The LORD'S PRAYER [of Open Theism]

~JM~ · Mar 23, 2007

The LORD'S PRAYER of Open Theism

Our Father Who is in heaven,
Shallow be Your name.
Your kingdom might come,
Your will could be done,
Perhaps on earth as it sometimes is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
Surprise, we all wanted cake instead.
And forgive us our debts without expiation,
Just as we also forgive your gambling and speculation.
And try not to lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from evil as was your supposition.
For Yours might be the kingdom and some power and most of the glory,
For today, since You know not what tomorrow will be.

Amen

whatever · Mar 23, 2007

Man, I hate it when people do this to Calvinists so I gotta say, this is just not very helpful. If you want to post actual words of some Open Theist in context and then respond, great, maybe that would be of some use. Making up strawmen is not.

webdog · Mar 23, 2007

Oh well for not wanting to start argumentative threads. You could have at least waited more than ONE MINUTE after posting that thread to start this thread... http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=981876&postcount=37

Wouldn't this be considered trolling?

~JM~ · Mar 23, 2007

I don't see how we could argue about Open Theism. If you're an Open Theist you stand outside Biblical theology and the historical Church with Arminian, Calvinist and yes, even Roman Catholics in full agreement: Open Theism is heretical.

I apologized for starting a thread that lead to an Arminian vs. Calvinism debate, Open Theism is a pale form of Christianity at best.

:1_grouphug:

webdog · Mar 23, 2007

So what's the point of this thread?

Allan · Mar 23, 2007

~JM~ said:

I apologized for starting a thread that lead to an Arminian vs. Calvinism debate, Open Theism is a pale form of Christianity at best.
Click to expand...

I agree here. Pale as in decaying corpse kinda of pale. But then again there is maybe one possible Open Theist on this board and I don't think that person ever really knows that much of what they say corresponds to that theology

gb93433 · Mar 24, 2007

~JM~ said:

The LORD'S PRAYER of Open Theism
Click to expand...

I am not an open theist but I do struggle with God changing his mind. I would be interested in your interpretation of 2 Kings 20 especially verses one and six.

gerald285 · Mar 24, 2007

~JM~ said:

The LORD'S PRAYER of Open Theism

Our Father Who is in heaven,
Shallow be Your name.
Your kingdom might come,
Your will could be done,
Perhaps on earth as it sometimes is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
Surprise, we all wanted cake instead.
And forgive us our debts without expiation,
Just as we also forgive your gambling and speculation.
And try not to lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from evil as was your supposition.
For Yours might be the kingdom and some power and most of the glory,
For today, since You know not what tomorrow will be.

Amen
Click to expand...

This shows just how a low opinion and total lack of reverence towards God that some in the church have come to. This is simply WRONG!

johnp. · Mar 24, 2007

I apologized for starting a thread that lead to an Arminian vs. Calvinism debate, Open Theism is a pale form of Christianity at best.
Click to expand...

Why did you apologise JM?

john.

Baptist Believer · Mar 24, 2007

~JM~ said:

The LORD'S PRAYER of Open Theism

Our Father Who is in heaven,
Shallow be Your name.
Your kingdom might come,
Your will could be done,
Perhaps on earth as it sometimes is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
Surprise, we all wanted cake instead.
And forgive us our debts without expiation,
Just as we also forgive your gambling and speculation.
And try not to lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from evil as was your supposition.
For Yours might be the kingdom and some power and most of the glory,
For today, since You know not what tomorrow will be.

Amen
Click to expand...

I don't know a single open theist who thinks that God is "shallow." Besides being completely inept at exposing the alleged faults of open theism, this "prayer" is blasphemous.

HankD · Mar 24, 2007

gb93433 said:

I am not an open theist but I do struggle with God changing his mind. I would be interested in your interpretation of 2 Kings 20 especially verses one and six.
Click to expand...

Why struggle dear brother?

God is absolutely sovereign, He is omni-EVERYTHING yet He changes His mind (or so it appears).
Accept it. It's scriptural.

Why wrestle with the angel?

Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

By and by, we'll know all about it.

HankD

~JM~ · Mar 24, 2007

If 2 Kings 20 refers to a real change [as the Open Theist contends] in the eternal mind of God, then we have a problem, the Bible then contradicts itself.

Joh 21:17 He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

1Jo 3:20 For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

We know that God in fact knows all, so what is meant in this passage?

1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.

We also know that “repent” cannot mean what the Open Theist believes it to mean, when the Bible talks about God “changing His mind” or repenting it cannot be as a man repents as 1 Sam. states so clearly. To get a better understanding of this passage we need to look at 2 Chronicles 32:24-26 and Isaiah 38:1-22.

