Part 1: Portrait of a Limited God

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the foreknowledge of God in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

Greg Strand: We welcome you to our annual Mid-Winter Ministerial Conference. Our conference team has planned and diligently prayed for the conference, the speakers, and for all those who are in attendance. We’re extremely excited about this conference, your presence here, and what God will teach us during our time together.

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It might be beneficial to share with you just briefly some of the history of these Mid-Winter Ministerials addressing theological issues. They began because we on the Board of Ministerial Standing, a number of years ago, were noticing weaknesses in ordination papers we were reading. We observed some candidates could neither integrate the whole counsel of God well nor defend the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.

Moreover, it appeared many evangelicals, including those in the Free Church, were no longer talking and discussing theological issues, and if they did, the Bible was seldom opened and used but rather assumed. These were a few of the concerns that birthed all our theological discussions. The Open View of God: A Critique is our fourth Mid-Winter in our series, Theological Discussion, with the others being The Destiny of the Unevangelized, Miraculous Gifts, and The Premillennial Return of Christ.

We’re encouraged we have observed a growing interest in and commitment to these theological discussions. We are well aware these kinds of commitments will determine the spiritual health of local churches and the denomination. For some background, when we began this series entitled Theological Discussion, we established four general goals for them.

First, instruction and teaching. Sadly, many pastors do not read good biblical and theological material which means oftentimes our discussions will not be about biblical-theological issues. Our desire is to foster that discussion or dialogue about important theological issues. An important aspect of this is modeling, so we always want the attendees to understand and experience the integration of both the head and the heart, the practical and pastoral outworking of truth.

Secondly, worship. We desire as we gather around the Word we will worship God in all his fullness.

Thirdly, ministry and prayer. As fellow ministers of the gospel of God’s grace, we want to minister to and pray for one another. This again models that those who are committed to theology care more than just about the head but about the whole person, and in fact, theology gives one a true foundation to care.

Fourthly, fellowship. We pray the deeper study of God’s truth will result in deeper, biblical fellowship with one another, that discussions will go beyond the weather to the things of God. The goals we have established for this Mid-Winter on open theism are as follows: to learn the open view position, to review the traditional position, to address key passages of Scripture related to important issues along with hermeneutical presuppositions, to critique the open view, to understand the trajectories of these positions, and to grasp pastorally the implications of these views.

In addition to these explicit goals, it will also be beneficial to ponder some of the important philosophical questions. Namely, is God in time or outside of time? Are early church fathers more platonic than Christian in their understanding of God’s attributes? What are the modern or postmodern influences that have influenced open theist proponents?

After the biblical-theological foundation has been laid and the additional questions have been addressed, our task is not yet complete. At the end of the day, it is crucial, as with all doctrine, to ascertain how open theism affects the church and how she is to respond. Regarding open theism, this is a radical rethinking of the historic position regarding the doctrine of God.

The implications of such a view are enormous, not only for how we think about God, most significantly how we understand his attributes of omniscience and omnipotence, but for every aspect of Christian theology and practice, such as the important issues of free will or free agency and prayer and guidance, hope and comfort in the midst of pain and tribulation.

In the 1980s, a dialogue regarding open theism was occurring primarily in academic journals, but there were a couple of books written from this perspective. In 1994 with the publishing of The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, it entered the mainstream of evangelicalism, and since then there has been a proliferation of books written from this perspective, and the publishing doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

At the most recent Evangelical Theological Society meeting, held this past November, I counted approximately 13 papers that were presented on open theism. It is imperative as ministers of the gospel of truth that we understand this position and can respond to it biblically. That is why we’re having this Mid-Winter Ministerial.

Regarding the program, let me just share a couple of things about the big picture. One of the things we are looking for as we gather at this conference is a fair and judicious treatment of the open view. It will not advance the argument at all if the position is not accurately presented. The best, most significant arguments of open theism must be presented and then critiqued. This is what will advance the argument and model for us good, godly scholarship, and both Dr. Carson and Dr. Osborne will do that for us.

