What Do the Scriptures Teach?
What Do the Scriptures Teach?
For readers who assume that Classical Theism is securely grounded in Scripture, it may come as some surprise to learn that openists regard this as their strong suit. On the one hand, the Bible is filled with passages depicting God as learning things (Gen 22:12; 2 Chron 32:31), changing His mind (Exod 32:14; Num 23:19; Jer 18:10; 26:13), reacting with surprise and disappointment (Gen 6:6; 1 Sam 15:10; Isa 5:2; Jer 3:7), and in other respects behaving in just the ways one would expect if the openists are right about His lacking exhaustive foreknowledge. On the other hand, passages invoked for Classical Theism often contain less than meets the eye: Isa 41:22–23 makes knowledge of the future the mark of a prophet but nowhere states that God's disclosures to true prophets include the contingent future, while Isa 46:9–10, where God “declare[s] the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done” (KJV) is explicitly about His own future actions, not the contingent future. Perhaps the best extended proof text for the traditional view is the paean to God's incredible knowledge in Psalm 139, which contains a number of passages that are highly suggestive of exhaustive foreknowledge; still, these aren't sufficiently unambiguous to settle the issue, given all the passages that appear to point straightforwardly in the other direction.
Openists have a theory about why most Christians nevertheless believe that the Scriptures teach exhaustive foreknowledge: (1) Traditional nonopenists start out with an a priori criterion of what is worthy of God (dignum deo); (2) they then identify verses that are most sympathetic to this a priori conception of God, employing them as control texts for understanding other biblical passages; (3) openist-friendly passages are subjected to an accommodationist hermeneutic which assigns them a nonliteral sense; (4) the result of this expedient is strained exegesis.
I deny that these four points give open theists the advantage.
1. Openists have their own conception of what is dignum deo, and they don't hesitate to draw on it when the Scriptures are silent. For example, if the openists are right that the Bible doesn't clearly teach exhaustive omniscience with respect to the future, it's no less true that it doesn't clearly teach exhaustive omniscience with respect to the past and present; yet openists accept the latter. Why? Presumably because ignorance of any detail of the past and present would not be dignum deo.
2. Classical theists have control texts in terms of which they can read the openists' favorite passages, but openists have their own control texts for reading the classical theists' favorite passages. What alternative is there when the Scriptures pull in different directions? The question is not whether to use control texts; it's which control texts and why.
3. It would be astonishing if God didn't accommodate Himself to our condition in the Bible. If this exegesis can be abused, the lesson is not to abuse it. Moreover, the openists themselves must allow for anthropomorphisms (various biblical passages attribute to God eyes, ears, mouth, face, hands, arm, backside). Why do they draw the line where they do?
4. The charge of “strained exegesis” is overblown; moreover, openists have their own problems with strained exegesis. Since openists rest so much of their case on their superior exegetical position, let's look at some examples. I'll begin with a couple of openist-friendly passages that classical theists can supposedly evade only through “strained exegesis.”
a. In Isa 5:4 we are told that the Lord expected (domesticated) grapes from a vineyard that instead yielded wild grapes. Gregory Boyd cites this as a case in which God didn't know beforehand what would happen. But how exactly does the fact that God expected grapes support Boyd's claim? If I tell a group of grade-school boys that I expect them to behave, does this show that I believe they will behave? Not at all. I may, at the same time as I expect them to obey, also believe that they will fall short of my expectations. (I've had experience with this particular group before!) If God expected grapes in this sense, His expectation provides no evidence whatsoever that He didn't also foreknow that the vineyard would yield wild grapes instead. To support Boyd's claim, God's expectation of grapes must be a belief that the vineyard would yield grapes. But in that case, God not only didn't know what the future held in store; He held a false belief about the future. No open theist, however, would accept such a conclusion. Open theists, then, should join classical theists in seeking a plausible reading of this passage in which God's expectation of grapes is not construed as a belief about the future. But that means the passage is useless as a proof text for Openism.
