The Christianity Today interview with Royce Gruenler, “God at Risk” (March 5), contained so many errors concerning the openness of God theology that we are forced to wonder whether he really intended to give an accurate and honest account of our views. We hope he did intend this, but if so he failed miserably.

Gruenler says we are “Pelagian.” This is false. We, along with the Eastern Orthodox Church, Wesleyans, and Arminians believe that God grants us the “enabling grace” to come to faith in Christ. No human can initiate salvation as Gruenler claims we believe. It is correct that we affirm that humans have the God-given freewill to reject God’s grace, as do all forms of Arminian theology. But this does not mean that God’s power is somehow limited. God has all the power he has ever had. He is omnipotent and could bring the world to a close at any moment if he chose to do so. Though God lacks no power, he does not always exercise that power. When we wrestle with our children we don’t suddenly lose some of our power–we simply restrain the full exercise of our power. The issue is not about the extent of divine power. Rather, the issue is about the type of beings God decided to create and the sort of covenant God has made with us.

Grunler claims we have only an “aesthetic” view of the atonement. Though it may be true of process thought, it does not come close to accurately depicting what any evangelical openness theologian believes. We challenge Gruenler to cite any openness theologian who limits the work of Christ in this way. Though the openness movement as such is not committed to any particular theory of the atonement, we agree with Gruenler that Jesus’ death and resurrection are the divine means whereby God reconciled all things to himself. Apart from Jesus’ work on our behalf there would be no redemption.

On the problem of evil, we, along with all who use the freewill defense, acknowledge that God is responsible for creating a world where evil could possibly come about. Gruenler seems to think this is a devastating criticism that we have not thought about. Again, he does not seem conversant with our work (nor with any standard Arminian treatment of the topic for that matter). He correctly says that God takes risks in our view and that God has been disappointed by our sin. Gruenler apparently believes that God was not disappointed by human sin-that God actually wanted us to sin! His view entails that God not only ordained Adam’s sin but all the other evils we experience as well. In claiming that we bypass the “biblical” definition of human freedom (by which he means the Calvinistic definition) he identifies the biblical view with theological determinism. We, along with the vast majority of Christians, reject this deterministic theology. In our view, God takes the risk that we will not do everything God wants us to do. Hence, some of God’s desires may go unfulfilled-which is what Scripture says at many points–but this certainly does not put God himself at risk as Gruenler suggests.

Gruenler claims that we deny there can be prophecy. This is also false. Each and every author who has published on openness theology affirms there is prophecy and that the open view is the best explanation for all the types of prophecies found in Scripture. We believe that some of the future is definite and some is indefinite. God does not determine everything about the future, but he does determine whatever he chooses to since he is the sovereign lord of history! When Gruenler criticizes our view of God and time, he seems to assume that God has to be timeless in order to be omnipresent and omniscient. The issue is not about God being limited by the speed of light (something no openness theologian has ever affirmed) or the nature of time itself. Rather, the issue is whether or not God experiences sequence in thoughts and emotions. We believe the Bible teaches that God has emotions (e. g. grief, Gen 6:6) and can change his mind (Jonah 4:2) and these are things a timeless being simply cannot do!

Finally, Gruenler says our God cannot really help humans, but he fails to interact at all with what we have said about the nature of the sort of help the God of openness can and cannot be said to provide. God has all the wisdom and power necessary to help us-God can heal, guide, teach and love us. In contrast to Gruenler’s claims we believe that God is profoundly involved in our lives. Gruenler’s criticism presupposes that only a God who controls every detail-including our own decisions-can help us. We who embrace a partly open view of the future reject this assumption-but so do all non-Calvinist Christians. The idea that God might prefer to have creatures that he does not totally control never seems to occur to Gruenler. For him, if God leaves anything for us to decide for ourselves, then God is not really God and is not worth praising or worshipping. Many evangelical readers will find abrasive this cavalier dismissal of the entire “Arminian” tradition in the pages of Christianity Today.

Criticizing theological positions is a perfectly legitimate enterprise. However, his caricature of our position puts Gruenler at risk of failing to state his opponent’s position in a way acceptable to his opponent. Chris Hall and John Sanders have a forthcoming article in CT (May) that attempts to model honest dialogue between a classical theist and an open theist.

Sincerely,

John Sanders, Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, William Hasker, Richard Rice and David Basinger

The post A Letter to the Editor of Christianity Today appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

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 view” of God. He then summarizes various stances on the nature of God’s providential governance of the world, and concludes with some arguments designed to show the advantages of the open view of God over its competitors. Mr. Hasker is Professor of Philosophy at Huntington College and former editor of Christian Scholar’s Review.

Note! You will find a response to the following article (also from Christian Scholar’s Review) by Alfred J. Freddoso, Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame. You will find his response, here.

This article was taken by permission from Christian Scholar’s Review 28:1 (Fall, 1998: 111-139)

God is not remote, closed off, and self-contained. Rather, God is open to us his creatures, to the world he has made, and to the future. We in turn need to be open towards God and towards the future he is creating for us. These are the central themes of the book The Openness of God.^[1] The book is the joint product of five authors, each of whom had arrived at a similar understanding of the nature of God largely independent of the others. This general conception of God has been extensively discussed among Christian philosophers, and to a certain extent among theologians as well. But there has not existed any overall presentation of the view that is usable and accessible for students, pastors, and lay Christians. We aimed to supply this lack. We have been gratified by the reception of the book; many persons have expressed appreciation for the enlightenment and spiritual benefit they have received from it. Others, more attached to some of the traditional conceptions our approach rejects, have been strongly critical.^[2] We thank the editors of the Christian Scholar’s Review for the opportunity to continue the discussion in its pages. The first part of this essay will briefly introduce the book itself. The second part will trace, somewhat autobiographically, the development of my own views on these topics. The final section will reflect on the understanding of divine providence, and divine action in the world, presented in the book.

Section I

The book is subtitled, at the suggestion of the publisher, A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. That is a good description of the book, though how radical the challenge is depends on your point of view-in particular, on where. you locate the center of the tradition. We do reject such classical metaphysical divine attributes as simplicity, impassibility, absolute immutability, and timelessness. We reject Calvinism with its claim that God determines all that happens through his eternal decrees, and Molinism with its subtler view that God’s control is mediated by his knowledge of the “counterfactuals of freedom.” (A bit more will be said about Molinism in the next section.) All of us hold that comprehensive divine foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian free will for creatures. We portray God “as majestic yet intimate, as powerful yet gentle and responsive, as holy and loving and caring, as desiring for humans to decide freely for or against his will for them, yet endlessly resourceful in achieving his ultimate purposes” (p. 154).

The first chapter, written by Richard Rice, presents biblical support for the “open view” of God. There is a great deal of such support; much more than we commonly think, accustomed as we are to reading Scripture through the lens of traditional interpretations. In particular, Rice lays a good deal of emphasis on the biblical notion of divine “repentance,” drawing on the work of Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim. I would not want to claim that Richard succeeds in resolving all biblical problems for our view-I doubt, in fact, that anyone has succeeded in doing that for any view-but he does establish the open view of God as one that has strong biblical credentials.

The second chapter, by John Sanders, begins by asking, “Why do we not usually read the Bible in the way suggested in the previous chapter?” (p. 59) The answer to this is found in a broad survey of the history of Christian thought, revealing the extensive influence within Christian theology of certain conceptions ultimately drawn from Greek philosophy. The sources of these ideas can be traced back to Philo Judaeus and Plotinus, among others, and they were mediated to mainstream Christian theology through such figures as Augustine and, especially, Pseudo Dionysius. Some criticisms of this chapter have misunderstood its intent. We do not contend that the theologians of the Church have “sold out” to philosophy,^[3] and we do not necessarily regard the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian theology as on the whole inimical. But even if, like me, you regard the availability of Greek philosophy to the early Church as “a manifestation of divine providence” (Openness, p. 194, n.1), it remains true that “great discernment was required in applying philosophical conceptions to the biblical God, and we need not assume that the church fathers made the correct decisions in every case” (ibid.). Nor is it a telling criticism to point out that major theologians of the church have already emphasized some of the themes we stress-for example, in Luther’s theologia crucis.^[4] We have no desire whatever to claim that what we are saying is completely novel, and unknown in earlier ages of the Church–quite the contrary, in fact. All too often, however, these authentic biblical insights have been overwhelmed by a theology which insists that the Bible cannot possibly mean what it seems to be saying.

The third chapter, on systematic theology by Clark Pinnock, is to my mind the heart of the entire book. In this chapter Clark spells out, briefly but very effectively, the conception of God and God’s relationship with the world which is the core of our view. I suspect that a person’s reaction to this chapter may well be determinative for her response to the book as a whole. If she finds this portrait of God unappealing, even repellent, then she is unlikely to be moved by the arguments and biblical texts presented throughout the book. But if she finds that the portrayal of God .speaks to her condition,” then she may well be willing to explore with us the various considerations, and the answers to difficulties and objections, which lead us to conclude that the picture is a truthful one. Let me add here that both in this chapter and throughout the book we take considerable pains to distinguish our view of God from the one presented by process theology, to equate the two^[5] is a serious-and, I have to think, culpable ^[6] misrepresentation of our view.

We come now to my own chapter, which reviews from the perspective of philosophical theology the various ways in which the open view of God differs from the classical theism of Augustine and Aquinas. I draw upon the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff, among others, for the themes of divine temporality and possibility, as well as on my own previous work. The latter part of the chapter reviews various options for understanding divine providence, ranging from deterministic Calvinism at one extreme to process theism at the other, and makes the case for the open view of God, sometimes also called “free will theism.”

The final chapter, by David Basinger, develops the practical implications of the openness of God, ranging over such topics as petitionary prayer, divine guidance, human suffering, and the social and evangelistic responsibilities of believers.

Section II

In this section I am going to introduce some of the key issues of the book in a somewhat unusual way. Often in reading various writers (especially when the views expressed are unusual and controversial), I find myself asking, “Now, why did she say that? What is going on here?” The answer to my questions will not necessarily be found in a recitation of evidence and arguments; rather, what I am asking for is insight into the actual thought-process that led the author to espouse those particular views. Since I suspect that others may ask the same sorts of questions, I will set down here a brief account of the way in which, over a number of years, I came to accept the “open view” of God. There is nothing normative about my particular history, of course, and if my coauthors were to tell their own stories they would all be somewhat different. Still, I hope that what I have to say will be helpful at least for some readers.

My story begins in the fall of 1952, about the time I entered Wheaton College as a freshman. I had been influenced by scientific notions about human beings to which I had been exposed, and I remember asking my parents just where inside our skins this “free will” they talked about was located. I also recall trying to think about moral responsibility along the lines of what I now recognize as compatibilism. (According to compatibilism, we can be responsible for. our actions and in some sense “free” even though our actions are completely determined by previous events and circumstances.) But sometime within the next year and a half or so I had given up this way of thinking, and had come to accept libertarian free will. (According to libertarianism, a choice is free only if another choice was really possible under exactly the same [external and internal] circumstances.) I can’t trace the details of the process by which this change came about, but undoubtedly an introductory course in philosophy taken from Arthur Holmes played a role in it. A major event in my junior year was a course in the thought of Augustine, also with Arthur Holmes. As a result of this course I read the Confessions, several of the minor works, and the entirety of The City of God-and the latter work, especially, precipitated a severe intellectual struggle. I was torn between my love and admiration for Augustine (which still persist today) and the deeply troubling aspects of his doctrines of election and reprobation. Eventually I concluded that the God of holiness, love, and justice in whom both Augustine and I believed simply could not be the author of an eternal, unconditional decree of reprobation. And in this conviction I have never wavered down to the present day. (I still have a copy of an exegesis paper on which Paul Jewett, my favorite professor at Fuller Seminary, commented acerbically on my Arminian exposition of Romans 9!)

A further result of this experience is that I seem to be permanently immune to a way of thinking which some of my fellow Christian philosophers find attractive. The persons I have in mind find any kind of determinism due to natural causes whether physical determinism according to natural law, or psychological determinism by the “strongest motive”-unacceptable and very much to be resisted. But with regard to the theological doctrine that God sovereignly determines everything that occurs, they think a different response is in order. God, they remind us, is not a “cause among causes,- another being who vies with us for control in the arena of creaturely activity. God is the Creator of all, and to be subject to his creative will is in no way to be compared with a bondage to mechanistic determinism. In fact, to deny that God exercises such control is very nearly to deny that he is our creator. I agree, of course, that God’s causal activity in the world is of a different sort than the causal activity that creatures exercise on each other. I also agree that determinism based on natural causes and theological determinism are logically independent of each other; either could be true without the other,^[7] both could be true, or (as I believe to be the case) both could be false. But none of this suggests to me that, of the two, theological determinism should be the more readily accepted. If anything, the difference runs the other way: it is far more readily intelligible that society should hold us responsible for actions produced by natural causes-causes, however, over which society has only limited control-than that a wise and just God should hold us responsible for actions which are, through and through, entirely controlled by his own decretive will. So my opposition here is to determinism as such; the particular variety of determinism involved is of secondary importance.

At this time I entertained no serious doubts about the compatibility of free will and divine foreknowledge; I comforted myself with the familiar (but ultimately inadequate) reflection that divine foreknowledge does not cause human actions to occur and therefore cannot keep them from being free. So you could say that my view was one of “simple foreknowledge,” but I also felt considerable attraction, under the influence of Augustine and C. S. Lewis, towards the doctrine of timeless divine eternity. Perhaps there was a slight tendency for the latter view to predominate in my thinking, but the tension between them was never really resolved, nor did I feel any pressing need to resolve it.

Finally, let me observe that it was sometime during these years-whether I was in college or in seminary at the time I can’t say-that I first became aware of the doctrine of divine middle knowledge. This theory, also known as Molinism,^[8] holds a special view about the nature of divine foreknowledge. God, according to Molinism, not only knows beforehand all the actual decisions that will be made by his free creatures; he also knows what any such creature would have done in any possible situation with which she might have been confronted, even if the choice is never actually made. (The statements describing these hypothetical free choices are nowadays referred to as “counterfactuals of freedom.”) Right from the very beginning, this theory struck me as being entirely implausible. When a person makes a free choice, it seemed (and still seems) to me, there is nothing whatever either in the circumstances involved or in the nature and character of the chooser that determines in advance the decision that will be made. So if God knows such a choice, it is the actual choosing itself that he knows, and nothing else. But if the choice is never in fact made, then there is no “actual choosing,” and thus nothing for God to know. And this perspective has remained with me ever since, through all my later study and criticism of the theory.

It was in 1973, at a summer institute in the philosophy of religion held in Grand Rapids, that I first became aware of Nelson Pike’s argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. The argument at once struck me as extremely compelling, and I have never wavered from that first impression. None of the ingenious ways of evading the argument has seemed to me at all satisfactory. Without doubt my acceptance of Pike’s argument was facilitated by the presence in my thinking of divine timelessness as a plausible back-up position. Surely, I thought, there can’t be anything unorthodox about believing that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will, when Thomas Aquinas held the very same view?

Over the next several years, however, the difficulties involved in divine timeless eternity began to press in on me. When I began to write a paper exploring the difficulties of this doctrine,^[9] I fully expected to find in the doctrine some insuperable logical incoherence which would render it untenable. As I worked through the paper, however, I was impressed to find that plausible, apparently coherent answers could be crafted to meet all of the logical difficulties that presented themselves. The result was that, in my thinking, timelessness got a reprieve; the article ends in an indecision which was a true reflection of my state of mind at the time.

The reprieve, however, was only temporary; it came to an end with the rejection of timelessness in my 1989 book God, Time, and Knowledge.^[10] I still regard the doctrine of timelessness as coherent and intelligible–or at least, I don’t think it has been shown to be incoherent or unintelligible. But divine timelessness, for reasons I will explain presently, does not help any more than simple foreknowledge in enabling us to understand God’s actions in providence and prophecy. It clearly is not the biblical way of thinking about God; it can be read into a few biblical texts only after we have already settled, on other grounds, that this is the way God must be understood. For me personally, however, the decisive consideration was that a timeless God would be able to know us human beings only as timeless representations in his “eternal present”; this, it seems to me, detracts seriously from the personalism and intimacy which are so important to our relationship with God. My conclusion at this point is that the doctrine of timelessness is inadequately motivated apart from a neoplatonic-inspired metaphysic that few Christian philosophers, at this juncture, can bring themselves to embrace.

