Chapter Four: God Limits His Control
CHAPTER FOUR
GOD LIMITS HIS CONTROL
Few theological topics have more practical significance than the topic of divine providence. How we understand the nature of providence affects how we understand God and the role we play in his plan. It also directly affects how we interpret suffering and evil in the world and thus how we minister to hurting people. And it obviously affects the level of hope, courage, and peace we have as we live in this world that sometimes feels as if it is spinning out of control. In short, this is an extremely important topic, and I feel honored to be given the opportunity to share my thoughts on it.
In what follows I will first lay out my understanding of the proper starting point for our reflections on providence and the criteria by which I think any proposed Christian model of providence should be assessed. I will then flesh out and defend the model of providence that I believe best meets these criteria. I will label this “the open model of providence” since its most distinctive feature is its assertion that the future is, to some extent, open, consisting of possibilities rather than a single, eternally settled story line. And I will conclude by arguing that the open model best meets the criteria for an adequate model of providence, though space limitations force me to reserve much of my critique of competing providential models to the response sections of this book.
Starting with Jesus
The Christocentric Starting Point
It is my conviction that all theological reflection must begin with Jesus and be carried out with a focus on Jesus. He is the one and only eternal Word of God (John 1:1), the only perfect image of God (Col. 1:15), and the only “exact representation” of God’s essence (hypostasis; Heb. 1:3). All the fullness of God was embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9; cf. 1:19). Hence, when we see Jesus, we see God the Father (John 14:7 – 9). As Paul says, “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God [is displayed] in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6 ESV; cf. 1 John 1:1 – 3). Jesus even goes so far as to claim that “no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27, emphasis added; cf. 1 John 2:23).
There is no reason to think a christocentric starting point is any less crucial for our reflections on divine providence than for any other topic. Indeed, Jesus is the one through whom everything came to be, by whom everything continues to be held together, and for whom everything exists. 1 How could we not expect to find in him the key to understanding the nature of God’s governance of the world? Of course, as with every other topic, we must allow the whole counsel of Scripture to inform our reflection. Yet, as Luther so clearly understood, Jesus is the centerpiece of Scripture. 2 Hence, Scripture must be interpreted through the lens of Christ (see John 5:39 – 47; Luke 24:25 –27, 44).
In light of this, I propose four christocentric criteria by which models of divine providence should be assessed.
God Wages Spiritual Warfare
As I have argued elsewhere, from his deliverance and healing ministry to his countercultural lifestyle, radical kingdom teachings, and voluntary crucifixion, everything Jesus was about centered on manifesting the reign of God against forces of evil that oppose God (namely, the Devil, principalities and powers, demons). 3 While there is never a question whether these foes will be ultimately vanquished by the work of Christ, it is also perfectly clear in the Gospels, as throughout the entire Bible, that these cosmic foes genuinely resist the reign of God and exercise a formidable destructive influence in the world today.4 In this light, I believe that the ability of a proposed model of providence to render intelligible the reality and scope of evil in the world and the need for God to battle against it should constitute a central criterion by which it is judged to be acceptable or not.
God Relies on Power and Wisdom
It goes without saying that God sometimes relies on sheer power to overthrow his cosmic enemies and to accomplish his purposes. This superior power is displayed in Jesus’ “power encounters” with demons, in his healing ministry and nature miracles (e.g., multiplying food and calming a storm), and especially in his resurrection. Hence, viable models of providence must ascribe to God the level of power needed to accomplish these things.
Yet, as important as God’s power is, Christ’s display of superior power in overthrowing enemies is actually the least distinctive aspect of his revelation of God. Indeed, reflecting our fallen inclination to worship power over others, pagans throughout history have tended to equate greatness with power. The more power a god has, pagans have typically assumed, the greater the god must be. What distinguishes the revelation of God in Christ from pagan views is that God does not rely primarily on power to conquer his spiritual foes.
In allowing the cosmic powers as well as wicked humans to crucify him, Jesus revealed that God also relies on his superior wisdom. In his wisdom, which he purposely kept “secret” and “hidden” throughout the ages (e.g., 1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 3:9), God allowed the powers to help orchestrate Jesus’ crucifixion (John 13:27; 1 Cor. 2:6 – 8), knowing that it was by this means that these forces of evil would bring about their own demise (Col. 2:14 – 15; cf. Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8). 5 Not only this, but by this same wisdom, the wicked intentions of humans played into God’s plan in bringing about Christ’s crucifixion (Acts 2:23; 4:28). In this light, I believe that any proposed model of providence that hopes to be considered viable for followers of Jesus must be able to render intelligible why God often relies on his superior wisdom to defeat foes and accomplish his purposes.
God Relies on Other-Oriented Love
As distinctive as God’s reliance on wisdom is, the most distinctive aspect of the revelation of God in Christ is Jesus’ demonstration that God relies on love to defeat foes and accomplish his purposes. More than anything else, it was the perfect love of God revealed in the incarnation, ministry, and self-sacrificial death of Jesus that in principle defeated evil. As he commands us to do, God overcame evil not with violence but by suffering violence on Calvary for the sake of love (1 Peter 2:20 –23; cf. Rom. 12:17 – 21). This is the very definition of the kind of love that God eternally is (1 John 4:8, 10; cf. 3:16) and the kind of love that followers of Jesus are commanded to express to all people, including our enemies (Luke 6:27 – 35; cf. Eph. 5:1 – 2). In this light, I believe that plausible models of providence must have at their center a God whose eternal nature is other-oriented, self-sacrificial love, as revealed in Jesus, and must render intelligible God’s reliance on other-oriented love to defeat evil and accomplish his purposes.
Yet there is another facet of God’s love that is centrally important for a Christian understanding of divine providence. Jesus reveals that God is a loving community of three divine persons. Moreover, that Jesus was fully human reveals that God wants to embrace humans in this loving divine community and carry out his purposes in the world in community with humans. Indeed, Jesus revealed that God’s desire is for the human community to participate in and reflect the perfect loving community of the triune God (see, e. g., John 17:20 –26).
A central aspect of this participation, as revealed in Christ, is that the God of communal love empowers humans genuinely to affect him. The cross reveals this from God’s side, as the one who is fully God suffered out of love at the hands of those for whom he died. And Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane reveals this from the human side, as the one who is fully human asked if it was possible for the Father to alter the divine plan and accomplish the mission in some way that avoided the hellish spiritual and physical agony of the cross (Matt. 26:39). In this particular instance, of course, it was not possible. Yet this prayer—by the only one who truly knows the Father (Matt. 11:27) — reveals that God is in principle open to modifying his plans in response to human input, as we find him doing throughout the biblical narrative (e. g., Ex. 32:12 — 14). 6In this light, I believe that any model of providence that hopes to be considered plausible by followers of Jesus must be able to render intelligible the loving, communal way God operates in the world as well as God’s loving willingness to be affected and influenced by humans.
