Part 2: 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.

Above all, many in this camp like to refer to Jeremiah 18. We’ll come back to this passage again and again, so it’s worth thinking about it as it is interpreted in openness circles now. Jeremiah 18. This is one of the passages in the Bible that speak of a potter and clay.

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“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?’ declares the Lord.

‘Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended for it.’ ”

In other words, the potter-and-clay model in the openness-of-God theologian’s understanding of things is not deterministic. We sing, “Thou art the potter; I am the clay. Mold me and make me,” and so on and so on. Far from that, this model in Jeremiah 18 suggests something quite different. The potter is busy making this pot and, “Whoops! Made a mistake. Squish it all back down in the clay again and start again.”

In exactly the same way, as it’s unpacked, then, God may pronounce judgment on some people and then they repent, so he changes his mind and makes it come another way, or he starts making something good, and then they become evil. They go after their sin, so God looks at this pot and says, “This is disgusting,” and smashes it down and starts all over again.

In other words, the whole potter-and-clay model, far from being essentially deterministic, is precisely interactive. In other words, God speaks in terms of what may or may not happen, and the potter-and-clay model is to be understood within that frame of reference.

Seventh, passages where God changes his mind. Not only Jeremiah 18:8–10 to which I have just referred but other passages as well, passages that suggest almost a virtue in God’s changeability. Jonah 4:2, for example, where it’s Jonah who is the miserable prophet who is rigid in his insistence that once a promise of judgment has been given then the judgment should be carried out, but instead God is the one who is flexible.

He pronounces judgment against Nineveh, and then when, lo and behold, Nineveh repents, God’s the one who changes his mind. God is the one who is changeable. Similarly, in Joel 2:12 and 13, or consider 1 Samuel 15, another passage that is often quoted in this debate. In 1 Samuel 15, verse 27 we read, “As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and tore it. Samuel said to him, ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you.’ ”

Verse 29: “He who is the glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not a man that he should change his mind.” In this case, surely, in the light of all that has happened in terms of the raising of Saul and the putting it down, what it means (to use Sanders’ category) is in this case God will not change his mind. In this particular instance, he won’t change his mind, but he could.

In other words, far from this being a universal, “God will not change his mind ever; God does not change his mind ever; he is not like a human being who doesn’t remember,” it’s simply saying in this particular case he doesn’t change his mind. Thus, people receive revised divine intentions to destroy (1 Chronicles 21), to expand life (2 Kings 20:1–6), and many other examples.

It seems as if God says one thing. In the case of Hezekiah, “Go tell them. Put your house in order. You’re going to die.” Then Hezekiah whines and God changes his mind and says, “Look. You can have another 15 years after all.” That brings us to the many passages where the King James Version has “God repented,” or in some versions, “God relented,” or in some versions, “God changed his mind.”

Usually, with some variation of nacham in the Niphal. All of these passages, which on face value say God does something different from what originally he was intending to do. Another passage often quoted is Daniel 12, but I’ll let that one go. Let me conclude in four or five more minutes here by outlining some theological categories and how they appear from the perspective of openness-of-God theologians.

I have spent most of my time in the biblical text, and I will spend most of my time breaking some of my own outline, I confess, in biblical texts for the next couple of hours too. I think that’s where we must start, but nevertheless, there are some theological structures that are extremely important for the openness-of-God theologians. Let me look at them from their perspective just rather briefly. I’ll mention five.

1. The openness-of-God theologians insist this helps us a great deal in the challenge of theodicy

That is justifying the ways of God to human beings. How do you deal with unjust suffering? How do you deal with ZoÎ’s eyes in the God of War book, if you’ve read it? How do you deal with the Holocaust?

The point is from an openness-of-God perspective God didn’t do the Holocaust in any sense. We’re engaged in a cosmic conflict between the Devil and God. This is what the Devil did, not what God did. This does not mean they are buying into some form of ontological dualism where God and the Devil are equal forces and you never quite know how it’s going to turn out.