And this brings us down to the present. If God is not all-determining, as the Calvinists think, if he does not possess middle knowledge, as urged by the Molinists, if he does not possess “simple foreknowledge” of the actual future, and if, like us, he experiences the passage of time moment by moment and not all at once in the “eternal now,” then it follows ineluctably that God’s knowledge of the future, incomparably greater though it is than any knowledge we could possess, is not the complete, certain, and infinitely detailed knowledge posited by most of the theological tradition. Though this conclusion is not one that I am now reluctant about, it was arrived at with considerable reluctance and after extended reflection, as I trust the foregoing narrative has made clear. What remains is to work out the implications of this-and that is what we have tried to do in The Openness of God.

Section III

What, then, are the implications of this view of God for our understanding of providence?^[11] According to the open view of God, God is strictly omnipotent, in that he is able to do anything which is logically possible, and consistent with God’s perfect nature. It is worth stressing that God as so conceived is in no way deficient in power as compared with God as viewed by Calvinism.^[12] We hold that God is completely capable of creating a universe, every detail of whose history is solely determined by his sovereign decree. But it seems to us that a wise and good God would not want-and in fact, has not chosen-to create a universe such as this. We in turn would ask the Calvinist, “Is God as you conceive him unable to create a world in which there are free creatures who voluntarily enter into a relationship of love and friendship with him? Or does he prefer a world in which he alone monopolizes control, leaving nothing to be decided by his creatures? And why should we think that he would prefer a world like that?”

God is also omniscient, in that he knows everything that logically can be known. We believe, however, that it is logically impossible for God to have foreknowledge of creaturely actions that are truly free. (An argument for this will be given below.) Note, however, that God has a vast amount of knowledge about the probabilities that free choices will be made in one way rather than another. To be sure, God could have created a world in which he would have full foreknowledge of every detail, simply by creating a world in which everything that happens is fully controlled by his sovereign decrees. But it seems to us that God found such a world less desirable-less appealing to his creative goodness-than a world which contains genuinely free creatures.

We believe that the open view of God has important advantages over alternative views (such as Calvinism and Molinism) in conceiving our personal relationship with God. God knows an immense amount about each one of usfar more, in fact, than we know about ourselves-but he does not, because he cannot, plan his actions towards us on the basis of a prior knowledge of how we will respond. That is to say: he is not a manipulator, relating to us by “pressing the right buttons” to get the exact response he desires to elicit. And this means that God is a risk-taker; in expressing his love towards us, he opens himself up to the real possibility of failure and disappointment. God doesn’t, of course, “need” us in all of the ways we need one another, but he does genuinely and deeply care about us; he is saddened when we reject his love, and rejoices when one of us turns to him in repentance and faith.

We believe that the open view of God is substantially better off than alternative views in dealing with the problem of evil. According to this view God knows that evils will occur, but he has not for the most part specifically decreed or incorporated into his antecedent plan the individual instances of evil. Rather, God’s governance of the world is primarily in terms of general strategies, strategies which are, as a whole, ordered for the good of the creation, but whose detailed consequences are not foreseen or intended by God prior to the decision to adopt them. As a result of this, we are able to abandon the difficult doctrine of “meticulous providence,” ^[13] and to admit the presence in the world of particular evils God’s permission of which is not the means of bringing about any greater good or preventing any equal or greater evil. And this, we believe, is an important advantage for our view as compared with others.

Criticisms of the openness-of-God theory typically claim that God as we conceive him would be unable to do the kinds of things that Scripture represents God as doing. One such complaint deals with the subject of prophecy-if God doesn’t know everything about the future, how can he tell us about it? Obviously a full discussion of this topic is beyond our present scope (and also beyond my competence), so I must limit myself to a few summary remarks. We have available to us three different ways of understanding biblical prophecies, consistent with God’s openness to the future. Some prophecies-perhaps more than have generally been so recognized^[14]–are conditional on the actions of human beings. Others are predictions based on existing trends and tendencies, while still others are announcements of what God himself intends to bring about irrespective of the choices made by creaturely agents. We believe (though I cannot argue here in detaiI^[15]) that these approaches can lead one to a satisfying understanding of the phenomena of biblical prophecy. We will take time to consider here just one more objection against the open view of God. It is sometimes asserted that God as we conceive him would not be able to ensure the fulfillment of his plan even in the most general respects. If every single human being has it in her power to accept or reject God’s offer of salvation, and if God has no advance knowledge of how a person will respond, then it would be possible for every person without exception to reject salvation-and if this were to occur, there would be no “people of God,” no Church, and a key element in God’s plan would be frustrated. As things actually stand, to be sure, this has not happened, but it could have happened; that it has not, is attributable to nothing but “God’s luck.”

To answer this fully, we should have to know exactly what methods and resources are available to God in his providential governance of the world. But this is something we certainly do not know, and cannot expect to know-and without it, any answer to the objection must be based on speculation. We certainly should not underestimate the tremendous resourcefulness of God in adapting his responses to human actions even willful and disobedient human actions-so as to achieve his wise and loving purposes. But even if it is possible, on the open view of God, for all human beings without exception to reject salvation, still this might be overwhelmingly improbable o improbable that the risk of such an outcome is negligible. Consider a parallel: According to modem physics, there is a finite probability that all of the oxygen in a room should concentrate itself in a small volume, leaving the rest of the room devoid of oxygen and unable to sustain life. But the probability of this happening is so minute that rational persons can and do disregard the possibility in conducting their lives; I am completely confident that not a single one of my readers goes about with bottled oxygen in order to protect himself in the event of such an occurrence’ So why should our inability to show how God can logically guarantee that humans will respond to his love constitute a serious objection?

I will bring this discussion to a close by calling some arguments to your attention. First, let us consider an argument for the claim that comprehensive divine foreknowledge and human free will are logically inconsistent. The idea, roughly, is this: If God knows already what will happen in the future, then God’s knowing this is part of the past and is now fixed, impossible to change. And since God is infallible, it is completely impossible that things will turn out differently than God expects them to. But this means that the future event God knows is also fixed and unalterable, and it cannot be true of any human being that she is both able to perform a certain action and able not to perform that action. If God knows she is going to perform it, then it is impossible that she fail to perform it–so, she does not have a free choice whether or not to perform it. There are dozens of different versions of this argument; one of my favorites concerns a certain Clarence, known to be addicted to cheese omelets. Will Clarence have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow morning, or won’t he? The argument proceeds as follows:

1. It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Premise)
2. It is impossible that God should at any time believe^[16] what is false, or fail to believe anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)
3. God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow. (From 1,2)
4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise: the unalterability of the past)
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3,4)
6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one. (From 2)
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5,6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free choice.
8. (From the definition of free Will)^[17]

What this argument shows is that it is logically impossible that God should have foreknowledge of a genuinely free action. It follows from this that if there are actions which are free in the libertarian sense, it is logically impossible for God to know in advance how such actions will turn out. And in the light of our definition of omniscience, God’s failure to know what logically cannot be known in no way detracts from God’s omniscience. As soon as these truths become available, God will be the first to know them! (On the other hand, the definition of omniscience given in step 2 of the argument above is faulty, because it fails to allow for the possibility of truths which are intrinsically unknowable.)

Since it is out of the question to address all of the alternatives to the open view, my final two arguments will be directed primarily at what may be the most commonly accepted approach to these matters, the theory of “simple foreknowledge.” This theory accepts libertarian free will (unlike Calvinism), and rejects middle knowledge, but holds that God has complete and certain knowledge of the actual future.

Clearly there are reasons for the popularity of such an approach. It avoids the immense theological difficulties of Calvinism, and the logical and metaphysical perplexities of Molinism, yet it upholds what many perceive to be the irreducible minimum for an adequate doctrine of omniscience and foreknowledge. I maintain, however, that the advantages of this theory are less than meet the eye. In particular, there are no benefits whatever for our understanding of divine providence, of God’s action in the world, from the affirmation of simple foreknowledge. Let me explain why. Suppose God knows, in exhaustive detail, exactly what the situation on the earth will be as of a particular future date-say, April 11, 2003. Suppose, also, that there is something about that situation that displeases God-something he would wish to make otherwise. Could God not then act, at some time prior to the date in question, so as to bring about a situation on April 11, 2003, that is more in accord with his purposes? A little reflection will show this thought to be incoherent. For the future God knows is, by supposition, the actual future for that date; the supposition that God then acts so that what he knows to be the actual future is in fact not the actual future makes no sense at all. Reflection on this and similar scenarios will lead us to see that it is impossible that God should use a foreknowledge derived from the actual occurrence of future events to determine his own prior actions in the providential governance of the world. If simple foreknowledge did exist, it would be useless.^[18]

Let me add a couple of comments concerning the application of this argument. First, notice that it applies equally to simple foreknowledge and to the doctrine of divine timelessness. The argument makes no use of the fact that God knows the future before it occurs; the difficulty arises from the circularity in which knowledge of a later event is the basis for God’s action at a time prior to the event in question. Thus the knowledge of the future possessed by a timeless God, like that of a God with simple foreknowledge, would be providentially useless.

The second point is one which, I now realize,^[19] has not been stressed sufficiently in my previous discussions of this argument. Included among the range of divine actions which, according to the argument, could not be based on foreknowledge of events still to come, is the action of inspiring a prophet to predict the future.^[20] The giving of a prophecy is just as much an action as the causing of a plague, and can have effects that are equally great; indeed, the prophets were inspired to speak as they did precisely in order to cause their hearers to act in ways they otherwise would not have. So any problem about prophecy that may exist for the open view applies also to simple foreknowledge and divine timelessness. To gain relief from such problems (if relief is really needed), your only recourse is to turn to Molinism or Calvinism.

The final argument I’ll present is targeted specifically at those of you who accept most features of the open view, but can’t bring yourselves to give up simple foreknowledge. You hold, as we do, that God is temporal and genuinely responsive. And you believe, like us but unlike Thomas Aquinas, that God’s compassion really is compassion and not just compassionate actions carried out against a divine emotional background of imperturbable tranquility But for whatever reason, you balk at giving up total divine foreknowledge. Let me say, first of all, that we openness-of-God believers regard you already as much more an ally than an opponent. What unites us truly is far more important than what divides us; in this context, the debate over foreknowledge and free will comes to seem more a fascinating logical conundrum than a fundamental theological watershed. Still, the difference remains, and we would like to persuade you to come the rest of the way and join us. The previous argument shows that your view doesn’t confer some of the benefits you may have supposed; the argument I’m about to present exhibits a positive advantage of the open view of God.

An important characteristic of the open view is that it takes seriously what we may term the “emotional life of God”-in Abraham Heschel’s term, the divine “pathos.” To be sure, a flatly literal reading of the biblical descriptions of God’s emotions is implausible; surely there is much here of anthropomorphism-or, more precisely, “anthropopathism.” Nevertheless, when we read that “As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him” (Ps. 103:13), we take this for a true description of the inner life of God. Now I submit that many of these descriptions exhibit the following two characteristics: (1) The emotion ascribed to God is connected with, and appropriate to, the particular situation of the human beings to whom God is related; and (2) the emotion would be profoundly different if we assumed it to be informed by a definite prior knowledge of the situation’s outcome. To take a single example, consider the well-loved parable of the Prodigal Son. As we know, the “waiting father” in the parable represents God, and the father’s longing for his son’s return-an experience to which many a human parent can relate-represents the heavenly Father’s longing for the return of an estranged sinner. And then the son appears, and “while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The father’s joy at this reunion is crucial for the parable as a whole. As Richard Rice observes, “the thrill of recovery is quite different from the satisfaction of a predictable achievement. . . . Losing something of value can inflict enormous pain. We feel the threat of permanent deprivation. The uncertainty as we search or wait to get it back can be agonizing. And then, if we’re fortunate, the moment of recovery brings a rush of surprise, relief and joy” (Openness, p. 41).

Now let’s try retelling the parable on the assumption that the father possesses foreknowledge of the outcome-he knows just when, where, and how his son will reappear. The father is still unhappy over his son’s absence, of course; to lose him from the family even for a limited time is a sad affair. But the father is spared any deep anxiety, nor will he stand day after day peering out in the hope that his son will reappear. Instead, on the appointed day he checks the calendar, glances at the sundial, and instructs the family retainer to break out the chariot: “Sonny will be showing up real soon now.” The whole emotional content of the parable is profoundly altered.

I wouldn’t expect this argument to have force for a classical theist like Anselm 123 or Aquinas. For them, all references to divine emotions are a mere manner of speaking, a way of communicating in terms of human-like emotions some distant reflection of the truth about a God who in reality is far above that sort of thing. But if, like me, you think God really does have an emotional life, then you may also feel you have some stake in being able to say that the emotions attributed to God in Scripture are emotions he really experiences. If that is what you want, the open view of God can give it to you-and so far as I can see, it is the only view that can.

^[1] In this selection William Hasker develops some themes from the book, The Openness of God, Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, III.: InterVarsity, 1994). 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 view” of God. He then summarizes various stances on the nature of God’s providential governance of the world, and concludes with some arguments designed to show the advantages of the open view of God over its competitors. Mr. Hasker is Professor of Philosophy at Huntington College and former editor of Christian Scholar’s Review.

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[1] See his chapter in The Grace of God, Will of Man (edited by Pinnock) where he describes his theological pilgrimage.
[2] See The Grace of God, The Will of Man, 19 and Barry Callen’s intellectual biography Clark H. Pinnock: Journey Toward Renewal,100.
[3] It is common for evangelical theologians to say they finite and potentially fallible but they rarely apply this to their own theologizing.
[4] Pinnock, “Evangelical Theology in Progress,” in Introduction to Christian Theology, ed. Roger Badham (Westminster John Knox, 1998), 79.
[5] Pinnock wanted an evangelical theology which was faithful to the scriptures, sympathetic to traditions, alert to the life of piety, and made use of the best learning of the day.
[6] One of Nicole’s arguments was that if God actually changed the divine mind as open theists claimed, then God was not perfect and made errors in judgment. If so, then God could not guarantee biblical inerrancy.
[7] For interviews with open theists and a telling of the controversy see Larry Witham’s The God Biographers: Our Changing Image of God from Job to the Present (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010), chapters 8-9.

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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 Openness of God. That the book had immediate impact is indicated by the fact that it placed eighth in the Christianity Today book of the year awards and that in January of 1995, Christianity Today reviewed the book with not just one but four reviewers.[1] The lead review asked some good questions and was generally favorable but the other three absolutely trashed the book. In a February 1998 article in Christianity Today, Tom Oden wrote: “The fantasy that God is ignorant of the future is a heresy that must be rejected. . . .”[2] John Piper, a prominent pastor in the Baptist General Conference, used Oden’s hersey comment to argue that Greg Boyd, a professor of theology at Bethel College in Saint Paul and pastor in the BGC, should be fired from the college and his pastoral credentials revoked. A great deal of time and energy was spent in this attempt. A board of inquiry was formed that ultimately found Boyd within the boundaries of BGC doctrine. At the1999 and 2000 annual meetings of the BGC resolutions were introduced to remove Boyd but they failed.
The Calvinist critics of openness had some success in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1999 they introduced a resolution on divine foreknowledge that the delegates approved to include as a revision to the Baptist Faith and Standard. In 2000 the SBC approved the following: God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.  However, these changes were not ratified by a number of state conventions, most notably the Texas convention, which is the largest. After the 1999 resolution in the SBC a February 7, 2000 editorial in Christianity Today titled “God vs. God” exhorted the critics of open theism to continue to debate rather than seek political means to squelch it. Evangelical critics of open theism were outraged at the editorial, questioning whether Christianity Today could be trusted any longer.
 