As you have perused the program, you have seen the messages our speakers will be sharing with us. Approximately one hour is scheduled for their lectures, and each lecture will be followed by approximately one-half hour for questions and answers. During their question and answer time, if you have a question, please find your way to one of the microphones and use it so everyone in the room can hear your question and the speaker, then, will not have to repeat your question for the tape. This will be done without a moderator; the speakers themselves will field the questions.

In our planning, we have concluded we will learn best and most if we can enter the dialogue through questions and answers that arise from the lectures. There are also break-out sessions, planned to foster additional discussion in smaller groups, of which you will hear more about later.

Finally, a word about the speakers. The fact that we have surpassed the largest number of attendees tells me not only that you are interested in learning more about this significant position known as open theism but also that there is a great deal of respect and appreciation for the significant ministry of our speakers, Dr. Donald Carson and Dr. Grant Osborne. You will hear a bit more about Dr. Osborne prior to his lecture later this afternoon.

Dr. Donald Carson is research professor of New Testament at TEDS. He received the Doctor of Philosophy in New Testament from Cambridge University. He has been at Trinity since 1978. Most of Dr. Carson’s adult life has been spent in academia, but early in his ministry he served more than three years as a pastor and several years in part-time itinerant ministry in various parts of Canada and Great Britain.

Carson’s areas of expertise include biblical theology, the historical Jesus, postmodernism, pluralism, Greek grammar, Johannine theology, Pauline theology, and questions of suffering and evil. Dr. Carson has written or edited over 40 books. Many of them are on the book table. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God published by Crossway, and the most recent, Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, which is a compilation of papers presented at a Telling the Truth seminar at Trinity in 1998, are two of his more recent books.

He was also the founding chair of the GRAMCORD Institute, a research and educational institution designed to develop and promote computer-related tools for research into the Bible, focusing especially on the original languages.

Recently, he founded Christway Media to distribute hymns he has written for the church and also tapes of solid biblical preaching and teaching from a variety of people. The CDs along with the songbooks are also at the book table. It’s entitled Shout With Delight: New Songs for the People of God. It does have a songbook that accompanies it. You’ll also find sheet music for one of the songs he has written, “Shall Forests Hide Their Beauty?” One of the favorites we sing at the church where I pastor is the final song of this CD, “To the Praise of His Glorious Grace.”

Although Dr. Carson is an academician, he is also a churchman. He has said numerous times as a professor in the seminary setting he is not on the front lines of ministry but a support for those on the front lines of ministry, pastors in local churches. If one looks through the many books he has written, one will observe his deep desire to equip the church to think God’s thoughts after him as revealed in the Word.

His grasp of most subjects is vast, and his biblical and theological insights are profound. You will see the fruit of that in these next two days. While at seminary as a student, Dr. Carson was my teacher and mentor. Through the years since then, he has become a friend. Dr. Carson, we’re grateful you are with us, and we look forward with great anticipation to hear the Lord’s Word through you. Before you come, please join me in a word of prayer.

Father, thank you for bringing us here. Lord, we want to think clearly about this important issue. Lord, enable us by your Spirit to avoid the emotionalism that will accompany this when a position we have embraced virtually our whole lives is being attacked. Lord, may we not respond in an attacking fashion, but may we think clearly, firmly rooted in the Word of God, the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.

Father, thank you for gifting people like Dr. Carson and Dr. Osborne who can be here with us to instruct us, to teach us, to help us to understand the text more clearly, and to then give ourselves more faithfully to the ministries to which you have called us. We pray now a blessing on Dr. Carson as he comes to speak. We pray this for the good of your people and ultimately the glory of your name. We pray this through Christ our Lord, amen.

Don Carson: Well, it’s a very great privilege to be with you. I hope I will have opportunity to talk with many of you personally over the next couple of days. I don’t know who the bigger sinner is here, Greg, for the sin of flattery or me, for enjoying it, but we’ll both repent, I’m sure, in due course.

I’m sure some of you already have looked me in the eye and said, “What have you done?” Most of you are too polite to ask, so I thought I would relieve your troubled minds. From the head office of Kansas City, Missouri, come 10 things that explain why my left eye looks the way it does.

