Imperishable Inheritance

I’m read­ing Boyd’s “God of the Pos­si­ble,” and in his intro­duc­tion he says some­thing rather inter­est­ing. Let me start by explain­ing his “motifs” to those who aren’t famil­iar with Open The­is­tic theology.

Open The­ism is built around the premise that God has cer­tain events that are set­tled before­hand and noth­ing can change that out­come (the motif of future deter­min­ism), but they also hold another motif that says that God has endowed us with such a high degree of free­dom (Lib­er­tar­ian) that the future is par­tially “open.” This is the motif of open­ness. This the­ol­ogy is built around texts that lit­er­ally say that God changed his mind (Exo­dus 32:14), regrets (Gen­e­sis 6:6), and so on.

They also build their the­ol­ogy on argu­ments that God wouldn’t cre­ated damned crea­tures (repro­ba­tion), and Boyd is waist deep attempt­ing to solve the prob­lem of evil with lib­er­tar­ian free­dom (then again, is it even a prob­lem at all?). Ok, now to Boyd’s feel­ings on lit­eral interpretation…

The clas­si­cal view of divine fore­knowl­edge inter­prets the first motif as speak­ing about God as he truly is and the sec­ond motif as speak­ing about God only as he appears to be or as fig­ures of speech. In other words, when­ever the Bible sug­gests that God knows and/or con­trols the future, this is taken lit­er­ally. When­ever it sug­gests that God knows the future in terms of pos­si­bil­i­ties, how­ever, this is not taken lit­er­ally.ⁱ

My approach to these two motifs dif­fers from this. I do not assume that the motif of future open­ness is less lit­eral than the motif of future deter­min­ism. Noth­ing in the Bib­li­cal texts that con­sti­tute the motif of future open­ness sug­gests that they are less lit­eral than the texts that con­sti­tute the motif of future deter­min­ism. As far as I can dis­cern, there are two rea­sons why clas­si­cal the­olo­gians con­clude that the sec­ond motif must not be literal—neither has to do with the bib­li­cal evi­dence.
Gre­gory Boyd, “God of the Pos­si­ble” (pg. 14)

He goes on to explain what those two pro­posed the­o­ries are and they are that the two motifs can be rec­on­ciled if both are taken lit­er­ally, and sec­ond he says that clas­si­cal the­olo­gians think that a “motif of future open­ness is ‘beneath’ God if it is taken lit­er­ally.” Now, he makes a very good exeget­i­cal point. It is a good point for this rea­son: his argu­ment that the ratio­nal for tak­ing cer­tain texts about God’s omni­science lit­er­ally and oth­ers fig­u­ra­tively is a chal­leng­ing thought. Matt Slick affirms this thought: “Open the­ists claim that the best way to read the Bible is to read it for its plain mean­ing when­ever pos­si­ble. This is a good pre­sup­po­si­tion, but it can­not always be done.“¹

The role of anthro­po­mor­phism becomes a great issue in this debate, but when I was debat­ing Boyd he affirmed that he “believed in anthro­po­mor­phisms,” but then again he also declares that his the­ol­ogy doesn’t con­tra­dict God’s omniscience.

Open the­ists affirm God’s omni­science as emphat­i­cally as any­body does The issue is not whether God’s knowl­edge is per­fect. It is. The issue is about the nature of the real­ity that God per­fectly knows. More specif­i­cally, what is the con­tent of the real­ity of the future? (pg. 16)

If you’re not care­ful with Open The­is­tic the­ol­ogy, you can quickly see the rea­son­ing behind this view on incom­mu­ni­ca­ble attrib­utes of God; but Open The­ists, in that they are fight­ing hereti­cal labellings, can­not out­right deny God’s omni­science so they dis­tort it into that God’s knowl­edge is per­fect, but He can­not know future free actions:

It’s because there is, in this view, noth­ing def­i­nite there for God to know! His lack of def­i­nite fore­knowl­edge of future free actions lim­its him no more than does the fact that, say, he does not know that there is a mon­key sit­ting next to me right now. As a mat­ter of fact, there is no mon­key sit­ting next to me, so it’s hardly ascrib­ing igno­rance to God to insist that he doesn’t know one is there. (pg. 16)

His mon­key exam­ple trails off, and I’m not going to go there now. I want to empha­size the approach that Boyd takes to inter­pre­tat­ing Scrip­ture. Boyd takes in the pref­ace of one night read­ing 2 Kings 20 (refer­ring to verses 1–5), and being puz­zled for the first time (believ­ing in the clas­si­cal view of divine fore­knowl­edge his entire life) to won­der if that really could be taken lit­er­ally. Does God ever change his mind? Which is the phrase at the top of his cover, above the title.

Am I Guilty?

This has impacted me on this level. I spend much time polemics debat­ing God’s sov­er­eignty to Armini­ans, and I won­der how I have indeed approached Scrip­ture. Mon­er­gists are forced to rec­on­cile the “two wills in God” to account for verses such as 1 Tim­o­thy 2:3–4. Also, an Armin­ian would read a verse such as John 12:32 and say, “Look, Jesus said He’ll draw every­one to Him­self. There­fore, Armin­ian pre­ve­nient grace is true.”

Am I guilty of this same crime? Do I read verses such as Romans 3:10–12, Eph­esians 1:4/Romans 9:15, and 1 John 2:18–19 in a way that the Armini­ans and Open The­ists read the texts sup­port­ing their the­ol­ogy. Do I truly have a Bib­li­cal, sys­tem­atic, and exeget­i­cal view of God’s decree in salvation?

End­notes

i. There is, of course, a sense in which all talk about God is non­lit­eral. When we say God “thinks,” “loves,” or “acts justly,” for exam­ple, we are say­ing that God engages in activ­i­ties that are anal­o­gous to what we do when we think, love, or act justly. Given this pro­viso, how­ever, it still is mean­ing­ful to insist that God lit­er­ally “thinks, “loves,” or “acts justly” and mean by this that these state­ments describe God as he truly is. This view would con­trast with a view that might hold that God doesn’t really “think,” “love,” or “act justly”; it just looks that way from our lim­ited per­spec­tives. My only point is that the lan­guage about God “chang­ing his mind,” “regret­ting,” and so on should be taken no less lit­er­ally than the lan­guage about God “think­ing,” “lov­ing,” or “act­ing justly.” (pg. 170)