Introduction and a
Very Short Bibliography.
Paper prepared for
RCUS Ministers’ Retreat, 8/18/2003, Mitchell, SD.
C. W. Powell
These four books, all published by Intervarsity Press, will serve as a starting point for understanding the ”Openness” movement. At issue, in the opinion of the author of this study, is the orthodox doctrine of God and His attributes of self-existence, immutability, infinity, and simplicity. These attributes have usually been considered incommunicable, the so-called negative attributes which set Him off as distinct from all that He made. These are the very things which are self-consciously challenged by the “openness of God” proponents, and stipulated to in their writings.
Basinger, David. The Case for Freewill Theism. Downers Grove, Intervarsity Press, 1996
Beilby, James K and Paul R.
Eddy, editors. Divine Foreknowledge, Four Views. Downers Grove,
Intervarsity Press, 2001
McGregor-Wright, R. K. No
Place for Sovereignty. What’s Wrong
with Freewill Theism. Downers
Grove, Intervarsity Press, 1996
Pinnock, Clark, Richard
Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. The Openness of God. Downers Grove,
Intervarsity Press, 1994
Websites that the author found interesting offered here without little comment, approval or disapproval, but for your discerning consideration.
http://www.founders.org/FJ22/reviews.html
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/openness.htm [This is a very good article by a Roman
Catholic theologian. The links in the
article are informative, in my view, especially on the idea of constituent
ontology being superior to relation ontology.
Provocative. His comments on
the paucity of real education in the last half of the twentieth century are
good, too, especially in relation to divine simplicity. How can you combat something you are
ignorant of? The blind are leading the
blind.]
http://www.desiringgod.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/foreknowledge/answering_boyd.html [John Piper and the “repentance” texts.]
http://twtministries.com/articles/9_openness/ A series of articles supporting openness.
http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/enrichmentjournal/200204/200204_134_openness_of_god.cfm [A sharp dissent from the openness movement
from the point of view of Pentecostalism]
http://www.solagroup.org/articles/understandingthebible/utb_0011.html
http://www.solagroup.org/articles/understandingthebible/utb_0012.html
http://www.tms.edu/fcls2001.asp [Faculty chapel lectures at Master’s
Seminary]
http://www.biblical-theology.com/omniscience2/timen.htm This is an important article that goes to
the meaning of eternity as far as God is concerned. According to the openness movement, time is of the essence of
God. He did not create time and He
cannot avoid it. He thinks and acts in
sequences of time. God is therefore
ruled by time. A person’s view of time
is critical to the doctrine of God.
http://www.biblical-theology.com/omniscience2/time.htm [Another view of time in the Finney
tradition. This and the previous site
shows how important the concept of time is in the Openness movement. They would have an “Open” God by encasing
Him in time!!! To paraphrase
Chesterton: when men “break out,” they
never break out into a larger space—they always break out into a narrower one.]
http://www.modernreformation.org/mr93/janfeb/mr9301interviewpinnock.html [Interview with Michael Horton and Clark Pinnock]
The method I will use in this lecture is to review the book The Openness of God and the views of the authors in the light of the incommunicable attributes of God and certain other important concepts. Some of the most revealing comments are in the endnotes and they will not be overlooked in this presentation, although it will be impossible to consider all the issues involved. We will try to look at some of the presuppositions that drive the Openness movement and critique them.
It is again the opinion of this writer that the view of God that is presented by the openness movement is so radically different from the view held by the Fathers, especially by the first six Ecumenical Councils that it is a stretch to think that the Openness Movement and the Fathers are speaking of the same God.
How many know what a tokalasi is? [I am not sure of the spelling]. For about 40 some years I have been asking that question and have never had an answer until a church history class at New Geneva Seminary, when it was still Knox Seminary, about seven years ago. There was a couple from South Africa visiting, and the woman knew and got a kick out of it.
The reason that you could not answer me, was because you are not able to assign any attribute to the word. What is an attribute? I would submit the following ideas to try to have a layman’s definition of attribute. I have two relatives in Colorado Springs, both of them are named Matt. It sometimes becomes confusing in our family because it may not immediately be apparent which Matt we mean when we use the name, Matt. Son Matt is the sixth son of C. W. and Penny Powell, born in California in 1974, is married to Andrea, until recently worked for Hewlett Packard, attends seminary, and is an elder at Trinity Covenant Church. Nephew Matt is married to Susanna, works as a graphics artist for Pikes Peak Raceway, owns a dog, and is a deacon at Trinity Covenant Church.
