When I first heard about ‘Open Theism’ the issue of Peter’s denials occured to me as well. Clearly God knew Peter was going to deny Him…in fact God knew exactly how many times it would happen and what event would mark the last denial (the crowing of the cock). This is certainly more than just a good guess by God. The only literal way to understand it is that God looked into Peter’s future and saw his denial. However, just because God choose to know or look into Peter’s future on this one issue does not mean that He chooses to know every person’s future exhaustively. The thrust of the Bible is that men must live by faith as demonstrated by the perfect life of Jesus Christ. God has made man in His own image and commanded us to live by faith in the principles that He has given us. Foreknowledge of the details of a fallen world is apparently not required; perhaps because such foreknowledge does not change those principles. In Peter’s case, God apparently did choose to know and predict his future sinfulness ahead of time. That is God’s perogative. If you balance His omniscience with His sovereignty God can know anything at anytime He chooses. The key is to remember that every choice He ever makes is perfectly timed and perfectly executed.

This is perhaps my biggest disagreement with ‘open theism’ as posited by this web site. I do NOT believe that the future is “unsettled.” I believe instead that God has made a point of focusing on His own future and excluding the sinful elements of time that are being contributed by fallen men. God has stated in the Bible all that we need to know to live by His principles and like any great teacher He has also shown us by example thru the work of His Son. We need not know the details in order to live by principle and in fact when it comes to sin, God the Father need not know the details (even if God the Son choose to experience them on the cross). It makes more sense that the details of a fallen world simply constitute a false premise to God. He continues to operate on His pre-existing standard of perfect Truth and His lack of knowledge of sinful choices is a tribute to His holiness, righteousness and purity.

The question of whether we, as mere mortals, can rest safe in the knowledge of the completeness of the canon would be a slightly different debate. I would argue that since the canon paints a picture from creation to the new creation, that further insights would not be required. It would hold little water with me to argue that God would feel the need to release a sequel after such a long gap from the original. Not even George Lucas would have the bottle to do that!