When the evangelical publishers, Baker and InterVarsity Presses, decided to publish more books by open theists, accusations were made that such presses could no longer be trusted to produce only works fit for evangelical consumption. One high-profile critic, who has several books published with Baker, threatened to withdraw all his books if Baker went ahead with its plans to publish a book by an open theist. They published the book. This provoked the neo-fundamentalist magazine, World, to publish a scathing attack on open theism and Baker Books. Virulent and inaccurate critiques of openness appeared in the September 1999 issue of Modern Reformation with the theme: “God in Our Image” and in the March 2001 issue of Christianity Today titled “God at Risk.”
However, in May and June of 2001 Christianity Today published a series of e-mail exchanges on openness between Chris Hall and me titled “Does God Know Your Next Move?” This finally allowed a proponent of openness to explain the position to a large evangelical readership. The editors at the magazine must be given credit for allowing this theological debate to continue in the face of intense pressure to cut it off at the knees.
Other critiques of openness appeared in the winter 2002 edition of Contact, the news magazine of Gordon-Conwell Seminary and in the March 2003 issue of Moody magazine.
In 2001 some pastors in the denomination that owns Huntington College organized an attempt to have me removed from the college. Over a two year period I faced a board of inquiry and expended a tremendous amount of energy coping with the numerous political maneuvers of my opponents.
During this time opponents of openness worked to get open theists expelled from membership in the Evangelical Theological Society (a predominately Calvinistic, conservative evangelical, group that desires to speak for all evangelicalism). At the 2000 annual meeting the Executive Committee announced that the theme for the following year, “Defining Evangelicalism’s Boundaries” would include an examination of open theism. At the 2001 meeting over three dozen papers were read on openness. At an ad hoc business meeting the majority of the membership endorsed the following resolution: “We believe the Bible clearly teaches (emphasis mine) that God has complete, accurate and infallible knowledge of all events past, present and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents.” The June 2002 issue of the journal of the society was dedicated to a discussion of open theism.
At the 2002 meeting Roger Nicole, one of the founding members of the society, formally charged Clark Pinnock and me with violating the doctrinal statement of the society by our denial that God possessed exhaustive definite foreknowledge. He charged that this implied that we denied the truth of scripture. The members voted to have the Executive Committee hold a formal hearing, which was done in October of 2003. The Committee decided that Pinnock was not guilty of the charge but that I was. The reason centered on the truth value of statements about the future actions of free creatures. I said they are only probabilities, not certainties. For them, any biblical statement about the future must be true in the sense that it is a certain fact to occur. It seems to me that such a view presupposes the stasis theory of time which open theists reject. Pinnock was exonerated because when asked about his stand on this matter he replied that he did not know much about such philosophical intricacies. Shortly before the 2003 annual meeting the faculty of the Southern Baptist seminaries passed resolutions against open theism. At the November ETS meeting a lengthy special business meeting was held. The “heavy hitters” of the Southern Baptists showed up and spoke strongly against open theism. The vote of the membership was 67% to retain Pinnock while 63% voted to remove me. However, this fell short of the required two-thirds needed for expulsion. I think the vote represents the fact that Executive Committee voted for Pinnock and against me due to the philosophical issues. One way to read this vote is that 1/3 of the members voted to expel us no matter what the recommendation of the Executive Committee was, another third voted to keep us no matter what the recommendation of the Executive Committee was, and the final third were swing votes that went with the recommendation of the Executive Committee. Hence, the ETS is very split on the matter.
Clearly, open theism has become a hot topic within evangelicalism. I am aware of nineteen books from evangelical publishers alone, dozens of journal articles, and over seventy conference papers. That open theism has struck a raw nerve with neoevangelical Calvinists can be seen in the titles of the books against open theism: God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God, The Battle for God, Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, God’s Lesser Glory: the Diminished God of Open Theism, No Other God, and, from one of my former professors,  Creating God in the Image of Man.
At the end of his 1995 review of The Openness of God in Christianity Today, Roger Olson asked whether American evangelicals have “come of age enough to avoid heresy charges and breast-beating jeremiads in response to a new doctrinal proposal that is so conscientiously based on biblical reflection rather than on rebellious accommodation to modern thought? This may be the test.” Ten years later, I wonder how Professor Olson would score the test.
 
Why is OT so threatening to some evangelicals?
1. Why have Calvinist evangelicals reacted so strongly? Why the brouhaha?
1.1   Open theists have presented the most acute criticism of, and alternative to, meticulous providence (theological determinism) in quite some time. Open theism has raised some extremely important points about Classical theism such as the inability of the God of Classical theism to respond to what we do or be affected by our prayers. Open theists have exposed these drawbacks and the proponents of meticulous providence know that their model simply will not sell in, for instance, many evangelical circles. It is no surprise that virtually all of the railing accusations and virulent rhetoric have come from proponents of meticulous providence.
1.2  The hermeneutical issues raised in the debate have undermined the sense of certainty that some evangelicals desire to obtain in handling scripture. This leads to a crisis of authority. Who is right? How do we settle what is correct? Who has the right to determine what is acceptable for evangelicals to believe? This is the issue of “control” over institutions and whose theological legacy will be continued. This is why, in my opinion, this theological discussion is so politicized.
1.3  For some, it seems to undermine their confidence in divine providence.
 

[1] Also, it is now in its twelfth printing indicating that it continues to have an impact.
[2] Christianity Today, (February 2, 1998): p. 46.

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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 as impassibility and timelessness. In the 1980’s Clark Pinnock and a few evangelical theologians began to publicly criticize some of these same attributes of God. Since the publication of The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God in 1994, the debate has increased in intensity. Some defenders of “evangelical orthodoxy” have sought to discredit this position through the use of caustic rhetoric, labeling the view “Socinianism,” making charges of “heresy,” accusations that we are “creating God in the image of man,” and even a crusade in the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist General Conference to rewrite the doctrinal statement of the denominations in order to exclude this position.[1] Why this strong reaction? What is so dangerous and threatening about this view of the divine nature? A recent editorial in Christianity Today highlighted this controversy and requested that classical theists and open theists begin a constructive dialogue.

To explore these issues and engage in dialogue I will first summarize the nature of God according to the openness perspective. Following this, the accusations against the view will be examined; particularly the charge that it is not “classical theism.” This will lead to a discussion clarifying the definition of classical theism, distinguishing it from other varieties of theism. It is hoped that this will provide a consistent nomenclature for the discussion surrounding the different versions of theism. Finally, I will conclude with a number of observations regarding the debate, most importantly, that Openness is Christian Theism. Hopefully, this paper will help clarify the terminology and the categories so that this debate can move forward in a constructive way.

A.    The character and attributes of God according to Openness.

The Open view arises out of the longstanding stream of the tradition which affirms libertarian freedom, conditional election, that our prayers can affect God, and utilizes the freewill defense. Hence, it finds much agreement with the early fathers, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Arminian and Wesleyan traditions, as well as proponents of simple foreknowledge. The openness model is an attempt to provide a more biblically faithful, rationally coherent, and practically satisfying account of God and the divine-human relationship from within this tradition.

What is Openness theology? To begin, the triune God of love has, in almighty power, created all that is and is sovereign over all. In freedom God decided to create beings capable of experiencing the triune love. God loves us and desires for us to enter into reciprocal relations of love with the triune godhead as well as our fellow creatures. In creating us the divine intention was that we would come to experience the triune love and respond to it with love of our own and  freely come to collaborate with God towards the achievement of God’s goals. Second, God has, in sovereign freedom, decided to make some of his actions contingent upon our requests and actions. God establishes a project and elicits our free collaboration in it. Hence, there is conditionality in God for God truly responds to what we do. God genuinely interacts and enters into dynamic give-and-take relationships with us.  Third, the only wise God  has chosen to exercise general rather than meticulous providence, allowing space for us to operate and for God to be creative and resourceful in working with us. God has sovereignly chosen not to control every detail that happens in our lives. Fourth, God has granted us the libertarian freedom necessary for a truly personal relationship of love to develop. Despite the fact that we have abused our freedom by turning away from the divine love, God remains faithful to his intentions for creation. Finally, the omniscient God knows all that is logically possible to know. God knows the past and present with exhaustive definite knowledge and knows the future as partly definite and partly indefinite. God’s knowledge of the future contains knowledge of what God has decided to bring about unilaterally (that which is definite), knowledge of possibilities (that which is indefinite) and those events which are determined to occur (e. g. an asteroid hitting a planet).

God established a covenant with the creation, making a fundamental commitment to its well being and to seeing the project through to completion. The commitment to love his creatures and bring them into a reciprocal relationship of love is fundamental to God. Once sin enters the scene God does not jettison the covenant, but, instead, responds to this development with a strategy for redeeming the situation.[2] The flexibility of the divine strategies does not imply a change in the fundamental commitment, but it does mean that God reacts to contingencies, taking them into account in order to fulfill the goal of his project. God remains faithful to his original purpose even while adjusting plans to take into account the decisions of his free creatures. Moreover, God is endlessly resourceful and competent in working towards the fulfillment of his ultimate goals. Sometimes God alone decides how to accomplish these goals. On other occasions, God works with human decisions, adapting his own plans to fit the changing situation. God establishes general commitments and is free to decide some specific future actions that he will undertake. Hence, the future is partly open or indefinite and partly closed or definite. It is not the case that just anything may happen for God has acted in history to bring about events in order to achieve his unchanging purpose. Graciously, however, God invites us to collaborate with him to bring the future into being.

Furthermore, God’s plan is not a detailed script but a broad intention that allows for a variety of options regarding precisely how it may be reached. “The divine plan,” says Jacques Maritain, “is not a scenario prepared in advance, in which free subjects would play parts and act as performers. We must purge our thought of any idea of a play written in advance.”[3] Some things are fixed while others are contingent. What God and people do in history matters. For example, if the Hebrew midwives had feared Pharaoh rather than God and killed all the baby boys it would be a different story than the one we have. Moses’ refusal to return to Egypt prompted God to resort to plan B, allowing Aaron to do the public speaking instead of Moses; altering what God had in mind. What people do and whether they come to trust God makes a difference concerning what God does–God does not fake the story of human history.

It should be clear by now that Openness affirms general providence, not meticulous or specific sovereignty. God governs the world through general strategies that are designed for the overall good of the creatures, but God does not tightly control every decision or action. One implication of this is that God does not intend each and every instance of evil so there is gratuitous evil—evil which does not lead to a greater good. Hence, God is, for some things, a risk taker. But this risk taking is not for the sake of human freedom as though libertarian freedom was the highest intrinsic good.[4] Instead, the risk is for the sake of love. God wants us to freely enter into a loving relationship with him in response to the divine love granted us. But since love cannot be forced, libertarian freedom is necessary as an instrumental good. Creating these sorts of conditions places great responsibility on human agents to care for one another and the creation. God has delegated certain responsibilities to us and holds us accountable in such matters as racism, evangelism, care for the poor, and stewardship of the land.

All this talk of divine flexibility, adaptability, and risk taking should not be understood, however, to imply that the being of God changes. God remains unchanging in his essence, in his love, wisdom, faithful-freedom, and power, but God can and does change in his relationship towards us in regard to his thoughts, actions, and emotions. This may leave some of you wondering about God’s aseity so let me address that. According to Openness, the triune God is self-sufficient and did not need to create in order to love for the trinity experiences and manifests the fullness of love.[5] In loving freedom the triune God decides to create creatures with whom to share this agape love. The creation should be seen as the result of the sovereign openness of God towards others. A God who is antecedently relational and self-sufficient is free to create significant others and enter into genuine reciprocal relations with them. The triune God as both lover and beloved is free to take the gracious initiative in both creation and incarnation of opening the love of the godhead to others

In summary, the openness model highlights these attributes and actions of God: Triunity, free creator, loving, wise, faithfully free, almighty, glorious, holy and righteous, merciful and longsuffering savior who redeems us through the work of the incarnate Son, who is present and absent, responsive and interactive, planning and purposive, everlasting, and passible. In particular, Jesus is our model of God for he is the exact representation of the divine nature and the one who has seen him knows what the Father is like (Heb 1:3; John 14:6).

B.    What is so Repugnant about this Description of God?

One of the main objections has been that it is not “classical theism” or “traditional Christian theism.” The implication is that there has been only one view on these matters in the history of the church. Unfortunately, even I have helped to foster this error in my own writings speaking of “the traditional view.” However, what I meant by “traditional” was the view that affirms that God is impassible, immutable, pure act, who determines what occurs. Of course, any survey of Christian thought reveals that Christians have disagreed on these issues. Actually, there exist several traditional views. In order to clarify matters I will examine the nomenclature in order to see whether or not Openness is compatible with classical or any form of traditional theism.

C.   What is Christianity Simpliciter or Historic Christianity?

First, we should inquire about Christianity per se. How should we define “Christianity Simpliciter.” Many have used the Apostles’ Creed as a helpful summary of historic Christianity. Or, we might articulate the Christian story as follows: God creates and provides for us creatures, works through Israel to bring about the redemption of the world from sin, becomes incarnate in Jesus and makes atonement for us via the cross and resurrection, the Holy Spirit works to draw us and all of our relationships into the divine life, and the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will culminate in the eschaton bringing about a new heaven and earth.[6] Proponents of Openness affirm both definitions and so align themselves with Christianity Simpliciter. These definitions are based on God’s activity in salvation history rather than a philosophical analysis. Put bluntly, it is about the Christian God, not about a generic “theism” with which Judaism, Islam, and even some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism find agreement!

D.   Varieties of Traditional Theism

Nevertheless, many critics of Openness draw heavily upon philosophical rather than distinctively Christian categories so I shall examine the debate from this angle as well. A taxonomy of theisms:

1.     Theism Simpliciter (TS): God is a personal being, worthy of worship, self-existent, the free creator (ex nihilo) of all that is not God, separate from the world (and is immaterial), sustains the world, continually active in it, perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal. This definition is from H. P. Owen, a recognized authority on the topic, and it has become commonplace in the philosophical literature.[7] One item I would add, however, is that God can unilaterally act in and even control earthly affairs should he so desire. There are two items I would like for you to note. (1) Theism Simpliciter is not to be equated with Christianity since there is nothing in the definition regarding the person and work of Jesus. This is a generic definition of “God” affirmed by most Christians, Jews, Muslims and some Hindus. (2) Although this definition rules out process theology, deism, finite godism, it does not provide us with any particular understanding of divine providence. We have to get more specific before our definition of God impacts our understanding of providence.

2      Classical Theism (CT) God is a se, simple, immaterial, immutable, impassible, timeless, necessary, personal, pure act, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good. Charles Hartshorne appears to have coined the term, “classical theism” to designate the view of God developed by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers.[8] Now we have enough specificity in our definition of the divine attributes to impact our understanding of providence.

2.1  God is timeless (no before or after for God, only an eternal present).

2.2  Immutable: God does not change in any respect including thoughts, will, or emotions. The divine plan is unchanging.

2.3   Impassibile: God cannot be affected by creatures. God never responds or reacts to what we do. Our prayers never affect God, rather God uses our prayers to effect what he desires to bring about through our prayers. There are no reciprocal relations between God and creatures.[9] God is closed to us.

2.4   Specific sovereignty: Only what God specifically ordains to occur, happens and everything which happens has been specifically ordained by God to happen. (Proponents of this view typically affirm compatibilistic freedom for humans in which you are free so long as you act on your desires, but your desires are determined.)

2.5   God has a meticulous blueprint for everything that happens in history.

2.6   The divine will cannot fail or be thwarted in any detail. God never takes risks.   In soteriology this leads to the doctrines of unconditional election and irresistible grace.

2.7   God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) because God determines what the future will be, not because God timelessly previsions the future.

This view has been widely held by some of the most important thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many critics of the Openness of God claim that it is incompatible with Classical Theism and so cannot be Christian because they equate Christianity with Classical Theism. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Seminary, claims that open theism rejects the very foundation of Christianity.[10]  What is the foundation of Christianity? Mohler, Geisler, and John Piper claim that the Christian faith is built on a particular view of God known as “Classical theism.” It is commonly asserted that “all” orthodox Christians have affirmed this view of God. There are three errors here, however. (1) Classical Theism cannot be equated with Christianity for there is nothing distinctively Christian about it (some Jews and Muslims affirm it as well). (2) As we have seen, Openness affirms Christianity Simpliciter which is far older, historically, than Classical Theism. Since Classical Theism developed in the centuries after Christ, it cannot be the foundation of Christianity. This is a very troubling move on the part of these esteemed evangelicals for they are supplanting Christ with philosophy. (3) Classical Theism is often depicted as “the” traditional view of God but it is not since there are other traditional views of God within each of these religions. I now turn to a major tradition that is incompatible with Classical Theism as well.