An attribute is something that we attribute or attach to a word in order to identify the concept that the word is code for, making communication possible. Identification is impossible without the use of attributes. In language we have names for persons, places, and things; for qualities of persons, places, and things; names for actions, and for qualities of those actions. We have words that name relationships. Without the attributes which we attach to these names, communication is impossible. In fact, the fallacy of ambiguity arises when people assign different attributes to the same name.
Years ago in a third-grade grammar class, I was laboring to explain what a sentence is. Using a device from an old 19th century grammar book I said, “A sentence is a complete thought. What is a complete thought? Well, you have to think about something, and then you must think something about it.” To illustrate I asked all of the children to think of a cat. “Do you have a cat in your mind.” Yes I then went around the room asking, “What is your cat doing? What are you thinking about your cat.” One by one, I got the answers. Drinking milk, lying in the sun, chasing a mouse, being chased by a dog, etc. Then I got to one little boy. His answer, “building a road.” My point was made. No one can think of a cat without thinking something about the cat, and what you think about the cat includes the definition of the word cat. It is impossible to think of cat without assigning attributes to the word, unless you are thinking of the word itself, either as a sound or as symbols on a page. But the word itself as a sound in the air, or the symbols on the page are meaningless without the attributes. There are a number of definitions of the word “cat” in the dictionary. A domesticated animal; any of the family of carnivorous, solitary mammals; a whip; a malicious woman; a jazz musician; a guy; a fish; two varieties of boats; tackle used to hoist an anchor; etc. The definition is in the attributes. If you change the attributes, you change the meaning of the word.
This is why Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:
8 For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound,
who shall prepare himself to the battle?
9 So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue
words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall
speak into the air.
10 There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices
in the world, and none of them is without signification.
11 Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.
So it is with the word “god.” The word is essentially without meaning in modern language. The only way you can say, for instance, that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity worship the same god is for the word ‘god’ to be without attributes, and therefore without meaning.
Therefore, we want to know what the Openness people mean when they say “God.” Karl Barth is supposed to have said something like, “You cannot say God by saying Man with a loud voice.” Are the openness people simply saying “Man” loudly when they say “God.” If the attributes assigned to God are simply human attributes, then the answer is “yes.” If so, then it is not a movement within Christianity at all, but a movement within humanism, and should be rejected by all those who love the Lord Jesus for it would involve the worship of a man, and not God.
Further notes.
In some respects the impetus to a whole lot of “new thought” in the modern world stems from the Holocaust. It was so blatantly evil that many people began to wonder about the kind of world it is that we live in. Can the concept of God exist in a world with Hitler and his likes? In some respects the generations following World War II were enamoured with their own importance, as if they had discovered the devil for the first time, that no one had wrestled with evil before. [“Wrestle” is a popular word in modern theology—you don’t understand and you don’t believe. You don’t accept and you don’t reject: you “wrestle.” Herod had great “wrestlings” when he ordered the beheading of John the Baptist. The Rich Young Ruler was “wrestling” when he went away from Christ. Pilate “wrestled” when he tried to wash the blood off his hands.]
Because of the Holocaust, it was important that Christians show that they didn’t dislike Jews, that the differences between Christianity and Judaism are really insignificant—we worship the same God in fact, and we certainly should not remember the persecution of Christians by the Jews, nor should we believe that Christ is God, for that concept cannot be reconciled with Judaism. This caused a fundamental reorganization of Christian thought.
Another idea that had to go was the concept of hell. If the wicked are going to burn in hell in the future, then Christians will be justified in burning them now. Calvin and Servetus come up again and again in the literature, to show the connection between belief in hell and burning inconvenient people. In some way there is a convenient amnesia when it comes to all the atheistic tortures, burnings, assassinations, etc, that took place in the 20th centuries in the name of building a new and just earthly kingdom. The biblical doctrine of hell is much too personal and final. It forces us to declare ourselves and make decisions. The modern world believes that God always gives us a second chance, for he is “wrestling” with our faults and failures also. He has feelings like we do. It is interesting that in the name of free-will theism, decision making is taken away, replaced by “wrestlings” and “sensitivity.” It is the sensitive people who “wrestle.”