God is sovereign, and he’s bigger, and he’s stronger, and he’s going to win. Just as you set your high school chess champion against an international chess master, you know how it’s going to turn out. There’s no doubt who is going to win. None whatsoever! God is sovereign in that sense, but that doesn’t mean the chess master controls actually every decision in the conflict.

So the Devil, therefore, does all kinds of really disgusting things, and when those disgusting things happen, it’s simply wrong to say God did it. God didn’t do it in any sense. This, it is argued, makes for a different sort of theodicy than any of the theodicies that have come down to us in the heritage of the church.

2. It also has bearings on how we think of the doctrine of the Trinity.

I will come back to that one later. The Trinitarian relationship becomes a model almost directly for all relationships. I’ll also come back to that one later.

3. It is argued that theologically and hermeneutically this sort of approach is more face-value straightforward.

That is, it is hermeneutically simpler. You don’t have to appeal all the time to these ill-defined anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms. You know what the text says is what the text says. If it says God changed his mind, he changed his mind.

Just believe it. Stop trying to make excuses and say, “This is an anthropomorphism,” as if you’re saying something profound. All that’s really saying is you don’t believe what the text says. From this perspective, therefore, this is a simpler way of reading the Bible. It is a more straightforward way. It is a more reverent way to read the Bible.

4. This also makes a difference in your prayer life.

Now it transpires that your prayers do make a difference. Your prayers are more than just, “Your will be done.” You intercede with God, and it may well be in this person-to-person dynamic that God changes his mind, and thus, you have had an important role to play in the actual bringing to pass of God’s sweeping purposes.

5. This view has pastoral implications that are immensely encouraging.

A woman loses her baby and doesn’t have to blame God anymore. Pastorally, you can show this person is involved in part of a huge cosmic conflict between good and evil, and you can say openly, “This was not God’s will. God will bring comfort to you in it, but it is not God’s will in any sense. This is part of the curse. It’s part of the fall. It’s part of the Devil’s work. It’s not God’s work, and God will give you comfort.” Pastorally, this is surely a far better way to go.

If I have now convinced you to become an open theist, I do pray you’ll hang on for the rest of the conference, but at very least, I want you to see there is a case to be made and that has been made in the books and articles to which I have referred. I was given strict instructions to finish at 10:00 and throw it open for questions.

I think somebody is going to carry these mics down the aisle a wee bit, and if you want to raise questions, the only limitation I will set is if you are asking questions about how to respond to this or that, at this point I won’t do it because that’s where we’re heading in the rest of the lectures. If I know I’m going to be tackling something in a later lecture, I’ll punt.

What I’d really much prefer now are questions that have to do with making clear what is going on. That is making clear what the issues are, what the definitions are, what the literature says, and so on. Those are the best sorts of questions to take at this point. Sir?

Male: Dr. Carson, have you noticed a difference in position or degree between someone like a Sanders and Boyd? In other words, is it fair to lump those two together, overlay them as if they are the same, or is there a significant difference in the way Dr. Boyd presents it and Mr. Sanders?

Don Carson: In terms of their deep structures (to use that category), I don’t see a lot of difference between those two. I do want to be careful, however, when you go across all the names in the field. When you start bringing up people like William Hasker and Richard Rice and a whole lot of others, there are quite a lot of differences.

Moreover, Boyd’s approach tends to be more “biblical.” That is to say he focuses more energy on the texts. Sanders is more theological, but that reflects more of their respective disciplines as far as I can see than some deep, under-girding philosophical or theological difference. You’re right.

One does want to be careful about lumping them all in the same camp, but that doesn’t mean you can’t say some things that show how they fit together, and I think I’ve been pretty careful about not ascribing the views of one to another. Sir?

Male: I’m just wondering … Do you know what the genesis of all this was biographically, historically? What prompted this view to start in the first place and then proliferate?