1. Freewill Theism (FT) also called Relational Theism. This longstanding traditional view affirms all of theism simpliciter: God is a personal being, worthy of worship, self-existent, the free creator (ex nihilo) of all that is not God, separate from the world (and is immaterial), sustains the world, continually active in it, perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal. Moreover, it even includes some of the attributes of classical theism. However, it modifies or even rejects several key attributes such as immutability, pure actuality, and impassibility. Freewill theists affirm that humans have libertarian freedom, that God can be affected by creatures, and that God enters into genuine give-and-take relations with us. It is called relational theism because God enters into genuinely reciprocal relations with us. Consequently, Freewill Theism cannot be equated with Classical Theism. This position has been held by many Jewish, Christian, Islamic and even some Hindu thinkers. It is at least as old, if not older, than Classical Theism.

Freewill theism divides into two subsets:

3.1   Standard Freewill Theism (SFT). As the name implies, it affirms all of Freewill Theism. It retains some of the terms of classical theism such as timelessness but it  affirms libertarian freedom (the ability to do otherwise than you did) and that God is affected by creatures. In Christianity, this view has been affirmed by many of the early fathers, the Eastern Orthodox church, Arminians, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals.

3.11God is timeless (an eternal present for God).

3.12 Immutable: the character of God does not change, but God can change in will, thoughts and emotions.

3.13 Impassibile: God can be affected by creatures. God responds or reacts to what we do. This is especially seen the doctrine of conditional election.[11] Moreover, our prayers may affect God.

3.14 General sovereignty. God ordains the rules of the game and allows for human freewill (libertarian freedom).

3.15 Some SFT’s affirm a blueprint, but maintain that God is not causing all to happen.

3.16 The divine will can be thwarted. God takes risks.

3.17 God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) because God timelessly sees all that will happen. God does not determine all things to happen, yet, the future is completely definite.

3.2  Open Freewill Theism or Openness of God (OG): this version of freewill theism also affirms theism simpliciter and libertarian freedom, but unlike traditional freewill theism it rejects timelessness and exhaustive definite foreknowledge.

3.21 God is everlasting: even God has a before and an after. Time is real for God.

3.22  Agrees with the SFT regarding immutability, impassibility, and general                            sovereignty.

3.23 God does not have a blueprint for our lives. God does guide, but God wants a mutual, give-and-take relationship.

3.24 Some aspects of the divine will can be thwarted. God takes risks.

3.25 God does not have EDF. Rather, “presentism” where God knows all the past and present and that part of the future which is determined. Some of the future is definite and some is indefinite (yet to be decided).

Although openness is in the same stream of the tradition as SFT, it sees certain problems in SFT. Openness may be seen as an attempt to clear the freewill theistic  river of some snags and boulders to allow the river to flow more smoothly. In light of the foregoing definitions it is clear that Openness does not meet the criteria for being classified as Classical Theism. This is not a big deal, however, since no variety of Freewill Theism is a member of Classical Theism. There is a family squabble between Open Theism and Standard Freewill Theism regarding two divine attributes (eternality and EDF), but Openness is certainly a subset of Freewill Theism and is thus a member of Theism Simplicter. Even more importantly Openness affirms Christianity Simplicter! It upholds the historic Christianity represented in the Apostles’ Creed. In theological terms the taxonomy is:

Christianity Simplicter (divides into two main traditions)

1. “Augustinian/Calvinistic”tradition          2. The Freewill Tradition (two types)

2.1 “Arminianism”               2.2 Openness of God

Following the philosophical analysis of the divine attributes the taxonomy is:

Theism Simpliciter (divides into two main types)

1. Classical theism                           2. Freewill Theism (two types)

2.1 Standard Freewill Theism           2.2 Openness of God

E.    Comparison of the Attributes.

A chart of the differences between Classical Theism and the two forms of Freewill Theism

regarding the divine attributes and providence.

E. Conclusions.

1.     The Openness of God conceives of God as a tripersonal being who is essentially related, with no need to create any world, but who freely created a world in which humans are capable of experiencing the divine love and reciprocating that love. God is open to us. This God has acted in history, demonstrating his love, holiness, wisdom, faithfulness, resourcefulness, almightiness, patience, and perseverance.

2.     Both Open and Standard Freewill Theisms are forms of the Freewill Theistic tradition and so affirm Theism Simpliciter. Moreover, both affirm the historic Christianity Simpliciter as exemplified in the Apostles’ Creed, for instance. Consequently, Openness is within “traditional Christian Theism.”

3.     Classical Theism and Freewill Theism both affirm Theism Simpliciter as well as the trinity, incarnation and redemption in Jesus. Thus, Classic Theism has much in common with the Openness of God—a fact often downplayed. To his credit, Norman Geisler, acknowledges that open theism affirms many of the  “essential attributes of God” along with classical theism “including infinity, necessity, ontological independence, transcendence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence” and so it should be placed within the “broad spectrum of theism as opposed to panentheism (process theology).”[12]

4.     A serious error occurs when evangelical critics of Openness equate Classical Theism with Christianity Simpliciter. When this is done, it is obvious that Open Theism cannot be classified as Christian theism. However, what the critics fail to notice is that, by making this equation, they also exclude all forms of Freewill Theism, including Arminianism, from the category “Christian theism.” That is, Classical Theism does not include the extremely large freewill theistic tradition. Though Geisler first classifies Open Theism within the “broad spectrum of theism,” he latter says that Open Theism is a significant departure from “classical theism” and “traditional Christian theology” implying that openness theology is in disagreement with pretty much the entire Christian tradition. In fact, he says Open Theism does not “fit comfortably in the theistic category” after all since it denies “God’s immutability, eternality, simplicity, and pure actuality.”[13] What Geisler gives with his right hand he takes back with his left. Unfortunately, he fails to see that his criteria would also disqualify all forms of freewill theism including Arminianism since it cannot affirm immutability, simplicity, and pure actuality in the way Geisler defines them. In fact, traditional Arminianism fits most of the criteria for what Geisler calls “Neotheism.”[14]`

We are now in position to see what some evangelical critics of Open Theism are doing: equivocating on the term “Classical Theism.” They begin by equating the terms Classical Theism and Theism Simpliciter. Thus, their initial definition of “Classical Theism” is extremely general so that it includes just about all Western theists including “Arminians” or freewill theists and supposedly excluding Open Theists. They have a large umbrella sheltering just about everyone except Open Theists from the rain.  However, they later modify the definition of Classical Theism to the more precise one involving divine simplicity, timeless, immutability, and impassibility (strongly defined). However, this tactic has now been exposed and we can see that their umbrella is actually far too small to include Arminians or the entire tradition of Freewill Theism, thus leaving a very large segment of historical Christian theism out in the rain! When classical theism is defined in precise terms then clearly Openness is not Classical Theism. But then, neither is  Arminianism Classical Theism and if Classical Theism is equated with “Christianity,” then Arminians are not Christian!  What Geisler and others should do is follow the lead of Michael Horton and R. K. McGreggor Wright who candidly exclude all Freewill Theists, (which includes the Eastern Orthodox, Arminians, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals), from genuine Christianity.

5.     Well then, why do not all of the critics of Openness draw this conclusion? Because they confuse yet another issue. The two forms of Freewill Theism, Openness and Standard, agree on all the divine attributes except for two: (a) eternality and (b) foreknowledge. Whereas SFT defines divine eternality as timelessness, Openness understands it to be everlastingness. Both Openness and SFT affirm omniscience, God knows everything that can be known, but they disagree over exactly what of the future can be known. Whereas SFT affirms that God knows the future contingent actions of libertarianly free beings, Openness denies this, affirming presentism instead. SFT affirms that God possesses exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) of all contingent events while Openness claims that though some of the future is definite, some of the future is indefinite or undetermined.

5.1  If Openness and SFT differ only on these two attributes, why the strong reaction to openness from the evangelical Classical Theists? Some are upset by our denial of impassibilililty and strong immutability. But then, they should be equally upset at SFT since it denies these as well. Though our critics sometimes decry our rejection of timelessness, most often it is our rejection of EDF which receives the brunt of their caustic rhetoric.

5.2  However, if one wants to use EDF to exclude Openness from Christianity Simpliciter, then one is going to have to establish that EDF is one of the core doctrines of the Christian faith! There are several major problems with doing this, however.

5.2.1      EDF has never been part of any ecumenical creed or council. On what basis are we to place EDF as one of the core doctrines upon which Christianity stands or falls?

5.2.2      Though both Classical Theism and Standard Freewill Theism affirm EDF, they do so for very different reasons. In Classical Theism God knows the future because God determines the future—there is no contingency in God. For SFT, God knows the future because God “sees” what will happen—there is genuine conditionality in God. Divine conditionality is the watershed issue in this debate, not EDF.

5.2.3      Finally, if God’s EDF is based upon either simple foreknowledge or timeless knowledge, then foreknowledge is useless for providence. SFT affirms timeless foreknowledge of our future actions in order for God to use this knowledge for providential control. For example, it is thought that if God foresees that I’m going to marry Alisha which will result in a horrible marriage, then God can take the appropriate steps to bring it about that he guides me to actually marry Beatrice instead. But this “solution” does not work at all! According to simple foreknowledge or timeless knowledge, God has only true knowledge of our future; what God “foresees” is the actual world—which events will actually occur in history. If God foresees what will actually occur, then God cannot bring it about that these events fail to occur since that would render his timeless knowledge false. If what God foresees is what actually happens—that I marry Alisha and have a horrible marriage—then God is powerless to stop it. The traditional Arminian understanding of foreknowledge is simply useless for divine providence.

5.3  Given this, the evangelical options regarding divine omniscience narrow to three: (a) the Determinism of Classical Theism where God has EDF because God determines the future; (b) Molinism or Middle Knowledge where God knows what we would do in any given situation (“counterfactuals of freedom”) in all feasible worlds. Once God chooses to create one of those worlds, then God knows what will actually occur in this world; (c) Presentism, God exhaustively knows the past, present, and that part of the future which is determined.

6.     One problem, committed by some Classical as well as Standard Freewill Theists, arises from the “pick and choose” method of affirming certain divine attributes of Classical Theism while rejecting others. For instance, when timelessness and unconditionedness are affirmed, but impassibility and immutability are rejected. However, esteemed Classical Theists such as Aquinas and Calvin clearly saw that the attributes of Classical Theism are a package deal. It is like a knit sweater, you cannot just have part of the sweater. Moreover, if you pull on one of the threads the sweater it begins to unravel. Begin tugging on impassibility, for instance, and God’s absolute unconditionedness unravels with it. Give up unconditionedness and immutability disappears along with timelessness. It is inconsistent to affirm some of these while rejecting others because the sweater simply falls apart. Geisler, John Piper, and J. I. Packer, for instance, are being inconsistent when they affirm the attributes of Classical Theism and also hold that God has feelings, is affected by our prayers, or that God can change his mind. Reformed philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff is correct that if God genuinely responds to us, then God is neither metaphysically immutable nor impassible; and if not immutable and impassible, then not timeless.[15] Divine timelessness is simply incompatible with divine possibility and a responding God. Evangelical Classical Theists should clearly communicate that our prayers never affect God in any way and that God does not have feelings. However, since such assertions run against the grain of much evangelical piety, it is not surprising that they draw back from the logical implications of their view.

7.     On the contemporary scene, there are three options for evangelical understandings of Providence. (A) The Augustinian/Calvinism with its all-determining God of Classical Theism who is not affected by our prayers and actions; who determines all that comes to pass (including sin and evil—for a greater good). (B) Molinism which attempts to combine libertarian freedom with divine control. (C) Freewill Theism with its God who enters into genuine give-and-take relations with creatures. Presently, there is an ongoing family squabble within Freewill Theism. Proponents of Openness believe that Standard Freewill Theism has some logical inconsistencies (e. g. affirming timelessness while denying impassibility). At the least, nobody has satisfactorily explained the metaphysics of a timeless God being affected by creatures. If SFT is actually useless regarding providence, then the options for evangelical views of providence are: Classical Theism, Molinism and the Openness of God. Since I believe that the Bible teaches that God is affected by us, responds to our prayers, enters into reciprocal relations of love with us, sometimes switches to plan B, and even changes his mind occasionally, Open Theism is the only game in town.

[1] See the reviews of the book in Christianity Today, (Jan. 9, 1995): 30-5; Robert Strimple, “What Does God Know?” in ed. John Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis (Moody Press, 1996); Norman Geisler, Creating God in the Image of Man? (Bethany, 1997); Modern Reformation (Sept. 1999); and the Baptist General Conference website.

[2] Even supporters of simple foreknowledge have to say that God atemporally either planned ahead for this contingency or responded to it in this way once God in foreknowledge “saw,” and thus “learned,” sin would occur.

[3] Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent, tr. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald Phelan (New York: Random House, 1966), 116.

[4] Here I am disagreeing with the emphasis some freewill theists place on libertarian freedom, or, at least the way they frame the issue.

[5] This is counter to the view of process theology which maintains that a world must exist in order for God to be relational. See the critique of Gregory A. Boyd, Trinity and Process: A Critical Evaluation and Reconstruction of Hartshorne’s Di-Polar Theism Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics (New York: Peter Lang, 1992).

[6] Note, however, that no particular understanding of divine providence is associated with this view. We have to get more specific before our definition of God shapes our understanding of providence.

[7] See his article “Theism” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and his  Concepts of Deity 150; see also Swinburne Coherence of Theism, 1).  A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Thomas Mautner (Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1996) p. 425 defines “theism” as Owen does.

[8] Hartshorne and Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, 1953  (see also Hartshorne’s article on panentheism in the Encyclopedia of Religion by Eliade, 1987).

[9] This is one of the main reasons why Donald Bloesch rejects Classical Theism. He says it cannot be “the God of the Bible.” (God The Almighty, p. 14)

[10] Mohler, “The Eclipse of God at Century’s End: Evangelicals Attempt Theology Without Theism,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 1 no. 1 (Spring, 1997): 10.

[11] It should be noted that some proponents of this view rejected the idea that God had emotions. Nonetheless, they believed that God does respond to us.

[12] Geisler, Creating God, 12 and 73.

[13] Geisler, Creating God, 73-4.

[14] Geisler, Creating God, 76-7.

[15] Wolterstorff, “Does God Suffer?” Modern Reformation (September, 1999): 45-7.

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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, even in the earlier work did not say that the early fathers were uncritical of Hellenistic philosophy. Rather, I said that they needed to be more critical on some issues pertaining to the divine attributes. I said that the fathers did not sell out to Hellenism and want to repeat that here. It was legitimate for them to work with the best Greek philosophical thinking of the day just as theologians today attempt to utilize the best learning in fields such as linguistics, psychology and philosophy. They desired to distinguish the Christian God from the gods of polytheism and though they found ideas in the philosophical discussions of deity useful for this end, they were also critical of various philosophical conceptions of divinity. However, I have changed my mind even more since 1998 concerning the degree to which the early church fathers were negatively influenced by Hellenistic philosophy.

One of the main obstacles for me had been the affirmation of divine impassibility by the fathers. From the middle ages to today, impassibility has generally meant that God is not affected by creatures. This had baffled me because these same fathers also said that God responded to our prayers, was compassionate, and even experienced changing emotions. It seemed to me that they contradicted themselves. I was not alone in reading the fathers in this way since this is the way the predominance of the secondary literature has interpreted them. However, Paul Gavrilyuk’s The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford, 2004) has helped me a great deal on this matter. According to Gavrilyuk, most of the early fathers did not have the stronger definition of impassibility in mind. Though there is no single definition of impassibility in the fathers, generally speaking they meant only that God could not suffer physically since God was not embodied or that God could not be forced to suffer or that God is not overcome by emotions as we are apt to do.

From the second through fourth centuries there was no standard definition of divine “impassibility.”[i] For Christian writers it did not mean that God was apathetic, distant, or lacked compassion. God did experience mercy and love. Christians disagreed with one another whether God experienced anger depending on whether or not they thought this emotion “fitting” for God. The word functioned in a couple of ways. First, it was a way of qualifying the distinction between creator and creatures. God is incorruptible while we are not. But we will be made impassible (incorruptible) in the eschaton. Also, we are prone to be overwhelmed by emotions, particularly negative ones, but God is not. Hence, it was used to safeguard divine transcendence (aseity) rather than deny psychological emotions to God. Second, it functioned to distance the Christian God from the gods of polytheism. They were passible in the sense that acted capriciously and lost control of themselves. In contrast, the Christian God faithfully loved, was patient, and acted consistently.[ii] Hence, it is clear that when the fathers said God was impassible they did not intend to rule out that he has emotions or that he is affected by and responds to us.

