Question About Open Theism

I recently received the following from a friend and thought my response may be beneficial to share. I changed the names involved (except my own) for their privacy:

Hi Jacob,

Lori's brother Michael is visiting us for a couple days. He likes to talk theology. He thinks that because we have free choice, God doesn't know everything.  Like would God put a tree of knowledge of good and bad in the garden if he knew man would choose evil?  Would you put a culvert in your back yard and then tell your kids not to go near it?  I'm not doing his position justice, but you get the idea.

So can you give me a few scriptural references we could discuss with him to straighten him out? 

ThanksYour brother in Christ,Jason

Hello my friend, thanks for your question. The position your brother-in-law is taking is called Open Theism which is a heresy that denies God's omniscience.The argument is essentially that if man has free will then God cannot know for sure what man will choose to do. If God knew the future decisions of men then those decisions would be predetermined in the mind of God. Could a person be free to do action "P" if God knows he will actually do action "Q" before he does it? They would say there is no freedom if God already knows what we will choose but this conflates knowledge of a future event with causation of said event. 

Also Open Theism is used as a dodge to the problem of evil, that is, If God is good then why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?

The argument for the problem of evil states:

1. God is defined as an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful being.

2. Such a being would want to stop evil/suffering from occurring, would see it coming, and be powerful enough to prevent it.

3. Evil/suffering still occur.

4. Therefore there is no such God.

So in reaction to this argument some have said that God is all-loving and all-knowing but not all powerful. He wants to stop evil and suffering but he is not always able to do so because he lacks omnipotence (Finite godism). Others have said that God is all-knowing and all-powerful but not all-loving. He foresees evil and suffering, he could stop it, but he does not care to do anything about it (Deism). Others take the position that God is all-loving and all-powerful but not all-knowing. So then God wants to stop evil and suffering, and he is powerful enough to do so but because he cannot foresee with certainty what will occur there are things that he was unable to stop. Finally, others simply accept the argument as is and conclude that there is no God at all.

The appropriate response to this argument, however, is the Free-will defense. God is, in fact, omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) and evil/suffering exists but this is not a logical contradiction. The reason it is not a contradiction is because God created human beings with free will, able to make decisions between right and wrong. Making free moral creatures God allowed for the possibility of evil and suffering to enter the world (although he did not create it, he made is possible) through the rebellion of his creatures. God has deemed the freedom of the will to be a greater good than determinism. Free willed creatures can obey or disobey, they can love or they can hate. Determined creatures can only do what is forced upon them to do. In order for any relationships we have as human beings to be meaningful, whether with friends or spouses or the Lord himself, then we must have the freedom to not love, to not obey, to not honor.

God most certainly did know that evil and suffering would occur. He knew Adam and Eve would disobey. God did not cause it but he allowed it because he valued having meaningful relationships with those who would choose to love and follow him. Furthermore, God is more glorified in a world where sin and evil and suffering occur because he has been able to demonstrate both his justice and his grace in this world in such a way that a non-fallen world could never know. So God is perfect love, but he does not force people to love him. God is perfect knowledge but knowledge is not the same as determinism nor does he always choose to use his knowledge in combination with his absolute power to stop all evil and suffering because 1) in many instances that would be to eliminate freedom of choice and human responsibility and thereby invalidate the possibility of meaningful relationships and actions, and 2) because some of the evil and suffering in this world is part of the curse because of the fall (Genesis 3) and God is actively judging mankind through those means. God often uses evil people and actions to accomplish his greater purposes (Genesis 50:20; Judges 3:7-8). Although God never does evil himself he sits above the world and orchestrates the evil therein to bring about his purposes such as the punishment of the wicked and also the greater good of those who love Him and are called by God (Romans 8:28).

So evil and suffering do not stand in contradiction to God's existence as perfectly good, all-knowing and all-powerful but they fit within a world where God made people who have free and meaningful decision and in which God is actively punishing the wicked.

Now, all philosophy aside, the Bible simply outright denies the notion that God doesn't know the future with certainty. In Isaiah 41:21-24 God challenges the idols to demonstrate their own deity saying:

Set forth your case, says the Lord;

   bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.

22 Let them bring them, and tell us

   what is to happen.

Tell us the former things, what they are,

   that we may consider them,

that we may know their outcome;

   or declare to us the things to come.

23 Tell us what is to come hereafter,

   that we may know that you are gods;

do good, or do harm,

   that we may be dismayed and terrified.

24 Behold, you are nothing,

   and your work is less than nothing;

   an abomination is he who chooses you.