Another important concept that had to go was the idea of absolute truth, or the knowledge of the one true God. Here the idea of “wrestling” is important again. Churches wrestle with Arminianism, with liberalism, with feminism, with process theology, with evolution, with creation, with inerrancy, with homosexuality, with abortion, etc. We do this “wrestling’ because we do not want to make up our minds. We want to leave our options open, which is a sign of not wanting to grow up. After all, the modern male does not want to choose Sally over Stephanie, or Kori or Daphne. He doesn’t want to be tied down. The result is perpetual childishness and irresponsibility.
If you say that something is true, you are left with the conclusion that something else is false, and some people will have trouble with that. So, instead, you “wrestle.” In this the modern churchman is more Hegelian than Christian, more like children who are tossed like dice before every wind of doctrine. We are like the Athenians who were constantly wanting to hear some new thing, ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth. This is another theme that runs through the literature: Some people have trouble with ______________ [you fill in the blank]. For instance Bassinger claims,
Some Christians not only find it more comforting to assume that some instances of evil are not a preordained part of God’s plan but go so far as to say that they can affirm the existence of God only if they assume that God is at times not directly involved. See, for instance, Evil in the videotape series Questions of Faith (United Methodist Communications, 1991). [footnote, page 200]
It is distressing to the modern theologian if people are not comforted, made to feel good. This desire to accommodate the theological and spiritual laziness of people, so as not to give a hint that we disapprove of their ideas or practices, is common. If some concept of God is unattractive to people, we must change the concept to something more pleasing, stripping God of this or that attribute if necessary. Jack will love Susie only if she looks like Priscilla. We will convert the heathen only if we first become heathen ourselves. In order for free will to operate effectively, every disagreeable concept must be removed. Susie might legitimately wonder if she is the one that Jack loves. Maybe Jack doesn’t love anyone, except some ideal woman that he imagines in his head.
The hermeneutical starting point, it seems to me, for most of these people, is the body of scripture that speaks of God “repenting.” They reject the idea of anthropomorphism and take the scripture at “face value.” Hence, God does change His mind. This means that all of the traditional views of immutability advanced for 2000 years must be challenged. Richard Rice puts it this way:
So important is the notion of divine repentance in biblical thought
that it deserves to be regarded as one of the central themes of Scripture. It represents “an important interpretive
vehicle for understanding the divine activity throughout the canon.”#
The result is a game of theological high card. “We have more verses that say God repents than you have that say that God does not repent. We win.” Deluded people will not bother to examine the overwhelming evidence of Scripture where the idea of God’s immutability is expressed.
As Dr. Roger Nicole. Visiting Professor of Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, puts it:
This
volume constitutes a frontal attack on the Reformed conception of God as
expressed in its confessions of faith and in its orthodox theologians. It also
challenges the Lutheran view, particularly Luther's and the Missouri Synod's;
the evangelical Arminian position, advocated in multifarious denominations; the
traditional Roman Catholic view, notably Augustine's and his followers; the
Eastern Orthodox position; not to speak of some non-Christian religions, notably
Islam. One could not, therefore, fault the authors for lacking courage, not to
speak of audacity. http://www.founders.org/FJ22/reviews.html
In the second lecture I will try to defend the biblical doctrine of God and His incommunicable attributes, so that the name God will have the same meaning to us that the Bible assigns to it, and the same meaning that the church has assigned to it throughout its history. For if we do not worship the same God and the same Christ as the apostles worshipped, then we have no hope in this world or in the world to come, but will be judged with the world.
But now, for the rest of the time we have this hour, we will look at some of the writing of a couple of the main figures in the movement.
Clark Pinnock: Professor
Emeritus McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario. [http://divinity.mcmaster.ca/academics/faculty/emeriti
]
Richard Rice: Professor of theology at La Sierra University, Riverside, California, as Seventh Day Adventist Outfit. http://www.lasierra.edu/
It’s the latest “answer” to Calvinism. I guess that Servetus, Arminius, Wesley, New England Theology, Finney, and the Azusa Street Revival couldn’t quite lay it in the dust. A Southern Oregon College history professor years ago was quoted as saying, “We have to bury Calvinism every generation.” I suspect that it will be faddish for a while and then transmorph into something similar.