The Council of Nicea in 325 took up the matter and declared that the divinity of the Son was immutable. In its historical context this does not mean that God cannot change in any respect. Rather, the pronouncement occurs at the end of lengthy list of Arian statements including the famous “There was once when he was not.” The statement regarding divine immutability is there to safeguard the full divinity of the Son, not to rule out reciprocal relations between God and humans. After Nicea the question was raised as to the precise way in which Jesus is both human and divine. Apollinaris, Eutyches, Nestorius, Cyril and others tried to answer this and, once again, divine impassibility was a key issue.[iii] Cyril, whose view carried the day, seems to claim that only physical bodies can suffer and since God is not physical God cannot suffer. No one can stick a spear in God’s side. Consequently, the Son took on a complete human nature by which his humanity suffered while his divine nature did not. Cyril is not excluding emotions to God (though he does not think it appropriate to predicate “grief” or “sorrow” of God).[iv] Cyril’s position was endorsed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The preamble to the statement produced by the Council lists a number of views that are rejected: Nestorius, Arius, Eutyches, and Apollinaris. Of interest to this study is the condemnation of those who say the “Godhead of the only-begotten is passible.” In context, divine impassibility is used to safeguard the full divinity of the Son from Arianism and perhaps also monophysitism.[v] Overall, it seems they thought that anyone who said the divinity of the Son suffered implied that the Son was corporeal before the incarnation and therefore a creature. In conclusion, these Councils declare heretical those who say God is mutable and passible only if these doctrines are used to undermine the full divinity of Jesus.

This development is good news for it enhances the degree to which the openness model agrees with more of the tradition. Some have criticized openness for departing from “the” tradition and a few even called it “heresy.” A few responses are in order. First, “the” tradition is not singular for there are multiple streams. Those who accuse us of rejecting “the” tradition usually enshrine their own particular tradition as “the” tradition. Second, it is true that the vast majority of theologians have affirmed that God is timeless and has exhaustive definite foreknowledge. However, it is also true that the vast majority of theologians until about 1750 believed that all young children that died unbaptized (or without Christian parents) were damned to hell. Few believe that anymore. As was discussed earlier (2.3), traditions have erred and do change. Though there were few in the past who affirmed dynamic omniscience, today many orthodox Christian scholars hold it. Also, typically overlooked is how the doctrine of exhaustive foreknowledge has been used. I will seek to show that dynamic omniscience finds agreement with the purpose of the doctrine of exhaustive foreknowledge in the freewill tradition. Finally, regarding the charge of heresy it should be noted that no ecumenical council discussed this issue and a theory of omniscience has never been a test of orthodoxy.[vi]

[i] See Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, pp. 15-16, 48, 58, and 70.

[ii] For citations of the fathers on these meanings see ibid., Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 6-11 and Chris Hall, “The Church Fathers on Impassibility,” in John Sanders and Chris Hall Does God Have a Future? (Baker, 2003), pp. 109-112. Prestige (p. 7) seems to suggest that the fathers also meant that God was not affected by us, that our prayers do not affect God and that God never does anything in response to us. If so, then he goes too far.

[iii] See Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, chapter 6.

[iv] See Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, p. 162. Cyril says this would imply impotence in God.

[v] Those who said God suffered as a “mixed” being undermined the homoousios (one substance) of the Son with the Father who is impassible.

[vi] It is conservative evangelicals, usually Calvinists, who accuse open theists of “heresy.” Evangelicals are prone to use the H-bomb on each other. B. B. Warfield called the holiness view of providence heretical because it led to faith-healing movements. Machen called premillennialism “a very serious heresy.” Cornelius Van Til called Gordon Clark a heretic and Clark was tried for heresy at Wheaton College. E. J. Carnell called Fundamentalists “cultic,” “sectarian,” and “heretics.” Evangelicals have demonized other evangelicals over evolution, charismata, mega churches, worship styles, women in ministry, inerrancy, the millennium and, dialoging with Catholics to name but a few instances. See Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001), pp. 104-111 and my “On Heffalumps and Heresies: Responses to Accusations Against Open Theism” Journal of Biblical Studies [http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org] 2, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1-44.

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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 but will enlighten pastors and laypersons who struggle with questions about suffering, evil, and human free will.

From the author:

A relational understanding of divine sovereignty. This book further develops the model of God described in a previous book: “The Openness of God.” According to the openness model (or relational theism) the triune God of love creates beings designed to enter into the divine love and to reciprocate that love. God enters into genuine give-and-take relations with us such that God not only initiates, but God also is able to receive from us and be affected by us. Because love cannot be forced, God sovereignly decides to make himself vulnerable to those he loves–God takes the risk that we may not respond to the divine love with love of our own. God risks that we may not love God, other humans and care for the creation as we should. All this is in opposition to the no risk view of divine providence in which everything that occurs in our lives is exactly what God wanted to happen. In the risk view, God has sovereignly decided not to tightly control everything. Hence, some things happen which God does not want to happen but works to redeem these situations. In the risk model, our actions and prayers, or lack of them, genuinely make a difference regarding our relationship with God.

A constructive view of God, highlighting the divine wisdom, love, responsiveness, power and faithfulness, is developed in order to show how God resourcefully works in human lives, taking into account our actions and our prayers.

The book includes lengthy chapters covering the Old and New Testament materials showing that God’s revelation teaches this understanding. It also includes an overview of church history detailing how this model of God agrees and disagrees with other Christian thinkers. Next, it interacts with philosophical sources in order to clarify what is meant by risk, sovereignty, love, omnipotence, omniscience and human freedom. The book concludes with an in-depth application of this model of God to the Christian life: salvation, suffering and evil, why our prayers really matter, and guidance.

Does God Have a Future?: A Debate on Divine Providence

By Christopher A. Hall & John Sanders

The nature of God’s knowledge of the future, sparked by the openness of God debate, is perhaps the most controversial issue in evangelical circles today. It has generated much heated discussion in venues like the Evangelical Theological Society. This book counters such intense discourse by pairing Christopher Hall, who affirms the historic Christian or classical view, with John Sanders, one of the foremost proponents of the openness view. For over a year, Hall and Sanders engaged in a friendly yet penetrating e-mail exchange responding to one another’s questions and concerns about God’s providence and foreknowledge. This book is a compilation of those inquiring e-letters, offering equal handling of both the classical and openness views. Motivated by the belief that evangelicals must learn how to disagree without becoming divisive, they display their respect for each other while vigorously disagreeing about important issues. The e-mail format has produced a series of to-the-point exchanges that make this complex topic more accessible and far more instructive and digestible than a pair of pro-con essays would have been. As such, it is the ideal introduction to the contemporary debate. This book is an expanded version of a two-part article that appeared in Christianity Today in 2001. All those interested in a serious, balanced presentation of the openness debate, without unfair caricatures, will appreciate this theologically sophisticated yet accessible book.

The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment

By David Basinger

Can God intervene in this world, and if so, to what extent? If God intervenes, can we initiate such intervention by prayer? And if God can intervene, why is evil so persistent? Taking up such practical, but profound questions, a coauthor of the much-discussed The Openenness of God here offers a probing philosophical examination of freewill theism. This controversial view argues that the God of Christianity desires “responsive relationship” with his creatures. It rejects process theology, but calls for a reassessment of such classical doctrines as God’s immutability, impassibility and foreknowledge.

God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God

By Gregory Boyd

Does God really know the future? Does he ever change his mind? The questions are controversial, but the quest for answers can revolutionize your life, believes Boyd. This pastor-theologian invites you to examine the classical view of God’s foreknowledge and the alternative “open view,” referring to Scripture passages that appear to support the open-view position. 192 pages, softcover from Baker.

The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

By Terence Fretheim

In this comprehensive and thought-provoking study, Terence Fretheim focuses on the theme of divine suffering, an aspect of our understanding of God which both the church and scholarship have neglected. Maintaining that “metaphors matter,” Fretheim carefully examines the ruling and anthropomorphic metaphors of the Old Testament and discusses them in the context of current biblical-theological scholarship. His aim is to broaden our understanding of the God of the Old Testament by showing that “suffering belongs to the person and purpose of God.”

God, Time, and Knowledge (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

By William Hasker

“This outstanding book . . . is a genuinely pivotal contribution to the lively current debate over divine foreknowledge and human freedom. . . . Hasker’s book has three commendable features worthy of immediate note. First, it contains a carefully crafted overview of the recent literature on foreknowledge and freedom and so can serve as an excellent introduction to that literature. Second, it is tightly reasoned and brimming with brisk arguments, many of them highly original. Third, it correctly situates the philosophical dispute over foreknowledge and freedom within its proper theological context and in so doing highlights the intimate connection between the doctrines of divine omniscience and divine providence.”–Faith and Philosophy

“[God, Time, and Knowledge] is an elegantly written, forcefully argued challenge to traditional views, and a major contribution to the discussion of divine foreknowledge.”–Philosophical Review

“This is a very competent, thorough analysis of the conflict between free will and divine foreknowledge (or, on some acounts, timeless divine knowledge of our future). It is exceptionally clear.”–Theological Book Review

Providence, Evil and the Openness of God (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

By William Hasker

“Providence, Evil and the Openness of God is a timely exploration of the philosophical implications of the rapidly growing theological movement known as open theism, or the “openness of God.” William Hasker, one of the philosophers prominently associated with this movement, presents the strengths of this position in comparison with its main competitors: Calvinism, process theism and the theory of divine middle knowledge, or Molinism.” “In this collection of essays, the author develops alternative approaches to the problem of evil and to the problem of divine action in the world. In particular, he argues that believers should not maintain the view that each and every evil that occurs is permitted by God as a means to a “greater good.” He contends that open theism makes possible an emphasis on the personalism of divine-human interaction in a way that traditional views, with their heavy emphasis on divine control, cannot easily match. The book concludes with a section of replies to critics, in which many of the objections leveled against open theism are addressed.” Proviaence, Evil and the Openness of God will be essential reading for advanced students and academics in the fields of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and Theology.

The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God

By Clark Pinnock

That Greek philosophy at least partially influenced Christianity is generally accepted, since it formed the foundation of the culture the first Christians lived in. Many of the early church fathers even appropriated Greek philosophy in their attempts to evangelize the pagan world they found themselves in. But was the Greek influence good or bad? The question is not new; Tertullian asked, in the second century AD, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church?”

This book is an attempt to show that the Greek influence was, as Tertullian felt, dangerous. Why dangerous? Because, according to the authors, the Greek concepts of what God was like and how he interacted with humans were fatally flawed, and have resulted in a Christian theology which has pagan notions of perfection at its core. These concepts include immutability, impassibility, and omniscience (particularly in terms of foreknowledge of all future events).

The authors begin with the contention that God has granted humans a significant degree of freedom, and that He chooses to enter into a genuine relationship with them. They defend this position biblically, historically, theologically and philosophically, offering a well-balanced, comprehensive look at several familiar issues from a different, and they claim, more biblical viewpoint.

The unique interplay of the five authors in this book makes it a fascinating read. Richard Rice makes a compelling biblical case for open theism, while John Sanders takes a look at just how Greek our Christian theology is, and why contemporary theologians are generally unwilling to accept the validity of open theism. Clark Pinnock offers what can be termed a systematic theology of God’s openness and William Hasker offers a cogent philosophical defense of open theism. David Basinger then offers some practical implications of open theism, and compares them to the implications of both traditional classical theism and process theology.

You may not agree with the authors of this volume, but the discussion itself about these major issues is vitally important. Learn why each of these five authors came to believe in open theism, and what it means in their lives.

Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Didsbury Lectures)

By Clark H. Pinnock

Openness theology roots its popular appeal in the biblical picture of a God who is passionately loving and bent on rescuing the lost creatures he loves. Open theists believe that God responds to his creation and actually changes his plans as a result of how humans respond to him. In Most Moved Mover, Clark Pinnock argues that we need to have a view of God centered on God’s open, relational, and responsive love for his creation. That picture of God has important implications for prayer, for prophecy, foreschatology, and for believers interested in thinking about God in new ways.

God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation

By Terence E. Fretheim

Fretheim presents here the Old Testament view of the Creator God, the created world, and our role in creation. Beginning with “The Beginning,” he demonstrates that creation is open-ended and connected. Then, from every part of the Old Testament, Fretheim explores the fullness and richness of Israel’s thought regarding creation: from the dynamic created order to human sin, from judgment and environmental devastation to salvation, redemption, and a new creation.Fretheim brings theology into conversation with such fundamental issues as ethics, suffering, ecology, and God’s interaction with the world.

God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will

By Richard Rice

A brief treatise supporting the open view.

The post Openness Theology Proper appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

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 this website.
•   The “History of Open Theism” on this website.
•   Taylor, Jusin. “A Bibliography on Open Theism.” Eds with John Piper, Beyondthe Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity. Chicago:Crossway, 2003: 385-400.
•   Swanson, Dennis M “Bibliography of works on open theism”. Master’s SeminaryJournal, 12 no 2 Fall 2001, p 223-229.

1. Multi-views books:
   •   Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views, edited by Bruce Ware(Broadman & Holman, 2008), includes a defense of open theism by Sanders, a defense of the traditional Arminian view by Roger Olson, a “classical Calvinist perspective” by Paul Helm and a “modified Calvinist perspective” by Bruce Ware.
   •   Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views ed. James Beilby and Paul Eddy (IVP, 2001). Contains Boyd on the open view, David Hunt for a modified simple foreknowledge view, William Lane Craig for middle knowledge, and Paul Helm for theological determinism.
   •   God and Time: Four Views ed. Gregory Ganssle (IVP, 2001). Wolterstorff defends a temporal conception of God, Helm the atemporal view, while Padgett and Craig affirm divine temporality since creation.
   •   Predestination and Free Will: Four Views, ed. David Basinger and Randall Basinger (IVP, 1986) contains Pinnock on open theism.
2. Works supporting open theism:

Archer, Kenneth. “Open Theism View: Prayer Changes Things.” The Pneuma Review 5.2 (Spring 2002): 32-53.

_________. “How Much Does God Control? Open View Response to the Arminian View,” The Pneuma Review 1/1(Winter 2004): 60-64;

Baker, Vaughn. Evangelism and the Openness of God: The Implications of Relational Theism for Evangelism and Missions (Pickwick, 2013).
Barholomew, D. J. God of Chance (London: SCM, 1984), chap. 7
Basinger, David. The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment. Downers

Grove, IL: IVP, 1996.
________. ‘Can an Evangelical Christian Justifiably Deny God’s Exhaustive

Knowledge of the Future?’ Christian Scholar’s Review 25/2 (1995): 135-145. ________. ‘Divine Control and Human Freedom: Is Middle Knowledge the Answer?’

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 36/1 (1993): 55-64.
________. ‘Divine Omniscience and the Soteriological Problem of Evil: Is the Type of

Knowledge God Possesses Relevant?’ Religious Studies 18/1 (1992): 1-18. Borgman, Paul. Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity

Press, 2001.
Boyd, Gregory. God of the Possible. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000.
________. “Two ancient (and modern) motivations for ascribing exhaustively definite foreknowledge to God: a historic overview and critical assessment.” Religious Studies 46 no 1 Mr 2010, p 41-59.
________. Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare

Theodicy. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001.
________. God At War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict. Downers Grove: IVP, 1997. ________. Is God to Blame? IVP 2003
_________. Trinity and Process: A Critical Evaluation and Reconstruction of

Hartshorne’s Di-Polar Theism Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics. American University Studies Series VII, Theology and Religion vol. 19. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.

_________. (2001) “The Open-Theist View.” James Beilby and Paul Eddy eds. Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
Boyd, with Alan Rhoda,and Thomas Belt “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future” Faith and Philosophy, 23(4), 432-459, October 2006.

Brents, T. W. The Gospel Plan of Salvation. 12th Edition. Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1928 [1st Edition, 1874].

Brümmer, Vincent. Speaking of a Personal God: An Essay in Philosophical Theology. Cambridge: University Press, 1992.