Don: Oh, boy. That’s a difficult question. In one sense, it’s a question about which I’m nervous because, although it’s a good question, I’m usually leery about trying to answer theological positions on the basis of underlying motives or underlying history or psychology. You have to deal with a position as a position regardless of where it came from.

Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out something of the biography or, in some cases, even autobiography of some of the person’s involvement. Boyd actually tells how he got there. He says he was in pastoral ministry from the opposite side and then facing certain pastoral crises he couldn’t handle very well, he began to think things through, and over a period of several years came to this position. That’s his analysis of how he got there.

For someone like Pinnock, it’s a bit different. Pinnock has changed in a lot of views over the years. When he went to New Orleans, he wrote two books defending inerrancy. A case can be made he often took positions that were opposite the school where he found himself. In New Orleans, a lot of people were heading another direction, and he defended inerrancy. Then he moved to Trinity, and he found quite a number of people who were pretty reformed, and he edited the book Grace Unlimited.

Then he went to Regent. This is a long story, but he took on Francis Schaeffer and some others there. He eventually went to McMaster, and the first thing he published at McMaster was really a deep critique of the more liberal Baptists in Canada and their handling of the conservatives back in the 1920s. He really has had a very interesting heritage along these lines. It’s not all bad to want to tilt at windmills because there are some windmills that need tilting at. On the other hand, it has not made for a heritage of stable theological position.

I remember when his more recent book on Scripture came out, it was reviewed by Roger Nicole, I think, in CT, and he said good systematicians must maintain a certain subtle balance between adhering to the tradition and entering innovatively into engagement with the current age. He said, “Dr. Pinnock has shown us how to do the latter. We might have wished he would have better maintained the former,” which was a respectful way of handling the issue.

I don’t want to say anything about bad motives. If I had to talk about the climate of the time, I personally don’t think these views would have come about had it not been for two other things perking along in the culture. One of them I’m sure about; the other, I think, is the case. In fact, one of these I’m going to deal with briefly on the last day.

I think you have to start developing a certain view of human autonomy to get here, a certain view that owes much, much more to the Enlightenment and then to postmodernity than it does to a biblical worldview in the first place. I’ll come back to that one. Secondly, I would want to argue there are quite a lot of parallels between this view and processed thought.

There are two big differences. I’ll come to those, too, in due course as well. Processed thought has no place, for example, for creation, whereas all of the defenders of the open view of God hold to creation, although Boyd has one or two interesting twists in his thinking about creation, too, that I haven’t seen in anybody else, but that’s a slightly different issue.

There is now a major book (I’ll refer to this later as well) of discussion between openness-of-God people and processed theologians who are really much more naturalistically inclined. There is a major book on the differences between them and where they interact with each other and where they’re different and so forth, but I’ll mention that, too, as we press on.

Male: Do you see this view as something that would be considered a heresy, or is there room within their view for a middle ground?

Don: That is a really tough question and an awful lot depends on what is meant by heresy. If one uses heresy merely in the etymological sense of hairesis, and that sort of thing (it’s a schismatic view; it’s a sectarian view), then it is certainly heresy, but if you mean it is heresy in the strong sense … Well, how strong a sense? If you mean by heresy that which is outside the tradition of the orthodox creeds, it is certainly heretical. It doesn’t fit anywhere in the orthodox creeds.

I think one of the things Dr. Osborn is going to be arguing is it doesn’t fit into the heritage of Arminianism either, which has also been argued by Picirilli, for example, in an article in JETS and so forth. If, by heresy, you mean the strongest possible thing, namely this is a doctrine which, if you believe it, you are damned, which is the tightest definition of heresy, that’s a much harder question. My short answer would be no, but let me come at it through a side door.

If you find someone, for example, who comes from some extremely liberal background who then meets some Christians and hears enough of the gospel actually to close with Christ and trust Christ, he or she may be bringing a whole lot of baggage that is still part of their mental furniture which formally is heretical, but they haven’t got it well integrated yet.