God Wins by Bringing Good Out of Evil
Finally, the resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that, as formidable as God’s cosmic foes are, he wins in the end. In fact, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, God has in principle already won and already accomplished all of his purposes for creation.7 Displaying his power, wisdom, and love, God brought the ultimate good of a restored creation and a redeemed people out of the evil of what was done to Christ on Calvary. It is now just a matter of time before God will bring unity to all things in heaven and earth under the lordship of Christ (Eph. 1:10; cf. Col. 1:20). In this light, I believe that any model of divine providence that hopes to be considered viable by followers of Jesus must be able to render intelligible God’s ability to bring good out of evil and ultimately defeat evil and accomplish his overall purposes for creation.
The Open Model of Providence
I will now flesh out the open model of providence that I believe best meets the four christocentric criteria just outlined. 8
Love and Freedom
As noted above, Jesus has revealed that God is other-oriented love. This means that everything he does is motivated by love. Hence, according to the open view, God created the world as an expression of his love and for the purpose of inviting others to share in his love. 9 This is reflected in Scripture’s proclamation that all things were made by and for Jesus Christ, the one who incarnates God’s love and who alone perfectly expresses God’s eternal, loving nature (Heb. 1:2 – 3). More specifically, as it concerns humans, the purpose for creation is for us to receive and reflect God’s love by being incorporated into Christ. 10 Before the creation of the world, God predestined that he would acquire a people — a “bride” — who would receive the Father’s perfect love for the Son and participate in the Son’s perfect love for the Father. In other words, God’s anthropological purpose in creating the world was to express his eternal nature (that is, “glorify himself”) by sharing his eternal, other-oriented, triune love with us. 11
If love is the goal of creation, however, then the creation must include free agents, according to the open view. As the early church uniformly understood, for contingent beings such as humans, love (as well as every other moral virtue) must be freely chosen. 12 Had God created us such that we had to love, our love could not be genuine.
To illustrate, suppose a scientist invented a microchip that could control every neuron in a person’s brain and that was so sophisticated it could be implanted without the person knowing it. If this scientist programmed the microchip to do so, she could coerce any person to feel, think, speak, and behave in perfectly loving ways toward her, and her subjects would even believe they were doing this of their own volition. While they would certainly appear to love this scientist, and while they themselves would believe they loved this scientist, would we not consider her demented if she mistook the coerced appearance of love to be actual love? In making subjects “choose” to love her, the scientist was actually preventing them from genuinely choosing to love her, for they no longer had the capacity to do this of their own volition. In reality, this demented scientist was just loving herself through these subjects, as much as if she were manipulating puppets on her hand to mimic loving expressions toward her.
So too, had he wanted to, the all-powerful God certainly could have created a world in which everyone was predestined to feel, think, speak, and behave in perfectly loving ways toward him and each other. But God would know, even if we did not, that we would be mere puppets on his hand. If God instead wants a people who genuinely love him and each other, he must create us with the capacity to choose to love or not. He must give us genuine say-so to affect what comes to pass as we choose lovingly to align our wills with his or not.
We might make the same point from a different direction. Christ’s ministry, along with the rest of Scripture, provides many examples of people rejecting God’s will and grieving God’s heart. Does this itself not prove that God created us with the capacity to reject his will and grieve his heart? That we find God giving people choices and holding them responsible for their choices throughout Scripture confirms this point. 13 Yet since everything God does is done with a loving motive, we can only conclude that God gave us the capacity freely to reject his loving will because it was necessary for love. A similar argument could be made regarding the many angels who rebelled against God (e.g., 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). Hence, it seems to me that Scripture as well as logic and intuition teach us that love requires freedom.
The Uncontrollable and Irrevocable Nature of Free Will
God’s decision to create a cosmos that was capable of love and that was, therefore, populated with free agents was also a decision to create and govern a world he could not unilaterally control. So far as I can see, these are two aspects of one and the same decision. What it means for God to give agents some degree of morally responsible say-so over what comes to pass is that God’s say-so will not unilaterally determine all that comes to pass. Of course, throughout history some pastors, theologians, and philosophers have tried to argue otherwise. God determines the free choices of agents, we are in various ways told, in such a way that these agents remain responsible for the evil they choose while God remains all-good in ordaining them to do these evil acts. 14 I cannot begin to enter the labyrinth of issues involved in this position, except to say that I find myself unable to ascribe coherent meaning to it. Language has meaning only insofar as it connects, at least analogically, with our experience. But I find nothing in my experience — or any conceivable experience—that sheds the least bit of light on what this mysterious “in such a way” (or related expressions) might mean.
To illustrate, suppose the earlier mentioned demented scientist secretly implanted her neuron-controlling microchip in a person’s brain, which led this person to murder someone. Can we conceive of any form of justice that would find the scientist to be innocent of the crime while holding the controlled subject responsible? I cannot, and it would not make the least bit of difference if all the lawyers in the world insisted she programmed the chip to control neurons “in such a way” that the controlled subject was morally responsible for the crime while the demented scientist remained innocent. Nor can I see what difference it makes if we replace the demented scientist with God and replace the microchip with a concept of “sovereign decree” or “predestination” or “divine ordination” or anything of the sort. Whoever or whatever rendered the murder certain to occur is morally responsible, whether by means of a microchip or a mysterious deterministic decree.
I and other open theists thus hold that God limits the exercise of his power when he creates free agents. To the extent that God gives an agent free will, he cannot meticulously control what that agent does. Yet the “cannot” in this statement is not a matter of insufficient power, for God remains all-powerful. It rather is simply a matter of definition. Just as God cannot create a round triangle or a married bachelor, so too he cannot meticulously control free agents.
This point is important inasmuch as some critics have caricatured the open view as suggesting that God arbitrarily restricts the use of his power on a case-by-case basis. If so, the argument continues, open theists must accept that if God refrains from preventing a particular evil, it is simply because he did not want to, just as deterministic understandings of providence hold. Hence, some conclude, the open model of providence offers no advantage over classical models, while depicting God as a rather arbitrary deity. 15
Just as important, it is not just that God cannot meticulously control the free will of agents; I would go further and argue that God cannot revoke it. 16 In fact, as it concerns theodicy, I am not convinced that there is a significant difference between affirming that God can unilaterally control a free agent, on the one hand, and affirming that God can unilaterally revoke the free will of an agent whenever he sees fit, on the other. 17 Libertarian free will is the capacity to choose to go this way or that way. If God revoked an agent’s capacity to go that way because he disapproved of it, then he clearly did not genuinely give the agent the capacity to go this way or that way. Conversely, if he truly gave an agent the freedom to go this way or that way, he must, by definition allow them to go that way, even if he abhors it.
