Open Theism notes

Got Questions? Bible Questions Answered What Is Open Theism?

What is open theism?

“Open theism,” also known as “openness theology” and the “openness of God,” is an attempt to explain the foreknowledge of God in relationship to the free will of man. The argument of open theism is essentially 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. Open theism holds that the future is not knowable. Therefore, God knows everything that can be known, but He does not know the future.

The Lexham Glossary of Theology Open Theism

open theism — A view on the nature of God that rejects classical attributes like omniscience or immutability in favor of positing a God who learns, adapts, takes risks, and modifies his plans in response to human actions. In this view, God's foreknowledge is limited by the uncertainties inherent in creating humanity with truly free will where even he does not know what free human agents will choose to do.

Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion Open Theism

open theism. Theological view claiming that some of the traditional attributes ascribed to God by classical theism should be either rejected or reinterpreted. Advocates typically reject the claim that God is timelessly eternal in favor of seeing God as everlasting, and they believe that though God’s essential character is immutable, God changes in some ways so as to respond appropriately to a changing creation. (See eternity/ everlasting; immutability.) Most controversially, open theists typically hold that God’s foreknowledge is limited, because of the limitations he has placed upon himself in giving humans free will. Open theists argue that their position is more consistent with the biblical picture of God than is classical theism, which they claim distorted the biblical picture because of Greek philosophical concepts of perfection. Critics charge that open theism does not do justice to divine sovereignty.

New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic Open Theism/Openness Theology

The principal motivation of open theists is pastoral, and springs from a perceived need to preach a God who can relate to suffering human beings in a meaningful way. Open theists assume that a God who cannot change or experience suffering cannot understand the realities of human life and therefore cannot relate to us. They claim that the biblical picture of a ‘suffering God’, revealed most fully on the *cross of Jesus Christ, contradicts this essentially philosophical view and offers us a God who can be known and understood as one who genuinely cares about our experiences of life.

Open theism clearly owes much to the theology of Jürgen *Moltmann who has promoted the idea of a suffering God in order to account for the horrors of Auschwitz and the like. There

Divine nescience.—In Basinger’s fifth claim, he asserts that God lacks exhaustive foreknowledge of human actions and can, at best, accurately predict a great number of them. This claim has a number of disturbing implications for the doctrines of Scripture’s inerrancy and authority, as open theism’s opponents have not failed to note. First, Basinger’s affirmation of divine ignorance implies that God’s expectations may at times be mistaken. If this is so, then God’s prophesying that an event will occur in Scripture constitutes no guarantee of the event’s eventual occurrence. “We may not like to admit it,” writes open theist Clark Pinnock, “but prophecies often go unfulfilled. Despite the Baptist, Jesus did not cast the wicked into the fire; contrary to Paul, the second coming was not just around the corners …; despite Jesus, in the destruction of the temple, some stones were left one on another.”

Open theists claim that sentiments like Pinnock’s cohere with the doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy, because statements about the future lack truth value. Since statements about the future are not even intended to correspond with a reality existing at the time of the statement, the open theist argument goes, one cannot reasonably pronounce them true, i.e., in accord with presently existing reality, or false, i.e., inaccurate in their representation of presently existing reality. Since prophecies are neither true nor false, the open theists maintain, one cannot reasonably attribute error to Scripture even if Scripture’s predictions about the future are wildly inaccurate.

If prophecies are neither true nor false, however, then Jesus certainly errs when he states of all Scripture, prophetic passages not excepted, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). In any event, regardless of how one resolves the issue of whether truth and falsehood are properties of statements about the future, the open theist position allows for the possibility that segments of Scripture may prove less than trustworthy. Whereas Jesus states unequivocally that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), open theism implies that perhaps it can.

Ashland Theological Journal, Volume 34 Open Theism: “What Is This? A New Teaching?—And with Authority!” (Mk 1:27)

Open Theism: “What is this? A new teaching?—and with authority!” (

The Journal of Modern Ministry, Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2004 Three Dangerous Ministry Implications of Open Theism (S. Lance Quinn)

Three Dangerous Ministry Implications of Open Theism

BY S. LANCE QUINN

One of the most beloved aspects of the doctrine of God is his omniscience. When believers are struggling with how to understand God’s will and care for them, the knowledge of his exhaustive knowledge (especially his foreknowledge) is of a tremendous, joyful significance. The omniscience—or the all-perfect knowledge of God—is precious to saints because it shows that he has total and complete awareness of all their needs and will perform whatever providential steps necessary to bring about their ultimate good and his glory. Several Scripture texts also clearly show God’s omniscience. For example, the apostle John declares that “God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” One of Job’s counselors, Elihu, said that God is “perfect in knowledge” (

Conclusion

Open theism provides no such encouragement. In relation to Romans 8:28, John Sanders remarks: ‘God is working to accomplish good in all things’, yet ‘the purposes of God meet with resistance, and even God does not always get what he wants.’ Ironically, this makes open theism weakest where it claims to be strongest—pastorally. As Bruce Ware asks:

How pastorally, spiritually, and existentially adequate is the counsel offered by openness proponents? At the heart of the pastoral counsel offered to suffering people by open theists is this claim: God did not bring about your suffering, so don’t blame God for it; instead, be encouraged because he feels as badly about the suffering you are enduring as you do.[1]

[1]Yuille, S. (2007). How Pastoral is Open Theism? Themelios, 32(2), 48–61.