So you discover in due course whether or not these people really are Christians by whether, in the course of time, their ongoing Bible study brings them closer into line with where the truth really is or, in fact, those are mental reservations that are such that they can never really bow to the historic Jesus. If that’s the case, sooner or later you want to say those bits of mental furniture really probably really were heretical for them and they weren’t genuinely converted.

In this particular case, therefore, you want to ask questions like, “Is this the view that is taken on by a first-year theology student who is reading the first three or four theology books in his or her respective life and they happen to be Sanders and Boyd and they become convinced and become apostles of this view and three years later they’ve gone beyond that?” Was it heretical for them?

Then you want to ask, not only in the individual case where they are, but you also want to ask where is the movement as a whole going? In the Arian controversy, I don’t think everybody who was on the Arian side was automatically and immediately promptly damned. I think in the Arian controversy, what you started doing was producing trajectories, and eventually, those trajectories become so polarized that you head into deep waters.

I think that was true, also, with the rise of modernism and liberalism. I don’t think as soon as somebody dropped the inerrancy of Scripture they were immediately damned, but I do think you have to ask in the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century where were those tendencies heading and what kind of polarizations did they produce and where ultimately did it lead mainline churches and so on?

You have to ask all of those sorts of questions. If you asked, as far as I can see, “Does this ultimately lead to a bifurcation of things that is extremely serious that affects ultimately on the long haul salvation, that it is so central that you have to oppose it?” I think my answer is yes. You can’t get anything much more central than the doctrine of God.

I will shortly argue that it does have huge bearing on their understanding of even some of the texts we have looked at and how you understand the cross and a whole lot of other things, too. That does not necessarily give us an agenda for how we go about doing it. It is a complex issue, and one wants some theological reasoning and faithfulness rather than merely pit-bull tactics.

Male: I’d be interested in hearing more of your assessment of how widespread this movement is. You mentioned one seminary and a denomination. In my particular community, it seems like it’s really going crazy like an oil spill. There are a number of charismatic churches and parachurch organizations that seem pretty excited about it. Is it as widespread everywhere? Do you have a sense of the trajectories of where this is going?

Don: That’s a very tough question as well because I don’t know any really careful study that has been done in the area. It’s all impressionistic and anecdotal, and the only thing I can say about my impressions is that, probably because Trinity has so many taps into it, we pick up a lot of information here and there, but my impression is only an impression, so I don’t want you to take this as a well-researched position.

The number of top-flight people who are working in the area is very small. In that sense, it is not yet very influential. On the other hand, there has already been established in several quarters a refusal to deal with it, which means it’s going to grow. I think the circles in which it is most likely to flourish are those where they do not have a great deal of theological noose and especially are already in a semi-Pelagian camp.

That means a lot of sort of the more touchy-feely sort of Christianity of evangelicalism that is not in any sense doctrinally or biblically theologically driven. What you said was right. It’s more likely to fire through large swaths of the charismatic camp than it is of the reformed camp, for example. It’s more likely to because so much of the charismatic camp is not theologically driven in as deep a way as the reformed camp is driven, for good and ill.

Moreover, so much of it is borderline semi-Pelagian in any case that is more open to that sort of thing, so I think this is going to be a biggie before it’s done. How long it will last, I wouldn’t want to predict, but it’s going to be a biggie, and I think ultimately it’s going to end up dividing churches, denominations, evangelical associations and so on. I wish it weren’t, but I think that’s what’s going to happen.

Male: Kind of piggybacking on the last two and perhaps it might be better to wait until later, but I’ll ask it anyway, I’m representing a church of 39 people, but we’re only 150 miles down the road from Bethel, and there are Bethel students in the community. My question is what do I do with what I learn here?

