Open View of God

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I'm a moderate to liberal Baptist but some of the most fundamentalist Baptists I know (and meet with weekly) also agree with this view. So don't let my "infidel" status affect your view of this very exciting recovery of early Christianity (pre Augustine's acquiescence to Greek philosophy). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In this world of words meaning anything the user wants them to and revisionist history, the above statement is meaningless. Anyone who holds to the OV of God is no fundamentalist, and is certainly defined by traditional church confessions and scriptural authority, as a heretic.

The Open View of God is a fallacious, heretical view of God. it is not OK to formulate views on the character, attributes and sovereignty of God by what makes us “feel better”, but only by what is revealed in Scripture. The Open View has been answered theologically by better minds than mine, i.e., Mohler and Piper and Ware and Sproul and many others, and also by people in this board. However, the refutation falls on the deaf ears of those which prefer to be tickled by man made doctrines and opinions.

Aside from the important theological concerns, OV is just plain – well, ******. To imagine an Infinite God who does not know the decisions and choices of his finite beings is ridiculous; such a god, whose foreknowledge is limited and controlled by finite sinful creatures is no God at all.

Theologically it is corrupt. It is admitted that select passages and anthropomorphisms in OT narratives are used to regulate the interpretation of Scripture, thereby jettisoning the principle of the clear interpreting the unclear and the NT interpreting the OT. In passages where there appears to be lack of knowledge or a change in God, these must be trumped by the clear biblical teaching, OT and NT, that God is supremely sovereign. The OV is clearly unable to delineate between God’s decretive will and his providential will.

The Open View of God blasphemes God because it denies:

God’s Omniscience: it robs God of his exhaustive eternal knowledge of all things. It grants sovereignty to man by default as a man knows his thoughts before God does.
Isaiah 55:8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

God’s Omnipotence: If God is not all knowing, then he is not all powerful, for he is unable to know what will occur prior to it occurring.
Isaiah 46:9 Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,”

God’s omnipresence: God cannot be omnipresent, and is limited as a created being, as he is unable to dwell in the mind of man, unable to access his thoughts prior to man knowing them.
Psalm 139: 1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me. 2 You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. 3 You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. 4 For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. 5 You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it. 7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me," Even the night shall be light about me; 12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

God’s eternality: God cannot be eternal, else he would exist in eternity past and future, and know all things which so ever come to pass.
Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

God’s sovereignty: God cannot be sovereign, as man is by default. However, Scripture is clear that God is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and all things come to pass not only with his permission but according to his will an plan .
Job 12:9 “Who among all these does not know That the hand of the LORD has done this, 10 In whose hand is the life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind?

prophecy: prophecy is impossible, for God cannot predict what he does not know will occur, nor can he control it. both Calvinists and Arminians (inconsistently) affirm that God is in control of human history, bringing it to a final climax. How can God do this if people may make a decision apart from his knowledge of the plan? In the OV view, we can never be assured that any prophecy can come to fruition, for either God or man may change his plans.
Isaiah 14:24 The LORD of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand, 25 to break Assyria in My land, and I will trample him on My mountains. Then his yoke will be removed from them and his burden removed from their shoulder. 26“This is the plan devised against the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out against all the nations. 27 “For the LORD of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?”

the OV, while claiming to adhere to Scripture, jettisons all those passages which speak to the inexhaustible foreknowledge and sovereign control of God.

the gospel is mocked : God could not have known whether or not Christ would have been crucified, and whether or not men would have believed. Hence the gospel becomes a lucky gamble, rather than the divine purpose of redemptive history. Therefore it must be untrue, in the OV view, that “… Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know——"Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; "whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.” (Acts 2:22-24).

The OV of God calls God enormously ignorant, as can be seen by this message by John Piper:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> In what follows, when I refer to God's knowing I mean his certain knowing, not his extraordinary ability to deduce probabilities from known facts. In the view that I am concerned to understand, namely, the view of Greg Boyd and others concerning the foreknowledge of God, what is denied is certainty in God concerning future volitions of human beings, and what is affirmed is the human capacity to contradict God's best prognoses, because of the God-given capacity of creative free choice.
For God not to know future volitions of humans is not a small ignorance but a huge one, unimaginably huge. It is, for example, not a periodic ignorance, but a continual one; not a narrow ignorance, but a universally human one; not an insignificant ignorance, but a tremendously significant one; not a confined ignorance, but a diverse one (relating to all things a person can choose).