This, of course, does not mean that God can do nothing to prevent an agent from freely engaging in evil. Short of coercively revoking an agent’s will, God can do a myriad of things to influence this agent in a different direction or to influence other agents to help prevent, or at least minimize, the evil this agent intends. But the one thing God cannot do, by definition, is meticulously control or unilaterally revoke a free will once given. 18God, of course, has sufficient power to do anything he pleases. But the constraint free agency places on God is not about power; rather, it is about the metaphysical implications of the kind of world God decided to create.
The Limited Scope of Free Will
While it is important that we understand the logical constraints that the decision to create a free world places on God, it is also important that we understand that there are significant constraints on the free will God gives us. The open view insists that we are morally responsible to the extent that we are free, but it does not specify the extent to which agents in general or any individual agent in particular is free. Indeed, given the innumerable variables outside of our control that influence us moment to moment, I do not see how anyone other than God could possibly specify the extent to which any agent is free, in a libertarian sense, in any given moment. 19
Hence, as important as free will is to the open model of providence, it does not naïvely deny that the scope of free will is significantly restricted. It thus has no problem affirming that God’s knowledge of what will come to pass in the future is incomprehensibly superior to ours, simply because he perfectly knows all past and present variables that effect what comes to pass, including his own will. Yet, amid all the things we do not have say-so over, the open view holds that free agents have (or at least had) some degree of say-so, however slight it may be in the total scheme of things. It is this limited domain of say-so for which we are morally responsible.
Character Solidification
Not only is free will obviously limited in scope; it is also limited in duration. As I have argued elsewhere, there are a number of indications that the irreversible directionality of time means something vis-à-vis libertarian free will. 20 The New Testament depicts life in this present epoch as an ever-closing window of opportunity, in which we are either growing in Christlikeness or becoming increasingly hardened to God’s Spirit (e. g., Heb. 3:13 – 15). We eventually reach a point of no return, when we are either solidified in our relationship with God or solidified in our rejection of God. 21 This present epoch is a probationary period during which God is acquiring and preparing his bride, the purpose of which is eventually to lead to a glorious wedding and eternal marriage (e. g., John 3:29; Eph. 5:25 –26, 31 – 32; Rev. 19:7).
On top of this, our own experience confirms the popular ancient maxim, repeated in various forms throughout history, that our choices become our habits; our habits become our character; and our character becomes our destiny.22 As we all know, the longer we continue down a chosen path, the harder it is for us to veer from this path, and we eventually reach a point of no return. We begin by making our choices, but in the end, our choices make us. We are gradually but inevitably becoming the decisions we make.
In this light, it seems evident that while love must be freely chosen, it does not have to be eternally chosen in a libertarian sense. Rather, the purpose of libertarian freedom is provisional, intended eventually to lead us to a much greater, eternally solidified form of compatibilistic freedom. God gives us the libertarian capacity to choose for or against love in hopes that we will eventually become not merely people who choose love but people whose very beings are love. At this point, we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, the one who incarnated God’s love. Tragically, Scripture suggests that those who persist in the opposite direction suffer the opposite fate They eventually lose their capacity to turn from their hard-heartedness and enter into God’s eternal love.
This point is important not only because it renders intelligible the biblical portrait of heaven and hell as irrevocably solidified but also because it explains how God can sometimes know what agents will freely choose under certain conditions. For example, given God’s perfect knowledge of the kind of character Peter had formed up to the time when he betrayed Jesus, there is little difficulty in understanding how God could have known that Peter would betray Christ when it was in his self-interest to do so (Luke 22:34). Peter was morally responsible for his cowardly decision, not because he could have chosen otherwise in that moment, but because he freely developed the kind of character that rendered it certain that he would deny Christ when it was in his self-interest so to do. 23
Freedom and Possibilities
We come now to the most distinctive, and most controversial, aspect of the open model of providence. According to this model, if an agent possesses the free will to choose between alternate possibilities, then what is real, prior to the agent’s choice, are the alternate possibilities. Hence, insofar as agents have been given genuine say-so freely to resolve possibilities into actualities and thereby influence what comes to pass, the open view holds that the future is comprised of alternate ontological possibilities. 24 In contrast to the classical view that assumed the future could be exhaustively described by propositions asserting what will or will not come to pass, the open view holds that, insofar as agents face ontological possibilities, the future must be described by propositions asserting what might and might not come to pass. 25 (For convenience, I will henceforth refer to the first class of propositions simply as “will” propositions and the second class as “might” propositions).
Most controversially, open theists hold that if God is omniscient and thus knows reality exactly as it is, and if the future is in fact partly comprised of ontological possibilities, then God must know the future as partly comprised of such possibilities. Since an omniscient God must know the truth-value of all propositions, in other words, he must know the truth-value of “might” propositions as well as “will” propositions.
This obviously conflicts with classical theism, which has generally assumed that God, by metaphysical necessity, eternally knows the future exclusively as a domain of settled facts, exhaustively describable by “will” propositions. In this view, it is assumed that an omniscient God, by definition, must know the future as exhaustively settled. The pervasiveness of this assumption is reflected in the fact that many (if not most) conservative Christian critics continue to accuse open theists of denying the perfection of God’s knowledge simply because we affirm that possibilities are included in the content of what God perfectly knows.26
The truth is that the most distinctive aspect of open theism is simply its willingness to question why the reality God created and perfectly knows must, by metaphysical necessity, be exhaustively and eternally settled. Why must there be a determinate fact of the matter about which causally possible future is “the” actual future? By what metaphysical necessity does the perfect nature of God’s knowledge dictate the content of the reality that God creates and perfectly knows? In other words, what is it about divine omniscience that renders it metaphysically impossible for God ever to create a world in which the future was causally open to alternate possibilities and therefore known by God as such?