“The prophet that
hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my
word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD.” --Jeremiah 23:28
Biblical Support
for Openness, by Richard Rice
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Quotation: All quotations
are from Rice unless otherwise attributed. |
General
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[The
doctrine of God] deeply affects our understanding of the incarnation, grace, creation,
election, sovereignty and salvation.
Preface, page 8 |
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Many
Christians experience an inconsistency between their beliefs about the nature
of God and their religious practice.
For example, people who believe that God cannot change his mind sometimes
pray in ways that would require God to do exactly that. Preface, page 8 |
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These
inharmonious elements are the result of the coupling of biblical ideas about
God with notions of the divine nature drawn from Greek thought. Preface, page 8 |
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We
do not claim that the open view is the only model with biblical or
philosophical support. The Bible is
not unambiguous on the subject….
Preface, page 9 |
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This
is why biblical scholars often object to expressions like “the biblical view
of” or “according to the Bible.” They
insist that there are biblical views, but no one biblical view. While it is not true, in spite of
what some people claim, that you can make the Bible say anything you want it
to say, different passages often seem to support different points of
view. To cite a familiar example,
many people do not see how the same God could command Israel on occasion to utterly
destroy it foes (Josh 6:17; I Sam. 15:2-3) and through Jesus instruct us to
love our enemies (Mt. 5:44). Footnote
7 on page 177 |
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One
idea of God and his relation to the world has dominated the church’s
perspective, among thinking and general believers alike, and it prevails in
the attitudes of most Christians today.
Page. 11 |
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Two
models of God in particular are the most influential that people commonly
carry around in their minds. We may
think of God primarily as an aloof monarch, removed from the contingencies of
the world, unchangeable in every aspect of his being, as an all-determining
and irresistible power, aware of everything that will ever happen and never
taking risks. Or we may understand
God as a caring parent with qualities of love and responsiveness, generosity
and sensitivity, openness and vulnerability, a person (rather than a
metaphysical principle) who experiences the world, responds to what happens,
relates to us and interacts dynamically with humans. These correspond to the differences
Sanders has noted between the God of Greek philosophy and the God of the
Bible. God is sovereign in both
models, but the mode of his sovereignty differs. –Pinnock |
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Modern
thinking has more room for a God who is personal (even tri-personal) than it
does for a God as absolute substance.
We ought to be grateful for those features of modern culture which
make it easier to recover the biblical witness. –Pinnock, Page 107 |
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As
a political aside, what would we think of those who contend that total
control is praiseworthy as a mode of government? --Pinnock, Page 124 |
Independence
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Love is the most important
quality we attribute to God, and love is more than care and commitment; it
involves being sensitive and responsive as well…. God’s relation to the world [is] dynamic rather than static… Not only does he influence [the creatures],
but they also exert an influence on him.
As a result, the curse of history is not the product of divine action
alone. God’s will is not the ultimate explanation for everything that
happens; human decisions and actions make an important contribution too. Page 15, 16 |
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Love
is the essence of the divine reality, the basic source from which all
of God’s attributes arise. This means
that the assertion God is love incorporates all there is to say about
God. Page 21 |
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Love
is the concrete reality that unifies all of the attributes of God. A doctrine of God that is faithful to the
Bible must show that all of God’s characteristics derive from love. Page 22 |
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The
Bible indicates that God is deeply sensitive to the ones he loves. Page 22 |
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(The
book of Hosea) tracks a succession of intense feelings, from jealousy and
anger to hope and joy. God’s response
to Israel runs the same gamut of emotion a betrayed husband would feel…Page
23 |
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Rice
quotes Tikva Frymer-Kensky in In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture
and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. “The dialogue between humankind and God as ‘the essential
insight of monotheism.” “Through this
imagery [the poetic writings of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Hosea, etc] the people of
Israel are enabled to feel God’s agony.” She also asserts that “the reactivity of God” that we see in
his powerful emotions for Israel is essential to monotheism, and shows that
the one God grants human beings a central role in determining the course of
history. God is the ultimate power in
reality, but God’s activity consists in large measure in responding to human
decisions and actions. What he
actually decides to do depends directly on the actions of human beings. Pages 25,26 Footnote, page 178 |
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God
does not stand outside the range of human suffering and sorrow. He is personally involved in, even stirred
by, the conduct and fate of man. Page
26 |
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God
is not the only actor on the stage of history. Other agents, too, play a role. Creatures who bear the image of God are capable of deciding and
acting, and God takes their decisions and actions into account as he
determines what course to follow. To
a significant extent, then, God’s actions are reactions—different ways he
response to what others do as he pursues his ultimate purposes. For the most part, the fulfillment of
God’s will represents a genuine achievement rather than a foregone
conclusion. Page 38 |
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God
identified himself to Moses in the wilderness, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14). In a move widely deplored by biblical and
systematic theologians today, Scholastic thinkers interpreted this as a
metaphysical statement and applied it to God’s being or existence. God thus says to Moses, “I am the
self-existent one.” It is more in
harmony with the biblical view [!!] to see this as expressing God’s freedom
to act and as relating God’s identity to his action, since it occurs at an
important moment in salvation history=--just prior to God’s dramatic
deliverance of his people from Egypt.