1. Diverse Ignorance
It is a diverse ignorance. In all my waking moments (and perhaps in my dreams) my will is inclining one way or the other concerning this or that thought to think, this or that emotions or attitude to savor or resist, this or that word to speak, or this or that movement of the body to make. Of all these diverse acts of mind, emotion, and body, God is ignorant up to the actual point of volition that performs or shapes them. So God does not know for sure my thoughts, the full nature of my emotions or attitudes, my words or my bodily acts one second before they come to pass. His ignorance is as diverse as are the aspects of life affected by human volition.
This would also include not only the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds happening in me, but also all the effects that come from all those acts of my will. Thus the diversity of the ignorance expands to the physical effects on my body that actually result from my thoughts and emotions, and the effects of my emotions on all the other people and things in my life. (God can know what effects would come if I release and do not resist anger or joy or gratitude or lust, but he cannot know the actual effects on people or things.) God does not know if my unresisted anger will result in a harsh word or a sneer or a swing of the fist or the pull of a trigger. He does not know if my unresisted discouragement will result in my not going to work or my committing suicide or my walking away from my marriage. He does not know if my chosen word will be one that saves life (as when my wife hollered, "Johnny!" as I started to step into Cambridge traffic a few years ago) or destroys life (as when a gang leader says, "Shoot!"). He does not know if my chosen deeds will make an airplane crash or cause a law to pass.
It also is evident, therefore, that the immense diversity of God's ignorance unleashes an even more immense ignorance of the diversity of effects resulting from each of the unknown thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds. Every volition as it produces or shapes thought, emotion, word, and deeds is like a cue ball that hits a triangle of billiard balls. The path of every one is unknown ahead of time by God. This, I say, is an immense ignorance because most of the events in the emotional, intellectual, verbal, and material world are caused or shaped by acts of human volition directly or indirectly. Of all these countless things God is ignorant until they actually happen.

2. Universally Human Ignorance
Now multiply the immense diversity of God's ignorance of my thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds times all the humans in the world. Not only is there a huge divine ignorance of my diverse life of thought, emotion, attitude, word, and deed, but he is also ignorant of all of that in all people everywhere who have wills. Race or age or intellect or sex or education or tribe does not limit his ignorance. As far as diversity in human nature and culture extend, so far does God's ignorance extend of what thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds every person will choose or shape by his or her volition. Everywhere at all times God is ignorant of all volitions and their effects up to the instant that they are performed by our creative wills.

3. Continual Ignorance
I said above that God is ignorant at all times of what volitions are yet future. Let the magnitude of this ignorance sink in. His ignorance of my thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds up to the instant they happen is followed by a continual ignorance that very next instant of what thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, and deeds may be brought to pass or shaped immediately on the heels of the acts just performed. Thus the instant God gains knowledge of my thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds, the extent and durability of what he now knows is unknown since it may be affected this way or that by the next instance's volition. Thus God is not accumulating useful knowledge with each instance's actualized volition, but is rather besieged by a relentless, never-ending, second-by-second onslaught of immense ignorance that actually causes the knowledge he just gained to be of no certain use since its possible effects in the world of ceaseless new volitions are also unknowable to him.
For example, God discovers that a man chooses to swerve his car into the oncoming traffic the instant the choice is made and the car swerves; but this knowledge is of little use because it is possible in the very next fraction of a second the man's free will may prompt him to swerve back so that if God should miraculously push an oncoming car off into the shoulder with a puff of wind, the man may in that very instant will to swerve to the shoulder. And so the second-by-second free acting of the driver's will runs ahead of God's knowledge and keeps him continually off balance and ignorant until the crash happens or doesn't happen. This continual uninterrupted ignorance of God is therefore immense.

4. Tremendously Significant Ignorance
The ignorance of future human volitions is not insignificant ignorance. Aside from purely natural events like wind, rain, lightening, heat of summer, cold of winter, aging, gravity, subatomic motion of electrons, animal behavior, etc., virtually all the significant reality in life and family and society and nations is the fruit of human volition. All technology, family dynamics, church life, legislation, military affairs, telecommunications, media, literature, drama, theater, architecture, transportation, food production, utilities, etc., etc., are created, shaped, sustained, and guided through moment-by-moment human volition. All of which God is ignorant until it comes to pass. Thus the entire fabric of culture in all its immense significance is being woven without God's knowledge of how each moment, hour, day, month, year, and decade will take shape.

5. Closing Question
Is this the God of the Bible? They would say probably that God can indeed plan and govern, because humans also plan and govern even though they are ignorant like this. Only God understands all relevant influences and so is much more knowing of probabilities than man is and so can plan much better than man can. In other words, God has the same kind of knowledge man does only he's better at it. He can make more probable prognoses concerning what man is about to do. But he is likely to be surprised a million times over. That is, the degree to which men really are free and creative and not governed by circumstance or genetics God shares in the immense ignorance spoken of above. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The Open View is heresy, plain and simple, and must be abandoned and rejected by every true believer. To believe in the OV God is to not believe in the God of the Bible, and is therefore a false faith.