Not only are there no compelling arguments supporting this assumption; there are a number of good arguments against it, four of which I will mention. First, as has been frequently argued, it is hard to reconcile the belief that all of history is an eternally settled story line with the belief that temporal agents possess the power to resolve contrary possibilities into actual courses of action. One way of formalizing the difficulty, suggested to me by Alan Rhoda, is as follows”:
1. Necessarily, if there is an eternally settled story line, then agent A chooses this and not that.
2. Necessarily, there is an eternally settled story line.
3. Therefore, necessarily, agent A chooses this and not that.
Yet if it is necessary that agent A choose this and not that, it is hard to see how agent A is genuinely free in the flow of history to choose this or that. 27
Second, regardless of what we may believe, we all live as though the future is partly open and partly settled. For example, every time we deliberate between alternatives in the process of making a decision, we presuppose that it is up to us to resolve alternate possibilities into one definite course of action. There simply is no other way to deliberate. Yet if it is metaphysically impossible for God to create a world with a partly open future, then we who argue that our everyday experience of the world as deliberating decision makers corresponds to the way reality is are not only mistaken in making this claim; we are actually asserting a metaphysical impossibility. Similarly, those of us who argue that God’s experience of the future is analogous to our own inasmuch as he too chooses between genuine possibilities must also be asserting a metaphysical impossibility. And even biblical authors who depict God as speaking and thinking about the future in terms of what might and might not come to pass (e.g., Ex. 13:17) must be asserting a metaphysical impossibility, even if we interpret them to be speaking anthropomorphically when they do so. It is difficult, to say the least, to see how this is so, which in turn suggests that the claim that an omniscient God must necessarily know the future exclusively as a domain of eternally settled facts is mistaken.
Third, it seems to me that if God knows the truth-value of all “will” propositions, he must, by logical necessity, know the truth-value of all “might” propositions. For the logical contradictory of “x will occur” is not “x will not occur” but rather “not [x will occur],” which is equivalent to “x might not occur.” So too, the contradictory of “x will not occur” is not “x will occur” but rather “not [x will not occur],” which is equivalent to “x might occur.”28 Hence, God’s knowledge of the truth-value of all “will” propositions entails a corresponding knowledge of the truth-value of all “might” propositions.
One might concede that God knows the truth-value of all “might” propositions while nevertheless holding that the future is exhaustively describable by “will” propositions if one insists that “might” propositions merely assert the logical precondition for “will” statements. That is, if anything will come to pass, then it must be possible for it to come to pass. Hence, if God knows that “x will occur,” he thereby knows that “x might occur,” and if God knows that “x will not occur,” he thereby knows that “x might not occur.”
This is the only interpretation of “might” propositions one can entertain if it is assumed that the future is exclusively a domain of eternally settled facts. But, as I have already argued, this assumption has no logical or metaphysical basis. It is unclear, moreover, what we are to make of a proposition that asserts “x might and might not occur.” If such a proposition is true, it falsifies both the propositions “x will occur” and “x will not occur,” for these are the contradictories of “x might occur” and “x might not occur. “ In this case, therefore, the “might” proposition cannot possibly serve as the logical antecedent to the “will” proposition. It thus seems to me that a proposition asserting what “might and might not” come to pass must be allowed to have an ontological referent, namely, the domain of real possibilities. 29
Finally, while open theists have employed a number of compelling philosophical, scientific, and pragmatic arguments in defense of their position, the primary reason evangelical open theists affirm that the future is partly open is because we believe this conclusion best fits the scriptural evidence. While Scripture certainly depicts aspects of the future as settled either in God’s mind (foreknowledge) or by God’s will (predestination), no Scripture forces the conclusion that the future is exhaustively settled, let alone necessarily settled from all eternity. To the contrary, a wealth of Scriptures seem to preclude this perspective. 30
For example, as we noted earlier, it is significant that Jesus asked the Father if the plan that involved his crucifixion could possibly be changed (Matt. 26:39, 42) — this despite the fact that if any event in Scripture was predestined and foreknown, it was that Jesus would die for the sake of sinners. 31 The very fact that Jesus inquired about this possibility presumes that it is in principle possible for God to change his mind in response to prayer. 32 Yet it is hard to see how God could ever modify his plans in the flow of history if every one of his plans had been unalterably settled from all eternity.
Similarly, if the future is eternally settled in God’s mind and/or by God’s will, it is challenging to see how God could genuinely regret some of his decisions in light of how events played themselves out (Gen. 6:6 — 7; 1 Sam. 15:11, 35). How can you regret something that turns out exactly as you eternally knew it would? So too, if the future is eternally settled, it is difficult to see how God could express surprise over how humans behave, and even confess several times that he expected people to act differently (e. g., Jer. 3:7, 19; Isa. 5:1–5).
Along the same lines, it is quite hard to understand why Scripture on numerous occasions would depict God as testing people to see how they would choose if their choices were settled an eternity before their testing (e. g., Deut. 8:2; 13:1–3). So too, it is not clear how Scripture could encourage us to speed up the time of the Lord’s return by how we live if the exact time of his return was eternally set in stone (2 Peter 3:11 — 12). And, most impressive in my opinion, it is quite a challenge to explain why we repeatedly discover God speaking and even thinking of the future in terms of what might and might not take place (e. g., Ex. 4:5, 8 — 9; 13:17; Ezek. 2:5, 7; 12:3) if the future is eternally settled. Hence, while Scripture certainly depicts aspects of the future as predestined and foreknown, open theists argue that a comprehensive assessment of Scripture suggests that some aspects of the future remain open.
The “Choose Your Own Adventure” Model of Providence
We might understand the open model of providence along the lines of a children’s Choose Your Own Adventure book. In these books, the narrative unfolds to a certain point, then the reader gets to choose from several alternatives how the main character should respond to the situation, thus deciding how the narrative should continue to unfold. The narrative then continues along the chosen story line until the reader comes to another point of decision, and so on throughout the book. The combination of choices the reader makes at these decision points leads the main character to one of several possible endings.
In the open model of providence, the future is partly settled and partly open in just the same way as in these books. God, the author of the adventure of creation, as it were, predetermines the overall structure of the adventure as well as all the possible story lines and all the possible endings within this adventure. Moreover, God predestines certain events to take place if certain story lines are chosen and other events to take place regardless of what story lines are chosen. 33 Yet within this predetermined structure, free agents are empowered with a certain amount of say-so as to which of the many possible story lines is actualized.
Of course, every analogy has its limitations. One obvious limitation of the Choose Your Own Adventure analogy is that it is too simplistic. The adventure of creation that we are contributing to is infinitely more complex than this analogy suggests. Every day we make hundreds if not thousands of free decisions, each of which opens up new possibilities for us and others while closing other possibilities. Moreover, our individual “adventures” are inextricably wrapped up with one another inasmuch as each decision we make affects others, for better or for worse. The same holds true regarding the decisions of angelic beings (e.g., Psalm 82; Daniel 10). Clearly, the complexity of the open-ended adventure of creation is virtually infinite, which simply reveals the unfathomable intelligence and resourcefulness of its Author.