Thus, according to Worfhart Pannenberg, it asserts that God “will show
himself in his historical acts.” In
effect, God says, “I will be there for you.”
Or, to risk putting it too colloquially, “I am the one you can always
count on.” At any rate, the text
points to the dynamic quality of God’s activity rather than to the static
quality of the divine nature. Page 49 |
Immutability
|
|
Scripture
tells us that God formulates plans and purposes and that he occasionally
changes his mind…. God repents. Page
26. |
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[Concerning
Moses’ prayer for Israel:] Moses
genuinely influenced God’s final decision.
At the outset, the future of the Israelites is really up in the air. God’s initial outburst shows that he is
deeply hurt by the people’s behavior and inclined to reject them, but his
decision is not final and, in effect, he invites Moses to “contribute
something to the divine deliberation.”
Moses’ vigorous entrance into the discussion shows that “God is not
the only one who has something important to say.” He appeals to God’s
reasonableness and reputation, and reminds God of his own promise. In
response, God immediately changes his mind: he “repented of the evil” he
planned to do. Fretheim concludes that
this passage reveals God as “one who is open to change. God will move from decisions made, from
courses charted, in view of the ongoing interaction with those affected. God treats the relationship with the
people with an integrity that is responsive to what they do and say” “this means that there is genuine openness
to the future on God’s part.” Page
29 |
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These
incidents indicate that human intercession can influence God’s actions. They show that god’s intentions are not
absolute and invariant; he does not unilaterally and irrevocably decide what
to do. When God deliberates, he
evidently takes a variety of things into account, including human attitudes
and responses. Once he formulates his
plans, they are still open to revision.
This appears to be true of even the most emphatic assurances on
God’s part. [Emphasis mine,
cwp.] Page 29 |
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What
happens to nations is not something that God alone decides and then imposes
on them. Instead, what God decides to
do depends on what the people decide to do.
[Concerning Jeremiah 18, the famous figure of the potter and the potter’s
wheel] Page 32 |
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[Concerning
Balaam’s oracle and 1Sam. 15:29].
Close inspection reveals that they are exceptions that prove the rule
that he can repent when he chooses. …
The word repent in both cases
is used synonymously with the word lie. The
point is not that God never changes, but that God never says one thing
while fully intending to do something else.
Only in this limited sense of the word does God not “repent.” Unlike human beings, God will not say one
thing and then arbitrarily do another.
Second, these statements pertain to specific promises that God
declares he will stand by forever; they do not posit a general principle.
Third, the assurance that god will not repent presupposes the general
possibility that God can repent when he chooses. God does not repent in certain cases, not
because it is impossible or inconceivable for him to do so, nor because he
never does so; he does not repent simply because he chooses not to do
so. Fourth, it is noteworthy—
“striking” one scholar exclaims –that one of the very chapters that asserts
that God does not repent (1 Sam 15) contains two statements that he does
repent vv11,35). So the scope of this
denial obviously is very limited. It
is not a statement of general principle. Page 32, 3 |
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So
important is the notion of divine repentance in biblical thought that it
deserves to be regarded as one of the central themes of Scripture. It represents “an important interpretive vehicle
for the understanding of the divine activity throughout the canon. Page 34 |
|
[Concerning
anthropomorphisms]. If human beings
and God have nothing whatever in common, if we have utterly no mutual
experience, then we have no way of talking and thinking about God and there
is no possibility of a personal relationship with him. Page 35 |
|
God’s
life is social and dynamic. This is
divine activity. God does
things. In fact, the Bible identifies
God primarily by describing his actions.