________. What Are We Doing When We Pray? A Philosophical Investigation. Revised edition, Ashgate, 2008.

Callen, Barry. Discerning the Divine :God in Christian Theology, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004

Carasik, Michael. “The Limits of Omniscience.” Journal of Biblical Literature 119.2 (summer 2000): 221-232

Clayton, Philip. “Kenotic Trinitarian Panentheism,” Dialogue, 44/3 (2005). Cobb, John B. Jr., and Clark H. Pinnock, eds., Searching for an Adequate God: A

Dialogue Between Process and Free Will Theists, William B. Eerdmans, 2000 Culp, John. “From Criticism to Mutual Transformation? The Dialogue Between Process and Evangelical Theologies.” Process Studies, pp. 132-146, Vol. 30, Number 1, Spring- Summer, 2001
Dorner, Isaac. Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration, Robert Williams and

Claude Welch trans. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), pp. 149-153
Ellis, Rober. Answering God: Towards A Theology of Intercession. Paternoster, 2005 Elseth, H. Roy. Did God Know? A Study of the Nature of God. St Paul: Calvary United

Church, 1977.
Ellington, Scott. “Who Shall Lead them Out? An Exploration of God’s Openness in Exodus 32:7-14.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 14/1 (2005): 41-60.
Fiddes, Paul S. The Creative Suffering of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Fretheim, Terence. The Book of Genesis. The New Interpreter’s Bible. Nashville,TN:

Abingdon, 1994.

________. “Creator, Creature, and Co-Creation in Genesis 1-2.” Word and World. Supplement 1 (1992): 11-20.

________.”Divine Foreknowledge, Divine Constancy, and the Rejection of Saul’s Kingship.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 47, no. 4 (Oct. 1985): 595-602.

________. Exodus. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox, 1991.
________. God and Violence in the Old Testament,” Word & World 24/1 (Winter 2004): 18-28.
________. “Prayer in the Old Testament: Creating Space in the World for God.” Ed. Paul

Sponheim. A Primer on Prayer. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988.
________. “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk.”

Horizons in Biblical Theology 10, no. 1 (June 1988): 47-70.
________. “The Repentance of God: A Study of Jeremiah 18:7-10. Hebrew Annual Review

11 (1987): 81-92.
________. “Suffering God and Sovereign God in Exodus: A Collision of Images.”

Horizons in Biblical Theology 11 no. 2 (Dec. 1989): 31-56.
________. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective. Overtures to Biblical

Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.
________. First and Second Kings, Westminster John Knox, 1999.
Geach, Peter. Providence and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977 Goetz, James. Conditional Futurism: New Perspective of End-Time Prophecy. Wifp n

Stock 2012. Argues that all biblical covenants and predictive prophecies conditional. Does not discuss the open theism debate but is compatible with openness.

Goldingay, John. Old Testament Theology, vol. 1 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003)

Gould, James B. “Bonhoeffer and Open Theism.” Philosophy and Theology: Marquette University Quarterly, 15/ 1, pp. 57-91, 2003

Gregersen, Niels Henrik. “Faith in a World of Risks: A Trinitarian Theology of Risk- Taking.” Eds. Else Pedersen, Lam Holger and Peter Lodberg, For all People: Global Theologies in Context: Essays in honor of Viggo Morterson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002): 214-233.

Harvey, Sharron. Open Theism and Environmental Responsibilities: A Promotion of Environmental Ethics. (Original publication 2007) AV Akademikerverlag, 2012.

Hasker, William. Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God, London: Routledge, 2004. _________. God, Time, and Knowledge, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion.

Cornell University Press, 1989.
_________. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional

Understanding of God, with Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, and

David Basinger, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994. _________. “Is Free-Will Theism Religiously Inadequate? A Reply to Ciocchi,”

Religious Studies, .
__________.“The Antinomies of Divine Providence,” Philosophia Christi, 4:2 (2002),

pp. 361-75.
__________.“Counterfactuals and Evil: A Reply to Geivett,” Philosophia Christi, . __________. “The God Who Takes Risks,” in Michael Peterson, ed., Contemporary

Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

_________.“Response to Helm,” in Michael Peterson, ed., Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

_________. “The End of Human Life: Buddhist, Process, and Open Theist Perspectives.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32:2 (June 2005).

_________. “The Problem of Evil in Process Theism and Classical Free Will Theism,” Process Studies 29:2 (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 194-208.

__________. “The Foreknowledge Condundrum.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 50, Numbers 1-3 ( December 2001 ): 97 – 114

___________. “Bitten to Death by Ducks’: A Reply to Griffin,” Process Studies 29:2 (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 227-32.

___________. “An Adequate God,” in John B. Cobb, Jr., and Clark H. Pinnock, eds.,

Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue Between Process and Free Will

Theists, Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2000, pp. 215-45 __________.“In Response to David Ray Griffin,” in Searching for an Adequate God, pp.

39-52.
__________.“The Openness of God,” Christian Scholar’s Review 28:1 (Fall 1998), pp.

111-23.
__________. “Tradition, Divine Transcendence, and the Waiting Father,” Christian

Scholar’s Review 28:1 (Fall 1998), pp. 134-39.
_________. “Providence and Evil: Three Theories,” Religious Studies 28 (1992), pp. 91-

105.
__________. The Triumph of God Over Evil: Theodicy for a World of Suffering.

Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2008.
_________. “Why Simple Foreknowledge is Still Useless,” Journal of the Evangelical

Theological Society, 52/3 (September, 2009): 537-544.
Hasker, William, Thomas Oord, and Dean Zimmerman eds. God in an Open Universe:

Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism (Pickwick, 2011).
Hayes, Joel S. The Foreknowledge of God; Or, The Omniscience of God Consistent with

His Own Holiness and Man’s Free Agency. Nashville: Publishing House of the

M[ethodist] E[piscopal] Church, South, 1890.
Hempelmann, Heinzpeter. Wir haben den Horizont weggewischt Die Herausforderung:

Postmoderner Wahrheitspluralismus und christliches Wahrheitszeugnis

(Wuppertal 2008).
________. Unaufhebbare Subjektivität Gottes. Probleme einer Lehre vom concursus

divinus, dargestellt anhand von Karl Barths “Kirchlicher Dogmatik”, (Wuppertal

1992).
Kapitan, Tomis. ‘Acting and the Open Future: A Brief Reply to David Hunt.’ Religious

Studies 33/3 (1997): 287-292.
_______. ‘Agency and Omniscience.’ Religious Studies 27/1 (1991): 105-120. Knight, Gordon. “Universalism for Open Theists.” Religious Studies: An International

Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 42(2), 213-223. 11 p. June 2006 Krump, David. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petionary

Prayer (Eerdmans, 2006)
Lucas, J. R. The Freedom of the Will. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
_________. The Future: An Essay on God, Temporality, and Truth. Blackwell, 1989. McCabe, Lorenzo Dow. ‘Does God’s Foreknowledge Embrace All Future Futuritions?’

Western Christian Advocate [Cincinnati], 23 May 1894: (Photocopy in Personal

Library Collection of Gordon C. Olson.)
_________.‘Prescience of Future Contingencies Impossible.’ Methodist Review

(September 1892): 760-773.
_________. Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity, Being an

Introduction to ‘The Foreknowledge of God and Cognate Themes’. New York:

Phillips and Hunt, 1882.
_________. The Foreknowledge of God and Cognate Themes in Theology and

Philosophy. Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1887 [original copyright 1878]. Moberly, R. W. L. “God is Not a Human That He Should Reptent: Numbers 23:19 and 1

Samuel 15:29,” in eds. Tod Linafelt and Timothy F. Beal, God in the Fray: A

Tribute to Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), pp. 112-123. Nichols, Jason. “Openness and Inerrancy: Can They be Compatible?” JETS 45/4 (Dec.

2002) 629-649.
Olson, Gordon. The Foreknowledge of God and The Omniscience of the Godhead

(Arlington Heights, IL: The Bible Research Corporation
Oord, Thomas Jay. “The Divergence of Evangelical and Process Theologies: Is the

Impasse Insurmountable?” ARC: Journal for the McGill Faculty of Religious

Studies, 51, 2003: 99-120.
_________. The Nature of Love: A Theology (Chalice, 2010)
Oord, Thomas Jay editor, Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science

(Pickwick, 2009).
Paulsen, David. “The God of Abraham, Isaac and (William) James.” The Journal of

Speculative Philosophy 13.2 (1999) 114-146
Pinnock, Clark H. and Cobb, John B. Jr., eds., Searching for an Adequate God: A

Dialogue Between Process and Free Will Theists, William B. Eerdmans, 2000 _________. ‘Open Theism: “What is this? A new teaching? – and with authority! (M[ar]k 1:27).’ University of Calgary, 03 February 2003. http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/RELS/chairs/cchair/crsrc/Pinnock.OpenTh eism.pdf
_________. ‘There Is Room for Us: A Reply to Bruce Ware.’ Journal of the Evangelical

Theological Society 45/2 (June 2002): 213-219.
_________. Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness. Grand Rapids: Baker

Academic, 2001.
_________. ‘Divine Relationality: A Pentecostal Contribution to the Doctrine of God’

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 16 (2000):3-26.
_________. ‘Between Classical and Process Theism.’ In Process Theology, ed by Ronald

[H.] Nash (309-327). Grand Rapids, Baker, 1987.
Pinnock, Clark and David Paulsen, “Open and Relational Theology: An Evangelical

Dialogue with a Latter-day Saint.” BYU Studies 48, no. 2 (2009): 50-110. Polkinghorne, John. Ed. The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. Grand Rapids, MI:

Eerdmans, 2001.
________. Science and Creation (Boston: Shambala, 1988)
_________. Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Realilty (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2004
Pratney, Winkey. The Nature and Character of God (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1998

Prior A. N. “The Formalities of Omniscience,” Philosophy 32 (1962), pp. 119-29
Purtill, Richard “Foreknowledge and Fatalism” Religious Studies 10 (1974): 319. _______. “Fatalism and the Omnitemporality of Truth,” Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988), pp.

185-192
Putt, Keith. “Risking Love and the Divine ‘Perhaps’: Postmodern Poetics of a Vulnerable

God.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 34.2 (2007): 193-214. (compares and

contrasts Caputo, Kearney, and open theism).
Rice, Richard. The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and

Human Free Will. Nashville: Review and Herald Publishing Assoc, 1980. Reimer, David J. “An Overlooked Term in Old Testament Theology—Perhaps,” eds. A.

D. H. Mayes and R. B. Salters, Covenant and Context: Essays in Honour of E. W.

Nicholson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003),
Rhoda, Alan. [Most of his work is available at: http://www.alanrhoda.net/papers.htm ________. “The Fivefold Openness of the Future.” In William Hasker, Thomas Oord,

and Dean Zimmerman eds. God in an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and

Open Theism (Pickwick, 2011).
_________. “Gratuitous Evil and Divine Providence,” Religious Studies, 46(3), 281-302,

September 2010.

________. “Probability, Truth, and the Openness of the Future: A Reply to Pruss.” Faith and Philosophy, 27(2), 197-204, 8 p. April 2010.

________. “Presentism, Truthmakers, and God.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90(1), 41-62, March 2009.

_______. Beyond the Chessmaster Analogy: Game Theory and Divine Providence, in Thomas Jay Oord (ed.), Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009).

________. “Generic Open Theism and Some Varieties Thereof,” Religious Studies, 44.2 (May, 2008).

_________. “The Philosophical Case for Open Theism.” Philosophia, 35(3-4), 301-311, September-December 2007.

________. Open Theism, Omnisciece and the nature of the Future. Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 432–459.

Rhoda, Alan Greg Boyd and Thomas Belt “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future” Faith and Philosophy, (2007)

Thomas Renz, “Proclaming the Future: History and Theology in Prophecies Against Tyre,” Tyndale Bulletin 51 (2000): 17-58

Saia, Michael R. Does God Know the Future? A Biblical Investigation of Foreknowledge and Free Will. Fairfax, VA Xulon Press, 2002.

Sanders, John. “Open Theism.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, 2013. _________. “Divine Reciprocity and Epistemic Openness in Clark Pinnock’s Theology,”

The Other Journal: the Church and Postmodernity (January 2012). _________.“Open Theistic Perspectives—The Freedom of Creation” in Ernst Conradie

ed., Creation and Salvation: Essays on Recent Theological Movements. LIT

Verlag, Berlin, 2012.
_________. “Open Creation and the Redemption of the Environment,” Wesleyan

Theological Journal, Spring 2012.
_________. “The Eternal Now and Theological Suicide: A Reply to Laurence Wood,”

Wesleyan Theological Journal 45.2 (Fall, 2010): 67-81.
_________. “Theological Muscle-Flexing: How Human Embodiment Shapes Discourse

About God,” in Thomas Jay Oord ed., Creation Made Free: Open Theology

Engaging Science (Pickwick Publications, 2009).
_________. “Divine Providence and the Openness of God” in Bruce Ware ed.,

Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views. Broadman & Holman. Nashville,

2008.
_________. “Divine Suffering in Open Theism” in D. Steven Long ed., The Sovereignty

of God Debate (Wipf and Stock Publishing, 2008).
_________The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. Revised edition, IVP, 2007. _________. “An Introduction to Open Theism,” Reformed Review, Vol. 60, no. 2 (Spring

2007). The issue includes three articles responding to my article.

http://www.westernsem.edu/files/westernsem/john%20sanders%20article.pdf

_________. “No Way to Settle the Matter: the Criteria We Use to Develop Different Models of God.” in And God saw that it was good: Essays on Creation and God in Honor of Terence E. Fretheim, ed. Fred Gaiser, (forthcoming Word and World supplement, January 2006).

_________. “Response to the Stone Campbell Movement and Open Theism,” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, Vol. 2, ed. William Baker (Abilene Christian University Press, 2006).

_________With Chris Hall, Does God have a Future? A Debate on Divine Providence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003.

_________. “On Heffalumps and Heresies: Responses to Accusations Against Open Theism” Journal of Biblical Studies 2, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1-44.

__________"Historical Considerations" and “Introduction” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. IVP, 1994. _________“On Reducing God to Human Proportions” in Semper Reformandum: Studies

in Honour of Clark Pinnock, eds. Anthony Cross and Stanley Porter (Paternoster,

U.K. and Eerdmans, U.S. 2003).
_________ "Why Simple Foreknowledge Offers No More Providential Control than the

Openness of God," Faith and Philosophy 14, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 26-40. __________.“Is Open Theism a Radical Revision or Miniscule Modification of

Arminianism?” Wesleyan Theological Journal (Fall 2003).
__________.“The Assurance of Things to Come” in Looking to the Future, ed. David

Baker, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2001.
_________. “On Heffalumps and Heresies: Responses to Accusations Against Open

Theism” Journal of Biblical Studies 2, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1-44 Online journal. __________.“Be Wary of Ware: A Reply to Bruce Ware” Journal of the Evangelical

Theological Society (June 2002): 221-231.
_________. “A Tale of Two Providences.” Ashland Theological Journal 33 (2001): 41-

55.
_________. With Chris Hall, “Does God know your Next Move?” Christianity Today,

May 21, 2001, pp. 38-45 and June 7, 2001, pp. 50-56.
_________. “Truth at Risk,” Christianity Today, April 23, 2001, p. 103.
_________. “Theological Lawbreaker?” Books and Culture (January, 2000) pp.10-11.

Reprinted in Daniel Judd, ed. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial

Issues in Religion. McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Sanders with J. Aaron Simmons. “A Goldilocks God: Open Theism as a Feuerbachian

Alternative?” Element: The Journal for Mormon Philosophy and Theology

(2013).
Sontag, Frederick. “Does Omnipotence Necessarily Entail Omniscience?” Journal of the

Evangelical Theological Society 34 (1991): 505-8.
Studebaker, Steven M. “The Mode of Divine Knowledge in Reformation Arminianism

and Open Theism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 47.3

(September, 2004): 469-480
Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Revised Edition. Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1993.
Truesdale, Al God Reconsidered: The Promise and Peril of Process Theology (Beacon

Hill, 2010).
Tuggy, Dale. “Three Roads to Open Theism,” Faith & Philosophy (2006).
Udd, Kris. “Only the Father Knows: A Response to Harold F. Carl,” Journal of Biblical

Studies [http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org]. 1.4 (Oct-Dec 2001):
________. “Prediction and Foreknowledge in Ezekiel’s Prophecy Against Tyre,” Tyndale

Bulletin 56.1 (2005): 25-41.
Van Inwagen, Peter. “What Does an Omniscient Being Know About the Future?” in Oxford

Studies in Philosophy of Religion (2008): 216-230.
_______. “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God.” Ed. Thomas Morris. Divine

and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1988)
Viney, Donald Wayne. “Jules Lequyer and the Openness of God.” Faith and Philosophy,

14 Ap 1997, p 212-235
_________. “The Varieties of Theism and the Openness of God: Charles Hartshorne and

Free-Will Theism.” Personalist Forum, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 199-238, Fall 1998. Wagner, C. Peter. Dominion! How Kingdom Acton can Change the World. Chosen

Books, 2008.
Ward, Keith. “Cosmos and Kenosis,” John Polkinghorne ed. The Work of Love: Creation

as Kenosis, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001
_________. “The Temporality of God,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

50 (Dec. 2001): 153-169.
________. Religion and Creation (Oxford, 1996) pages 275-277.
White, C. Jason. “An Accommodating and Shunning Culture: Evaluating the Cultural

Context of the Evangelical Theological Society in the United States.” Scottish

Journal of Theology 65, no. 2 (2012): 192-2011.
Witham, Larry. The God Biographers: Our Changing Image of God from Job to the

Present (Lexington Press, 2010). Provides a history of the debate in

evangelicalism.
Woodruff, David. “Being and Doing in the Concept of God.” Philosophia 35 (3-4), 313-

320. September-December 2007.

_________. “Examining Problems and Assumptions: An Update on Criticisms of Open Theism.” Dialogue, 47.1 (2008): 53-63.

Woterstorff, Nicholas. “Unqualified Divine Temporality” in Gregory Ganssle ed. God & Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001.