A second and even more significant limitation of the Choose Your Own Adventure analogy is that the author of these children’s books plays no roll in influencing the paths readers decide to take. By contrast, God not only created the overall adventure of creation; he is also the main character in this adventure, influencing how the adventure gets played out. Indeed, Scripture gives us reason to believe that God is present, active, and passionately involved in each and every decision every created agent ever makes (e. g., Acts 17:26 –28). We might say that in contrast to the authors of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, the Author of the adventure of creation writes himself into every possible story line of the overall adventure, and thus every possible story line of every possible character in this creational adventure. Yet as passionately influential as God is, according to the open model of providence, he lovingly refrains from coercing agents as they exercise the domain of say-so that he has given them.
The Open Model and the Four Christocentric Providential Criteria
Having outlined the open model of providence, I will now briefly assess it in light of the four christocentric providential criteria developed earlier.
God Wages Spiritual Warfare
Evil originates either in God’s will or in wills other than God’s. The impossible dilemma of all versions of theological determinism is that they believe God’s will is the ultimate explanation for everything that comes to pass, including evil, while also maintaining that God is all-holy and completely free of evil, as Scripture indeed teaches (Hab. 1:13; 1 John 1:5). As I noted earlier, I find this perspective to be completely incoherent, the relentlessly repeated “in such a way” clause notwithstanding.
By contrast, models of providence that ascribe libertarian free will to created agents avoid this dilemma. Evil originates in created wills that choose to go against God’s will, which is precisely what makes these choices evil. Yet I would argue that the open model has one advantage over most providential models that ascribe libertarian free will to agents while maintaining that God is eternally certain of what free agents will do. In the open model, God grants free will to human and angelic beings, knowing it is possible that they will use their free will for evil purposes and harm others but lacking the certainty that they will do so. When these agents make themselves evil, God must put up with them, for, as argued above, God cannot revoke the capacity to choose for or against love once he has given it.
By contrast, in models in which the future is eternally settled in God’s mind, God is certain that particular agents will bring about the exact evils they end up bringing about, before he gives them the free will to carry out these evils. One must thus wonder why God would empower Satan, Hitler, Stalin, and other horrifically evil agents to do what they did, knowing full well they would carry out these exact evils if he did so.34 Since God is all-good, proponents of these models are forced to conclude that it is somehow better that these specific evils be allowed than that they be prevented. This is a formidable problem, and it is a distinct advantage of the open view that it completely avoids this problem.
Of course, open theists must yet account for why God gave Satan, Hitler, and Stalin the potential for evil. Like most other free will theists, open theists explain this by appealing to the general principle that love requires freedom. Having explained this, however, open theists alone are free from the burdensome assumption that there is a specific divine reason for each specific evil.
An even more problematic question that burdens those who view the future as eternally settled and thus known by God as such is why God would give certain agents the free will to damn themselves, especially when he tells us he desires all to be saved and is grieved by every person who is lost. 35 More puzzling still is why God sincerely tries to get individuals and groups to turn from their wicked ways and surrender to him if he is eternally certain his efforts will fail (e. g., Acts 7:51; Rom. 10:21; Heb. 3:7 – 19). Indeed, one must wonder why, throughout the Bible, God attempts a number of endeavors that fail to come to pass if he was certain all along that his efforts would fail because people would not cooperate (e. g., Ezek. 22:30). Does not the fact that God tried to get people to acquiesce to his will suggest that God believed at the time that it was at least possible that agents might comply? Yet doesn’t the fact that the people ended up rejecting God’s will, despite his efforts to the contrary, indicate that God was not certain the people would not comply?36
For these and other reasons, I submit that the open model of providence satisfies the first of the christocentric providential criteria better than alternative models.
God Relies on Power and Wisdom
Inasmuch as the open model of providence holds that God is the all-powerful Creator of all that exists, it is evident that this model has no problem ascribing to God the level of power we see him exercising in Christ and throughout Scripture. As the Author of the adventure of creation, God can, from the very start, write himself into every possible story line to exercise whatever level of unilateral say-so he sees fit. The only qualification, according to the open model (as well as all models that ascribe libertarian free will to agents), is that God cannot, by definition, exercise meticulous control over agents insofar as he has given them say-so.
Yet the open model also effectively explains why God relies more on his wisdom than on his power when defeating his foes and accomplishing his purposes in Christ and throughout the biblical narrative. God needs only to outsmart his opponents if he is not controlling everything they do but rather interacting with agents who possess their own intelligence and their own say-so. A God who accomplished all his purposes simply by exercising his inherent power exhaustively to control others would have no more use for intelligence than a dog does in exercising its inherent power to control the wagging of its tail. Because the open view ascribes a degree of independent intelligence and irrevocable say-so to angelic and human free agents, it explains why God cannot achieve his objectives simply by displaying his omnipotence and why he must, therefore, also rely on his superior wisdom.
God Relies on Other-Oriented Love
Along similar lines, it is difficult, to say the least, to understand how a God who meticulously controlled everything—including every evil that ever befell anyone and even the eternal damnation of certain people — could be described as perfectly loving, especially if we define love by pointing to Jesus’ self-sacrificial death on the cross (1 John 3:16). The common Reformed reply that God ordained all that comes to pass, including evil, “for his glory” simply reveals that this model works with a power-centered criterion of greatness (“glory”) rather than the criterion of other-oriented love that Jesus demonstrated when he gave his life on Calvary for those who were his enemies.
By contrast, the open model argues that God does not meticulously control everything precisely because God is a God of perfect love. God’s other-oriented greatness was displayed when, out of love, God limited the exercise of his power by granting agents their own domain of morally responsible say-so. And God’s other-oriented greatness was displayed even more clearly when, out of love, he allowed humans to use the say-so he had given us to crucify him. God glorifies himself not by displaying his inherent ability to damn whomever he wishes. He glorifies himself, rather, by displaying his loving character, as he suffered and died for enemies who would otherwise be damned. It is for this reason that we who follow Jesus most glorify God when we imitate Jesus’ self-sacrificial love toward others (not when we try to control them).
