B.R.S., B.A., M.A., M.Litt., D.Phil.

A Paper Prepared for Presentation to the Forum of The Oxford Society of Scholars Meeting in Rewley House/Kellogg College, University of Oxford 12-14 January 2004
Printed with permission

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Lorenzo Dow McCabe and Some Neglected Nineteenth Century Roots of Open Theism in North America

‘Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if preserved in, they must lead,’ said Scrooge, ‘But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.’ (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

When old Ebenezer Scrooge asks the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come whether the dreadful scenes foretold him were shadows of things that will be or only of things that might be, he touched upon some of the vital questions posed by human beings from time immemorial. Dickens’s fictitious miser was neither the first nor the last to utter the major existential question of whether the writing could yet be sponged away.

The vast literature of humankind – including major works in philosophy and theology – continues to be permeated by questions about the nature of the future, whether it exists as a fixed reality or only as potential, as well as what can be known of it, or even whether it can be known with any degree of certainty at all.¹ Related questions concerning divine omniscience, along with the possibility, nature and extent of divine foreknowledge, go beyond academic significance as people are faced with tasks of coping with both personal and social scale suffering and by encounters with evil.²

These questions have specifically troubled the waters of Christian doctrine and practice since apostolic times without bringing healing resolution. Many attempted the quest for answers, but Augustine and the Scholastic thinkers developed the approaches and theories which became the dominant answers to these vital questions. They were consistent with most post-apostolic theology and philosophy.³

As the Christian world was shaken by the massive changes of the late medieval and renaissance period, and as controversies of the Protestant Reformation rekindled the questions, along with variations of those Augustinian and Scholastic dogmas, Erasmus and Arminius popularised alternative approaches. Debates since that time have been largely variations on these themes – themes which re-emerge in various contexts and historical epochs throughout Christian history.

In the turbulent years of the American Civil War, its aftermath and continuing on through the First World War in the early part of the last century, issues related to God’s knowledge of the future re-emerged. Questions of moral government in the light of social and justice issues, questions of maintaining the goodness of God in the face of moral evil including suffering and war (ie, ‘theodicy’), and questions of liberty and self-determination in a revivalist frontier environment combined to give rise to intense and sometimes heated reconsiderations of root issues concerning the various attributes of God (including omniscience) and the nature of God’s relationship to humans (including freedom of the will and foreknowledge).⁴ Though philosophers and theologians of many denominational backgrounds addressed the issues, these concerns were engaged with new urgency among American Wesleyan, Methodist and holiness groups.

These perennial questions are alive and well once again at the dawn of our so-called postmodern age, characterised by change and uncertainty brought about by a massive paradigm shift affecting nearly all areas of western thinking, believing and living. Relativity, quantum physics and chaos theory have resurrected questions about the nature of time.⁵ Revolutions, wars and threats of annihilation, combined with heightened global awareness of human rights issues have brought questions of theodicy again to the fore.⁶

While not exclusive to Christians in the western world, North American evangelicals seem particularly engaged with questions of the nature of human free will, as well as related concepts of divine sovereignty, providence, and omniscience. Christian publishing houses, current popular periodicals, academic philosophical and theological journals, and evangelical theological and philosophical societies, are scenes of verbal combat verging on an ecclesiastical civil war over these ancient, unresolved issues.⁷

Of particular concern is a growing debate between those who consider themselves ‘orthodox traditionalists’, embracing ‘classical’ theistic stances toward questions of the nature of God and God’s relationship to creation and time, and a loose association of theologians and philosophers variously labeled as ‘open theists’ or ‘freewill theists’, espousing an ‘openness of God’ theological paradigm.⁸ The interactions generally carry little of the character of badinage among colleagues appreciating diversity in a common quest for theological articulation.⁹ The former commonly depict themselves as defenders of the faith and champions of orthodoxy, polemically charging opponents within evangelical circles with quislingesque heresy and warning of dire peril to both individuals and the whole evangelical community in embracing these ‘neo-evangelical’ views.¹⁰ Much of the work of open theists has, therefore, necessarily taken on an apologetic flavour.

In general, the former are found primarily in various shades of Augustinian or Calvinistic determinism. The latter identify more with Arminian and Wesleyan sources, toned by freewill beliefs, though they are sometimes deemed to go beyond Arminianism, finding themselves opposed and excluded even by many freewill traditionalists.¹¹

Clark Pinnock describes it as ‘a Wesleyan/Arminian model with a twist.’¹² He claims that ‘[n]inety percent of it is in agreement with these evangelically oriented theological traditions, while ten percent is contested.’¹³ While John Sanders identifies the basic area of conflict within that smaller contested area as this very Arminian identity, Pinnock rightly recognises that it is open theism’s affirmation of what he terms ‘current omniscience’ and denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge that are the most visible and contested sticking points in contemporary debates.¹⁴

These debates intensified dramatically with the 1994 publication of The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, co-authored by five of open theism’s leading thinkers.¹⁵ Since that time a virtual flood of articles, books and internet publications continues to pour forth and sustain the controversies. Pinnock identifies open theism as ‘a variant of Wesleyan/Arminian theology which enjoys a respected place in evangelical tradition’ – an identification that most other evangelical open theists would affirm.¹⁶ Opponents, however, speak of it as a clear departure from traditional evangelical orthodoxy, attacking it alternatively as either a new teaching or a restatement of an ancient heresy.

Despite clear distinctions, most critics associate this model with that of process theism.¹⁷ While major proponents of open theism grant an appreciation for certain aspects of process theology, they are also very clear about radical distinctions between these two approaches. Though Pinnock, for example, has spoken of open theism as an attempt to find a via mediabetween classical and process theisms, he has been specific about where the two models differ.¹⁸ Gregory Boyd has been particularly forceful in presenting both the affinities and incompatibilities between them.¹⁹ Despite certain limited similarities, evangelical open theists have not identified process thought as the source of their ideas.

Neither have they identified with Socinianism – after the teachings of the Polish reformer Faustus Socinus – another theological variant commonly critically associated with open theism.²⁰ Whereas process theologians indicate the importance of these sources, open theists are aware that there exists an unbridgeable gap between Socinian heresy and orthodox evangelical theism.²¹ The resemblance between Socinian formulas concerning divine omniscience and similar expressions in open theism, though remarkable, are actually historically accidental rather than relationally dependent.²²

Ideas about limiting of foreknowledge in such a way that the future remains to some degree undetermined and uncertain, even for God, are not new. Not only did the Socinians hold an understanding of divine omniscience close in wording to the current omniscience of open theism, but the medieval Jewish theologian Gersonides said that in creating beings with genuine free will God limited the divine omniscience, even abdicating some dimensions of divine foreknowledge.²³ Likewise, Ambrose is reported to have said concerning prayer that ‘if God foreknows the future, and if this must needs come to pass,’ and ‘if all things come to pass by the will of God, and his counsels are fixed, and none of the things he wills can be changed, prayer is vain.’²⁴

Contemporaries of Ambrose – Porphyry, Albinus and Calcidius – held similar ideas. The latter was reputed to have been a Christian, possibly even a Milanese deacon. He wrote that ‘it is true that God knows all things, but that he knows everything according to its own nature: that which is subject to necessity as submissive to necessity, the contingent, however, as provided with such a nature that deliberation opens a way for it.’²⁵ And furthermore, ‘contingent things are not inflexibly arranged and determined from the beginning with the sole exception of the very fact, that they must be uncertain and depend upon a contingent course.’²⁶

More specifically, however, open theists have insisted that this theological model is part of the larger picture Arminian and Wesleyan theological traditions. Open theism is seen not so much as a variant of this set of traditional views as a consistent development of, or within, it. Rather than being theologically discrete, it is traditional Arminian and Wesleyan belief evolved to a further level.²⁷

These roots of open theism as they developed during the second half of the nineteenth century are all but ignored by its opponents. Few critics allude to these historical developments, and fewer still take them seriously, despite the fact that open theists have consistently identified these factors as influential in their theological formation.²⁸

Rather than stretching credulity and the bounds of anachronistic fallacy, the major components of evangelical open theism can be found, at least in embryonic form, within these strangely neglected late nineteenth century historical theological developments among Arminian, Wesleyan, and holiness writers and preachers of the American frontier. While most of the writers from this period were content to simply replay themes previously heard, several of them articulated in their preaching and teaching barely-formulated ideas about how to understand divine omniscience and foreknowledge in ways which allowed humans authentic freedom of the will.

Methodist theologian and biblical scholar, Adam Clarke, for example, said that God ‘knows Himself, and what He has formed, and what He can do; but it is not necessitated to knowas certain what He Himself has made contingent.’²⁹ Although he described divine omniscience in a way which resembles ‘presentism’ or ‘current omniscience’ in open theism – the view that God has perfect knowledge of the past and present, as well as of what God determines to do in the future – he also insisted that ‘God’s gracious design to save a lost world by Jesus Christ could not be defeated by any cunning, skill, or malice of men or devils.’³⁰

John Miley would later say that Clarke ‘held in the part of God a purely voluntary nescience’ – a position which he criticised as inconsistent because ‘a voluntary nescience in God must imply a knowledge of the things which he chooses not to know.’³¹ Miley, along with others of this period, understood ‘nescience’ – literally ‘not knowing’ – to be the antonym of prescience. He recognized that ‘[t]he divine nescience of such volitions would be a necessity, not a free choice.’³²

In saying this, Miley recognised the importance of the work of the Methodist theologian and philosopher Lorenzo Dow McCabe.³³ Although Miley himself did not embrace what was becoming known, primarily through McCabe’s teaching and writing, as the divine nescience of future contingencies, he was very aware of, and even sympathetic to, this understanding. He noted that ideas of divine nescience had already been put forth in the sixteenth century among the Socinians and among some Remonstrants (Dutch followers of Arminius), though not Arminius himself, but praised McCabe’s articulation as both powerful and persuasive.³⁴ He wrote that this ‘doctrine itself has more recently been treated with a definiteness and thoroughness and supported with a force of argument which are quite new,’ and he confessed that ‘it is much easier to pronounce the arguments of Dr. McCabe a nullity than to answer them in a process of lucid and conclusive logic.’³⁵

McCabe’s influence spread through both his students and writings.³⁶ During the late 1800s, the pages of the Methodist Quarterly Review and other more local periodicals regularly set forth either McCabe’s ideas or reactions to them.³⁷ He published three books. The first, on the subject of sanctification, was followed by two more lengthy treatments of his ideas concerning divine foreknowledge, which he generally termed ‘prescience’, and nescience of future contingencies.³⁸ At the time of his death, he was planning two further books: one expounding a new theory of the atonement which he had worked out, believing it superior to any others then known, and another setting forth his ethical theory.

