The Hexagon of Opposition: Thinking Outside the Aristotelian Box

Gregory A. Boyd, Thomas Belt, Alan Rhoda It has traditionally been believed that omniscience means God’s knowledge of the future may be expressed exclusively in terms of what either will or will not come to pass. One common line of reasoning supporting this traditional belief is the following: P1:       All propositions are either true or…

The Incompatibility of Libertarian Free Will and Divine Timelessness

William Hasker The affirmation of libertarian free will immediately negates the divine determinism that is characteristic of classical theism. But it also (though this is less widely recognized) negates the doctrine of God as timelessly eternal. To assert that humans possess libertarian freedom implies that there is a fundamental, ontological difference between the future and…

Implications of Divine Repentance For the Attributes of God

William Hasker The notion of divine repentance is pivotal for the differences between classical theism and open theism. If God repents, then God undergoes change. If so, then God is not absolutely unchangeable, and certainly is not timeless. Divine repentance is closely associated with expressions of divine sorrow and regret over a decision previously made,…

Tradition, Divine Transcendence, and the Waiting Father

William Hasker In his reply William Hasker urges that while the theological tradition is worthy of respect, the kind of deference to tradition insisted on by Freddoso is excessive and unreasonable; in the past, such deference might well have prevented theological developments now recognized as beneficial and important. It may be desirable to characterize divine…

The “Openness” of God: A Reply to William Hasker

Alfred J. Freddoso University of Notre Dame 1. Introduction Emulating Bill Hasker, I will begin with a few autobiographical remarks. Numbered among the half-dozen or so writers whom I have been most influenced by spiritually as well as intellectually are St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas. Having pondered at length the philosophical doctrines…

The Openness of God

William Hasker In this selection, William Hasker develops some themes from the book, The Openness of God, which he co-authored with Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders and David Basinger. After giving a brief overview of the book, he recounts the process by which, over a period of years, he came to embrace the “open…

God and the Future

Dr. Gregory A. Boyd A Brief Outline of the Open View January 1999 In this essay I shall briefly state the Open view of God’s relationship to the future with the scriptural grounds on which it is based. I shall then briefly address the most common objections raised against it. The Open View It goes…

Divine Reciprocity and Epistemic Openness in Clark Pinnock’s Theology

John Sanders This paper was given at a session honoring the work of Clark Pinnock at the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco, November 18, 2011.   Canadian theologian Clark Pinnock was once a renowned defender of the doctrine of meticulous providence (where God tightly controls each and every event that transpires). He caused…