For similar reasons, I believe the open view best explains why God relies on humans to accomplish many of his plans and how it is that humans can impact God, at times even to the point of influencing him to modify his plans. To the extent that humans (and, we could add, angels) use their say-so to oppose God’s will, God’s will is, to that extent, thwarted. The open view thus affirms that to the extent that God has invested agents with say-so to affect what comes to pass, he needs them freely to align themselves with his will if his will is to be fully accomplished “on earth as it is in heaven.”37 While those who continue to embrace the power-centered criterion of greatness invariably view such a dependent and vulnerable God as weak, if we allow the crucified Messiah to shape our conception of God, this dependency becomes one more mark of God’s greatness. 38
Because it affirms that God is confident enough to condition some of his plans on the free participation of his people, the open view renders intelligible the remarkable urgency Scripture attaches to prayer and to people’s fulfilling their role as God’s coworkers. 39 Because the future to some extent remains up to us to resolve as we yield to, or resist, God’s Holy Spirit, things genuinely hang in the balance when we decide what to do. There is, in this model, no sense in which our lives are a pro forma activity by which we merely play out a script that was written an eternity ago. This invests our life with a profound, moment-to-moment significance and sense of responsibility.
Finally, because the open model of providence views the future as partly open, it arguably makes better sense than competing models do as to how God can be affected and influenced by what humans do, even to the point of changing his plans in response to our input and activity. It is not that we provide God with information he otherwise would not have. Rather, it is that the omniscient and omnipotent God wants a genuine, loving relationship with us, and it is in the nature of loving relationships that they are mutually influential. Hence, the Author of the adventure of creation writes into some of the possible story lines that if things unfold in a certain way, and if certain agents with whom he has a relationship pray and/or engage in other activities, he will respond by changing the direction in which he was planning to go. God’s ability and willingness to change his plans are much harder to make sense of if the course of history, including God’s own future behavior, is exhaustively settled from all eternity.
God Wins by Bringing Good Out of Evil
The final christocentric providential criterion is perhaps the most controversial inasmuch as it has frequently been argued that the God of open theism cannot guarantee that he can bring good out of evil and accomplish his overall purposes for creation. For example, Bruce Ware argues that the open view of God portrays him as a “passive, hand-wringing God” who can do little more than make guesses about the future and hope for the best. 40 Since God can “only guess what much of the future will bring,” Ware wonders if “a believer [can] know that God will triumph in the future just as he promised he will.”41
I believe that this criticism is completely without merit—at least if we grant that God is infinitely intelligent. If God’s intelligence has no limit, then he can perfectly anticipate, from all eternity, each and every possible decision free agents might ever make. Indeed, an infinitely intelligent God is as prepared for every one of any number of possible future events as he would be for a single future event that was certain to take place. We humans are less effective at anticipating and preparing for possibilities than we are for certainties because the more possibilities we face, the thinner we have to spread our finite amount of intelligence. Hence, if we humans faced an open future of the magnitude that God faces, we would undoubtedly be wringing our hands and could “only guess what much of the future will bring.“ But a God with unlimited intelligence does nothing of the sort, for the simple reason that he has no need to spread his intelligence thin to cover possibilities.
With no limit to his intelligence, God can anticipate and prepare for each and every possibility as effectively as if it was a certainty. He knows every one of the innumerable possible story lines creation could take as though it was the only story line creation could take. While not everything happens for a divine purpose, in the open view, everything happens with a divine purpose, for God has from eternity been preparing a response to each and every possible event in case it takes place. It is evident, then, that the God of open theism knows the future just as effectively as the God of classical theism, who faces an eternally settled future. The future that the God of open theism knows is infinitely more complex, however, which is why some who apparently have trouble imagining a God smart enough to handle such complexity claim he would be anxiously wringing his hands and making guesses if he were placed in such open-ended circumstances.
If we can remain confident in God’s intelligence, however, we should have no more difficulty trusting that God can bring good out of evil and triumph in the end when he faces a partly open future than if he faced an exhaustively settled future. If any further reassurance is needed, however, consider that the God of open theism not only perfectly knows and anticipates all the possible story lines creation could take; he himself established the conditions and boundaries of those possible story lines. We may thus rest assured that if there were possible story lines that could not result in God’s bringing good out of evil, let alone story lines that threatened God’s objectives for creation as a whole, the Author of the adventure of creation would simply exclude them from the adventure. 42
Conclusion
In this essay I have shared some of the fundamental reasons why I believe the open model of providence is the most compelling for all who make Christ the centerpiece of their understanding of God. It renders intelligible the reality of evil that Christ and God confront throughout Scripture. It ascribes to God the level of power revealed in Christ and throughout Scripture. Whether parting the Red Sea, raising Jesus from the dead, or predestining certain events to take place, whatever power Scripture ascribes to God, the open view ascribes to God. But because it ascribes a degree of independent intelligence and say-so to agents, the open view also renders intelligible why God does not rely primarily on power but also relies on his unfathomable wisdom and his perfect love. God outsmarts and defeats his opponents through self-sacrificial, other-oriented love. This is the love he eternally is and thus the love that permeates everything he does, including every aspect of his providential rule over creation 43
1. Col. 1:15 – 17; cf. John 1:1 – 3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 3:9 – 10; Heb. 1:2 – 3; 10.
2. As Luther famously quipped to Erasmus, “Take Christ out of the Scriptures, and what will you find remaining in them?” Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will [1525], in Luther’s Works, ed. J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann, 55 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955 – 1986), 33:26.
3. See Gregory A. Boyd, “The Christus Victor View,” in The Nature of the Atonement, ed. J. Beilby and P. Eddy (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 23 – 49; idem, God at War, 171 – 268. On Jesus’ life as a sustained revolt against the powers, see idem, “The Kingdom as a Socio-Political Spiritual Revolution,” Criswell Theological Review 6, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 23 – 42.
4. For example, John claims that “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19; cf. John 12:32; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph.2:2). See Boyd, God at War.
5. That God kept his wise plans hidden explains why, throughout Jesus’ ministry, demons recognized who Jesus is but had no clue why he had come to earth (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7; Luke 8:21). For a fuller discussion, see Boyd, “Christus Victor View,” 36 — 38.
6. Other classic examples of God changing his mind in response to human activity are Ex. 33:1 — 3, 14; Deut. 9:13 — 29; 1 Sam. 2:27—31; 1 Kings 21:21 — 29; 2 Chron. 12:5 — 8; Jer. 18:7 — 10; 26:2 — 3; Ezek. 4:9 — 15; Amos 7:1 — 6; Jonah 3:10. John Sanders offers an insightful discussion of this motif in The God Who Risks, 48 — 84. For a popular-level discourse on this theme by one of the world’s most famous evangelists (“God’s Smuggler”), see Brother Andrew, And God Changed His Mind (Grand Rapids: Chosen, 1999).