Open theists refer primarily to the two books published on divine nescience. One of McCabe’s colleagues noted that his ideas about this doctrine were perceived as novel by many American clergy, while they were already fairly well known in both Germany and England. He claimed that the professor’s thinking in the area of divine nescience was ‘the product of his absolutely original investigations into the teachings of the Bible, and of the unbiased human reason,’ and that he was motivated by ‘daring but devout attempts to place our Arminian theology on an impregnable basis’ to embark on ‘a new and brave departure from the beaten path in the agonizing struggle of men to make God just, as well as the justifier of the sinner.’³⁹ Such a claim is rendered somewhat plausible by the fact that due to perennial problems with his eyesight, McCabe was never a prolific reader.

Samuel W. Williams wrote that McCabe wanted his books to form ‘a complete refutation of the Calvinistic doctrine of decrees.’⁴⁰ He traced the genesis of McCabe’s thinking about divine nescience to ‘a hint of the subject given him by Professor [F. S.] Hoyt,’ following which ‘he carried on independently.’⁴¹ McCabe confirmed this relationship in a tribute in the preface to his book on foreknowledge, where he also claimed that his motives were simply to further the search for truth and resolution in the unresolved problems between absolute divine foreknowledge and human freedom.⁴² McCabe also quoted someone (perhaps Daniel Curry) who he regarded as ‘[o]ne of the ablest thinkers American Methodism has yet produced [as saying]: “The denial of absolute foreknowledge is the essential compliment of the Methodist theology, without which its philosophical incompleteness is defenseless against the logical consistency of Calvinism.”‘⁴³ McCabe clearly viewed his directions as refinements of Arminian belief.

McCabe expressed disappointment in Bledsoe’s work on theodicy, saying that it was just a restatement of existing Arminian theology and did not resolve the problematic issues of reconciling an absolute divine foreknowledge and human freedom.⁴⁴ He regarded as equally tragic the resignation and despair indicated by those who could not find a way to resolve this dilemma inherent in Arminianism. McCabe’s Arminian and Wesleyan approach to theology, together with his literal biblical hermeneutics, dominated the development of his beliefs about the definition of divine omniscience and limits to, but not complete elimination of, God’s foreknowledge.

Miley realised that there were problems in reconciling both Calvinistic and traditional Arminian beliefs about God’s knowledge with the belief in God as personal being. He went so far as to write that ‘[i]f the ministries of providence in the free agency of God … be not consistent with his foreknowledge, the foreknowledge cannot be true,’ and ‘[i]f there must be for us an alternative between the prescience of God, on the one hand, and his true personal agency in the ministries of providence, on the other, the former doctrine must be yielded, while we cleave to the latter, because it embodies the living reality of the divine moral government.’⁴⁵ Likewise I. W. Wiley wrote in 1881 that there were many things about God and God’s relationship to creation which were yet problematic, and that these things could be resolved either by Calvinistic determinism or Arminian simple free will, nor through some ‘eclecticism which would combine parts of both.’⁴⁶ While he preferred the Arminian approach, he confessed that ‘Arminianism has not freed [people] from all difficulties, and especially [not] from those very serious embarrassments which … [grew] out of the doctrine of the divine foreknowledge of contingent or volitional events.’⁴⁷ McCabe declared that the ‘surrender of prescience [was] indispensable to the respectability of Arminianism.’⁴⁸

Open theists are not simply ‘McCabites’. The theological phraseology of McCabe’s era sounds somewhat stiff and rigid to most people today. Open theists have, therefore, generally chosen alternative terms, and they recognise limitations in his work. They also, however, express a debt of gratitude for McCabe’s systematic exposition of the doctrine of divine nescience as helpful in formulating and articulating the ideas of open theism, especially limited foreknowledge and current omniscience.

During, and immediately after, his lifetime, McCabe’s ideas were subjected to heated debate, criticism, ridicule and rejection by some, and warmly welcomed and appreciated by others.⁴⁹ Nevertheless, he was acknowledged as remaining solidly within the bounds of Arminian and Wesleyan orthodoxy as understood in his historical and cultural context. Fellow professors and former students bore witness to McCabe’s commitment to a verbal theory of biblical inspiration bordering on dictation.⁵⁰ One former student wrote that ‘[h]e was so extremely orthodox that he was inclined to believe all the discrepancies of the Word of God to be the direct dictation of the Spirit!’⁵¹

In terms very similar to those used by open theists, McCabe argued that absolute divine prescience is contraindicated by the biblical writers. He noted as ‘remarkable how constantly it is implied, or assumed, in the Scriptures, that God does not foreknow the choices of free beings while acting under the law of liberty,’ and that ‘there are numerous passages in which is clearly found the assumption of the incapacity or inability of omniscience to foreknow … the choices of beings endowed with the power of original volition and action, unless it should be through a violation of the law of human freedom.’⁵²

Clearly, there are occasions when God can and does override normal operating principles of creaturely freedom to accomplish certain ends which God has determined to bring about.⁵³ For example, he contended that some biblical prophecies are to be understood in this light, for ‘God in prophecy … overrides the law of liberty, just as he overrides the law of material forces in miracles.’⁵⁴ He stressed that the human person is so constituted, that his will can be brought under the law of cause and effect, by bringing overpowering influences to act upon reason and his sensibilities. ⁵⁵Those circumstances are, however, understood to be exceptions to the normal operations of both God and human beings, and in them choices cease to be free. Choices under such circumstances cannot have a moral or responsible component for the chooser.⁵⁶

McCabe described human beings as ‘free moral agents … co-creators, co-causes, co-originators’ with God, and noted that ‘the Scriptures represent man as having … the power of taking the absolute initiative,’ such that if people are ‘not … free being[s] there can be for [them] neither right, wrong, justice, moral philosophy, or moral government.’⁵⁷ As in the claims of open theists, therefore, absolute divine prescience is incompatible with the nature of human freedom and choice, as well as with responsibility and moral accountability.

McCabe argued further that such prescience of future free volitions is inherently contradictory and therefore impossible. Since future choices have no actual existence, they cannot be said to be actually known. To speak of knowing what is quite literally nothing is meaningless and absurd. ⁵⁸ Concerning contingencies, he wrote, that ‘only from that moment … a contingency becomes a knowable thing. Up to the point of some free being originating its conception and determining to actualise it, it is pure unreality …. If … a thing [is] unknowable, it is no reflection upon Omniscience to affirm its incapacity to know it.’⁵⁹ McCabe clearly understood that denial of absolute prescience was not a denial of omniscience. He noted that ‘knowledge of a nothing is self-contradictory, and [a human] free choice before [someone] made it is a nothing.’⁶⁰

Writing about the same time as McCabe, Joel S. Hayes produced a volume on the foreknowledge of God in which he interacted with critics of the emerging doctrine of divine nescience. He argued that there is no biblical evidence that necessitates God’s absolute foreknowledge, but rather that God ‘does not state that he knows more than he has foreordained.’⁶¹

Like McCabe, he goes beyond simple defense of free will, however, arguing that ‘God, though infinite in power and wisdom, did not and could not know before man was created whether he would sin or not’ and that ‘having created man a moral agent … he could not prevent his sinning; nor could he before having created him, not knowing who would sin and who would not, have put any other moral being in his place with expectation of better results.’⁶² Nescience of future actions of moral agents is, therefore, inherent in, and necessary to, genuine human freedom.⁶³ Absolute divine foreknowledge is an idea incompatible with true human freedom, for ‘to foreknow a free volition is a contradiction.’⁶⁴

Both McCabe and Hayes spoke of God knowing and using probabilities. Hayes differed from McCabe in defining foreknowledge primarily in terms of ‘moral certainty’ – an understanding which relies on the concept of probabilities as the basis for a kind of virtual certainty about the actions of human beings as a class rather than about individuals or the free choices of individuals.⁶⁵

McCabe’s understanding of the relationship between God’s prescience and probabilities more closely resembles that of most open theists. He wrote that

God could … estimate approximately what are likely to be the choices of free agents in the early future. And this estimate of probabilities may be so nearly indubitable, in many cases, as to resemble prescience itself.⁶⁶

He agreed with President Tappan that ‘[o]ur calculation of future choices … can never be attended with absolute certainty, because the will, being contingent, has the power of disappointing calculations which are made upon the longest observed uniformity.’⁶⁷ Furthermore, ‘[a] contingent thing must be a pure origination by a being possessing power to select and originate one out of many. But this is possible only on the hypothesis that the future is now undetermined, unfixed, and, therefore, uncertain in the universe of contingencies.’⁶⁸ In a similar way, ‘[a]lteration, in the nature of things, necessitates subjective uncertainty in the divine mind,’ and therefore ‘[t]he state of omniscience is … a state of uncertainty as to which … alternates will certainly come to pass.’⁶⁹ In short, the future must be at least partly open.⁷⁰

The concept of risk is implied in such a statement. Though not specifically developed in detail by McCabe – he termed this a ‘pure adventure’ – or his contemporaries, the idea that God risks disappointment in endowing creatures with genuine freedom, since such freedom implies ability to choose against God and against God’s will.⁷¹ He wrote that God created human beings ‘clothed with the august endowments of liberty, and an ability to disappoint [God's] desires and expectations and defeat his purposes.’⁷² Understood in this context, God’s ‘sovereignty … is a sovereignty over sovereigns, not a sovereignty over mere machines or passive instruments, under the reign of mechanical philosophy.’⁷³ As among open theists, however, this does not imply that God is ultimately unable to accomplish those things which are divinely appointed. McCabe was quite clear in believing that ‘[t]he Scriptures indicate that God has two kinds of plans relative to this world and its inhabitants, – one sovereign, the other contingent,’ and that God’s ‘sovereign plans are determined upon absolutely’ and ‘will be accomplished by one set of means or by another, ordinary or extraordinary.’⁷⁴ God may even determine ‘in his mind the identical agent through whom [some sovereign purpose] shall finally be brought about.’⁷⁵ In other words, the future is both partly open and partly closed.