Yong, Amos. ‘Divine Omniscience and Future Contingencies: Weighing the Presuppositional Issues in the Contemporary Debate.’ Evangelical Review of Theology 26/3 (July 2002):240-264.

Yerxa, Donald A. “A Meaningful Past and the Limits of History: Some Reflections Informed by the Science-and-Religion Dialogue.” Fides et Historia, 34.1 2002: 13-30.

Zimmerman, Dean. [several of his articles are available at http://fas- philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/index1.htm
_______. “Open Theism and the Metaphysics of the Space-Time Manifold”, in God in an

Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism, ed. by William Hasker, Thomas Jay Oord, and Dean Zimmerman (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2011), pp. 125-57

_______. “Time and Open Theism”, in Science and Religion in Dialogue, Vol. 2, ed. by Melville Stewart (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 791-809 _______. “God Inside Time and Before Creation,” Gregory Ganssle and David

Woodruff eds., God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002), pp. 75-94
_________. For more of Zimmerman’s papers on God, time, and foreknowledge see:

http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/index1.htm

3. Works engaging open theism:
Christianity Today, 1995, Vol. 39 Issue 1 contains reviews by Roger Olson, Doug Kelly,

Alister McGrath and Tom Oden of the book, The Openness of God.
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45/2 (June 2002): the entire issue. Master’s Seminary Journal, 12 no 2 Fall 2001, entire issue.
Bouma-Prediger, Celaine. “Toward a Reformed Theology of Prayer and Spiritual Direction: A Response to John Sanders. Reformed Review, vol 60, no. 2 (Spring 2007), Boyd, Gregory & Paul R Eddy. Across the spectrum: understanding issues in evangelical

theology. Baker Academic, 2002.
Cottrell, Jack. “Understanding God: God and Time” in Evangelicalism and the Stone- Campbell Movement, Vol. 2, ed. William Baker (Abilene Christian University Press, 2006).
Dorrien, Gary. The Remaking of Evangelical Theology (Westminster John Knox, 1998). Fackre, Gabriel “An evangelical megashift? The promise and peril of an `open’ view of

God.” Christian Century, 5/3/95, Vol. 112 Issue 15, p484, 4p
Keepers, Brian. “My Only Comfort in Life and in Death: A Pastoral Response to Open Theism.” Reformed Review, vol 60, no. 2 (Spring 2007),
Kurka, Robert. “Open Theism and Christian Churches (Independent)” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, Vol. 2, ed. William Baker (Abilene Christian University Press, 2006).
Robinson, Michael The Storms of Providence: Navigating the Waters of Calvinism,

Arminianism and Open Theism. (University Press of America, 2004).
Tiessen, David Alstad. “The openness model of God: an Evangelical paradigm in light of its nineteenth century Wesleyan precedent.” Didaskalia (Otterburne, Man.), 11 no

2 Spr 2000, p 77-101

Warden, Duane. “Open Theism and Churches of Christ (a cappella)” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, Vol. 2, ed. William Baker (Abilene Christian University Press, 2006).
________. “Openness of God,” Restoration Quarterly, 46 no 2 2004, p 65-78

Yerxa, Donald A. “A Meaningful Past and the Limits of History: Some Reflections Informed by the Science-and-Religion Dialogue,” Fides et Historia, 34.1 Winter/spring 2002: 13-30.

4. Works Against Open Theism:
Beckman, John C. “Quantum Mechanics, Chaos Physics and the Open View of God.”

Philosophia Christi, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 203-213.
Bloesch, Donald. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. (IVP, 1995)
Bray, Gerald. The Personal God. Patternoster, 1999.
Caneday, A B, “Critical comments on an open theism manifesto” Trinity Journal, ns 23

no 1 Spr 2002, p 103-107
________. “Putting God at Risk: a Critical Analysis of John Sanders’ The God Who

Risks.” 1999. Trinity Journal, ns 20 no 2 Fall 1999, p 131-163

Ciocchi, David. “The Religious Adequacy of Free-will Theism,” Religious Studies 38 (2002): 45-61.

Cole, Graham A. “The Living God: Anthropomorphic of Anthropopathic?” Reformed Theological Review, 59 no 1 Ap 2000, p 16-27.

Davis, William. “Does God Know the Future?” Modern Reformation 8/5 (September, 1999) 20-27.

Erickson, Millard. God the Father Almighty. Baker, 1998.
________. What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? Zondervan, 2003 Feinberg, John. The One True God. Crossway Books, 2001
Flint, Thomas. Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 1998.
Frame, John. No Other God: A Response to Open Theism. Presbyterian and Reformed,

2001.
George, Timothy. “What God Knows.”. First Things (June-July 2003): 7-9
Geisler, Norman and House, Wayne. The Battle for God. Kregel 2001.
Geisler, Norman. Creating God in the Image of Man? Bethany, 1997.
Helm, Paul. “Does God Take Risks in Governing the Universe?” in Michael Peterson ed.

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell, 2003. _______ The Providence of God. InterVarsity Press, 1994.
Helseth, Paul Kjoss. ‘On Divine Ambivalence: Open Theism and the Problem of

Particular Evils.’ Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44/3 (2001):

493-511.
Hesselink, I. John. “A Response to John Sanders on Providence: Your God is Too

Small.” Reformed Review, vol 60, no. 2 (Spring 2007),
Highfield, Ron. ‘The Function of Divine Self-Limitation in Open Theism: Great Wall or

Picket Fence?’ Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45/2 (June 2002). _______. Great is the Lord (Eerdmans, 2008)
_______. “The Problem with the ‘Problem of Evil’: A Response to Gregory Boyd’s Open

Theists Solution,” ResQ 45 (2003): 175-76,
Horton, Michael. “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological

Method.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 45.2 (June 2002): 317-

342
________. “Is the New News Good News? Modern Reformation 8/5 (September,

1999) 11-19.
Huffman, Douglas and Johnson, Eric. eds. God Under Fire. Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan, 2002.
Hunt, David P. “The Providential Advantage of Divine Foreknowledge” in Kevin Timpe,

ed. Arguing About Religion (Routledge, 2009).
Lamerson, Samuel. “The openness of God and the historical Jesus” American

Theological Inquiry, 1 no 1 Ja 15 2008, p 25-37

MacArthur, John. Open theism’s attack on the atonement” Master’s Seminary Journal, 12 no 1 Spr 2001, p 3-13.

Master, Jonathan. “Exodus 32 as an Argument for Traditional Theism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45.4 (2002), pp. 585-598.

McCormack, Bruce, “The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism,” in McCormack ed. Engaging the Doctrine of God (Baker, 2008).

Middelmann, Udo. The Innocence of God (Paternoster, 2007).
Mordomo, Joao.”Missiological Misgivings about the Openness of God Theology.”

Patrick Henry College, Global Journal of Classical Theology, 3.2 (Nov. 2002). Mohler, Albert. “The Eclipse of God at Century’s End” Southern Baptist Journal of

Theology, 1.1. (Spring, 1997) 6-15.
Murphy, Ganon. Consuming Glory: A Classical Defense of Divine-Human Relationality

Against Open Theism (Wipf & Stock, 2006)
Picirilli, Robert. “An Arminian Response to John Sanders’s The God Who Risks: A

Theology of Providence.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 44/2

(September 2001): 467-491.
________. “Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future.” Journal of the Evangelical

Theological Society, 43/2 (June 2000): 259-271.
Piper, John. ed. Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical

Christianity. Chicago: Crossway, 2003.
Pyne, Robert and Spencer, Stephen. “A Critique of Free-Will Theism.”, in two parts

Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (July 2001): 259-286 and (October 2001): Richards, Jay Wesley. The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine

Perfection, Immutability and Simplicity, IVP 2003
Robinson, Jason. “Freewill Theism: Doing Business in a Free-Market Society.” Theology

Today 62 (2006): 165-175.
Robinson, Michael. “Why Divine Foreknowledge?” Religious Studies 36: 251-275. Roy, Steven. “God as Omnicompetent Responder? Questions about the Grounds of

Eschatological Confidence in Open Theism” Looking Into the Future, ed. David

W. Baker (Baker Academic, 2001): 263-280. ______. How Much Does God Foreknow? IVP, 2006.

Stallard, Michael D. A dispensational critique of open theism’s view of prophecy” Bibliotheca sacra, 161 no 641 Ja-Mr 2004, p 27-41.

Schreiner, Thomas and Ware, Bruce. eds. The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, Baker, 1999.

Thompson, Matthew K. “Does God Have a Future? A Pentecostal Response to Christopher Hall’s and John Sanders’ Recent Book.” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies; Spring2004, Vol. 26 Issue 1, p130, 8p

Tiessen, Terrence. Providence and Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000)

Tracy, Steven. “Theodicy, Eschatology, and the Open View of God” Looking Into the Future, ed. David W. Baker (Baker Academic, 2001): 295-312.

Ware, Bruce. God’s Lesser Glory. Crossway Books, 2000.
________. “Despair amidst suffering and pain: a practical outworking of open theism’s

diminished view of God.” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 4 no 2 Sum

2000, p 56-75.
_______. Ware, Bruce. Their God is Too Small: Open Theism and the Undermining of

Confidence in God (crossway, 2003).
______. God’s Greater Glory (Crossway, 2004).
Webster, Loring C. The End from the Beginning; Or, Divine Prescience vrs. Divine

Nescience of Future Contingencies. Cincinnati: Cranston & Curts, 1895.
Wellum, Stephen. “Divine Sovereignty-Omniscience, Inerrancy, and Open Theism” JETS

45/2 (June 2002): 257-278.
Williams, Stephen N. “More on Open Theism” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 22 (2004): 32-50.
_______. “What God Doesn’t Know,” Books & Culture, November/December 1999. vol.

5, no 6, p.16.
Wood, Laurence. “Divine Omniscience: Boethius or ‘Open Theism?’” Wesleyan

Theological Journal 45/2 (Fall 2010): 41-66.
________. “Does God Know the Future? Can God be Mistaken?: A Reply to Richard Swinburne.” Asbury Theological Journal 56 (Fall 2001): 5-47.
Wright, R. K. McGregor. No Place for Sovereignty., IVP, 1996.
Yuille, Steven. “How Pastoral is Open Theism? A Critique from the Writings of George

Swinnock and Steven Charnock.” Themelios 32/2 (Jan. 2007): 46-61.

5. Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses: Doctoral Dissertations:

1. Park, Dong Sik. The God-World Relation Between Joseph Bracken, Phillip Clayton, and Open Theism. Claremont Graduate School, 2012.
2. Baker, Vaughn. Evangelism and the Openness of God: The Implications of Relational Theism for Evangelism and Missions. University of South Africa, 2011.
3. Holtzen, William Curtis. Dei Fide: A Relational Theology of the Faith of God. University of South Africa, 2007.

4. Ham, T. C. Relational Metaphors and Omniscience in the Hebrew Bible (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2007).
5. Holland, Richard. God and Time: Rethinking the Relationship in Light of the Incarnation of Christ (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, 2007).
6. Ostrom, William Bruce. Divine Sovereignty and the Religious Problem of Evil: An Evaluation of Evangelical Models (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007).
7. Rissler, James D. Divine providence and human libertarian freedom: Reasons for incompatibility and theological alternatives. University of Notre Dame, 2006, 322 pages.
8. Calvert, Michael. Paradox Lost: Open Theism and the Deconstruction of Divine Incomprehensibility—A Critical Analysis (PhD, Trinity Theological Seminary, 2005).
9. Harmon, Jerry. Exodus 24.6-7: A Hermeneutical Key in the Open Theism Debate (PhD, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005).

10. Moore, Scott. The Problem of Prayer (PhD, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006).

11. Campbell, Travis. The Beautiful Mind: A Reaffirmation and Reconstruction of the Classical Reformed Doctrines of the Divine Omniscience, Prescience, and Human Freedom. Westminster Theological Seminary (2004).

12. Gilbert, Kevin James. The rule of express terms and the limits of fellowship in the Stone-Campbell movement: T. W. Brents, a test case. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2004.

13. Robinson, Franklin Webster. Adversity, crisis counseling, and the openness of God: An evaluation of open theism for pastoral response to victims of violence. Azusa Pacific University, 2002.

14. Kersey, Kent Allen The freedom of God and man: A critical analysis of the relationship between providence and anthropology in Open Theism. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002.

15. Ladd, Steven Willis Theological indicators supporting an evangelical conception of eternity: A study of God’s relation to time in light of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002.

16. Steven Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow? An Evangelical Assessment of the Doctrine of the Extent of the Foreknowledge of God in Light of the Teaching of Open Theism, Trinity International University, 2000. Now published.

17. Tae Soo Park, A Biblical Response to Open Theism: Christology in the Four Gospels. Bob Jones University 2004.

Masters Theses:

1. Conn, Jeremy. Developing Doctrinal Criterion for Evaluating Orthodoxy andHeresy: Open Theism as a Test Case. Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary,2011.
2. Belt, Thomas G. A Critical Evaluation of the Religious Adequacy of OpenTheism: Toward an Open Theistic Theology of Petitionary Prayer. University of Wales, 2007

3. Manning, John. Does God Suffer? Australian College of Theology, November 2006.
4. McLaughlin, Ryan Patrick. God of Authentic Rapport: A Tale of MeinIgenes. Ashland Theological Seminary, August 2006.
5. Lim, Joung Bin. A Thomistic Account of Divine Providence and Human Freedom. Texas A&M University, 2005.
6. Verhage, Kara Elizabeth. Prayer and a Partially Unsettled Future: A Theological Framework for Prayer From the Perspective of Open Theism Emphasizing Prayers of Supplication. Luther Seminary, 2004.
7. Thompson, Matthew K., Openness and Perichoresis: An Analysis of Pentecostal Spirituality Toward a Pentecostal Doctrine of God. Saint Paul School of Theology, 2003.
8. Nichols, Jason. Omniscience in the Divine Openness: A Critical Analysis of Present Knowledge in God. Trinity International University, 1997.
9. Jason Brian Santos, Jean Calvin’s classical divine providence juxtaposed with John Sanders’s Risk theology and the pastoral implications of Theodicy. Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002.
10. Pillai, Jessica D. God’s Change of Mind. Denver Seminary, 2004.
11. Joseph Holt: Predicating Infinity of God: An Open Theist Perspective. BethelSeminary, St. Paul, MN, 2001.
12. Craig W. Thompson. John Sanders’s Philosophy of Religious Language: anAnalysis of Divine Predication in the God Who Risks, Dallas TheologicalSeminary, 2002.
13. Jonathan L. Master, Exodus 32 as an Argument for Traditional Theism. CapitolBible Seminary, 2002.
14. Irwin, Ben. The Sovereignty of God and the Biblical Narrative: A Response toOpen Theism. Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, May, 2002.

15. Dana Arledge, Does Scripture teach libertarian Freedom? Grand Rapids Baptist

Seminary, 2003. News articles:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Bollag, Burton. “Can God see the future? Some evangelical scholars are taking worldly heat for suggesting that divine knowledge has its limits.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 26, 2004 v51 i14 pA11-A14.
Bollag, Burton. “Peer Review,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/18/2005, Vol. 51 Issue 24, pA8, 1/2p, 3c;

“One God, Hold the Omniscience,” Michael Valpy. Toronto Globe and Mail 9/3/2005. F7.