10. You should see the other guy.
11. With a face this ugly, I thought a little liposuction would improve my appearance.
12. My son is now bigger than I am.
13. It’s amazing what some people will do to gain a little attention and sympathy.
14. My wife had cancer surgery last year, and I decided I need something cut open to demonstrate my sympathy.
15. My advisee group this year is a little livelier than usual.
16. It’s getting harder to convince donors to give to Trinity.
17. President Waybright has recently adopted a tough line with obstreperous faculty.
18. While reading countless pages on the open God perspective, my eye couldn’t believe what it was seeing and popped a few blood vessels.
19. My wife’s chemotherapy and hormone therapy have made her unusually feisty.

With a sense of humor that wry, you will forgive me if occasionally it creeps out in the following lectures.

The open view of God may not have made its presence yet felt around the English-speaking world. It is almost entirely an American phenomenon, but when America sneezes the rest of the world catches cold. Moreover, the openness of God theology does, at least, encourage us to think afresh about God at a time when many in confessional evangelicalism are thinking about almost everything else, so that even at that point it is something that can be a boon.

The open view of God, sometimes called the relational view of God, sets itself self-consciously against what we may call classical theism. It has been promulgated by several influential books and many articles. One major evangelical seminary has been heavily influenced by it. One denomination is racked by division over it with many individuals espousing that view in other denominations.

Probably the most influential books include, first, the one that Greg Strand mentioned (Clark Pinnock was the editor), The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, Greg Boyd’s God At War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, John Sanders’ The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, and again Greg Boyd’s God of the Possible. There are others in the works and a lot of other books of lesser consequence and, as I say, many essays.

Sanders sets the stage by dividing the doctrine of providence into two camps: a no-risk view and a risk view. He identifies the no-risk view with classical theism. The former, in his understanding, means God specifically ordains everything, from the Holocaust to the death of a student in Sanders’ college. He writes (page 10), “Of course, ‘taking her home’ is a euphemism of God’s killing her.”

The latter view, the risk view of providence, means God himself takes risks. He either does not know or cannot know the outcome of our future free decisions. I word it that way because openness theologians themselves vacillate between these two positions depending on what the sub-issue is. We’ll come to the details later. The implications, as we shall see, are massive.

Sanders likes to speak of models of providence. He has three criteria for acceptable theological models of providence. First, consonance with the tradition, both biblical tradition and otherwise. We will see, for him, this really means consonance with his interpretation of the biblical tradition and not a lot of consonance with the tradition since the Bible. Secondly, conceptual intelligibility. Thirdly, adequacy for the demands of life. We’ll come back to all of those three on the last day.

Methodologically, openness of God theologians warn constantly against any bifurcation of God into two realms: God as he is in himself versus God as he has disclosed himself. Theologically, that has sometimes been labeled the God of immanence and the God of economics or the immanent approach to God and the economic approach to God. This, too, we shall come back to in due course.

God may be more than what he has disclosed, Sanders says, but we can’t know it. All we can know about God is what he has disclosed of himself, so those must be our controlling categories. This is very important for the way he will, then, address matters of divine accommodation, but on that issue, too, I shall return.

Increasingly, openness of God theologians are inclined to insist on three points. First, what is really open in this view is not so much God but the future. Secondly, the real issue is not God’s omniscience or whether God has perfect knowledge but whether there is something for God to know. In other words, the openness of God theologians insist they believe in omniscience as much as any classical theist does, but they define omniscience a little differently.

Boyd, for example, gives several parallels. In his book God of the Possible on page 16, he says, “God cannot know the result of a free future decision any more than God can know that I have a monkey on my shoulder. Of course, I don’t have a monkey on my shoulder. That’s why God can’t know that I have a monkey on my shoulder. In other words, God can’t know something that doesn’t exist. There is no monkey on my shoulder, so God can’t know that I do. There is no future free decision yet made, so God can’t know that either.”

In other words, in this definition of omniscience, God can know everything that can logically be known, but there are all kinds of things that cannot logically be known and God cannot know those. Assuming for a moment a correspondence theory of truth, a statement is true if it corresponds to reality and false if it does not, but unless you assume the future already exists, there is nothing for definitive statements about future free actions to correspond to, so how can there be a correspondence knowledge of something that doesn’t exist for it to correspond to?