Interpretation of 2 Kings 20:1-11 and Jonah 3 - 4/2
The case of Hezekiah's sickness in 2 Kings 20 is supplemented by the parallel passages in 2 Chronicles 32:24-26 and Isaiah 38:1-22. These passages reveal that by the 14th year of his reign, Hezekiah yielded to pride in spite of God's goodness to him and to Judah, protecting them from the disaster that befell Samaria through the Assyrian conquest. To deal with this defect, God announced to Hezekiah that if he continued in his self-sufficiency, his life was at an end, for no human power could overcome his deadly terminal disease. Only by a miracle could his life be continued. So Hezekiah "repented of the pride of his heart" (2 Chron. 32:26) and God graciously extended his life by 15 years: "I will heal you" (2 Kings 20:5) He said and the rest of the passage deals with the confirmation of God's miraculous power that would apply both to Hezekiah's personal life and to the protection of Judah from Assyrian attacks (2 Kings 20:6; Isaiah 38:6). This is articulated very clearly in Hezekiah's song recorded for us in Isaiah 38:10-20. That this whole process does not reflect a change of mind on God's part is manifest from the fact that in that same fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, God had promised him at least three more years of life (2 Kings 9:29) and that the birth of his son Manasseh, necessary for the fulfillment of God's promise to David ( 2 Sam. 1:12-16), also took place 3 years later in the seventeenth year of his reign (2 Kings 21:1).
The case of Jonah's prophecy is even clearer for the Ninevites understood well that Jonah's announcement did not mean "whatever you do, I have determined to obliterate you within forty days" but rather "forty more days of your rebellious conduct and I will "let you have it!" The Ninevites, led by their king, responded in due repentance and abandonment of "their evil ways and violence" (Jonah 3:8). They rightly used the 40 days' reprieve as a time of humiliation and renewal. Thus they gained another reprieve of some 150 years!! It is noteworthy that Jonah himself had anticipated this development (Jonah 4:2) and that is why he wanted to flee to Tarshish, being eager to see the discomfiture of Israel's enemy rather than their continued existence. From beginning to the end God's purpose was the same, to wit a moral renewal in Nineveh!
When such a sounder interpretation of the texts is acknowledged, the validity of claiming these cases as documenting a change of mind on God's part has vanished. If this is acknowledged, not only is their proof against God's fixity of purpose lost, but in the process their construction of the word Nicham as implying such a change is jeopardized. (Found 100 times in the Hebrew, it is translated as repent only 45 times in KJV. The translation "change one's mind" found 16 times with reference to God in NAB and NRSV is probably wrong, although 7 of these state that God "does not change his mind" Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29 (twice), Ps. 110:4; Jer. 4:28; 20:16; Ezek. 24:14).
http://www.founders.org/FJ52/article2_fr.html
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Peace,

jm

Amy.G · Mar 24, 2007

Well, once again I've learned a new term. Open Theism.
Could someone explain to me what that is?

How have I gotten by all these years with just reading the Bible? :laugh:

gb93433 · Mar 24, 2007

HankD said:

Why struggle dear brother?

God is absolutely sovereign, He is omni-EVERYTHING yet He changes His mind (or so it appears).
Accept it. It's scriptural.
Click to expand...

Certainly I do not know enough about God and the culture in that day well enough to be able to explain the seemingly contradiction. I do believe that God responds to people and meets their need when they meet His condition.

The way I see the whole thing is much like God who gives us our skin color, the parents we had, etc. and that is His choice. But in His choice he gave us a domain in which to freely choose.

I think of it much like a cow in the pasture. The farmer owns the cow and chooses the field where she will eat but she is free to eat where she likes within the confines of the fence.

johnp. · Mar 24, 2007

A couple of sources Amy.G.

http://www.theopedia.com/Open_theism
http://www.ondoctrine.com/20openth.htm

john.

Amy.G · Mar 24, 2007

Thanks, Johnp

~JM~ · Mar 25, 2007

God Does Not Repent Like a Man
By John Piper November 11, 1998

After Saul disobeys Samuel, God says, "I regret [= repent] that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands" (1 Samuel 15:11). Some have argued that since God "repents" of things he has done, therefore he could not have foreseen what was coming. Else why would he repent or regret, if he knew in advance the consequence of his decision?

However, this is not a compelling argument against God's foreknowledge. First of all, the argument assumes that God could not, or would not, lament over a state of affairs he himself chose to bring about. That not true to human experience; and more importantly, God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about.

Not only that, God may also be capable of looking back on the very act of bringing something about and lamenting that act in one regard, while affirming it as best in another regard. For example, if I spank my son for blatant disobedience and he runs away from home because I spanked him, I may feel some remorse over the spanking - not in the sense that I disapprove of what I did, but in the sense that I feel some sorrow that spanking was a necessary part of a wise way of dealing with this situation, and that it led to his running away. If I had it to do over again, I would still spank him. It was the right thing to do. Even knowing that one consequence would be alienation for a season, I approve the spanking, and at the same time regret the spanking. If such a combination of emotions can accompany my own decisions, it is not hard to imagine that God's infinite mind may be capable of something similar.

Now the question is: Does the Bible teach that God laments some of his decisions in the sense that I have described above (which does not imply that He is ignorant of their future consequences), or does the Bible teach that God laments some of his decisions because he did not see what was coming?

The answer is given later in 1 Samuel 15. After God says in verse 11, "I repent that I have made Saul king," Samuel says in verse 29, as if to clarify, "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent" (KJV). The point of this verse seems to be that, even though there is a sense in which God does repent (verse 11), there is another sense in which he does not repent (verse 29). The difference would naturally be that God's repentance happens in spite of perfect foreknowledge, while most human repentance happens because we lack foreknowledge. God's way of "repenting" is unique to God: "God is not a man that he should repent" (the way a man repents in his ignorance of the future).

For God to say, "I feel sorrow that I made Saul king," is not the same as saying, "I would not make him king if I had it to do over." God is able to feel sorrow for an act in view of foreknown evil and pain, and yet go ahead and will to do it for wise reasons. And so later, when he looks back on the act, he can feel the sorrow for the act that was leading to the sad conditions, such as Saul's disobedience.

Hence we have our precious fighter verse in Numbers 23:19 - "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" I say it is precious, because here God's commitment to his promises hangs on his not repenting like a man. In other words, God's promises are not in jeopardy, because God can foresee all circumstances, he knows that nothing will occur that will cause him to take them back.

Resting in the confidence of God's all-knowing promises,

Pastor John

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God bless.

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