7. The qualifier “in principle” is necessary because, obviously, we do not yet experience everything that Christ accomplished (see Heb 2:7 — 9) We live in between the “already” and the “not yet” of God’s eternal kingdom on earth
8. While there is a good deal of agreement regarding the nature of divine providence among open theists, there are also significant differences Hence, it should not be assumed that I speak for all open theists as I develop my open model of providence For a sampling of other openness perspectives on themes related to divine providence, see Sanders, God Who Risks; William Hasker, The Triumph of God over Evil (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2008); Richard Rice, God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985); Peter Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover (Grand Rapids: Paternoster/Baker Academic, 2001); and Michael Saia, Does God Know the Future? (Fairfax, Va.: Xulon, 2002). Particularly noteworthy is the recent intriguing use Alan Rhoda has made of game theory to discuss issues related to providence in “Beyond the Chess Master Analogy: Game Theory and Divine Providence,” in Oord, Creation Made Free. Other essays by advocates of open theism in Creation Made Free are pertinent to this topic as well
9. Thomas Oord justifiably argues that open theology is first and foremost a “theologic [sic] of love” (“An Open Theology Doctrine of Creation and Solution to the Problem of Evil,” in Oord, Creation Made Free, 28 -52).
10. The classical expression of the “in Christ” motif, which in fact permeates all of Paul’s writings, is Eph 1:3 – 14
11. This motif is beautifully expressed in Christ’s prayer in John 17:20 – 26 It is worth noting that this prayer arguably refutes the typical Reformed view that God’s “glory” refers to his sovereignty (understood as meticulous control), for Jesus says he gave his disciples the “glory” the Father had given him (v 22) My thanks to Paul Eddy for pointing this out to me
12. See, e.g., Tatian Address to the Greeks ANF 2: 7. For the early church’s understanding and emphasis on free will, see Dale R Stoffer, “The Problem of Evil: An Historical Theological Approach,” Ashland Theological Review 24 (1992): 60 – 62; Roger Forster and Paul Marston, God’s Strategy in Human History (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1973), 243 — 57; Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 39 — 49. The necessity of libertarian freedom for love to be genuine does not hold for God, I argue, for unlike contingent beings who by definition could be otherwise, God is by definition a necessary being whose eternal, God-defining character could not be otherwise
13. For a succinct review of passages revealing our ability to choose to reject God’s will, quench God’s Spirit, thwart God’s purposes (to a degree), and thus grieve God’s heart, see Boyd, Is God to Blame? 61 — 77.
14. For example, the Westminster Confession affirms that “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (3. 1, emphasis added). Similarly, Augustine speaks of the unspeakably strange “ways” agents who act in opposition to God’s will thereby fulfill his will. Enchndim, ANF 3: 100.
15. This is the central argument in Helseth, “What Is at Stake?” 275 — 307.
16. For the purposes of this essay, I am painting with rather broad strokes. A much more nuanced discussion would specify innumerable variables that condition the extent to which God can maximize the good and minimize evil in any given situation. See Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, chaps. 6 — 7.
17. This touches on the ongoing philosophical discussion generated by H Frankfurt in “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (December 1969): 829 — 39. Suffice it for the present to note that even if one grants the validity of Frankfurt’s counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities, the fact that there is evil in the world is proof enough that God does not utilize a “Frankfurt device” to revoke free will when it suits him
18. The irrevocability of free will is important for all the same reasons as the uncontrol– lability of free will. If God had the power to revoke free will whenever he wished, we would once again have to conclude that when God does not revoke an agent’s will once he sees that he is going to use it for evil purposes, it can only be because he does not want to. This in turn forces the conclusion that God allows each specific instance of evil he does not prevent for a specific, good divine reason, which is precisely the position the open view denies.
19. Among the variables that influence us are our genetic inheritance, our upbringing, current physical and spiritual influences (e. g., God as well as good and evil spirits), the ongoing effects of previous decisions others and we have made, and, most important, the amount of say-so God has given us at the start. For a more comprehensive and nuanced discussion, see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, chaps. 5 – 7.
20. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 185—206.
21. Several passages that suggest people can become solidified in their stance against God are Matt. 12:31 — 32 (and parallels); Rom. 1:24—28; 1 John 5:16. On the other hand, that heaven is consistently depicted as a secure place where God’s redeemed will delight in him forever suggests that people eventually become solidified in their loving orientation toward God. On the fate of those who die with characters yet unsolidified, see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 380 — 85.
22. The earliest form of this teaching, so far as I have been able to discover, appears in Heraclitus, who in the fifth century BC remarked that “character is man’s fate Walter Kaufmann, ed., Philosophic Classics, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 17. On some historical examples of this teaching, see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 187 — 89.
23. Also at play in the betrayal narrative is that Peter had been clinging to a mistaken militant concept of the Messiah (see, e,g., Matt. 16:21 – 23). This is why Peter appeared so bold while Jesus was working miracles and the crowds were following him, yet revealed himself to be a coward once Jesus was arrested and the crowds turned against him. God’s purpose in having Jesus give the prophecy of Peter’s denial was to reveal to Peter the sinfulness of his own character and help him discover the true, self-sacrificial nature of leadership in the kingdom. The kingdom Jesus ushered into the world advances not by conquering people but by loving, serving, and dying for them (as Jesus was already showing Peter in the garden; see John 18:10 – 11; cf. Luke 22:50 – 51). I do not believe it is a coincidence that after the resurrection Peter was made to affirm three times his love for Christ and that Jesus then uttered another prophecy over him. Far from denying Christ, Peter was now ready to follow Jesus to the point of dying just as he died (see John 21:15 - 19).
24. By referring to “ontological possibilities,” I am claiming that possibilities are not merely logical or epistemological. Some possibilities reflect a state of being.
25. This must be qualified In cases in which an agent’s choice between alternatives is rendered certain ahead of time by virtue of the solidified character they have freely acquired, their resolving of alternate possibilities precedes their conscious choice. In such cases, what is ultimately real relative to the alternate possibilities facing an agent is not what they might and might not choose but what they will or will not choose.
26. This is reflected in some of the titles of books critiquing the open view, such as Steven Roy, How Much Does God Know? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006); Millard Erickson, What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006). In fairness, however, I have to concede that some open theists in the past have invited this misunderstanding in that they unwittingly accepted the classical view of the future as exhaustively settled in the process of denying that God knows it as settled, thus giving the impression that there are things God does not know. See, e. g., Clark Pinnock, “God Limits His Knowledge,” in Predestination and Free Will, ed. D. Basinger and R. Basinger (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 141 — 62.
27. It is sometimes argued that those who argue for the incompatibility of exhaustively definite foreknowledge and libertarian free will are guilty of transferring the necessity of God’s knowledge of a future event to the event itself. See, e,g., William Lane Craig, “The Middle Knowledge View,” in Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, ed. James Beilby and Paul Eddy (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 126 - 27. While this criticism applies to some ways of construing the problem, I do not see that I have committed this modal fallacy in the argument just offered.