God is omniscient, but what he knows is only what is logically possible to be known. This, ultimately, has a bearing on the relationship of God to time and so forth. This, too, is something for future exploration.

Thirdly, they say certain things about foreknowledge of the future. Both Calvinists and Arminians claim God’s knowledge of the future is exhaustive. Of course, they have some differences about how that knowledge relates to control of the future, but we’ll put that aside for a moment. The openness of God theologians introduce a third option. They deny that Scripture teaches the future is exhaustively settled. God determines and, thus, foreknows as settled some of the future but not all of it.

Boyd, then, in God of the Possible begins his biblical examination by a survey of passages often held to support relational theology or openness of God theology because, he says, classical theists do not accept the openness of God theology, in part, because they cannot reconcile a motif of future openness (that’s his terminology) with a motif of future determinism. They think the Bible really does teach some kind of future determinism. Therefore, they’re not open to the kinds of evidence the openness of God theologians want to advance.

Boyd sets out to show the Bible rightly understood does not embrace any form of future determinism. We will look at those passages following Boyd’s outline, first of all, and then we’ll look at passages Boyd and others advance to espouse the openness of God view. All of my first lecture is given to outlining their view, and then we’ll begin to come back later.

1. Passages following Boyd’s outline

I’m here now for a while going to follow Boyd’s breakdown, although with some supplementary material.

A) Passages where God declares his intentions

I’m now looking at passages and categories ostensibly in support of classical theism which Boyd thinks do not do anything of the sort. We begin, first, with passages where God declares his intentions. For example, Isaiah 46 and 48. We will be thumbing through the Bible constantly for the next little while.

Here, God seems to say in unambiguous terms that he will do what he wants to do. For example, chapter 46, verse 10: “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ ” Again, chapter 48. Repeatedly, God speaks of the things he will do. “From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you.” Then he begins to unpack what he will do.

What Boyd says about these passages is they all have to do with a future restoration which God himself will ultimately bring about, but there is nothing in these passages that suggest, Boyd says, there is an exhaustive control of the future here. No one is denying God does know about and control some elements in the future, but there is nothing in these passages, he says, that demands an exhaustive knowledge of the future or a controlling knowledge of the future.

B) Passages that speak of God’s foreknowledge of Israel’s future sometimes with specific time references

For example, the 400 years predicted in Genesis 15, verses 13 to 15, or the 70 years predicted in Jeremiah 29:10. Again, Boyd replies, God does not have to control and/or know every future decision to ensure these results.

He can move the big pieces around just as a very able chess-master tackling some inferior player may not be able to know in advance all the individual moves the opponent will make but still can predict how it’s going to come out, and if he has any sort of knowledge of the other player, may even be able to predict within a certain kind of statistical likelihood about how long it will take to beat the other chap. That’s all that’s required from these passages, and to read more into them is merely to read in the effects of later Greek thought.

C) Passages that include specific prophecies about specific individuals

For example, the naming of Josiah or the naming of Cyrus. You see, he doesn’t take the liberal option for the naming of Cyrus that makes it post eventum, after-the-fact, a kind of prophecy that is not really a prophecy. He does take Isaiah to be written by Isaiah, so this is 140 years or so before Cyrus comes on the scene. Here, we’re told, “God sets strict parameters around the freedom of the parents in naming these individuals.” That’s his terminology. I quoted him exactly.

In other words, he says in some particular instances when he does want a specific detail to come out, a specific result to come out, maybe to prove he’s capable of doing this sort of thing, then in those cases he is so sovereign he can work the results to come out as he predicts, and in this case (I repeat his terminology), “He sets strict parameters around the freedom of the parents in naming these individuals so that, in fact, they do give them the appropriate names.” There are many examples of this sort of thing in Sanders’ volume. Read, for example, from about page 92 on.

D) Passages that include God’s foreknowledge of predictable characters

That’s the way Peter’s denial is understood in Matthew 26:33–35. Christ Jesus himself sees that Peter is a certain sort. He has a sort of chronic ability to lead with his mouth. He has done it all of his life. He has done it during the years of training. He’s a bit of a bull in a china shop. On the other hand, deep down he’s a bit of a softie. He’s not going to make it, and Christ knows his character so well that he predicts Peter is the one who will, in fact, deny Christ.