Do I go back and home and say, “I was at this great conference and I’d like to tell you why these are bad guys”? Do I just leave it alone or wait until it comes up? Perhaps it’s better asked at the end of the conference, but I’ll raise it now just so you can kind of bubble around in your thinking a little bit. Do I raise the issue? Do I wait until it comes up? Do I go hide in the sand or claim ignorance or just give them a copy of your book?

Don: Well, talking about future free contingent decisions, the book’s not written yet. Mind you, there are some good books. I’ll be mentioning them later. There’s a little book by Bruce Weir that has just come out very recently from Crossway that isn’t bad at all. It’s not bad on the theological front. It’s pretty good. On the pastoral front, it’s pretty good. It’s weak on the exegetical front, which is one of the reasons I’m going to spend more time in the next two lectures dealing with the exegetical side because there is more already out there on the theological side than there is on the exegetical side.

I would like to think there are some alternatives between saying nothing and waiting for it to give me a problem and giving three addresses on naming all the bad guys and why they’re wrong. Sometimes if you belong to a community where it’s not bubbling yet but where there might be tendencies that could move in that direction pretty easily, the best way of tackling it is just as part of your regular preaching, not having a sermon titled, “The Openness of God: A Critique.” You have titles like that for pastors’ conferences.

When you’re handling some of these passages, handle them in such a way that implicitly you’re tackling this problem again and again and again. If you’re aware of what is being said on the other side and aware of how to handle the passages more responsibly, if you do that again and again and again, then when the problem does come up you can start saying, “Well, how does that square with this passage we looked at or how does it square with that passage we looked at?”

People already have the passages in their heads so can begin to interact with it. If there is somebody stirring in the church over it, then there might be a place for a one-on-one discussion like, “Why don’t you read this book by Weir and tell me what you think about that?” There might be all kinds of intervening pastoral steps before you have to make a federal case of something, but sooner or later I do think nationally this one is going to hit us. I wish it weren’t, but I think it will. Sir?

Male: Has anybody written anything dealing with health, wealth, and prosperity and the issue of suffering? It seems the American view of suffering versus the suffering view of other parts of the world is quite different and it relates to this very particularly.

Don: Yes, it does. It’s bound up with the question of theodicy, and it’s bound up with questions of how you read a fallen world and live under it, although I’m sure Greg Boyd, for example, would be quite upset to be linked with the health-wealth-and-prosperity people. I mean, he’s not in that camp. He’s a very able communicator and he knows how to draw lines for himself. He would be very upset to be linked in that camp.

Yet pastorally, there is a similar view of suffering in certain respects. There’s no doubt about that, although the under-girding theology is forgetting they’re really quite different. What I would want to say is it is better to have a more comprehensive view of suffering and theodicy which, in my view, is then tied finally to a quite different view of God, salvation, and eschatology, but those sorts of structures I’ll come back at a little later.

There is a lot nowadays written about theodicy that is confronting the health-and-wealth-and-prosperity type gospel, but very little of it has been tweaked so it is addressing the kind of theodicy you can get in this other camp because the under-girding structures are a bit different. Does that make sense?

Male: Yeah. Just follow up a little bit. Is there something we could look at that’s already written, whether it’s a book or an essay, that would deal with a clearer perspective on suffering? I mean, general statements are made, but it just seems to be so vague.

Don: I don’t want to start becoming a book peddler, but I did write a little book on the subject myself called How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil. It works through some of the big themes but also some passages and chunks … A whole chapter on Job, for example, and the suffering of the cross and so forth. That book has been out for about 10 years.

Some of the most moving letters I’ve ever had from readers have come from readers who read that book just because it has hit them where they were. It says more about where they were more than the book itself. Mind you, I’ve had some blistering letters from other readers on other subjects I have to tell you.

Male: I do want to thank you for, at least in this hour, giving us a respectful summary of some of the stronger parts of these theologians anyway, particularly the biblical passages. If there is any attractiveness in this, it is in taking those things that are problematic to the traditional view and trying to deal with them. Sometimes we do pass off those in our theology and say, “We’ve got that all explained,” and I think we have to understand the attractiveness of that.