28. In the schema I am proposing, “x will not occur” is the contrary (not contradictory) of “x will occur,” and vice versa. For a fuller development of this position, see Rhoda, Boyd, and Belt, “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future,” 432 — 59; Boyd, “Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations,” 1 — 19.
29. William Craig has argued that the logic of open theism, as I espouse it, forces me to deny that propositions concerning future contingents have any truth-value and forces me to deny bivalence (Craig, “The Middle Knowledge View,” 55 - 57) I want to be clear why I believe Craig is mistaken on both counts Bivalence requires a nonopen view of the future only when it is combined with the assumption that “will” and “will not” propositions exhaust the possibilities and are therefore contradictory I instead argue that “will” and “will not” propositions are contraries, not contradictories, because there is a third “might and might not” possibility that excludes both “will” and “will not “ I thus affirm that all propositions concerning future contingents have a truth-value and affirm bivalence
30. The biblical case for the open view has been presented many times, so I will in this essay provide only a brief overview. For several expositions, see Sanders, God Who Risks; Pinnock, Most Moved Mover; Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective"; Boyd, God of the Possible; idem, Satan and the Problem of Evil; idem, “The Open Theism View,” in James K Beilby and Paul R Eddy, eds, Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2001), 13 - 47.
31. See, e.g., Isa. 53; Zech. 12:10; Matt. 20:18, 28; Acts 2:23; 4:28; Rev. 13:8.
32. As we find him doing numerous times throughout the biblical narrative See note 7
33. For example, I agree with Baxter Kruger and a number of early church theologians that it was predestined, even prior to the fall, that God would become incarnate and adopt humans into the triune community. For an excellent exposition of this theme, see C. Baxter Kruger, The Great Dance (Blackwood, Australia: Perichoresis, 2000); idem, God Is for Us (Jackson, Miss : Perichoresis, 1995) Most of what is predestined and/or prophesied in the Bible, however, is conditional and thus open to modification if and when conditions change (see, e, g., Jer. 18:7 - 10). See Sanders’s excellent discussion in God Who Risks, 61 - 65, 72 - 92, 131 - 39.
34. The simple foreknowledge perspective arguably avoids this charge, for in this view, God has no power to affect the future he eternally knows will occur. Unfortunately, this puts God in a position similar to that of the legendary Cassandra, who was cursed with the ability to see the future while being unable to do anything about it. See Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 88 - 90; idem, “An Open Theism Response” [to simple foreknowledge], in Beilby and Eddy, Divine Foreknowledge, 107. A milder but insightful critique is offered by John Sanders in “Why Simple Foreknowledge Offers God No More Providential Control Than the Openness of God,” Faith and Philosophy 14, no. 1 (1997): 26 - 40.
35. E.g., Ezek. 18:23; 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4; 4:10; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 John 2: 2. It is worth mentioning that if the damned are ultimately annihilated forever rather than consciously punished forever, the problem of why God endowed agents with free will knowing they would certainly use it eternally to damn themselves is significantly lessened, though not altogether abolished. This observation has little relevance, however, since to date the majority of classical theists believe that the damned undergo eternal, conscious suffering.
36. The open view has been widely criticized for ascribing to God the possibility of holding false beliefs. See, e.g., Craig, “Middle Knowledge View,” 55 — 56; John Piper, “Grounds for Dismay: The Error and Injury of Open Theism,” in Piper et al., Beyond the Bounds, 372 — 73. The charge lacks merit inasmuch as it is predicated on the very view of the future that open theism denies. Obviously, if one assumes the future is exhaustively settled, then God errs if he expects an outcome that fails to come to pass. But if one grants instead, if only for the sake of argument, that the future is partly comprised of possibilities and probabilities, then open theists ascribe no false belief to God when we assert (as Scripture frequently does; see, e.g., Jer. 3:8, 19) that God may expect, and even try to achieve, a certain outcome that ends up failing to come to pass. An omniscient God would accurately expect a more probable event to take place and may rationally attempt to accomplish things that are not certain to succeed because they depend on human cooperation. On this, see Boyd, God of the Possible, 59 — 63. The open view is thus able to explain the surprise, disappointment, and frustration frequently ascribed to God in the Bible, without denying God’s infallibility, and so far as I can see, it is the only view that is able to do so. For similar reasons, the open view most easily accounts for the number of divine prophecies that fail to come to pass exactly as prophesied in Scripture (e, g., Ezek. 26). See Sanders, God Who Risks, 79 — 83.
37. Matt. 6:10. Note that Judges 5:23 explicitly states that God was angry with the people of Meroz because they did not assist he Lord when he needed them On God’s self-chosen dependence on humans, see Sanders, God Who Risks, esp. 48 — 65, 280 — 85.
38. Here I agree with C. S. Lewis, who argued, “To become … capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all feats we attribute to omnipotence” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain [New York: Macmillan, 1962], 117). By contrast, see Bruce Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, Ill : Crossway, 2000), which is permeated by the presupposition that God is only as great as he is controlling Throughout this book, the portrait of a God whose knowledge, feelings, and decisions are conditioned by what humans do or who is to any extent dependent on humans to accomplish any of his plans is assumed to be less glorious than an all-controlling deity. With all due respect, I frankly have to confess that I find this criterion of divine greatness to have more in common with ancient Stoicism and Islam than with the crucified Savior.
39. On prayer as illustrating the mutually influential relationship between God and humans, see Terence E Fretheim, “Prayer in the Old Testament: Creating Space in the World for God,” in A Primer on Prayer, ed. Paul R. Sponheim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); E. Frank Tupper, A Scandalous Providence (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995), 274—80; Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 226 —41.
40. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory, 216.
41. Ibid, 20-21
42. On this point, open theism (as I espouse it) and Molinism have much in common, for both hold that God excludes possible worlds in the process of actualizing the real world. The primary difference is that open theism believes that the possible worlds God knows prior to creation include truths about what might and might not come to pass as well as truths about what would and would not come to pass under certain conditions, while Molinism (arbitrarily, in my view) affirms only the latter. Because of this, Molinism holds that the world that God actualized is constituted by a single, exhaustively settled story line, whereas open theism holds that the world God created includes many possible story lines that free agents must resolve into a single story line. For more on the relation of open theism to Molinism, see Boyd, “NeoMolinism and the Infinite Intelligence of God,” 187—204.
43. My thanks to my brilliant friend Alan Rhoda, who offered helpful feedback on an earlier version of this essay