In this context McCabe, in words echoed almost verbatim by open theists, asserted that God is both wise and resourceful enough to handle any situations and contingent developments which arise from undetermined freedom among humans.⁷⁶ Furthermore, God can do so while acting within the realm of present knowledge, without the necessity of prescience.⁷⁷ He asserted that ‘God is fully able to meet any and every emergency, no matter how great, how sudden, or how complicated, that can arise anywhere in infinite space or endless duration.’⁷⁸ After all, he asked, ‘[i]s not God omniscient in respect to all knowable things, to all free choices as soon as they are put forth? …. Those attributes of Jehovah [sic] could overcome all difficulties and provide for all hazards, and turn to best account all developments that may be made in all the boundless universe and throughout eternity.’⁷⁹ McCabe delighted in demonstrating that ‘[n]escience presents … the sovereignty of God with most impressive magnificence as he goes forth over the boundless universe overcoming all difficulties, and arresting, as far as possible, all evils which are inevitable in the government of beings whose choices originate in the depths of their own free-wills.’⁸⁰ Such resourcefulness would be highly valued among human beings and would actually be more praiseworthy and glorious in the divine being than would insistence upon an omniscience which included absolute prescience.⁸¹

Along with this, McCabe consistently argued that there would be no real advantages to either God or creation for God to possess unlimited prescience. Not only does God not need such prescience to perfectly rule in divine providence, but God would actually be hindered by having this kind of foreknowledge. God could do nothing to change what God foreknew would happen, since what is foreknown cannot, by definition, be changed.⁸²

This kind of omniscience would also rule out any form of actual change within God. McCabe contended that ‘universal prescience … is positively inconsistent with [God's] character and office as the moral governor of the moral universe,’ for

[a] real trial, a trial that is not a mere delusive semblance, requires that God’s feelings and his conduct toward an accountable spirit should be constantly changing and varying with the ever varying volitions which that spirit puts forth in the exercise of his endowment of freedom. But this can only be possible on the supposition of God’s nonprescience of those volitions. To affirm that God’s feelings, purposes, and conduct can change just as the free volitions of the subject do actually change, when he has perfect foreknowledge of all the future volitions of that free subject, is to assert a manifest impossibility.⁸³

Contained within this pericope are safeguards for authentic mutuality in the divine-human relationship, the capacity of God (contra classical understandings of the attributes of impassibility and immutability – related notions that God does not experience emotional or any other changes) to actually feel experientially rather than just know about emotions cognitively and to change in some ways by experiencing the sequentiality of time.⁸⁴ In this context, McCabe quotes Isaak August Dorner’s claim that ‘[i]n the world … God must live as historical life, a life that is conditioned by man’s use of freedom.’⁸⁵ God’s eternality is, therefore, not conceived in terms of ‘timelessness’ or some Boethian ‘eternal now’ but in terms of endless duration, without beginning or end.⁸⁶

In like manner, nescience is essential if God is to be understood in personal terms or as entering into personal relationships with humans. Absolute prescience would rob God of every attribute essential to personal being. God would not be free because God could never choose, do, think or act in any other way than God does act, otherwise the divine prescience would be false, which it cannot by definition be. In fact, God would be immobilised – unable to think, choose, initiate, act, react, or interact – like the idols which were so often the object of divine wrath. Ultimately, God’s omniscience would conflict with God’s omnipotence, since, as McCabe asserted, ‘if God is not able to form a conception that he never thought of, then he has never in all the eternity past possessed the power to form any new conception, and then, consequently, all his conceptions must be eternal; and if eternal they were never originated, and God, therefore, has never been able to form a new conception, or to originate and determine any one thing.’⁸⁷ This, however, would represent an intolerable situation.⁸⁸ It would also, he contended, contradict apostolic witness in Scripture.⁸⁹

Like both McCabe and open theists, Hayes declared that genuine human freedom is essential since a ‘doctrine of necessity makes God the only real agent or actor of sin in the universe’ because otherwise ‘the creatures which he has made [are] merely passive instruments in his hands to accomplish his purposes.⁹⁰ God would ultimately be responsible for evil, and a satisfactory theodicy would be impossible.⁹¹ In contrast, however, McCabe located ‘the origin of sin in the human will’ and declared that ‘[t]he simple and single choice of a free will was the absolute incipiency of moral evil into the moral universe.’⁹² However, ‘no considerations, no ends, no final causes, could ever justify God, before an intelligent universe, in violating absolute rectitude, or in overriding freedom in free agents, or in outraging benevolence, either in planning wickedness, or in desiring its inception, or in creating individual souls who he foresaw would certainly be wicked and miserable and everlasting blotches upon his moral universe.’⁹³ In contrast, ‘divine nescience brings beauty, quietness, profit, and assurance forever into the great theodicean [sic] problem.’⁹⁴

Concerning the future state of the reprobate, McCabe is less willing than open theists to abrogate the doctrine of eternally conscious separation in hell. He does, however, advocate the idea that ‘[t]here must … be a point in probation beyond which the power of alternative choices cannot be continued.’⁹⁵ In other words, the human characteristic of indeterministic freedom is not eternal; it will come to an end.⁹⁶ McCabe described something of a psychological or character evolutionary process in which habitual choices, dispositions and behaviours progressively take on a permanent form, giving rise to an immutable character.⁹⁷ This works gradually in such a way that ‘[e]very additional volition adds additional weakness to the conscience, darkness to the mind, hardness to the heart and perverseness to the will. In this process the soul finally reaches a state in which it is irredeemably fixed in its awfully shocking depravities,’ ultimately resulting in a condition of ‘being morally petrified.’⁹⁸ Once this condition is reached, a person is lost to God and beyond the reach of God’s love and mercy.⁹⁹

McCabe identified other specifically pastoral concerns which would be better addressed in the language of divine nescience than in that of absolute prescience. It better addresses the reality of spiritual warfare, as well as the urgency of evangelism and missions.¹⁰⁰ McCabe lamented that

[m]uch of the indifference, the casting off of personal responsibility, and the non-development of latent spiritual power, that have so sadly characterised and paralyzed the Church, is … chargeable to the belief of the old dogma of universal and absolute prescience. The old view of the divine foreknowledge – involving the fixed certainty of all future events – has ever been most enervating and repressing. It has made pigmies of those who might have been giants, and mere glimmering lights of many pulpits which should have sent a powerful and saving radiance far across the moral darkness of this world.¹⁰¹

It better fit the nature and efficacy of prayer and thoroughly resolved intellectual objections to that discipline. He quoted Richard Rothe’s phrase: ‘If absolute prescience be true, prayer becomes not only nonsense, but inexcusable.’¹⁰² Further concerning prayer, McCabe argued that ‘[t]he logical and practical effect of … belief in divine foreknowledge is …. [that one] can never infract or modify that which God infallibly foreknows.’¹⁰³ Real prayer, however, ‘means that God will do for a soul, on condition of its compliance with the duty of prayer, that which he will not do if that condition is not complied with,’ and therefore, ‘[i]f the condition be complied with it effects changes in God, or prayer is a meaningless institution’¹⁰⁴

It makes Christianity more palatable to those who are not themselves of the Christian faith. In this light, McCabe referred to Albert Barnes agonised confession of his inner turmoil and confusion resulting from his inability to resolve the tensions between prescience and freedom.¹⁰⁵ Neither was he alone, said McCabe, for ‘almost every Christian believer fights a life-long battle with this most obtrusive and harassing dogma,’ and ‘[t]he doctrine of the absolute foreknowledge of God has occasioned more perplexity and intellectual torture than any other in all the departments of theology.’¹⁰⁶ Accepting divine nescience would resolve the spiritual turmoil experienced nearly universally resulting from the dogmas of absolute omniscience and total prescience.

Miley wrote that ‘[t]he divine nescience of future volitions, if accepted as truth, is not necessarily revolutionary in theology,’ neither for Calvinism (which, he argued, logically allows no authentic contingencies) nor Arminianism, since ‘[e]very vital doctrine would remain the same.’¹⁰⁷ Furthermore, in contrast to contemporary critics of open theism, he asserted that ‘[i]f the truth of nescience were established or accepted, it would be as little revolutionary within the sphere of practical truth as in that of doctrinal truth,’ and [c]ertainly it could not in the least abate any of the moral forces of Christianity.’¹⁰⁸ On the contrary there could even be positive results.

