Imperishable Inheritance

This will be the last post I add to the mes­sage board on Gre­gory Boyd’s web­site. I have tried relent­lessly, but it seems as though I have accom­plished noth­ing. I posted the fol­low­ing chal­lenge to Dr. Boyd. I have also included a response to some on the post I started: The ‘god’ of Open The­ism (rather flli­pant eh?).

Dr. Boyd,

I am writ­ing of des­per­a­tion. I was hop­ing I could visit this mes­sage board and chal­lenge Open The­ists to re-think the very view they hold of God. It seems as though the work I have done here has been to no avail.

Now, it should be noted I have been less than edi­fy­ing in how I staged my argu­ments, and I apol­o­gize for any­one on this board that I may offended. I feel strongly that God is in dan­ger, and I sought out what­ever means pos­si­ble to save Him. But I have seen the folly of my ways, I must not con­tra­dict myself in that I believe God is com­pletely sov­er­eign (in that He has planned the ends as well as the means) and trust that He will work in this arena.

I chal­lenge you Dr. Boyd to save God. Bring Him back to who He is. If this is indeed an “actu­al­ity” please set­tle it. I’ve read enough of you, Pin­nock, and Sanders vs. Piper, Ware, White, Mohler, and the ETS to real­ize that the only thing being accom­plished is both sides dig­ging deeper into their con­vic­tions and get­ting no where. Let us pre­serve the world­view of God as “holy, holy, holy.”

And the four liv­ing crea­tures, each one of them hav­ing six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.” And when the liv­ing crea­tures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives for­ever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will wor­ship Him who lives for­ever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, say­ing, “Wor­thy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You cre­ated all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were cre­ated.“
Rev­e­la­tion 4:8–11

Here is another response I wrote on their board.

I believe in free will as well, but not in the “open­ness” sense. I believe that not only does God know every­thing that has and will come to pass, but He also pro­vided the means for that to hap­pen. We are respon­si­ble, moral agents. Free will is com­pat­i­ble with sovereignty.

It just seems to me that Open The­ists (and Armini­ans) want to pre­serve “free will” so much that they eiseget­i­cally con­strue the Bible to come to such a res­o­lu­tion. There is noth­ing in the Bible to lead us to any ratio­nal con­clu­sion that we can “choose oth­er­wise” from God’s act of foreordination.

I have read noth­ing in Boyd’s, Pinnock’s, or Sander’s mate­r­ial to even come close to a sound, sys­tem­atic con­clu­sion. There is a rea­son Pin­nock and Sanders were brought up for expul­sion out of the ETS, and the same rea­son that Sanders was removed from his post.

I read Boyd say:

“The Open view demeans God’s sov­er­eignty only if ‘sov­er­eignty’ is equated with ‘metic­u­lous con­trol.’ Defend­ers of the open view of the future believe that the bib­li­cal por­trayal of God’s sov­er­eignty con­sists of much more than mere con­trol and includes dynamic qual­i­ties such as flex­i­bil­ity, spon­tane­ity and cre­ativ­ity. These aspects of God’s sov­er­eignty are mean­ing­less if the future is exhaus­tively set­tled.“¹

“Metic­u­lous con­trol” is exactly the car­i­ca­ture that Armini­ans and Open The­ists want to make Calvin­ists out to be (as I am defend­ing my stance); that we are sim­ply pup­pets of God, but the fail to even under­stand what the Calvin­ist (and Bib­li­cal) view of sov­er­eignty is:

Divine Sov­er­eignty
The right of God to do as He wishes (Psalm 50:1; Isa­iah 40:15; 1 Tim. 6:15) with His cre­ation. This implies that there is no exter­nal influ­ence upon Him and that He also has the abil­ity to exer­cise His power and con­trol accord­ing to His will. ²

God is in absolute con­trol. His sov­er­eignty is affirmed, because He appar­ently gives us com­plete free will to decide what the “actu­al­i­ties” will become. Why does Boyd see God as “flex­i­bil­ity and spontane[ous]?” In deny­ing the very anthro­po­mor­phisms that Open The­ists do, you are read­ing in un-Biblical anthropomorphisms.

Now, I know Romans 9 is a com­mon reformed text (as it should be), but there is a very real rea­son why it is as such. Paul dealt with these var­i­ous ques­tions posed on God’s char­ac­ter (ie Boyd’s com­ment up top).

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the con­trary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the pot­ter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one ves­sel for hon­or­able use and another for com­mon use? What if God, although will­ing to demon­strate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience ves­sels of wrath pre­pared for destruc­tion? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon ves­sels of mercy, which He pre­pared before­hand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gen­tiles.
Romans 9:19–24

We are not to “guess” or read into what we would like God to be. The God of the Bible is in com­plete con­trol, all-knowing, does with us as He pleases. We must end this bud­ding anthrope­cen­trist the­ol­ogy. Please…