Notice one of the distinctions God makes between himself and false gods and the challenge he issues that they may prove their divinity “Tell us what is to come hereafter that we may know you are gods.” The Lord says his ability to know what will happen in the future is part of his divine nature and it sets him apart from dumb idols and false deities. Again in Isaiah 46:9b-10 the Lord says “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’”.

All of the predictive prophecy that the Bible contains depends on God’s ability to know the future, including the free choices of men. The fact that his word stands and he always accomplishes his purposes and brings about what he intends demonstrates with absolute assurance that he knows not only all possible choices of men but the ones they will actually make. The Bible leaves no room for an impotent God that empties him of any of his qualities. If we strip him of even one attribute he ceases to be God and becomes a demi-god, a finite being.

Click Here for more on Open Theism

What is Open Theism?

Open Theism is the belief that God does not know with total certainty what will occur in the future. Proponents of this view are typically Arminian in their theology and have a strong view of human freewill which seems to be what leads them to this end. Keep in mind that a strong view of free will does not need to conclude Open Theism, nor are most Arminians Open Theists, but those who are Open Theists unilaterally have a strong view of Libertarian Free Will.

Essentially the issue is “How can man truly be free if God knows the future?” The thought being that if God knows for certain what will occur 5 minutes from now or a 100 years from now then those events are necessarily predetermined. For if God knows what I will do in 5 minutes then am I really free to do otherwise? In this view, then, to have free will God cannot know future events (particularly the choices of free creatures). If free will is to be retained then God cannot know with certainty what I will do in the future. God may be able to predict with a high level of accuracy, God may be able to intervene in time and space to try and get the result he wants (and he may be very good at doing so) but he can’t “know” what will happen.

What then does this do to the idea of God’s omnipotence and omniscience? Do Open Theists reject the classical Christian view of God? They would say no. They rebut this insinuation on the basis that the future has no real existence. Open Theists will say that God is indeed omniscient, that he knows everything that can be known, but since the future does not exist as a thing to itself then that is not something God knows or can know and therefore it does not impugn his status of being omniscient.

So is Open Theism an acceptable Christian view of God? No. In Isaiah 44:6-8 the Scripture states “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.  Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”

Here in this passage God stakes his own divinity upon his ability to discern what will occur in the future. It is on this basis he challenges the false gods of the pagan people to prove that they are really gods. If then God stakes his own divinity on his ability to discern what will take place in the future, how then can we strip that from him for the sake of trying to preserve human freedom? Indeed free will has become an idol for some and they have placed it above the Lord himself. That’s what Open Theism is, idolatry.

So the Bible rejects Open Theism as a valid option for Christians, but what about their philosophical reasoning for pushing it in the first place. Have Open Theists stumbled upon a truth that is at odds with the biblical revelation? Is it truly contradictory for God to know the future and man to have free will?

While I hardly have the time (nor probably you the patience) to lay out all of the various models of how God’s sovereignty and human freedom might relate to one another, suffice it to say that there are some other good options on the table that don’t lead to Open Theism. But here is the rub, the primary misunderstanding for Open Theists is that “knowledge of” is the as “cause of.” They are hung up on the idea that if God knows what I will do, then I cannot possibly do otherwise and therefore what I will do is determined if God indeed knows it. But this is an unnecessary logical leap on their part. God having perfect knowledge of what I will do does not mean that he is causing me to do that thing, rather, it is to say that he simply knows what I will choose to do. If I were to decide to do something else, then God would also know that.

God knows all the possibly choices I could make, and he knows which of those choices I will actually make. But none of this necessitates the idea that I make the choice I do because God forced me to. How can God know all this? Well, again, there are several strong models of God in relationship to time that offer an explanation. Since we believe that God created time and space it is not too difficult to swallow that he is not constrained by it and is therefore able to view all of time as though it were present. But regardless of what view of God and time you might take, ultimately I would answer thus: He is God!

I don’t mean for that to be a cheap answer, but think with me a moment. Do you understand how God created all matter out of nothing? No. None of us can fathom the incredible power of God. We know that he did it. Science and philosophy strongly support this reality, but we have no working model for how to create something out of nothing (That is a true nothing, not Lawrnece Krauss’ “nothing” which is really something!). We cannot grip such an idea with our minds and yet we can reasonably demonstrate that such is the case, and the Bible says it is so. So why when we come to this issue of God’s knowledge of the future in relationship to free will do we demand that God couldn’t know the future unless he determined every part of it so as to make us puppets?

We should not have such a small view of God. It is not logically contradictory for God to know the future free will decisions of men. Open Theism is therefore not a necessary philosophical conclusion and it is also at odd with God’s self-disclosure in the Bible. As such any kind of Open Theism ought to be rejected as bad theology and bad philosophy and a form of idolatry.