Critics of open theism frequently link it with Socinianism or with process theism. Both associations are compatible with the apologetic and theo-political aims of these writers, but they are historically inaccurate and fallacious. While certain tenets of open theism bear resemblance to some aspects of both Socinian and process thought, these resemblances are historically accidental. Some open theists have expressed appreciation for process theology, but they have not identified it as a significant source for the formation of their thinking. They do, however, consistently identify their roots in Arminian and Wesleyan tradition, especially certain developments among Methodists on the American frontier during the late nineteenth century, particularly the thinking of Lorenzo Dow McCabe. Amidst the furious attacks by detractors of open theism these historical roots have strangely been almost entirely neglected. Open theism is, in fact, neither the radical new departure from evangelical orthodoxy nor the embracing of unbiblical heresy it is purported to be. Perhaps recognition of the roots of open theism in a stream of orthodox Christian heritage can begin to rebuild what has been already been broken as a result of contemporary controversies among North American evangelicals, generate a climate in which differences are both recognised and appreciated, and contribute to better equipping people to encounter questions and issues arising from the shift toward postmodernism.

The post Things That May Be Only? appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

It has traditionally been believed that omniscience means God’s knowledge of the future may be expressed exclusively in terms of what either will or will not come to pass. One common line of reasoning supporting this traditional belief is the following:

P1:       All propositions are either true or false (bivalence).

P2:       God knows the truth value of all propositions (omniscience).

P3:       The future can be exhaustively described in terms of what either will or will not come to pass.

C:        Therefore, God knows the future exclusively as that which either will or will not come to pass.

The argument is formally valid. Accordingly, those who deny the conclusion (C), such as open theists, have to deny one or more of the premises.  Some deny the first premise (P1) and argue that propositions expressing future contingencies are neither true nor false.  Others deny the second premise (P2), arguing that the truth value of propositions about future contingencies is logically impossible to know and thus not within the domain of God’s omniscience. For reasons too involved to explore presently, we find both positions to be problematic.[1] We also deem such moves unnecessary to the denial of the conclusion (C), for, we shall argue, the third premise (P3) can be plausibly denied. This premise, we maintain, is arbitrarily restrictive. There are three, not two, distinct modes in terms of which future events may be described. It may be that (1) a future event S will obtain and it may be (2) that S will not obtain. Both of these possibilities are countenanced by P3.  What P3 overlooks, however, is that it may also be the case (3) that S might and might not obtain.

If we grant that there are three, not two, distinct modes in terms of which future events may be described, then it is not the case that the future can be truly described solely in terms of what either will or will not come to pass.  And if, in fact, the future cannot be truly described solely in terms of what either will or will not come to pass, then it follows that an omniscient God will not know the future solely in terms of what either will or will not come to pass. Rather, an omniscient God must also know the future partly in terms of what might and might not come to pass.

To say that S might and might not obtain is to say that S’s obtaining is indeterminate— neither inevitable nor impossible.  The logical possibility of S being indeterminate is implicit in the structure of a future-tense Square of Opposition modeled after the traditional Square of Opposition from Aristotelian categorical logic.  But this possibility has been largely overlooked in Western philosophy which has tended to assume that the future could be expressed solely in terms of what either will or will not come to pass.  The structure of the Square is partly to blame, for it fails to make the logical possibility of genuine indeterminacy sufficiently explicit.  When we make this possibility explicit, we find that the Square of Opposition transforms into a Hexagon of Opposition, in light of which it becomes clear how one may affirm genuine indeterminacy and thus deny (C) while at the same time affirming bivalence (P1) as well as God’s knowledge of the truth value of all propositions (P3).

In this essay we first show how the future-tense Square of Opposition allows for the possibility of a partly indeterminate future (I).  We then point out two problems with the Square with respect to its ability to handle future indeterminacy (II).  Following this, we demonstrate how a consistent working out of the logic of the Square leads to a future-tense Hexagon of Opposition (III). After highlighting several advantages of the Hexagon over the Square (IV) we conclude by applying insights gained from the Hexagon to assess the assumption (P3) that the future can be exhaustively described in terms of what either will or will not come to pass as well as the conclusion (C) that God knows the future exclusively as that which either will or will not come to pass.

I. Indeterminacy and the Square of Opposition

We begin by considering the Square of Opposition as it concerns S’s obtaining.

Now, several observations about the Square’s treatment of S’s obtaining are worth noting.[2] On the standard interpretation of the Square, the contraries “S will obtain” and “S will not obtain” cannot be conjointly true, but they may be conjointly false. Conversely, while the subcontraries “S might obtain” and “S might not obtain” cannot be conjointly false, they may be conjointly true.  Most significantly, we must note that when both subcontraries “might” and “might not” are true, contraries “will” and “will not” are both false, for “S will obtain” and “S might not obtain” are contradictories, as are “S will not obtain” and “S might obtain.”

These observations already expose the arbitrary restrictiveness of P3, for P3 simply denies that propositions expressing conjointly true subcontraries “might” and “might not” are ever true.[3]  To say the same thing a different way, P3 denies that propositions expressing the logically possible negation of both contraries “will” and “will not” are ever true. P3 mistakenly treats the contraries “will” and “will not” as though they were contradictories, subject to the law of excluded middle, and thus assumes that they together exhaust the logical possibilities. P3 reflects the traditional tendency to insist that either it is true that “S will obtain” or it is true “S will not obtain,” as though these two possibilities were mutually exhaustive, which is why it supports the traditional conclusion that God, by virtue of knowing the truth value of all propositions, necessarily knows whether S will or will not obtain.  According to the Square, however, it may be false that “S will obtain” and false that “S will not obtain,” just in case it is true that “S might and might not obtain.” Again, “will” and “will not” are contraries, not contradictories, so while both cannot be true, both may be false. And “might” and “might not” are subcontraries, not contraries, so both cannot be false, but both may be true.

Of course, S will end up either obtaining or not. But, as the Square reveals, this does not imply that it is now true that either “S will obtain” or “S will not obtain.” The logical possibility of a true proposition expressing conjoined subcontraries reveals that the truth condition of future tense propositions is not found in what eventually comes to pass but in the state of things at the time the truth claim is made.

To illustrate, the truth condition of the statement, “Hillary will be president in 2008,” uttered in 2004, is not found in the as yet non-existent state of reality in 2008, but in the state of reality in 2004. Is it in fact determinately the case in 2004 that Hillary will be president in 2008? The statement is false just in case it is either determinately the case in 2004 that Hillary will not be president in 2008 or indeterminately the case in 2004 that Hillary will be president in 2008. The second possibility reflects the state of affairs expressed by conjointly true subcontraries “might and might not” on the traditional Square: “Hillary might and might not be president in 2008.” If in 2004 it is true that Hillary “might and might not” be president in 2008, then it is false in 2004 that Hillary “will” be president in 2008 and false also that she “will not” be resident in 2008—even though Hillary will eventually turn out either to be president in 2008 or not.[4]

This entails, of course, that it is logically possible that God, by virtue of knowing the truth value of all propositions, knows in 2004 that it is false that Hillary will be president in 2008 and knows it is false in 2004 that Hillary will not be president in 2008 just in case God knows in 2004 that Hillary might and might not be president in 2008.

II. Two Shortcomings in the Traditional Square

Why has the western tradition mostly assumed that the future can be exhaustively expressed in terms of what “will” and “will not” come to pass? Why has the logical possibility of future indeterminacy expressed by conjointly true subcontraries “might and might not” been mostly neglected in the western tradition? Why have the contraries “will” and “will not” been treated as though they were contradictories? Part of the explanation, we believe, lies in two curious features of the Square that tend to obscure the logical possibility of future indeterminacy.

First, we should note that while a determinate future can be expressed on the Square by the single propositions “S will obtain” and “S will not obtain,” there is no single proposition expressing future indeterminacy. To express this third possibility, we must conjoin the two subcontraries “might” and “might not.” In other words, determinacy (“will” and “will not”) is given primitive status on the Square, while indeterminacy must be inferred.

This asymmetry between determinacy and indeterminacy perhaps explains why “might” and “might not” have tended to be understood exclusively in terms of their individual subaltern relations to “will” and “will not.” That is, while “will” and “will not” have been allowed to express states of affairs, “might” and “might not” have tended to be limited to expressing merely the epistemological preconditions of those two determinate states. If it is true that “S will obtain,” it must also be true that “S might obtain,” viz. it must be possible for S to obtain. So too, for it to be true that “S will not obtain,” it must also be true that “S might not obtain,” viz. it must be possible for S not to obtain.

But what has not been adequately appreciated in the western tradition is that the subcontraries “might” and “might not” may be conjointly true and the contraries “will” and “will not” conjointly false. In this case, “might” and “might not” are no longer related as subalterns to “will” and “will not.” Rather, when they are conjointly true, they have the same relation to “will” and “will not” that “will” and “will not” have to each other.  In other words, they express a third distinct possibility –future indeterminacy – that stands in a contrary relationship to both the positive future determinacy expressed by “will” and the negative future determinacy expressed by “will not.”  For any possible future state of affairs, one of the three – “will,” “will not” and “might and might not” – must be true and the other two false.

But, because “might” and “might not” must be conjoined to play this third, indeterminate, contrary role, the possibility of their playing this role has been largely overlooked. Consequently, the possibility that the future is in some respects indeterminate and known by God as such has been largely overlooked.