As for Judas, in John 6:64 we’re told Jesus had known from the beginning who would betray him. Even the language of John 17:12 … He’s the son of perdition. This takes place “… so that Scripture might be fulfilled.” All of this indicates no more than that Christ had this profound insight into the kind of people who were all around him and he could see what was going on just as a more insightful pastor, perhaps, who really gets to know people really well can start making predictions after a while about whose going to turn out which way.

E) Passages that include foreknowledge of life plans

The kind of passage you find in Jeremiah 1:5, where God knows Jeremiah from the womb, or similarly, Paul in Galatians 1:15, where Paul insists he was set aside for the work of the ministry from the womb, “from birth” the NIV has. We’re told these are always tentative projections. These sorts of passages must be linked to a passage like Luke, chapter 7, verse 30, where some reject God’s purposes for themselves, to use the text.

If God has the purpose that Jeremiah will turn out a certain way and God has the purpose that Paul will turn out a certain way, Paul could have been disobedient to the heavenly vision, to use his expression, as he himself suggests to Agrippa in Acts 26:19, when he says, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”

Thus, if we’re told in Galatians 1:15, that God set Paul apart from the womb, then in due course, the circumstances were brought about so Paul could make a free, unpredictable decision, but let’s be quite frank. There are other passages that say (Luke 7:30) some did reject God’s purposes for them, so Paul could have rejected God’s purposes, too, and he openly says he didn’t but was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Therefore, one should not read too much into a Jeremiah 1:5 or into a Galatians 1:15.

F) Passages that include prophecies of kingdoms and judgments, huge sweeping movements in history

A passage like Daniel 2:28–40. A lot of these are symbol-laden, and God, because of his spectacular knowledge, even where he does not have impossible knowledge (the knowledge of the results of free future decisions) he has this spectacular knowledge that enables him to see how this force in history will result in this countervailing force.

He can predict how kingdoms will rise and fall and respond to one another without necessarily having a sort of exhaustive knowledge of which empire comes next or something like that. It’s a sort of “choose your own adventure” sort of prediction. That, again, is not my terminology.

G) Passages that speak openly of foreordaining something; in particular, foreordaining something connected with Christ

As in Acts 2:23, where Herod and the other leaders and the rulers of the Jews “conspire against your holy servant Jesus,” and then, we’re told, “They did what your hand had determined beforehand should be done.” What do you do with a passage like that? Or Acts 4:28, where crucifixion is said to be predestined.

In this case, Boyd says the crucifixion itself was predetermined. That was just so central there’s no way you could imagine God did not ordain in advance the death of Christ. Of course, he did, but he did not ordain certain individuals to do it. Somebody had to, but the individuals who did it were neither predestined to do so nor foreknown to do so. The predictions are of a generic sort and need to be understood that way.

In Sanders’ treatment of Acts 2:23 and 4:28 and related passages, he says all that is being predicted is that God ordained in advance the peculiar dynamic circumstances that would bring about opposition to the Son so that it took on this particular shape, but he did not in any sense compel Pilate to do it. Pilate could not only have washed his hands, he could have walked away from it, but he didn’t.

H) Passages that speak of a predestined church or predestination of believers

As in Ephesians 1:4, all of these passages that speak of either predestination or election are corporate in nature so that God does have this purpose of calling out the church, but none of them, he says, means to descend all the way down to the level of the particular individual, so there is no particular individual who is chosen. How could this be? Because to come to faith involves a free future decision.

Even, then, in a passage like the so-called golden chain of Romans 8 (“All those whom God foreknew, those also he predestined; those whom he predestined …” all the way to glorification with this golden chain), he says all of this is in the plural. God intimately loved the corporate whole. He loved them in advance in all of their corporate wholeness without saying anything further about what individuals would be included or excluded from this corporate wholeness.

I) Passages that speak of end times and God’s foreknowledge of such end times

You can read what Boyd says in his book on possibility in pages 48 to 50. These are all of such a generic nature that, although God certainly knows the future in broad sweep and will bring it about because he’s such a superb chess player, this does not mean he knows all the details himself.