…let God be true but every man a liar. Rom 3:4a

 

Amen, Chris.
This reminds me of the tower of Babel, people trying to make God into a little g so they can feel that they are somewhat in control.

 

The Open View of God makes the God of our Bible no different than Odin, Zeus, Ra, etc.

In fact, it pulls down the greatness of God to that of the mythological beings who were based on God (but given limitations by humans so that humans could "out-smart" and "out-do" the gods), and relegates God and the Bible to a status of "myth" instead of divine truth.

Consider the truth of my words: If the Open View is correct, then the ultimate conclusion is that instead of a Plan for everything and all of us, God acquiesces to us (resulting in no plan at all, but simple reactions to us silly humans).

[ October 29, 2001: Message edited by: Don ]

 

Great post Brother Chris.

 

What kind of god would test people, sometimes in the most severe manner, if he already knew beforehand the outcome of the test?

 

That's exactly where the OV of god fails. God is sovereign and knows everything. He does not "test" us to find out what will happen or what we will choose. He tests us for our benefit, not His. If you believe that testing is for His benefit, you strip Him of His sovereignty and ultimately all of His attributes, lifting yourself up to His level, or bringing Him down to yours. This is not the God of the Bible.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made everything beautiful in His time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

 

I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him. Ecc. 3:14

 

Job 23:10 But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

 

Keith,

Don't worry about what Chris calls you; consider the source. How did Jesus describe such? Whitewashed tombs.

 

And that, Keith, is apparently where you fail to understand "the Plan."

The ONLY analogy I've ever come across to understand this is the story of Patton vs. Rommel. If you've seen the movie "Patton," then you'll know what I'm talking about.

At the beginning of the battle, Patton is standing on top of a hill, watching through binoculars. When Rommel's forces come through the gap that Patton was watching, Patton triumphantly announces, "Rommel, you magnificent _____, I read your book." Patton's forces trounce Rommel's soundly.

The outcome of this battle was "predestined," or even "pre-ordained" if you will. Just as Patton knew the outcome of his plan, God knows the outcome of His.

The misunderstanding here is the word "predestination." I do not believe in the Calvinistic definition of predestination; that is, God has chosen who will be saved and who will burn in hell. I believe in the biblical definition of predestination, which is basically "foreknowledge."

Analogy: If I were to go back in time, I would have "foreknowledge." But I can't change or influence anything. If it has already happened, then my being there has already happened, and whatever I do has already happened. Quite the mindbender, eh?

Final analogy: The Plan, like a football play, has already been executed through Christ's death on the cross. The ball has been snapped, and is moving down the field. The only difference is, we already know that those who accept Christ as their savior will be in the end zone with us at the final touchdown.

Joy said it best: "Testing" and "proving" is not for His benefit, but ours. For instance, 2 Corinthians 1:4 basically tells us that trials and tribulations occur so that we may help others when they experience the very same trials and tribulations.

The Open View, in its attempt to explain and de-limit God, actually limits Him. By putting forth the hypothesis that God does not know the future, we state that God does not know what the final outcome will be. The Bible clearly states that God DOES know the future, and is not limited to our humanistic, simplistic, and limited view of reality (which He created).

Not Calvinistic predestination that says God has already chosen; biblical predestination that says God already knows.

Now, Keith, as for e-mails: You lost me. What are you talking about?

 

And boy-oh-boy, I never really meant to get in on this conversation!....

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Don:
The misunderstanding here is the word "predestination." I do not believe in the Calvinistic definition of predestination; that is, God has chosen who will be saved and who will burn in hell. I believe in the biblical definition of predestination, which is basically "foreknowledge."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Don:

Glad you're standing against the Open View heresy. However the biblical definition of predestination IS God has chosen.

See the multiple threads on Calvinism and election and
Doctrines of Grace (TULIP)

 

I have sat out of this discussion for a while, just to see how it would develop, and none of how it has gone has surprised me. When the dust settles, you have to ask honestly, does God Himself present Himself in His Revelation to us as a God Who is open? I rechecked the four pages of this thread thus far, and the overwhelming amount of Scripture given is against the open theism view. Go back and look at the data Pastor Larry presented just on the number of verses. The overwhelming message from the Text of Scripture screams out at us that open theism is not describing the God of the Bible.

Chick