There is a second, closely related observation we need to make about the Square. If we begin with the truth of one of the two determinate contrary poles, we can know the truth value of the other three poles. If, for example, “S will obtain” is true, then the subaltern “S might obtain” must also be true while both “S will not obtain” and “S might not obtain” must be false, the former because it is the contrary of “S will obtain” and the latter because it is its contradictory. By contrast, if we begin with a true “might,” we can only know that its contradictory “will not” is false. We can know nothing regarding the truth values of “will” and “might not.” It could be that “will” is true and “might not” false, or it could be that “might not” is true and “will” is false. The same applies if we begin with a true “might not,” in which case the contradictory “will” is false and either “might” is true and “will not” false or “will not” is true and “might” is false.

In other words, the Square allows us to falsify “will” with a single proposition—a “might not”—while leaving open the question as to the truth values of “might” and “will not.” The Square also allows us to falsify “will not” with a single proposition — “might” — while leaving open the question as to the truth values of “might not” and “will.” But, though the Square allows us to express “might and might not” through conjoined subcontraries, it gives us no way of falsifying this state of affairs while leaving open the question as to the truth values of “will” and “will not.” “In other words, to know that it is false that “S might and might not obtain,” we must know that either “S will obtain” is true and “S will not obtain” is false or that “S will obtain” is false and “S will not obtain” true.

To achieve parity with the three truth claims the Square allows for, we must be able to falsify “might and might not” while leaving open the question of the truth values of the other two truth claims (will” and “will not”).  Yet, to achieve this requires a fundamental revisioning of the Square, for we must posit a single proposition expressing “might and  might not” just as we have for “will” and “will not,” and it must have the same relation to “will” and “will not” that they have with each other. What is more, we must posit a single contradictory proposition to “might and might not” which, by virtue of being true, can falsify “ might and might not,” just as “will” and “will not” can each be  falsified by a single contradictory proposition  (“might not” and  “might). This, we shall soon see, transforms the Square of Opposition into a Hexagon of opposition.

As with our first observation, the lack of parity between “will” and “will not,” on the one hand, and “might and might not,” on the other, reveals a prejudice toward determinacy within the traditional Square. The Square logically allows for indeterminacy but does not treat it on a par with determinacy. And given how influential the Square has been to the development of Western thought, we suspect that this inadequacy may help explain why the tradition has tended to assume that the future is exhaustively expressible in terms of what will and will not come to pass and thus that God knows the future exhaustively in terms of what will and will not come to pass.

III. The Hexagon of Opposition

We wish to explore a model that grants indeterminacy the same propositionally singular status as determinacy. Toward this end, we will use Q as a primitive operator meaning “It is indeterminately the case that…” alongside primitive operator Z meaning, “It is determinately the case that…”. We will also revise the Square in such a way that Q will be granted the same logical status as Z.

As we have stated, there are three, not two, distinct modes of being that may characterize the future. Using Q and Z as defined, we arrive at:

Z(S) = It is determinately the case that state of affairs S occur (“S will obtain”)

Z(~S) = It is determinately the case that state of affairs not-S occur (“S will not obtain”)

Q(S) = It is indeterminately the case that state of affairs S occur (“S might and might not obtain”)

Each of these propositions affirms a distinct metaphysical possibility concerning any possible future state of affairs. These possibilities are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. As jointly exhaustive, at least one must be true for any meaningful future tense proposition. Thus we arrive at our first theorem:

I.          (S) [(Z(S) Ú Z (~S) Ú Q(S)].

As mutually exclusive, if any one is true, then the other two must be false, giving us three additional theorems:

II.        Z(S) « ~Z(~S) Ù ~Q(S)

III.      Z(~S) « ~Z(S) Ù ~Q(S)

IV.      Q(S) « ~Z(S) Ù ~Z(~S)

Because no two can be true at the same time, while any two can be false at the same time, these three possibilities are related as contraries, which we can represent by the following Triangle of Contrary Relations.

This Triangle of Contrary Relations generates a Triangle of Subcontrary Relations when we associate each possibility with its contradictory.  Consider first Z(S) (“It is determinately the case that state of affairs S obtain”). The contradictory of Z(S) is, of course, ~Z(S) (“It is not determinately the case that state of affairs S obtain”) and can be illustrated as follows:

The contradictory of Z(~S) (“It is determinately the case that state of affairs not-S obtain”) is ~Z (~S) (“It is not determinately the case that state of affairs not-S obtain”) which we locate opposite its contradictory:

Lastly, the contradictory of Q(S) (“It is indeterminately the case that state of affairs S obtain”) is ~Q(S) (“It is not indeterminately the case that state of affairs S obtain”), illustrated as follows:

Note that the first two propositions above, Z(S) and Z(~S) (“will” and “will not”) and their contradictories are explicit on the traditional Square. But the third proposition, Q(S) (“might and might not”) and its contradictory ~Q(S) have now been made explicit.

Now let’s consider how the contradictories (~Z(S), ~Z (~S) and ~Q(S) are related to each other. Consider the pair ~Z(S) and ~Z(~S). Since Q(S) entails both ~Z(S) and ~Z(~S) (by Theorem IV), it is clear that they are conjointly true when Q(S) is true. It is equally clear that ~Z(S)and ~Z(~S) cannot be conjointly false. For if ~Z(S) is false, then Z(S) is true, and if ~Z(~S) is false, then Z(~S) is true. But Z(S) and Z(~S) cannot be conjointly true (by Theorems II and III), so ~Z(S) and ~Z(~S) cannot be conjointly false. The same results obtain mutatis mutandis for the other pairs, (~Z(S) and ~Q(S); ~Z(~S) and ~Q(S). So, for each pair, it is possible that both be true and not possible that both be false, which means that they are subcontraries. We thus arrive at a Triangle of Subcontraries overlapping with the Triangle of Contrary Relations.

Thus far we have considered contrary, contradictory, and subcontrary relations. There remains one more logical relation to consider, namely, subaltern relations, which run outward from Z(S), Z(~S), and Q(S). We already know from the Square that ~Z(~S) is the subaltern of Z(S). Thus, if Z(S) (“will”) is true, the subaltern ~Z(~S) (“might”) is necessarily true. The same now applies to the relationship between Z(S) and the adjacent ~Q(S) (“not ‘might and might not’”). If Z(S) is true, ~Q(S) must be true. Likewise, if Z(~S) (“will not”) is true, the subaltern ~Z(S) (“might not”) is also true. The same subaltern relationship exists between Z(~S) and ~Q(S). If Z(~S) is true, ~Q(S) must be true. Lastly, Q(S) (“might and might not”) also has subaltern relations with the adjacent propositions. If Q(S) (“might and might not”) is true, both subalterns ~Z(~S) (“might”) and ~Z(S) (“might not”) are true.

As figure 7 below illustrates, the subaltern relations run from each of the three propositions forming our Triangle of Contrary Relations to each of the propositions forming the Triangle of Subcontrary Relations, completing a Hexagon of Subaltern Relations:

Note that the traditional Square of Opposition is still present in the Hexagon. We have simply enlarged and completed it. Indeed, one should notice that in completing the traditional Square we have uncovered two other intersecting Squares of Opposition, each exhibiting different truth functions but preserving the same logical relations. The traditional Square of Opposition is composed of contraries Z(S) and Z(~S) and subcontraries ~Z(~S) and ~Z(S). A second Square is composed of contraries Z(S) and Q(S) and subcontraries ~Z(S) and ~Q(S). A third Square is composed of Z(~S) and Q(S) and subcontraries ~Q(S) and ~Z(~S). The three squares may be highlighted as follows:

What we have in effect done is complete and correct the future tensed Square by replicating it three times from the vantage point of the three logically possible modes of being that the traditional Square allows for but does not adequately express. As with the traditional Square, the logical possibility of all three modes is implicit in each of the three Squares, but made explicit only when all three Squares are joined together, forming what we call the Hexagon of Opposition. It exhibits all the contrary, subcontrary, contradictory, and subaltern relations associated to the three logically possible modes of being.

IV. The Superiority of the Hexagon of Opposition

We may now more completely and elegantly account for the three logically possible modes of being and thus the truth values of all possible future tense propositions. The Hexagon’s advantages over the traditional Square in expressing future tense propositions include:

1. The Hexagon recognizes indeterminacy as a distinct mode of being about which we may offer true or false propositions (as opposed to the Square which only indirectly recognizes indeterminacy through conjointly true subcontraries). On the Hexagon of Opposition, indeterminacy is expressed by the operator Q, alongside the determinacy operator Z. The Hexagon thus recognizes indeterminacy in the same “propositionally singular” fashion as it recognizes determinacy.

2. Similarly, the Hexagon clarifies all the logical relations between all possible future tense propositions, whereas the traditional Square leaves some of these relations unexpressed. For example, the Hexagon clarifies the important difference between “might” (~Z(~S)) functioning as the subaltern of Z(S) and thus expressing the epistemological condition for  Z (S) and falsifying “ (Z(~S)), on the one hand, and “might” (Q(S)) expressing an indeterminate mode of being, on the other. In other words, the Hexagon illustrates the truth that “might” and “might not” may independently be true or false as the subalterns of Z(S) or Z(~S) respectively, but when conjointly true (Q(S)) their relation to Z(S) and Z(~S) is contrary, not subaltern. As we noted earlier, this distinction is not made by the traditional Square, a fact that we suspect has contributed to the relative neglect of indeterminacy in the western tradition.

3. The Hexagon allows us to falsify Q(S) (indirectly present on the Square through conjointly true “might and might not”) while leaving open the truth values of Z(S) (“will”) and Z(~S) (“will not”). The Square, we have seen, allows this for Z(S) and Z(~S), but not for Q(S). Because the Hexagon places Q(S) on equal, contrary footing with Z(S) and Z(-S), in knowing any one of the three contrary proposition is true, we know the truth value of its contrary, subcontrary, contradictory and subaltern relations. But in knowing any one of the three contrary propositions as false, we leave open the truth value of the other two contraries.