2. Passages and categories in favor of the open God theology

This is a list of the passages Boyd treats, with a few others thrown in, that are alleged to defend classical theism.

A) Passages where God regrets how some things turn out

Let’s begin with Genesis 6:5. This is when the human race has become so evil that God decides to destroy it. We read, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”

The implication, the openness of God theologians say, is that God may change his assessment of his own prior actions and beliefs. I’m quoting now. “That is, since God learns what happens as history unfolds, it is possible that God may learn things that make him reevaluate and reassess the correctness or wisdom even of his own past actions.”

“That explains, then, why God promises not to destroy the earth with a flood again,” Sanders says on page 50. “It may be the case that, although human evil caused God great pain, the destruction of what he had made caused him even greater suffering. Although his judgment was righteous, God decides to try different courses of action in the future.” In other words, the reason why God decides not to send another flood is because that caused him even more pain than all the pain he suffered from seeing the guilt and sin in the first place.

Now writing from the other side, but it’s probably a fair summary, Weir summarizes the position. “ ‘Perhaps this is not, after all, the best way to deal with despicable, evil,’ God reasons. Although just, perhaps it is not the best, so God will try something else the next time.” Likewise, Sanders on page 132 on Exodus 3:16 to 4:9 and in Jeremiah 3:7 and Jeremiah 3:19 and 20, “These and other texts leave open the possibility that God might be ‘mistaken’ about some points as the biblical record acknowledges.”

He treats Saul’s kingship that way (1 Samuel 13:13). “ ‘You acted foolishly,’ Samuel said. ‘You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart …”

In other words, what would have happened to the Saul dynasty really depended on Saul’s conduct. If Saul had acted honorably, then God himself would have established his dynasty, so we wouldn’t have had a Davidic dynasty; we would have had a Saulic dynasty, I suppose. That’s the first set of passages and categories.

B) Passages where God asks questions about the future, confessing his own uncertainty

For example, Numbers 14, verse 11. This is at a time when the people are rebelling against Moses. In verse 10, “But the whole assembly talked about stoning them.” The two returning spies. “Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. The Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague …’ ”

In other words, God himself doesn’t know how this is going to end out. Something similar in Hosea 8:5, where Boyd argues God does not know the outcome. “Throw out your calf-idol, O Samaria! My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of purity? They are from Israel!”

Boyd himself does recognize some questions must be viewed as merely rhetorical. That’s his category. He takes it that way, for example, in Genesis 3:8 and 9. In the fall narrative, God is walking in the cool of the garden, and he calls out to the man, “Where are you?” Not for a moment does Boyd think God doesn’t know, because that doesn’t involve a future free decision.

Rather, he says this is merely a rhetorical question, and there are some in the Bible like that, but he says in so many other cases, like the two he has just cited, there is no reason for thinking God’s ignorance is merely part of a rhetorical device; God’s ignorance is real. That’s why the Bible, then, can speak of God being surprised or acting in a certain contingent way or the like.

C) Passages where God confronts the unexpected

That is, unexpected to him. Think, for example, of Isaiah 5. This one is Boyd’s. You recall the context. Isaiah is already preaching sermons of threatening judgment and the like, and to get the people’s attention he breaks out his guitar and sings them a little ballad, a ballad about a vineyard. “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard.” He goes through this ballad. There’s a little story to it. Everybody likes a story, especially when it has a nice beat.

Eventually in the second verse, it begins to unpack that it’s really talking about Israel and so forth. You know how it works. “My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”

Then this concluding verse that would have brought a hush over the crowd listening to the music: “The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” In other words, Boyd says, God looked for certain things. He expected certain things. He expected good fruit. He looked for it and didn’t find it, and he’s so distressed he breaks out in judgment, just as the vineyard owner expected good fruit from all of his labor and didn’t get it.

Explicitly, this comes in very strong language, Boyd says. For example, Jeremiah 3:6 and 7 and Jeremiah 3:19 and 20, where God actually says things like, “I thought you would return.” Jeremiah 3: “During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, ‘Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it.’ ”

Then down to verses 19 and 20. “I myself said, ‘How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation. I thought you would call me “Father” and not turn away from following me. But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the Lord.”