…we should note that the very concept of an act involves change. An action makes a difference. It brings about something that would not
otherwise exist. In the case of
specific acts, it brings about something that did not previous exist. To say that God acts, therefore, means
that it makes sense to use the words before and after when we
talk about him. Page 36 |
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The
Bible clearly supports a concept of divine changelessness. In certain respects God never varies, he
is always the same. The notion that
god is changeless is perfectly compatible with the open view of God. In fact, it is just as important to this
position as to the conventional alternative.
The difference between them is not that one views God as changeless
while the other doesn’t. The
difference is that everything about God must be changeless for the
traditional view, whereas the open view sees God as both changeless and
changeable. We
can attribute both change and changelessness to God if we apply them to
different aspects of his being. God’s existence, God’s nature and God’s
character are just as changeless as he could possibly be. These aspects of divinity are completely
unaffected by anything else. God
would be God no matter what happened in the world. Indeed, God would be god
whether the creaturely world existed or not.
Page 48 |
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The
reason that God is open to change in some respects is the fact that in other
respects he never changes. It is
God’s nature to love, to love without measure and without interruption. And precisely because this is God’s
essential nature, he must be sensitive and responsive to the creaturely
world. Everything that happens in it
has an effect on him. Because God’s
love never changes, God’s experience must change. In other words, it is part of God’s
unchanging nature to change. Page 49 |
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[Speaking
of a watch that keeps perfect time,
but changes from 6:05 to 6:12 in the course of seven minutes. So there are changes that are neither for
the better nor for the worse, and the change in the watch is such a change. It is, in fact, an example of change
that is consistent with and/or required by a constant state of
excellence. –Hasker, Pages 132-3
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Infinity
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God
makes decisions and then he acts. He
decides before he acts, he acts after he decides. This is so simple that it sounds trivial, but it points to a
fundamental truth about God. Not only does he bring about change, but in a significant
sense [Emphasis mine] God himself experiences change. After God acts, the universe is
different. The concept of divine
action thus involves divine temporality.
Time is real for God. Page 37 |
|
[Concerning
Is. 46:9-11] “I am God, and there is
no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times
things not yet done, saying, ‘My purposes shall stand, and I will fulfill my
intention.’ …I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have planned, and
I will do it” (NASV) These verses
seem to indicate that divine purpose and divine enactment are not one
indistinguishable event, but distinct moments in God’s experience. God announces his plans; then he acts to
implement his plans. Moreover, God
acts from time to time throughout the course of human history, not just at
the beginning. So the drama of
history is not an exorable outworking of a process instituted at the
beginning of time, but a series of events.
Page 37 |
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God
hoped that Saul would be a good king.
When Saul disappointed him, God turned elsewhere. Page 37 |
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God
sets goals for creation and redemption and realizes them ad hoc in
history. If Plan A fails, God is
ready with Plan B. – Pinnock, Page
113 |
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It
is hard to form any idea of what timelessness might mean, since all of our
thinking is temporally conditioned. A
timeless being could not make plans and carry them out. Second, it creates problems for biblical
history, which portrays God as One who projects plans, experiences the flow
of temporal passage and faces the future as not completely settled. –Pinnock, page 120 |
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The
God of the Bible is not timeless. His
eternity means that there has never been a never will be a time when God does
not exist. –Pinnock, page 121 |
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Simplicity |
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The
Trinity points to a relational ontology in which God is more like a dynamic event
than a simple substance and is essentially relational, ecstatic and
alive. God exists as diverse persons
united in a communion of love and freedom, God is the perfection of love and
communion, the very antithesis of self-sufficiency. – Pinnock, Page 108 |
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Although
the doctrine of simplicity was not dealt with directly in the writings I
examined, there are implications for the doctrine in many of the quotations
above. |
On the
Incarnation and the Atonement
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|
The
familiar word incarnation expresses the idea that Jesus is the
definitive revelation of God.