4. By clarifying the difference between the subaltern relations of “might” and “might not” to “will” and “will not” when considered alone, on the one hand, and the contrary relation of “might and might not” to “will” and “will not” when considered conjoined, on the other, the Hexagon makes explicit the present tense truth condition of future tense propositions. The truth value of “S will obtain” or “S will not obtain” or “S might and might not obtain” is located not in what eventually happens, but in what is now the case. Stated otherwise, the Hexagon reveals that the truth of a future tense propositions about future contingents depends on when the truth claim is made.  The Hexagon thereby reveals that the common philosophical assumption that the truth of all future tense propositions is timeless is misguided, for it arbitrarily assumes that all propositions expressing what “might and might not” obtain are false.

What then are we to make of the tenseless proposition, “S obtains at T”? In our view, it is an incomplete proposition in cases where S asserts a contingent state of affairs, for only necessary truths are timeless (viz. necessarily true at every moment). If a statement expressing the proposition “S obtains at T” is uttered prior to T, the statement is actually asserting the proposition “S will obtain at T” and is true just in case S will obtain at T, false that “S will not obtain at T” and false that “S might and might not obtain at T.” If uttered subsequent to T, the statement actually asserts the proposition “S did obtain at T” and is true just in case S did obtain at T and false that “S did not obtain at T.” And if uttered at T, the proposition “S obtains at T” actually asserts “S now obtains” and is true just in case S does in fact now obtain and false that “S does not now obtain.” In other words, the meaning and truth value of a proposition expressing a contingent state of affairs depends on when the claim is made with respect to the time of the event in question.

If the temporal relationship between when a statement is uttered and the contingent state of affairs asserted is not known, there is, strictly speaking, no propositional meaning or truth value to speak of. A tenseless proposition asserting a temporally indexed contingent state of affairs is like the proposition X + 2 = 4 where X is unspecified. If X =2, it is true. If X= 3, if is false. And if X = banana, it is meaningless.  But if X is unspecified, we must simply regard the proposition as incomplete and having no truth value.  So too, “S obtains at T” is incomplete unless we know the temporal relationship between when the proposition is asserted and when the event in question is supposed to obtain (or not) — that is, unless we know whether the proposition is actually asserting “S will obtain at T” or “S did obtain at T” or “S now obtains at T.”

V. Conclusion

We believe that the Hexagon of Opposition has a wide range of applications. One of these, we are convinced, is clarifying the argument we presented at the beginning of this essay. What are we to make of P3? To recall, P3 stated:

The future is exhaustively described in terms of what either will or will not come to pass.

As we have seen, the traditional Square itself demonstrates that this premise is arbitrarily restrictive, for it allows for subcontraries “might” and “might not” to be conjointly true thus rendering their contradictories “will” and “will not” false. But the Square also helps explain why the tradition has tended to assume P3, for it is prejudiced toward determinacy by virtue of not giving indeterminacy equally primitive status with determinacy, as we’ve shown. The Hexagon makes the arbitrariness of P3—and the limitations of the traditional Square that contribute to P3—explicit.

The Hexagon makes it clear that there are no logical grounds for assuming the future can be expressed solely in terms of what “will come to pass” and what “will not come to pass.” From a strictly logical perspective, the future can only be exhaustively expressed in terms of what “will come to pass,” what “will not come to pass” and what “might and might not come to pass.” Hence, the Hexagon makes it explicit that it is at least logically possible that God, by virtue of knowing the truth value of all propositions, knows some of the future as what might and might not come to pass. Just in case “S will obtain” or “S will not obtain” is true, God knows that “S might and might not obtain” is false. And just in case “S might and might not obtain” is true, God knows that both “S will obtain” and “S will not obtain” are false.

Of course, one could hold that while propositions expressing what “might and might not” come to pass (Q(S)) are logically possible, as a matter of fact God has rendered them all false by creating a world in which the future is exhaustively settled and thus known by God as such. True enough. God could have done this. But the Hexagon makes it clear that God could conceivably have done otherwise. And this is enough to demonstrate that P3 is not true a priori and thus that omniscience does not logically entail that God knows the future exhaustively in terms of what will or will not come to pass.

In the final analysis, the extent to which the future is in fact open and/or settled is a contingent matter that must be ascertained on grounds other than pure logic. However, the Hexagon of Opposition clarifies that nothing in logic itself, and thus nothing in the definition of omniscience, constitutes grounds for concluding there are no true “might and might not” propositions. It thus makes explicit that the future is not by definition exhaustively settled and thus that God does not by definition know it as exhaustively settled.

[1] For a discussion, see Alan Rhoda, Gregory Boyd, Thomas Belt, “Open Theism, Omniscience and the Nature of the Future,” (Publication Pending).

[2]  Some might at the outset object to the applicability of the traditional Square to future tensed propositions. Unlike “all” and “none” on the traditional Square, one could argue, “S will obtain” and “S will not obtain” are contradictories, not contraries.  In response, if one grants that indeterminacy is real, ontologically speaking, there are three, not just two, possible future-tense propositions that may describe the future, as we’ve already suggested.   All three are mutually exclusive, which means they cannot be contradictory.  They can only be contrary.  Not only this, but if we accept that “S will obtain” and “S will not obtain” are contradictories, we must deny that “S will obtain” is the contradictory of “S might not obtain” and that “S will not obtain” is the contradictory of “S might obtain.” But then, we must wonder, what is the relationship between these propositions?  Clearly “S will obtain” and “S might not obtain” cannot both be false (and so with “S will not obtain” and “S might obtain”). But, for reasons argued elsewhere, we argue they also cannot both be true  (see A. Rhoda, G. Boyd and T. Belt, “Open Theism, Omniscience and the Nature of the Future”), Hence, one must be true while the other must be false, which makes “will” and “might not” contradictory (and so “will not” and “might”).   The other relations of the traditional Square (contrary, subcontrary and subaltern) follow from this as illustrated above.

[3] See G. Boyd, “Neo-Molinism and the Infinite Intelligence of God,” Philosophia Christi, 5”1 (2003), 187-204, and item, “Unbounded Love and the Openness of the Future: An Exploration and Critique of Pinnock’s Theological Pilgrimage,” Semper Reformandum: Studies in Honour of C.H.Pinnock, eds. S. Porter and A. Cross (Great Britian: Paternoster, 2003), 38-58.

[4]  Another way of stating this is to note that while “Hillary will be president” and “Hillary will not be president” are contrary, not contradictory, propositions, “Hillary is president” and “Hillary is not president” are contradictory.  Temporal passage is marked by the transition from three possible modes of being regarding the future (“will,” “will not,” “might and might not”) to two possible modes of being regarding the present and past (“is,” “is not,” and “was,” “was not”).

The post The Hexagon of Opposition: Thinking Outside the Aristotelian Box appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

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.

The post 1994-2004, an Overview of the Debate on Open Theism in Evangelicalism appeared first on OpenTheism.info.

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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Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Scripture says that God is sovereign over all things, yet we have free will to determine our actions. So to what extent is God supreme? In this masterful examination of the sovereignty of God, 13 respected scholars help you understand the full authority of the Lord—and explain how to apply this knowledge to your life. Previously published as two volumes: The Grace of God and The Bondage of the Will. 368 pages, softcover from Baker.

What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge

By Millard J. Erickson

As “openness theology” becomes increasingly controversial within evangelicalism today, divine foreknowledge threatens to join predestination vs. free will among Christianity’s divisively debated doctrines. Now one of America’s most respected theologians examines the question from both sides. Thoroughly evaluating all relevant arguments with graceful deliberation, Erickson offers thoughtful conclusions with less heat and more light. 304 pages, hardcover from Zondervan.

Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

By Thomas P. Flint

Thomas P. Flint develops and defends the idea of divine providence sketched by Luis de Molina, the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian. The Molinist account of divine providence reconciles two claims long thought to be incompatible: that God is the all-knowing governor of the universe and that individual freedom can prevail only in a universe free of absolute determinism. The Molinist concept of middle knowledge holds that God knows, though he has no control over, truths about how any individual would freely choose to act in any situation, even if the person never encounters that situation. Given such knowledge, God can be truly providential while leaving his creatures genuinely free. Divine Providence is by far the most detailed and extensive presentation of the Molinist view ever written.

Middle knowledge is hotly debated in philosophical theology, and the controversy spills over into metaphysics and moral philosophy as well. Flint ably defends the concept against its most influential contemporary critics, and shows its importance to Christian practice. With particular originality and sophistication, he applies Molinism to such aspects of providence as prayer, prophecy, and the notion of papal infallibility, teasing out the full range of implications for traditional Christianity.

No Other God: A Response to Open Theism

By John M. Frame

The theological movement known as open theism is shaking the church today, challenging the Reformed doctrines of God’s sovereignty, foreknowledge, and providence. In this timely work, John M. Frame clearly describes open theism and evaluates it biblically. He addresses questions such as: How do open theists read the Bible? Is love God’s most important attribute? Is God’s will the ultimate explanation of everything? Do we have genuine freedom? Is God ever weak or changeable? Does God know everything in advance? Frame not only answers the objections of open theists but sharpens our understanding of the relationship between God’s eternal plan and the decisions or events of our lives.

The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism

By Norman L. Geisler & H. Wayne House

Listen and learn as Geisler and House go head-to-head with Boyd, Pinnock, and other neotheists. Defending the historical evangelical view of God, the authors take issue with the theology, hermeneutics, and philosophy of neotheism—especially the question of God’s knowledge and control of past and future events. A well-argued defense of God as Creator and Sustainer. 256 pages, softcover from Kregel.