“Redfining Omniscience.” Bill Broadway; The Washington Post; Nov 8, 2003; pg. B.09

“2 Escape Expulsion by Evangelical Group” Bill Broadway. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Nov 22, 2003. pg. B.09
“Process, Open Theologians Debate” Thomas Oord, Science and Theology News. 4.5 (Jan 2004), pp. 2, 32.

Smith, James. “What God Knows,” Christian Century 7/12/2005, 122.14, p30-33.

8. “College to close out ‘open theism’ scholar.” By: Dart, John. Christian Century, 12/28/2004, Vol. 121 Issue 26, p13, 2/3p,
9. “Open Theism Scholars Retained,” Christian Century, 12/13/2003, 120.25, p14.

10. “Evangelicals in the dock” Leithart, Peter J. First Things, 141 Mr 2004, p 9-11.

11. “Cracks in the Ivory Tower,” Allen Guelzo. Books & Culture (Summer, 2005).
12. “Does God know what you’re thinking now?” Richard N. Ostling, Halifax DailyNews 08-03-2003

13. “Theological society won’t oust two ‘open theists’” Adelle Banks Religion News

Service 12-05-2003

14. “Society Keeps Open Theists,” San Antonio Express-News 11-22-2003
15. “Evangelical theologians reject ‘open theism’” Gorski, Eric The Christian Century118.34 12-12-2001 p. 10
16. “Theologians Divided over Free Will,” Eric Gorski, Colorado Springs Gazette11/24/2001.
17. “How Much Control Does God Have? Ray Waddle Tennessean 01-20-2001 3B
18. “Area Religious Colleges Wrestle With Orthodoxy.” Rebecca Green, Fort WayneJournal Gazette May 21, 2005, Page 1C.

19. “Love is the Answer,” Kevin Kilbane. Fort Wayne News Sentinel. 3/5/ 1999, 20. Open or Closed Case? Controversial theologian John Sanders on way out at

Huntington. Stan Guthrie Christianity Today, 12/22/2004
21. “Open to Healing,” Neff, David. Christianity Today, Jan2004, 48.1, p21.
22. “Closing the Door on Open Theists?” Doug Koop Christianity Today, Jan2003,

p24.
23. “Foreknowledge Debate Clouded by ‘Political Agenda.’” Neff, David.

Christianity Today 11/19/2001
24. “God at Risk” By: Zoba, Wendy Murray. Christianity Today, 03/05/2001, 45.4,

p56-9.
25. “Did Open Debate Help the Openness Debate? Christianity Today, 2/19/2001 26. “God vs God” Christianity Today, 2/7/2000
27. “Do Good Fences Make Good Baptists? Christianity Today, 8/8/2000

The post Bibliography on Open Theism appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

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 Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996.

________. “Practical Implications.” In The Openness of God. Pinnock, et. al. InterVarsity Press, 1994.

________. “Can a Christian Justifiably Deny God’s Exhaustive Knowledge of the Future?” Christian Scholar’s Review. 25 (December, 1995): 133-145.

Bauman, Whitney. “God’s Creation, God’s Created, and God’s Creating: A Process View of Eschatology,” in the CTNS Bulletin, vol 21, no 4 (Fall 2001): 12-17.

Beckwith, Francis. “Limited Omniscience and the Test for a Prophet: A Brief Philosophical Analysis.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 36 no. 3 (Sept. 1993): 357-62.

Beilby, James and Eddy, Paul. Eds. Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2001.

Berthrong, John H. All under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Berthrong, John H. Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Chu Hsi, Whitehead, and Neville. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Bloesch, Donald. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Christian Foundations. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Boyd, Gregory. God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997.

________. God of the Possible. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000.
________. Letters From a Skeptic. Colorado Springs, Co: Chariot Victor, 1994.
________. Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Warfare Theodicy. Downers Grove,

IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001.
________. Trinity and Process: A Critical Evaluation and Reconstruction of Hartshorne’s Di-

polar Theism Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Bracken, Joseph and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, eds. Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology

of God. New York: Continuum, 1997.
________. The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World

Relationship. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001.
________. Bracken, Joseph. “Proposals for Overcoming the Atomism Within Process- Relational Metaphysics.” Process Studies 23:1 (Spring 1994): 10-24.
Bray, Gerald. The Personal God. Patternoster, 1999.
Breazeale, Kathlyn A. “Don’t Blame It on the Seeds: Toward a Feminist Process Understanding

of Anthropology, Sin and Sexuality.” Process Studies 22, no.2 (summer, 1993): 71-73. _____. “Marriage After Patriarchy?: Partner Relationships and Public Religion.” In Religion in

a Pluralism Age: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Philosophical Theology, eds. Donald A. Crosby and Charley D. Hardwick. Peter Lang Press, 2001.

_____. “Process Perspectives on Sexuality, Love and Marriage.” In Chalice Handbook on Process Theology, eds. Jay McDaniel and Donna Bowman. Chalice Press, forthcoming.

Brummer, Vincent. The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

_____Speaking of a Personal God. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Callen, Barry L. God as Loving Grace: The Biblically Revealed Nature and Work of God.

Nappanee, Ind.: Evangel, 1996.
________. Journey Toward Renewal: An Intellectual Biography. Nappanee, Indiana: Evangel

Publishing House, 2000.
Carson, D. A. Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in

Tension. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994.
Ciocchi, David. “The Religious Adequacy of Free-will Theism,” Religious Studies 38 (2002): 45

61.
Cobb, John B. Jr. Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today. Nashville:

Abingdon, 1995.
________. The Process Perspective: Frequently Asked Questions about Process Theology. St.

Louis: Chalice Press, 2003.
________. Reclaiming the Church. Westminster John Knox, 1997.
________. Transforming Christianity and the World. Orbis, 1999
________. Postmodernism and Public Policy: Reframing Religion, Culture, Education,

Sexuality, Class, Race, Politics, and the Economy. Albany, N.Y.: State University Press

of New York, 2001.
________. and Clark H. Pinnock eds. Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between

Process and Free Will Theists. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000. Coleman, Monica A. “The World At Its Best: A Process Construction of a Wesleyan

Understanding of Entire Sanctification.” Wesleyan Theological Journal. 37.2 ( Fall

2002) 130-152.
Daniell, Anne. “The Spiritual Body: Incarnations of Pauline and Butlerian Embodiment Themes for Constructive Theologizing toward the Parousia,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 16:1 (Spring 2000): 5-22.
Dean, William. “Historical Process Theology: A Field in a Map of Thought.” Process Studies.

28:4 (Fall-Winter 1999): 244-266.
Dombrowski, Dan. Analytic Theism, Hartshorne, and the Concept of God Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1996.
________. Kazantzakis and God Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. ________. Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne (Nashville: Vanderbilt

University Press, 2003).
________.Being Is Power,” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 16 (1995): 299-314. ________. “God As Absolute and Relative,” Encounter 56 (1995).
Doud, Robert. “The Biblical Heart and Process Anthropology,” Horizons 1996 (23/2: 281 – 95). ________. “Ereignis in Heidegger and Concrescence in Whitehead.” Existentia, 2001 (XI/1-

2: 1 – 12).

________. “A Whiteheadian Interpretation of Baudelaire’s Poetry.” Process Studies 2002 (31.2)

Durie, Robin. “Immanence and Difference: Toward A Relational Ontology.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 40:2 (Summer 2002): 161-189.

Erickson, Millard. God the Father Almighty. Baker, 1998.
Erickson, Millard. What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan, 2003.
Farley, Edward. Divine Empathy: A Theology of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.
Farmer, Ronald L. Beyond the Impasse: The Promise of a Process Hermeneutic. Macon, Ga.:

Mercer University Press, 1997.
Feinberg, John. The One True God. Crossway Books, 2001.
Flint, Thomas. Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1998.
Ford, Lewis S., Review: Clark Pinnock, et. al. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the

Traditional Understanding of God. International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 41

(February 1997): 63-65.
________. Transforming Process Theism. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press,

2000.
Frame, John. No Other God: A Response to Open Theism. Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001. Franklin, Stephen T. The Dying of the Sacred Light: An Essay on Religion and Culture in

America. Unpublished manuscript presented at The Enlightenment in Evangelical and

Process Perspectives Conference, Claremont, California, 20-22 March, 1997. Fretheim, Terrence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia:

Fortress, 1984).
________. Exodus (Westminster/John Knox, 1991).
________. “The Book of Genesis,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. I, ed. L. E. Keck, et al.

(Nashville: Abingdon, 1994).
________. First and Second Kings (Westminster/John Knox, 1999). ________. Jeremiah (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2002).

________. “Theological Reflections on the Wrath of God in the Old Testament.” Horizons in Biblical Theology. 24:2 (December, 2002).

________. “Law in the Service of Life: A Dynamic Understanding of Law in Deuteronomy.” In

A God So Near: Essays in Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller

(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003): 183-200.
________. “Old Testament Foundations for an Environmental Theology,” in Currents in Biblical

and Theological Dialogue, ed. J. Stafford (Winnipeg: St. John’s College, Univ. of

Manitoba, 2002): 58-68.
________. “The Character of God in Jeremiah.” In Character and Scripture: Moral Formation,

Community and Biblical Interpretation, ed. W.P. Brown (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2002): 211-230.
________. “Hearing God from the Other,” Word and World. 22:3 (Summer 2002): 304-306. ________. “The Earth Story in Jeremiah 12,” in Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. N.

Habel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000): 96-110.
________. “God,” in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000): 510-514.
________. “Divine Judgment and the Warming of the World: An Old Testament Perspective,” in

God, Evil, and Suffering: Essays in Honor of Paul R. Sponheim, ed. T. Fretheim and C.

Thompson (St. Paul, MN: Word and World Supplement Series 4, 2000): 21-32. ________. “Christology and the Old Testament.” In Who Do You Say That I Am: Essays on

Christology, ed. M. Powell and D. Bauer (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1999):

201-215.
________. “To Say Something–About God, Evil, and Suffering.” Word and World. 19:4 (Fall

1999): 339, 346-350.
________. “Some Reflections on Brueggemann’s God,” in God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter

Brueggemann, ed. T. Linafelt & T. Beal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998): 24-37. ________. “Divine Dependence upon the Human: An Old Testament Perspective.” Ex Auditu.

13 (1997): 1-13.
________. “The God Who Acts: An Old Testament Perspective.” Theology Today. 54:1 (April

1997): 6-18.
________. “God in Exodus.” Creative Transformation. 4/1 (Autumn 1994): 1, 3-5.

________. “Salvation in the Bible vs. Salvation in the Church.” Word and World. 13:4 (Fall 1993): 363-372.

Geisler, Norman and House, Wayne. The Battle for God. Kregel 2001.
Geisler, Norman. Creating God in the Image of Man? Bethany, 1997.
Grenz, Stanley J. The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago

Dei. Westminster John Knox, 2001.
Griffin, David Ray. Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts. Albany: State

University of New York Press, 2000.
________. Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith: A New Synthesis. Louisville: Westminster

John Knox Press, 2004 (forthcoming)
________. “Process Theodicy, Christology, and the Imitatio Dei,” in Jewish Theology and

Process Thought, ed. Sandra Lubarsky and David Ray Griffin (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1996), 95-125.
________. “A Naturalistic Trinity,” Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God, ed. Bracken Joseph A. and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (New York: Continuum, 1997), 23-40. ________. “Reconstructive Theology,” The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 92-108. ________. “Panentheism: A Postmodern Revelation,” In Whom We Live and Move and Have

Our Being: Reflections on Panentheism for a Scientific Age, ed. Philip Clayton and

Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
________. “Liberal But Not Modern: Overcoming the Liberal-Conservative Antitheses.”

Lexington Theological Quarterly. 28 no. 3 (Fall 1993): 201-222.
________. “Process Theology and the Christian Good News: A Response to Classical Free Will

Theism.” Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists. John B. Cobb, Jr., and Clark H. Pinnock, eds. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000.

________. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Hallman, Joseph M. The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991.

Hardy, Douglas S. “A Winnicottian Redescription of Christian Spiritual Direction Relationships: Illustrating the Potential Contribution of Psychology of Religion to Christian Spiritual Practice,” Journal of Psychology and Theology. 28/4 (2000):251-263.

___________. “A Response to Haynes,” Journal of Psychology and Theology. 28/4 (2000): 268- 269.

Hasker, William. “An Adequate God.” Searching for An Adequate God. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Clark H. Pinnock, eds. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000.

________. Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God. London: Routledge, forthcoming 2004. ________.”Is Free-Will Theism Religiously Inadequate? A Reply to Ciocchi,” Religious

Studies, forthcoming.
________. “The Antinomies of Divine Providence,” Philosophia Christi, 4:2 (2002): 361-75. ________. “Counterfactuals and Evil: A Reply to Geivett,” Philosophia Christi, forthcoming. ________. “The God Who Takes Risks,” in Michael Peterson, ed., ContemporaryDebates in

Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2003.
________. “Response to Helm,” in Michael Peterson, ed., Contemporary Debates in Philosophy

of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2002.
________. “The Problem of Evil in Process Theism and Classical Free Will Theism,” Process

Studies 29:2 (Fall/Winter 2000): 194-208.
________. “‘Bitten to Death by Ducks’: A Reply to Griffin,” Process Studies 29:2 (Fall/Winter

2000): 227-32.
________. “In Response to David Ray Griffin,” in Searching for an Adequate God, 39-52. ________. “The Openness of God,” Christian Scholar’s Review 28:1 (Fall 1998): 111-23. ________. “Tradition, Divine Transcendence, and the Waiting Father,” Christian Scholar’s

Review 28:1 (Fall 1998): 134-39.
________. “Providence and Evil: Three Theories,” Religious Studies 28 (1992): 91-105. ________. “A Philosophical Perspective.” The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the

Traditional Understanding of God. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994. Helm, Paul. “Does God Take Risks in Governing the Universe?” in Michael Peterson ed.

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell, 2003.
Highfield, Ronald. “The Function of Divine Self-Limitation in Open Theism.” Journal of the

Evangelical Theological Society, 45.2 (June 2002): 279-300.
Holt, Joseph. Predicating Infinity of God: An Open Theist Perspective. M.A. thesis, Bethel

Seminary, St. Paul, MN, 2001.
Horton, Michael. “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method.”

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 45.2 (June 2002): 317-342.
Howell, Nancy. A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics. Humanity Books,

2000.
Huffman, Douglas and Johnson, Eric. eds. God Under Fire. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,

2002.
Inbody, Tyron L. The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil. Louisville:

Westminster John Knox, 1997.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New

York: Crossroad, 1996.
Judd, Daniel. ed. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Religion. McGraw

Hill, 2002.
Keller, Catherine. From a Broken Web, Beacon Press, Boston, 1986 ________.Apocalypse Now and Then, Beacon, 1996.
________. and Daniell, Anne. Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and

Poststructuralist Postmodernisms. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. ________. Face of the Deep, Routledge, New York, 2003.
Korsmeyer, Jerry D. Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science.

New York: Paulist Press, 1998.
Lamp, Jeffrey S. Review: Clark H. Pinnock, et. al. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge

to the Traditional Understanding of God. Wesleyan Theological Journal. 31 (Spring

1996): 229-231.
Lodahl, Michael Eugene. “Creation out of Nothing? Or is Next to Nothing Enough? Thy Nature

and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue. Bryan P. Stone

and Thomas Jay Oord, eds. Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2001.
________. The Story of God: Wesleyan Theology and Biblical Narrative. Kansas City: Beacon

Hill, 1994.

________. God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way. Nashville: Kingswood/Abingdon, 2004.

________. “‘And He Felt Compassion’: Holiness Beyond the Bounds of Community.” In Embodied Holiness, eds. Samuel M. Powell and Michael E. Lodahl. Downers Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 1999.
Lorenzen, Lynne F. The College Student’s Introduction to the Trinity. Collegeville, MN:

Liturgical Press, 1999.
Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville: Abingdon,

1994.
Master, Jonathan L. Exodus 32 as an Argument for Traditional Theism. Th.M. thesis, Capitol

Bible Seminary, 2002.
McLachlan, James. “The Mystery of Evil and Freedom: Gabriel Marcel’s Reading of Schelling’s Of Human Freedom “ in Philosophy and Theology, 12 (2) 2000.
________. “Fragments for a Process Theology of Mormonism” in Element: The Journal of

Mormon Philosophy. (Forthcoming).
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