According to the central claim of Christian faith—“the Word became
flesh” (John 1:14) --this particular
human life was the most important means God has ever used to reveal
himself. The fundamental claim here
is not simply that God revealed himself in Jesus, but that God revealed
himself in Jesus Christ as nowhere else. N this specific human life, as never before or since, nor anywhere else in the sphere of creaturely
existence, God expresses his innermost reality.
Accordingly,
from a Christian standpoint it is appropriate to say not only that Jesus
is God, but that God is Jesus.
For Christians, Jesus defines the reality of God. Page 39 |
|
It
would therefore seem that God, like us, is personal existence. If so, then God enjoys relationships, has
feelings, makes decisions, formulates plans and acts to fulfill them. Naturally, we may not use the “humanity”
of God as a pretext for unbridled speculation, but it clearly points to
important similarities between our experience and his. Page 40 |
|
[Concerning
Isaiah 53 and I Pet. 2:21-2] Through
this remarkable portrayal we see the sovereign of the universe as one who
reaches to the depths of human need with tenderness and compassion, one who
appreciates human sorrows to the fullest.
Page 40 |
|
Whereas
traditional theism seeks to safeguard God’s transcendence by denying divine
sensitivity, the open view of God does so by maintaining that his sensitivity
and love and infinitely greater than our own. This is the sort of difference that lies behind the familiar
prophetic exclamation, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways….As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:8-9). This is not general affirmation of divine
inscrutability, in spite of the use theologians often make of it. It refers specifically to God’s
willingness to forgive, in contrast to our typical reluctance to do so. “:Let the wicked forsake his way and the
evil man his thoughts, “ states the preceding verse. “Let him turn to the Lord, and he will
have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon” (Is.
55:7). Page 43 |
|
The
fact that Jesus’ life most clearly revealed the nature and character of God
has important implications for the Bible’s use of anthropological
language. When the Scriptures compare
God with humanity, the clearest
parallels are not between God and fallen human beings, but between God
and our essential humanity, specifically Jesus Christ. To draw from König’s work again, when the
biblical writers deny that God is like human beings, sinful humanity is
typically the point of comparison.
But when the same writers continue to speak of God in anthropomorphic
terms, “it is obvious that it is in another sense that they refer to God as
being like man. Here it is intended
that the comparison is between God and man as the image of God, and not
between God and man as sinner” In
particular, “the anthropomorphisms in the Bible represent the proclamation
about God in terms of the person and work of Christ.” Not only what Jesus taught about God,
then, but the way he manifested God in his treatment of people, in particular
the undeserving and unwanted, provides powerful indications that God is
deeply sensitive and responsive to human experience. Page 43 |
|
[Quoting
2Cor 5:18-20] This text underscores
the central New Testament truth that God is always the subject, and never the
object, or reconciliation. He is the
agent, not the recipient of reconciliation.
The apostle’s call, therefore, is not for sinful human beings to
reconcile God, but to be reconciled to God, to accept the reconciliation that
God feely offers. Clearly, then, the
cross was God’s action. He was working in Christ to accomplish our
reconciliation. Appreciating this
fact, many Christina scholars now perceive the suffering of Calvary not a
something Jesus offers to God on human behalf, still less as something God
inflicts on Jesus (instead of on human beings), but as the activity of God himself….God
was in Christ, himself enduring the agony that Christ underwent. As Kenneth Leech puts it, “It is necessary
to see God in the pain and the dying.
There must have been a Calvary in the heart of god before it could
have been planted on that hill outside…Jerusalem. Page 45 |
|
If
God was indeed in Christ, then the most significant experience Jesus endured
was something God endured as well.
The cross is nothing less than the suffering of God himself. Page 46 |
Prophecy and
Foreknowledge and Predestination
|
|
A
prophecy may express God’s intention to do something in the future
irrespective of creaturely decision.
If God’s will is the only condition required for something to happen,
if human cooperation is not involved, then God can unilaterally guarantee its
fulfillment, and he can announce it ahead of time. [He cites examples.]
