events, such as His sending His son to die for the sins of the world. Neither did God know that Jesus' incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, nevermind the meticulous four thousand years before Christ came in which the world's stage was arranged in preparation for His coming. Neither would God foreknow Christ's second coming and the end of the age to be able to allow John to write down the Revelation for God's chosen people.

This cannot be chance, God knew it all along. God must have foreknown the fall of Adam and it's terrible moral effect on mankind. Paul says,"[God] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity." When you add this to the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 1:4-6, we can see that God's glory is linked to His foreknowledge and His deity. "[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace."

It is of course ironic that the desire of openness theology is to have a God who can relate to us in time and space and have the same limitations as we do. Indeed, if all we knew about God was what he had revealed of himself to Moses and the prophets, we would be astonished by the very suggestion that the transcendent God that could not be looked upon had somehow taken human form and begun to live among us. According to the traditional Christian understanding of God, it is precisely in the person of Christ that the impassible, immutable, eternal God becomes passable, mutable, and temporal. We do not need to invent an 'open' conception of the divine nature in order to marvel at the "folly" of a risk taking, passible God; all we need to do is to contemplate Christ crucified.

So if God does not know our future, or our present (for that is where we actively bring our unknown choices from conceptualisation into the past) or what decisions we or demons make, He is actually very limited indeed. He is in effect confined to the past, His own plans and musings and calculation of the probability of future events. This leaves God in a somewhat dire state. I would almost feel sorry for a God like that. Would He inspire awe and entice me to worship Him? I doubt it.

So how much does that leave to God? What percentage of the world and the future does God really know. If we were to talk of percentages, how much does that leave to God, 30%? This is the problem for any person who believes that God is limited to time. So the problem, then, is that God is cut out of the future entirely and only has what is old to work with, as one man said, all He has is fossils. It would be as foolish as us studying dinosaur bones to try and discover the future of our world. So He is confined to possibilities and probabilities, but He doesn't know actualities nor future certainties .I do not think that that is a God I would like to love and serve.To do that would be to love only 30% of Him!.

"Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays." Kierkegaard

Note: © October 2002, God-Life.com
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