The question I have from the review of the literature is, theologically, is there ever an analogy made to the kenosis? In other words, can this view be analogous to Jesus’ self-limitation? Does God exercise self-limitation? He chooses in some areas, not that he can’t know or that it’s not to be known, but he chooses in some areas to wall that off.

Don: There are passages in Sanders and, occasionally, in Boyd (nothing comes to mind immediately that makes a connection with the kenosis) that try to distinguish things God cannot know and things he chooses not to know. Some don’t like to go down that sort of route at all because there are real problems with it.

Let me say something about your first observation about the difficult passages that have to be addressed. There’s a sense in which I agree with that, which is why I tried to be as evenhanded in my description as I could be in the first hour. On the other hand, I also want to say there is enormous hubris in that stance, too, because a fair bit of what comes across from this literature is unavoidably of the sort that everybody has it wrong until us. The whole history of the church is wrong.

When I read, for example, about a year ago the CT editorial after an initial debate on some of these matters, to be frank, I was appalled by it. The reason why I was appalled is because it was basically saying, “Well, obviously there’s a lot of biblical evidence on both sides here. We need to think it all through afresh.”

It was in a historical vacuum, as if nobody has thought about these things. Hasn’t anybody read Saint Augustine or John Chrysostom or Anselm or Calvin or Wesley? People have been thinking about these sorts of things for 2,000 years, and to have a few proof texts that allegedly handle everything is appalling.

Moreover, I have observed that almost every movement that comes along that wants to correct us blames where the church is on the fathers or some other group, so that if we have too much of a longing for eternity and not enough of a this-life thing, it’s because of the Platonists. If we have too much of a static view of God and sovereignty, it’s because of the Neo-Platonists. The fathers are wrong about everything, and we’re right about everything.

The naivetÈ in that sort of approach to church history I find deeply disturbing in a journal like Christianity Today, which is just irresponsible. It was journalese without any theological noose whatsoever. Whereas I agree that problems shouldn’t be hidden over, I think the reasons why they are exegetical problems is because we have built up an evangelicalism that is biblically sub literate, and we’ve been doing it for so long that now, when these passages are brought in, a lot of people are surprised. “Oh! All these problems in the Bible? I haven’t seen those before!”

Whereas, if they had been deeply informed by careful, balanced, theological, and biblically reflective preaching for the last 50 years, there’s no way this would have gotten a foothold. In other words, the reason why this gets a foothold is, in part, because the level of actual biblical commitment and understanding, let alone historical rootedness, is so shallow that we think new problems are being raised when they’re the same old ones tweaked in a slightly different guise under different epistemology, namely the epistemology of late modernity and early postmodernity.

So although I agree problems have to be handled directly, respectfully, honestly, exegetically, as well as theologically and philosophically (I agree with all of that), I’m always suspicious of the group that comes along and is waving a flag that is saying, in effect, “Everybody has it wrong before us, and now we have it right,” and then quotes a lot of Bible. I’m always suspicious. Now I’ve probably offended everybody.

Male: In one portion of your presentation, you suggested when things happen after human beings make decisions or nations make decisions, God perhaps according to the open view says, “Oops! I made a mistake.” Is that what they’re really saying, or are they saying God actually created a system in which either choice could be made; that he knew either choice could be made, and it’s not that he’s saying, “Oops! I made a mistake” as much as feeling sorrowful that the wrong, moral decision was made?

Are they really saying God goes, “I shouldn’t have done it that way,” or are they really saying God has so constructed that system that way and he knows it could go either way? He is joyful when it goes the way his heart desires and he’s sorrowful when it’s not?

