“Divine Relationality and Theodicy in The Shack” by Dr. John Sanders, Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas. Presented at the American Academy of Religion in Montreal Canada, November 7, 2009 I was asked to give this paper because some readers see a number of themes in the The Shack by William Paul Young that correspond well…
John Sanders Let me provide a brief overview of the history of the debate within evangelicalism. For many years the core ideas of openness had been buried in academic journals and I thought it was time to bring them to the attention of a broader public so I organized a team and we published The…
John Sanders Introduction: Overview of the issues and summary of Open Theism. Currently, in North American evangelicalism, there is a controversy regarding the nature of God and divine providence. The 1970’s witnessed the beginning of a prolonged reassessment of certain traditional divine attributes by some prominent evangelical philosophers. They reformulated, or even rejected, attributes such…
John Sanders Some misunderstanding has arisen regarding my view of the relationship between the church fathers and Hellenism and I would like to clarify my stance. In my chapter in the Openness of God (1994) I was more negative than I was when I covered the same material in The God Who Risks (1998), yet,…
Books containing opposing viewpoints that challenge open theism. Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace By Thomas R. Schreiner Scripture says that God is sovereign over all things, yet we have free will to determine our actions. So to what extent is God supreme? In this masterful examination of the sovereignty of God,…
Books containing open theistic perspectives. Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views Edited By Bruce Ware Perspectives on the Doctrine of God presents in counterpoint form four basic common beliefs on the doctrine of God that have developed over the course of church history with a goal of determining which view is most faithful…
Books addressing open theism and openness theology proper. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence By John Sanders In The God Who Risks, theologian John Sanders mounts a careful and challenging argument for positive answers to both of these profound theological questions. His powerful book not only will contribute to serious theological discussion…
Updated April 2013 John Sanders Briefly, the position is that God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and the present and knows as possibilities and probabilities those events which might happen in the future. God could have created a world in which he knew exactly what we would do in the future if God had…
Bibliography on Open Theism by John Sanders (last updated 4/2013) This bibliography is arranged in five categories: (1) multi-views works, (2) works supporting open theism, (3) works engaging open theism, (4) works against open theism, and (5) doctoral dissertations and masters theses engaging open theism. See also: The bibliography compiled by Thomas Oord on…
Compiled by Thomas Oord. Below are titles of books, articles, essays, and dissertations pertaining to “relational theology.” The list includes works on open theism, process theology, and others that are either for or against a relational understanding of God. The list is limited to materials published about a decade prior to 2002. Basinger, David. The…