False Doctrines Poisoning The Church
Part 2
Open theism,” also known as “openness theology,” the “openness of God,” and “free will theism,” is an attempt to explain the foreknowledge of God in relationship to the free will of man. I’ll explain in a moment.
The term “open theism” was first coined in 1980 with the publication of Seventh-day Adventist theologian Richard Rice’s Openness of God. The concept was not broadly discussed, however, until 1994 when five essays were published by five Evangelical scholars, including Rice, under the title The Openness of God.
Since then, open theism has become a modern theological movement, and has gained significant traction within evangelical circles over the past few decades. In recent years, open theism has increasingly found its way into mainstream evangelical churches and publications. Hence, the need to address it!
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The argument of Open Theism goes like this: human beings are truly free; if God absolutely knew the future, human beings could not truly be free. Therefore, God does not know absolutely everything about the future. So God is learning just as we are!
In other words, how can we humans be free to make choices if the choices we make are already known by God before we ever make them? If we were truly free, then God would not know what choices we’re going to make, but would only learn of them once we made them.
So open theism holds that the future is not knowable. God knows everything that can be known, but He does not know the future.
Open theism bases these beliefs on Scripture passages which describe God “changing His mind” or “being surprised” or “seeming to gain knowledge.”
Gen 6:6 “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
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.”
Jonah 3:10 “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.”
So the open theist claims that these and other passages reveal that God did not know how the future would unfold.
Why does this matter? Because if open theism is true, God is essentially stripped of his God-ness! God is not a true God. And furthermore, many other passages of Scripture showing he does indeed know the future are nullified. Yet contrary to the verses used by the open theists to justify their position, an abundance of others make it crystal clear God DOES know the future! Verses like:
Isaiah 46:10 “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.”
Isaiah 42:9 “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” – Jeremiah 1:5
Job 14:5 “You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live,”
Eph 1:4 “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
Scripture is abundantly clear regarding God’s knowledge of the future. Note, for another example, the Bible’s definition of genuine vs. false prophecy in Deut 18:21-22:
“And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’ – when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.'”
In this passage, part of the work of the prophet (appointed by God to bring his word to the people) is to foretell the future. If he claims to foretell the future, and that prophecy fails, then the people may conclude that he is a false prophet. The assumption behind this assertion is that God knows the future, and therefore any true prophet will predict the future accurately.
–Knowledge of the future is not only the test of a true prophet. It is also the test of a true God!
True prophets announce the future: not only long range prophecies like the coming of the Messiah (Isa. 9:6–7; 11:1-9), but also specific, short range events of the near future.
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And the Bible boldly declares that God has a foreknowledge of free human decisions. He also knows how world history will unfold. An example of this is God’s promise to Abraham:
“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. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’” (Gen. 15:13–16)
This amazing prediction presupposes a great number of specific future facts: that Abraham will have many descendants, that they will migrate to lands with unfriendly rulers, that the rulers of the nations will afflict them, that these afflictions will end after four hundred years, and so on.
And we note that these events result from many free human decisions–by the rulers, by Abraham’s offspring, by the Amorites, and so on. This prophecy of major historical events predicts many free decisions and actions by many different people.
–The undeniable truth here is that God knows the future exhaustively, meticulously, and in every detail.
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So what DO the verses used by open theists reveal about God’s knowledge of the future, or the lack thereof?
The Scriptures about God ‘relenting’ or ‘changing his mind’ or ‘regretting’ a decision should be understood as God describing Himself in ways that we can understand, which he does all the time.
In the Bible we read of God’s hands, arms, his back, his eyes, ears, and mouth. (Is 59:1; 2 Chronicles 16:9) Yet Jesus said God doesn’t have a body like ours! He told the woman at the well, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”–John 4:24
So all of the verses showing God to have bodily characteristics are examples of anthropomorphism—which is a big word describing how God is presented with anatomical or emotional terms so that humans can better understand Him. The use of anthropomorphism does not imply that God has an actual body.
So when it says God ‘relented’ or ‘changed his mind’ or that he seemed to learn of something he didn’t know, it is simply Scripture’s way of helping us grasp spiritual truth. He wasn’t second guessing Himself when it says he ‘regretted’ creating man, but is describing how their sin grieved Him.
No, God doesn’t have arms, but he definitely holds me up! He doesn’t have eyes like me but he definitely sees or knows all of my circumstances. He doesn’t have a mouth to speak like me, but he certainly communicates with me!
Also, God does indeed “change His mind” when he withholds judgment based on our repentance. When we repent of sin before His judgment is dispensed, He will forgive and relent from sending it. But this in no way means He didn’t know what we were going to do!
God’s disappointment at the wickedness of humanity in Noah’s day does not mean He did not know it would occur. In fact, God’s foreknowledge that mankind would fall into sin is revealed in this verse:
1 Pet 1:18-20 “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.”
But more! In contradiction to open theism, Ps 139: 4,16 state,
“Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD…All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Clearly, God knows the future–our future–to the smallest details!
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So summing all this up:
How could God predict intricate details in the Old Testament about Jesus Christ if He does not know the future?
How could God in any way guarantee our eternal salvation if He does not know what the future holds?
How could Jesus have said to Peter, “Tonight you will deny me three times, and after the third time a rooster will crow?”–Matt 26:34
How could He have predicted that an army would one day, 37 years from then, surround Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem would be destroyed along with the Temple? (Luke 21:20) It happened in AD 70 just as He predicted!
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The examples are endless of Bible prophecies predicting the future both near and far. Only a God that knows the future can do that!
Ultimately, open theism fails in that it attempts to explain the unexplainable—the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and mankind’s free will. Yes we have a free will, but God also knows the decisions we will make.
Just as extreme forms of Calvinism fail in that they make human beings nothing more than pre-programmed robots, so open theism fails in that it rejects God’s true omniscience and sovereignty.
God must be understood through faith, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6).
Open theism is, therefore, not scriptural. It is simply another way for finite man to try to understand an infinite God. Open theism should be rejected by followers of Christ.
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Next time: The Problem with Calvinism!