God Under Fire

Edited By Douglas S. Huffman & Eric L. Johnson

God Never Changes Or does he? God has been getting a makeover of late, a ‘reinvention’ that has incited debate and troubled scholars and laypeople alike. Modern theological sectors as diverse as radical feminism and the new ‘open theism’ movement are attacking the classical Christian view of God and vigorously promoting their own images of Divinity. God Under Fire refutes the claim that major attributes of the God of historic Christianity are false and outdated. This book responds to some increasingly popular alternate theologies and the ways in which they cast classical Christian theism in a negative light. Featuring an impressive cast of world-class biblical scholars, philosophers, and apologists, God Under Fire begins by addressing the question, ‘Should the God of Historic Christianity Be Replaced?’ From there, it explores issues as old as time and as new as the inquest into the ‘openness of God.’ How, for instance, does God risk, relate, emote, and change? Does he do these things, and if so, why? These and other questions are investigated with clarity, bringing serious scholarship into popular reach. Above all, this collection of essays focuses on the nature of God as presented in the Scriptures and as Christians have believed for centuries. God Under Fire builds a solid and appealing case for the God of classical Christian theism, who in recent years—as through the centuries—has been the God under fire.

How Much Does God Foreknow?: A Comprehensive Biblical Study

By Steven C. Roy

Does the Bible teach that God’s foreknowledge is exhaustive and infallible?

Does Scripture affirm that God foreknows the free decisions of human beings?

Current debates over the extent of God’s foreknowledge, argues Steven C. Roy, have not given sufficient consideration to the complete biblical revelation. Seeking to correct this imbalance, Roy provides in-depth studies of dozens of key passages in both the Old and the New Testaments.

Cognizant of the current debates between classical notions of divine foreknowledge and more recent “openness” views, Roy interacts incisively with their respective theological positions and draws out implications of biblical teaching for the practical matters of Christian worship, prayer, guidance, suffering and evil, and ultimate hope in the triumph of God.

Steven C. Roy (Ph.D., Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He has also taught systematic theology, historical theology and ethics. Prior to coming to Trinity, he was a pastor for twelve years and taught in Cameroon, West Africa. He is author of God as Omnicompetent Responder? Questions about the Grounds of Eschatological Confidence in Open Theism in Looking to the Future, edited David W. Baker.

Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity

By J. Piper, J. Taylor & P.K. Helseth

Isaiah tells us that knowing the future distinguishes God from idols. In denying exhaustive foreknowledge, “open theism” undermines the foundation of orthodox Christianity. Explaining why this new theology’s god is not the God of Scripture, 12 pastors and teachers provide a philosophical, historical, and linguistic understanding of the boundary lines at stake. 288 pages, softcover from Crossway Books.

God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism

By Bruce A. Ware

Christians throughout history have been strengthened by their confidence that God knows everything about the future. But consider this: What if it simply is not true? What if God can only rely on His best guess about tomorrow–just as you and I do? Would it not affect your trust in Him, your confidence in facing the future, your worship, and your motivation to leave everything in His hands? And yet this is the consequence that has to be faced if you trust what a number of leading voices in evangelicalism are proposing under the doctrine of open theism. In its redefinition of the nature of divine providence, open theism adjusts the entire picture of God’s sovereignty and involvement in our lives. Bruce Ware carefully summarizes and critiques this dangerous doctrine from a thoroughly biblical perspective, providing an excellent treatment of both the classical and openness views. He explores their implications and faithfully pinpoints the subtle ways that open theism undermines our trust in God and lessens His glory in our lives.

No Place for Sovereignty: What’s Wrong with Freewill Theism

By R.K. McGregor Wright

Many evangelical thinkers are calling into question the sovereignty of God, a theory called “freewill theism.” Wright examines that theory, showing what is wrong with it biblically, theologically, and philosophically. Along the way, he looks at historical theology and makes a strong case for the Reformed view of God’s sovereignty. 264 pages, softcover from InterVarsity.

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Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views

Edited By Bruce Ware

Perspectives on the Doctrine of God presents in counterpoint form four basic common beliefs on the doctrine of God that have developed over the course of church history with a goal of determining which view is most faithful to Scripture.

Contributors to this fifth book in the PERSPECTIVES series are Regent College J.I. Packer chair in Theology and Philosophy Paul Helm (Classical Calvinist perspective), editor Bruce Ware (Modified Calvinist perspective), Baylor University professor of Theology Roger Olson (Classical Arminian perspective), and Hendrix College assistant professor of Religion John Sanders (Open Theist perspective).

Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science

Edited By Thomas Jay Oord

In this volume openness theologians and biblical scholars including Pinnock, Boyd, and Sanders have chapters.

God in an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism

Edited By William Hasker, Thomas Jay Oord, and Dean Zimmerman

Since its inception, the discussion surrounding Open Theism has been dominated by polemics. On crucial philosophical issues, Openness proponents have largely been devoted to explicating the underlying framework and logical arguments supporting their perspective against competing theological and philosophical perspectives. As a result, very little constructive work has been done on the interconnections between Open Theism and the natural sciences. Given the central place of sciences in today’s world, any perspective that hopes to have a broad impact must necessarily address such disciplines in a sustained and constructive manner. To date such engagements from the Openness perspective have been rare.

God in an Open Universe addresses this deficiency. This book demonstrates that Open Theism makes a distinctive and highly fruitful contribution to the conversation and constructive work occurring between philosophy, theology, and the sciences. The various essays explore subjects ranging from physics to prayer, from special relativity to divine providence, from metaphysics to evolution, and from space-time to God. All who work at the intersection of theology and the sciences will benefit greatly from these essays that break new ground in this important conversation.

The God Biographers: Our Changing Image of God from Job to the Present

By Larry Witham

The God Biographers presents a sweeping narrative of the Western image of God since antiquity, following the theme of how the “old” biography of God has been challenged by a “new” biography in the twenty-first century. The new biography has made its case in free will theism, process thought, evolutionary doctrines, relational theology, and “open theism”—a story of people, ideas, and events that is brought up to the present in this engaging narrative.

Readers will meet the God biographers in the old and new camps. On the one side are Job, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin. On the other side is a group that includes the early Unitarian and Wesleyan thinkers, the process thinkers Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Hartshorne, and finally a new breed of evangelical philosophers. This story looks closely at the cultural and scientific context of each age and how these shaped the images of God. In the twenty-first century, that image is being shaped by new human experiences and the findings of science. Today, the debate between the old biographers and the new is playing out in the forums of modern theology, courtrooms, and social movements. Larry Witham tells that panoramic story in an engaging narrative for specialists and general readers alike.

Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

By James Beilby

Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views provides a unique venue for well-known proponents of four distinct views in the openness of God debate to present their case. Paul Helm of King’s College, London, presents the Augustinian/Calvinistic view. David Hunt of Whittier College contends for a simple foreknowledge view. William Lane Craig of Talbot School of Theology argues for middle knowledge, or Molinism, and Gregory A. Boyd of Bethel College presents the openness view.

God & Time: Four Views

By Gregory E. Ganssle

How should we best understand God’s relationship with our time-bound universe? In this book, four notable philosophers skill fully take on this difficult topic, all from within a Christian framework yet contending for difficult views. Paul Helm presents the divine timeless eternity as relative timelessness. William Lane Craig offers the timeleness and omnitemporality view while Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for God of time position.

Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom

By David & Randall Basinger

If God is in control, are people really free? The Basingers present four views on this thought-provoking question: Bruce Reichenbach on God’s self-limited power, John Feinberg on God’s control through foreordination, Clark Pinnock on God’s self-limited knowledge, and Norman Geisler on God’s control by foreknowledge. Paper, IVP.

God as Loving Grace

By Barry L. Callen

This book available at Barnes & Noble.com by clicking here.

Who is the God of the Bible? In this book Barry Callen presents the Triune God of loving grace. Callen contends that God’s loving grace “is at the center of the answer” to all questions we humans have about God: about creation, divine revelation, incarnation, and any hope we have for salvation.

While beginning and ending with the scriptural narrative of God’s loving grace, Callen interacts with many contemporary ideas and thinkers in a reasonable and irenic way. The result is a biblically based presentation of God that addresses the questions that many are asking today.

Discerning the Divine: God in Christian Theology

By Barry L. Callen

Exploring the many-faceted doctrine of God from multiple angles, Callen reaffirms its pre-eminence in Christian theology. Topics of discussion include the deeply moved “First Mover”; the theistic quest; the tensions between “domesticating the Deity” and “letting God be God”; and Divine revelation in history, including near-death experiences and God’s presence in suffering and marginalization. 232 pages, softcover from Westminster/John Knox.

God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict

By Gregory Boyd

We have all heard about spiritual warfare, and putting on the armor of God. But who are we fighting? And what form does our conflict take? Dr. Greg Boyd, in God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, attempts to answer these questions and more.

Some in our culture, because of the call for Christians to be peacemakers, feel that a warfare mentality is un-Christian. Dr. Boyd feels that a warfare mentality is the only mindset that enables us to truly deal with the very real problem of evil (and a call to be a peacemaker assumes that war is going on). He shows that the writers of the Bible, like the cultures around them, saw existence as a cosmic conflict between good and evil, and how the Bible calls us to join that conflict. This call is to more than just exorcisms and the like. It is a call to holiness and a passion for God. All godly actions, including prayer, feeding the poor, charity, etc., can be seen as warfare, as acts which stand against the evil and chaos present in our world.