This raises, therefore, fundamental questions about any sort of vision of omniscience that means God knows absolutely everything including the results of future free contingent decisions. In this case, God not only does not know, he was wrong in his guess. He expected a certain thing and it didn’t work out that way. Therefore, because he is a person interacting with other persons, he responds by a different set of plans. In other words, it’s not just here that God doesn’t know but that God was wrong in what he expected.

Again, the language of Jeremiah 19:5 which is, again, very striking language. “It never entered my mind,” God says. We read, “They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” But that’s what they’ve done.

D) Passages where God gets frustrated

There are a lot of passages that are commonly cited here. Let me mention just two. Exodus 4:10 and following. Here we read, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘O, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.’ The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’

But Moses said, ‘O, Lord. Please send someone else to do it.’ Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, ‘What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well.’ ” In other words, on the face of it God gets frustrated in an ongoing dialogue where it’s not entirely clear how the human being will respond, and if the human being responds in as obstreperous a way as Moses responds, then God gets frustrated the way you and I get frustrated when our kids respond in ways we hadn’t envisaged about some point or other.

This can have more comprehensive consequences. In another passage, Ezekiel, chapter 22, a well-known passage often used in calling people to ministry. Ezekiel 22, verses 30 and 31. “ ‘I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done,’ declares the Sovereign Lord.”

In other words, God was looking for a way to save the people from destruction. He looked for somebody … somebody … to do the right thing, and he couldn’t find anybody. Poor God was frustrated. Therefore, the only honorable thing left to do was, in fact, to pour out wrath. This eventually gets tied into a particular view of prayer and its efficacy as well.

E) Passages in which God tests people in order to know or to find out what their character is, what they are really like

There are many passages like that, as you know. The famous Akedah, the sacrifice-of-Isaac passage in Genesis 22. “God tested Abraham to find out what was in his heart,” we’re told.

On pages 52 to 53, Sanders goes so far as to say, “Up to this point, God really does not know what kind of man he has in Abraham.” Then Sanders says, “God needs to know if Abraham is the sort of person on whom God can count for collaboration toward the fulfillment of the divine project.” The divine project being that in Abraham all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

He goes on to say, “In 15:8, Abraham asked God for assurance. Now it is God seeking assurance from Abraham.” That’s Sanders’ assessment. In other words, this is not a rhetorical thing in any sense. God really doesn’t know what kind of person Abraham is, so he does this precisely so he can find out.

Something similar, then, is said about Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29:31. Of course, there is corporate testing in Deuteronomy 8:2. God led them in the wilderness and suffered them to be tested that he might find out what was in their hearts, whether they would learn to live by the Word of God. They had to learn that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Again, corporate testing in Deuteronomy 13:1–3. Sometimes the tests fail, and God is disappointed, as in Psalm 95:10 and 11 or in Hebrews 3:7–10.

F) nuPassages where God speaks in terms of what may or may not happen

God sometimes speaks in terms of what may or may not happen, and he does this precisely because he doesn’t know. Thus, in Exodus 4, for example, we read at the beginning of the chapter, “Moses answered, ‘What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, “The Lord did not appear to you”?’

Then the Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff,’ he replied. The Lord said, ‘Throw it on the ground.’ Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.’ So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ‘This,’ said the Lord, ‘is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.’ ”

In other words, the whole point in this passage all the way down (the further sign of putting a hand in the cloak and it comes out leprous) brings us to this conclusion in Exodus 4:8. “Then the Lord said, ‘If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.’ ”

God doesn’t know how it’s going to happen. “If this happens, you do that; if they don’t get that one, try this one.” God himself doesn’t know. Ezekiel 12:3. I won’t look it up. You can look it up for yourself. Or the Lord Jesus himself in Matthew 26:39, “If it be possible, take this cup from me.”

In other words, Jesus in all of the agony of Gethsemane does not think in terms of some sort of fixed destiny. As far as he knows, he’s heading for the cross, but things are still open-ended. The future is not all that determined. Maybe there’s a way out. “If it be possible, take this cup from me.” That is why it makes sense, then, to speak of hastening the Lord’s return (2 Peter 3:9 and 12).