Page 51 |
|
A
prophecy may also express God’s knowledge that something will happen because
the necessary conditions for it have been fulfilled and nothing could
conceivable prevent it. By the time
God foretold Pharaoh’s behavior to Moses, the ruler’s character may have been
so rigid that it was entirely predictable.
God understood him well enough to know exactly what his reaction to
certain situations would be.”] Page
51 |
|
A
prophecy may also express what God intends to do if certain conditions
obtain. [Examples are those of
prophecies against Jerusalem, Nineveh, etc. if they do not repent.] Page 51 |
|
The
problem with the traditional view on this point is that there is no if
from God’s perspective. If God knows
the future exhaustively, then conditional prophecies lose their
integrity. They do not express a
genuine divine intention. They are
nothing more than hypothetical assertions that God fully knows will never be
realized…. It was simply a ploy that
produced the desired result. Page 52 |
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The
[open view of God sees] God sometimes acting on his own within the world, but
more often interacting with creatures whose behavior is not entirely
predictable—not even by him. Page 53 |
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The
bible asserts that God does not want “anyone to perish, but everyone to come
to repentance”… Yet it appears that not all will be saved. Then, God’s will does not guarantee the
outcome he desires. Page 55 |
|
[With
regard to prophecies about individual behavior, such as Pharaoh, Judas,
Peter] Was their occurrence …in evitable? Not necessarily. It is logically possible that they represent conditional
prophecies. In the case of Peter’s denial this seems especially likely, since
Jesus had prayed that his faith would not fail…. Page 55 |
|
The
fact that God foreknows or predestines something does not guarantee that it
will happen, the fact that God determines a part of history does not mean that
he determines all of history, and the fact that God extends a specific call
to certain people does not mean that he similarly calls all people. Page 56 |
|
First,
although certain things did (and do) happen in harmony with divine
predestination, this does not mean that these events could not possible have
failed to occur. As we have seen, the
Bible clearly indicates that God has often experienced disappointment and
frustration. Page 56 |
|
Second,
it may be true that God occasionally acts by fiat and directly causes
something to happen. Yet even if he determines one event, it does not
necessarily follow that he determines all events…. He requires our cooperation.
Page 56 |
|
Third,
the concept of calling does not imply that God directly decides the eternal
destiny of each human being. In fact,
we misunderstand the biblical notion of calling, or election, if we think it
applies either primarily to individuals or primarily to ultimate human
destiny. Throughout the Bible divine
election typically represents a corporate call to service. It applies to groups rather than to
individuals, and it involves a role in God’s saving work in the present world
rather than in the future life (although this may be an extension of the
former). There were specific alls to
individuals, of course. Page 57 |
|
The
popular belief in God’s total omniscience is not so much a biblical idea as
an old tradition. –Pinnock, Page 122 |
|
God
does not go in for power tactics.
–Pinnock, page 114 |
|
God
created a dynamic world and enjoys getting to know it. –Pinnock, Page 124 |
Conclusion by
Rice
|
|
If
we shift our angle of vision in light of some powerful biblical themes, a
quite different portrait of God emerges.
A number of important ideas converge in the view that god’s experience
is open and that his relation to the creaturely world is one of dynamic
interaction. The most fundamental of
them is divine love, God’s unswerving commitment to the welfare of his creatures
and his profound sensitivity to their experiences. We find the clearest manifestation of this love in the life and
ministry of Jesus, the Word become flesh who shares our human lot with us. We also see it throughout the history of
creation and salvation that preoccupies the writers of the Bible. We see it in the biblical accounts of
God’s inner life—in his actions, decisions and, perhaps most vividly, in his
feelings. Various
passages reveal a God who is deeply involved in human experience. The failings of his human children disappoint
him and their sufferings bring him grief, but he seeks their companionship
and rejoices when they return his love.
These passages also reveal a God who is active within human history,
patiently pursuing his objectives for his creatures, while taking into
account their decisions and actions.
They show that God adjusts and alters his plans to accommodate changes
in human behavior. The
view of God proposed in this book thus rests on a broad spectrum of biblical
evidence. A host of biblical themes
support the openness of God. Page 58. |
Hebrews 6:17-18
Wherein God, willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it
by an oath:
That by two immutable things,
in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation,
who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
Which hope we have as
an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that
within the veil;