b. John Sanders believes that “conditional prophecies” undermine the doctrine of exhaustive foreknowledge: “How can a conditional promise, say to Saul (1 Sam 13:13), be genuine if God already foreknows the human response and so foreknows that God will, in fact, never fulfill his promise?”5 What exactly is the problem here? Suppose it's true that if a certain nation does evil, God will destroy it; and if it turns from evil, God will spare it (Jer 18:7–10). Suppose further, as classical theists maintain, that God already knows what He will do and that He knows He will destroy it. Sanders doesn't see how God could reveal the second conditional (that if it turns from evil, God will spare it) while knowing this unconditional truth about the future (that He will not spare it but will in fact destroy it). But why? These are both truths, so God wouldn't be lying. Sanders thinks it would nevertheless be disingenuous: it's only if God does not know what will actually ensue that He can be “sincere when uttering conditional statements.” But I'm not sure why. The destruction of this nation is a bad result; God wants it to be spared (and so should we). Then it's important that we know: “If you repent, I spare! If you don't repent, I destroy!” This is motivating knowledge. And why not also reveal that destruction, rather than mercy, is what will in fact occur? Here's a reason. Since we are prone to fatalistic fallacies, we are strongly tempted to reason like this: It's no use trying to turn from our evil (thereby securing mercy rather than destruction) since destruction (alas!) is what will occur. That's unmotivating knowledge for irrational (fatalist-susceptible) creatures like ourselves, and God wisely declines to reveal it.
Let's now look at a couple of classical theist-friendly passages and the openist response to them.
c. The night following Jesus' betrayal, Peter came to three forks in the road at which he could either avow or deny his affiliation with Christ, and each time he took the road of denial. Jesus' prediction earlier that evening that Peter would deny Him three times is therefore a prima facie example of divine foreknowledge of future contingents. What resources can openists bring to bear on this and similar examples?6 In the first place, it might be a disguised conditional: if you don't straighten up, Peter, this is how it will play out (exactly three times!). Second, Christ might not have been expressing a definite belief about the future but only an assessment of the probabilities of the predicted event's occurring, given His knowledge of the past and present. Or third, Jesus might have known that God intended to ensure that things turn out this way so that (as Boyd speculates) “three times Peter's true character was squeezed out of him.”7 Besides the individual problems to which each of these is prone, there's the overarching problem that none of these is even remotely a “straightforward” reading of the texts rather than a wholly speculative account driven simply by the requirements of the openist position on foreknowledge.
d. In John 18:4 (NRSV) we read, “Then Jesus … came forward and asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’” This is just the sort of passage openists cite on behalf of their position. If Jesus knew whom they were seeking, He wouldn't have asked; since He did ask, He didn't know. Anyone whose Christology requires that Jesus already knew the answer will have to engage in “strained exegesis” to explain how He could ask such a question without being disingenuous. For example, they might claim that Christ is not asking the question for His own sake (e.g., to find out something of which He's ignorant) but for their sake; it's an accommodation to the mob's ignorance of the fact that He already knows rather than a reflection of His own ignorance.
Is it possible to determine whether such charges of “strained exegesis” are just and to do so in a neutral way without a prior commitment to one side or the other? I believe it is. Discerning readers may have noticed that this was supposed to be an example of a classical theist-friendly text; even more discerning readers may have noticed that I misquoted the text. It actually reads: “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’” So Jesus did the very thing openists would ordinarily regard as demonstrating His ignorance, while in fact “knowing all!” If this doesn't settle the case definitively in Classical Theism's favor, it at least shows that the Scriptures themselves approve of the exegesis that openists label “strained.”
Who's got the Bible on their side is a big topic which can hardly be settled from just four texts. I believe, however, that the lessons just learned from these texts would be borne out by other texts we could have examined with sufficient time. Classical theists should admit that there are passages whose straightforward reading favors Open Theism. But that's as far as the concessions should go. The alternative classical reading of these texts is not strained, and it's the openist reading of certain other texts that is truly strained. When all the scriptural data are taken into account, the openists' charge of “strained exegesis” bounces back on them.