So join with Dr. Boyd in restoring a warfare mentality to the church. This book will open your eyes to the continuing activity of God in the world. It may also give you a new and greater sense of significance, as humans, through God and choosing God’s way, can work with God in restoring the world to the perfection that God intended it to have.

God at War is a challenging and provocative book, challenging some of our traditional philosophical ideas about God and reality and provoking us to join this cosmic battle on God’s side, the side of good. Dr. Boyd displays a keen understanding of the scriptural passages about conflict, and he quotes extensively from authors who have studied spiritual warfare. The result is a book both conservative and contemporary at the same time, well worth the effort in reading.

Satan & the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy

By Gregory Boyd

Following his book God at War, Boyd here seeks to defend his scripturally grounded trinitarian warfare theodicy with rigorous philosophical reflection and insights from human experience and scientific discovery. He suggests that thereis an alternative to the classical Calvinist understanding of the sovereignty of the trinitarian God and of the reality of Satan that sheds light on our fallen human condition. While all may not agree with his conclusions, this book promises to advance the church’s discussion over these critical issues.

Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father’s Questions about Christianity

By Dr. Gregory A. Boyd

Greg Boyd is an apologetics professor at Bethel College. When he became a Christian, his father, Ed, thought he had joined a cult. For fourteen years, Greg tried to talk to his father about Christianity, with little success. Then, in what he saw as a last ditch effort, Greg invited his father participate in a dialogue through letters in which Ed could express all his doubts and questions and Greg could attempt to answer them, and prove the validity of his own views. To Greg’s surprise, his father agreed. This book is the collection of those letters.

Who is this book for? It has a wide potential audience. Its a great example of the power of apologetics, and could be used in a classroom setting to stimulate discussion. Its also a hopeful example for those who have loved ones not yet saved (Ed became a Christian after three years of dialog with Greg). But its also valuable for people who are already Christians, on two fronts. One, its helpful for those seeking answers to questions provided by friends and loved ones. Two, its a wonderful exposition of basic Christian beliefs, and can help believers strengthen their faith.

Honest, thought-stimulating, intelligent, well-written. A good addition to any library.

Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering

By Gregory A. Boyd

Is God to Blame? This is often the question that comes to mind when we confront real suffering in our own life or in the lives of those we love. Pastor Gregory Boyd helps us deal with this question honestly and biblically while avoiding glib answers. Writing for ordinary Christians, Boyd wrestles with a variety of answers that have been offered by theologians and pastors in the past. He finds that a fully Christian approach must keep the person and the work of Jesus Christ at the very center of what we say about human suffering and God’s place in it. Yet this is often just what is missing and what makes so much talk about the subject seem inadequate and at times misleading. What comes through is a hopeful picture of a sovereign God who is relentlessly opposed to evil, who knows our sufferings and who can be trusted to bring us through them to renewed life.

Speaking of a Personal God: An Essay in Philosophical Theology

By Vincent Brummer

This short work shows how systematic theology is itself a philosophical enterprise. After analyzing the nature of philosophical enquiry and its relation to systematic theology, and after explaining how theology requires that we talk about God, Vincent BrÜmmer illustrates how philosophical analysis can help in dealing with various conceptual problems involved in the fundamental Christian claim that God is a personal being with whom we may live in a personal relationship.

Answering God

By Rob Ellis

“Prayer changes things” according to the old clich`. But what things, and how? Engaging with biblical texts on prayer, Rob Ellis finds valuable guidance on the contents of prayer, as well as evidence of early wrestling with its problems. He also reviews the works of leading historical theologians such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin before asking how the question “Who is God?” connects with our thinking about intercession. Concluding with a Trinitarian theology of intercession that draws on the work of Karl Barth, Answering God will be of interest to church ministers, leaders and students of theology.

Exodus: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching & Preaching)

By Terence Fretheim

This new volume in the helpful Interpretation series competently steers preachers and teachers through theological and literary difficulties in the second book of Moses. Fretheim begins by reviewing issues of faith and history, drawing out ways in which the Hebrew story of redemption can be applied to modern Christian experience. In his commentary, he pays special attention to the significance of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the relationship between law and narrative, and the shaping of literature by liturgy. About 300 pages, hardcover from Westminster/John Knox.

First and Second Kings (WBC) (Westminster Bible Companion)

By Terence Fretheim

By focusing his attention upon the plot of 1 and 2 Kings, Fretheim does not allow ancient history to obscure a timely, prophetic message. He convincingly shows that 1 and 2 Kings were far more concerned with real life issues than with chronicling the historical accomplishments of various monarchs.

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.”

Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit

By Clark H. Pinnock

This magnum opus from one of evangelicalism’s most stimulating theologians. Pinnock’s systematic theology examines the centrality of the Holy Spirit to the church’s life and witness, and invites us to move beyond rationalism to recover “intimacy and immediacy” with God. A theological bridge of mainstream, evangelical, and charismatic thought. 280 pages, softcover from InterVarsity.

Grace of God and the Will of Man, The

By Clark Pinnock

The Grace of God and the Will of Man brings together an impressive array of evangelical scholars from many traditions to examine the scope of God’s saving purposes and His manner of working for the salvation of human beings. Developing the proposition that the dynamic, personal God of the Bible respects the freedom He has given to the human race, the essays in this book paint a picture of how God sensitively works out His plans for individuals and the whole of history. The writers of this volume don’t claim the last word on this subject, but they make a convincing case for an evangelical alternative to deterministic theology.

The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis

By John Polkinghorne, Michael Welker

The development of kenotic ideas was one of the most important advances in theological thinking in the late twentieth century. Now a diverse group of acknowledged experts brought together by the Templeton Foundation presents a stimulating interdisciplinary evaluation of these controversial ideas.

The post Open Theist Perspective 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).
________. “The Desire to be God: The Theological Character of Sartre’s Atheology” in Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Winter 1998
________. “Mythology and Freedom: Nicholas Berdyaev and the Ungrund” in Philosophy

Today, Winter 1996
________. “The Idealist Critique of Idealism: Bowne’s Personalism and Howison’s City of

God,” in The Personalist Forum, Winter 1998.
________. “George Holmes Howison: The Conception of God Debate and the Beginnings of

Personal Idealism” The Personalist Forum, Vol. X no. 4 (Fall) 1995.
________. “Persons, Creativity, and God: Some Mormon Thoughts about Process Thought” in

Mormonism and Contemporary Christian Theology, David Paulsen, ed. State University

of New York Press and Brigham Young University Press. (forthcoming)
________. “Berdyaev’s Uses of Jacob Boehme’s Ungrund Myth.” in McLachlan, James, ed.

Philosophical and Religious Conceptions of the Person and Their Implications for Ethical, Political, and Social Thought. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.

Meeks, M. Douglas. God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.

Miller, Patrick D. “Prayer as Persuasion: The Rhetoric and Intention of Prayer.” Word and World 13, no. 4 (1993): 356-362.

________. They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer. Minneapolis, Fortress, 1994.

Nichols, Jason. Omniscience in the Divine Openness: A Critical Analysis of Present Knowledge in God. M.A. thesis, Trinity International University, 1997.

Nobuharu, Tokiyuki. “God and Emptiness: Cause, Reasons, and the World’s Abyss. Forms of Panentheism in Religion and Nature” in: Sybille Fritsch-Oppermann, ed. Zufall, Notwendigkeit, Bestimmung: Der Dialog zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Religion ueber Schoepfung und Naturangesichts der Fragen von Kausalitaet und Determination, Loccumer Protokolle 15/01, Evangelische Akademie Loccum, Germany, 2001.

________. “Portraying ‘Authentic Existence’ By the Method of Analogy: Toward Creative Uses of the Analogy of Attribution Duorum Ad Tertium for Comparative Philosophy of Religion.” Bulletin of Keiwa College. 1 (February 1992): 61-83; 2 (February 1993): 127- 50: 3 (February 1994): 1-19.

________. “How Can Experience Give Rise to Religious Self-Awareness and Then to the Topological Argument for the Existence of God Cogently? Nishida, Whitehead and Pannenberg.” Process Thought. 6 (September 1995): 125-150.

________. “Hartshorne and Hisamatsu on Human Nature: A Study of Christian and Buddhist Metaphysical Anthropology.” Bulletin of Keiwa College. 5 (February 1996): 1-49.

________. “Christ As the Problem of Analogy: Concerning the Theological-Analogical Significance of Q and the Gospel of Thomas.” Bulletin of Keiwa College. 6 (February 1997): 25-51.

________. “A New Possibility for Logos Christology Through Encounter with Buddhism: Tillich and Takizawa Critically Considered and Compared.” Bulletin of Keiwa College. 7

(March 1998): 91-118; 9 (March 1999): 107-137.
________. “Toward a Global Ethic of Loyalty/Fidelity/Truthfulness.” Bulletin of Keiwa

College. 9 (February 2000): 1-27.

Olson, Roger E. “Whales and Elephants: Both God’s Creatures But Can They Meet?” Pro Ecclesia 4.2 (Spring 1995): 165-89.

Olson, Roger. “Has God Been Held Hostage by Philosophy? A forum on free- will theism, a new paradigm for understanding God.” Christianity Today, 39 (Ja 9 1995): 30-34

Oord, Thomas Jay. “The Divergence of Evangelical and Process Theologies: Is the Impasse Insurmountable?” ARC: Journal for the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies. Forthcoming.

________. “Divine Love” and “Theodicy.” Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays. Thomas Jay Oord, ed. Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 2003.

________. “Evil, Providence, and a Relational God.” Quarterly Review. 23:3 (Fall 2003): 238- 250.

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________. Matching Theology and Piety: An Evangelical Process Theology of Love. Ph.D. Thesis. Claremont Graduate University, 1999.

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