Don: For some of the passages, you’re quite right. That is what is said, so I dealt with a lot of those, but the “mistake” language is not mine. That’s Sanders, and even in some places where he puts mistake in quotation marks to soften it, it is still what he is saying. At the end of his treatment of the flood episode, that’s exactly what he says.

He says God, in sending the flood, was just. He’s never unjust, but although he was grieved that he made them in the first place, he was even more grieved by all the suffering he saw because of the judgment that he resolves not to do it again because he was “mistaken.” There was a better way. That’s his category! Those are virtually his words. Not mine.

Male: That’s why I think I asked the question I did before. As I read Greg Boyd’s book, I didn’t hear the “mistake” language as much as I heard the “option” language.

Don: That’s why on that particular issue I particularly ascribed it just to Sanders.

Male: Thanks.

Male: You mentioned this just in passing. You didn’t go on to it, but you’re going to go on to it more. How do they deal with God being, maybe, outside of time if he’s in time? It seems if he is in time in their view, time is limited to this earth. How does that tie into time being relative to the speed of light and all other kinds of things in a created universe?

There seems to be a very narrow view of time itself that God is tied to with this, and if God has created all the universe and he’s somehow outside of it, then he has to have more freedom from time itself somehow than that. How does that tie into scientific knowledge and all the rest of it that seems to say time is not that, maybe, constant as we might think it is? Do they deal with that at all in this whole process?

Don: Almost all of those who hold any libertarian view of free will … Let me define the term. There are different definitions of free will, a lot of them. The libertarian view of free will which they espouse … They’re not the only ones who do espouse it. There are some who don’t accept or espouse their libertarian view of free will.

In a libertarian view of freewill you have such absolute freedom that you have power of contrary, it’s called, so that you not only chose to do something, but you could have chosen to do the opposite, absolutely, with absolute freedom. Almost all who hold some sort of libertarian view of freewill ultimately want to hold some sort of view of God in time or in sequence and necessarily so in the openness-of-God camp.

This is argued by them again and again and again, that God presents himself as foreordaining something, predicting what will take place, or raising questions about what will take place. That is the way God is presented in the Bible. Call it anthropomorphism if you like, but that’s the way God is presented in the Bible, and if that’s the case, either you must say God does exist in time or that he exists in sequence and that is the only way we are authorized to think of him.

Now I have not seen in the literature a first-class, technical discussion of what that would mean for contemporary views of science, although Boyd has some science in his background. There are some answers that have come back from Paul Helm and a couple of other philosophers. If I have time, I’ll deal with some of them on the last day, but I probably won’t get to them.

The whole notion of God not being able to know in advance the results of future free decisions turns in part on God looking at the future the way we look at the future. What does future look like to God if he stands outside of time? Free depends on a libertarian view of freedom. If you have a different definition of freedom or you acknowledge that God could stand outside of time, then that whole future free contingent decision thing looks very differently again.

So it turns out the openness-of-God people are necessarily tied to certain kinds of philosophical stances about these matters, and if you break out of those stances, then you have to raise fundamental questions about the whole openness-of-God thing. You have to. It is one of the reasons why this is so complex a subject.

Because, you see, if I were to come back and start by raising the sort of question you’ve raised there, then the way a Boyd comes back to me is by saying, “You’re not just doing exegesis on the Bible. I’m talking about the Bible; you’re talking about philosophy.” But if I come back and just deal with sort of text after text after text after text and don’t deal with those large issues, those large issues frame the discussion whether we like it or not. You cannot avoid them.

Everything you say is grounded in a certain philosophical outlook, and only the people who don’t understand that think they’re immune from it. Carl Henry was right when he said, “There are two kinds of presuppositionalists: those who admit it and those who don’t.” All of our discussions, whether we like it or not, are locked into larger frames of reference that you eventually have to discuss.

That means the subject is picking up exegesis and biblical theology and historical theology and epistemology and philosophy and so on. That’s why it has become such a very difficult subject, I’m afraid, which gives us plenty of scope for offending a lot of different people in different ways.