A Chal­leng­ing Faith

The Bible is cer­tainly an eccen­tric book. You can find some very strange sto­ries and pas­sages within its pages. It is also a very dif­fi­cult book. The story of a father who sac­ri­fices his daugh­ter because of a vow; talk of dash­ing children’s heads against the rocks (Psalm 137:8–9); the para­ble of the Shrewd Man­ager; these sto­ries and many more are chal­leng­ing and answers are not so clearly evi­dent on a first, sec­ond or third read­ing. There is a grap­pling that is nec­es­sary for cor­rectly under­stand­ing what is being said. In one instance a pas­sage is obvi­ous; at oth­ers, it can be deeply con­fus­ing, con­fin­ing or chal­leng­ing. As one who has stud­ied lit­er­a­ture, I appre­ci­ate this. The Bible is not a Danielle Steele novel. The book that God gave us is chal­leng­ing and thought-provoking. It makes us use our minds and hearts in a way that we don’t nor­mally do. [pullquote]The Bible is not a Danielle Steele novel. The book that God gave us is chal­leng­ing and thought-provoking. It makes us use our minds and hearts in a way that we don’t nor­mally do.[/pullquote] Most impor­tantly, it forces us to rely on the Holy Spirit with all our being to under­stand these extra­or­di­nary words we read.

In the past, those who main­tain an open view of God have taken a beat­ing at the hands of many other the­olo­gians and Chris­t­ian lay writ­ers. This is trou­bling because in real­ity the Open View the­olo­gians are wrestling with the Scrip­tures and look­ing at verses or sto­ries that just don’t fit with what has been taught in the past. Are they cor­rect in every assess­ment? Per­haps not. How­ever, they are delv­ing deeper into the words God gave us than maybe we have done in many years since. Like Jacob, they are wrestling with God.

One the­olo­gian who truly wres­tled with the Scrip­tures was the late Clark Pin­nock. A remark­able the­olo­gian who was instru­men­tal in clar­i­fy­ing the infal­li­bil­ity of Scrip­ture later in life took on the view of Open The­ol­ogy. Let’s explore what that exactly is.

So What Did Clark Pin­nock Believe?

There are essen­tially three areas where Open The­ism stands in con­flict with the clas­sic view of the­ol­ogy, the Calvinist-Augustinian view. The issues below are ones that make clas­sic the­ists roll their eyes and offer strong disagreement—these three view­points: the power or sov­er­eignty of God, the immutabil­ity of God and finally, God’s foreknowledge.

a. The Power or Sov­er­eignty of God

The Clas­sic View of God’s power is that God is sov­er­eign and in con­trol of all human and super­nat­ural events. As the Reformed the­olo­gian R.C. Sproul has said, “If there is any part of cre­ation out­side of God’s sov­er­eignty, then God is sim­ply not sov­er­eign. If God is not sov­er­eign, then God is not God.” (R.C. Sproul, Cho­sen by God, p. 26) The Clas­sic or Calvin­ist view holds that God must be in con­trol of all events, in all places and in all times. This is where we get the strong insis­tence in pre­des­ti­na­tion; that we as each per­son were either cho­sen by God to be in rela­tion­ship with him or not. Our sal­va­tion depends noth­ing on us; it is all up to God. There is no choice and no free­dom. We are either des­tined for heaven or hell; the choice is God’s alone.

The Open View sees things dif­fer­ently. They do not see the use of the word sov­er­eignty as syn­ony­mous with con­trol. Beyond that, if we have the choice of free­dom in our lives as they believe, it is inevitable that God had to give up some “con­trol.” This is an impor­tant sum­ma­tion of this theology—there are always con­se­quences or ram­i­fi­ca­tions to what you believe and these beliefs must be thought out and weighed. When it comes to the doc­trine of prov­i­dence each path leads to places that have trou­bling reper­cus­sions. But right away you may be think­ing What?! God is not in con­trol? How could this be? Isn’t this a basic of Chris­tian­ity? Pin­nock insists, sov­er­eignty has to do with rule and author­ity, not con­trol. He argues in response that God still has con­trol, but not in a way that is deter­min­is­tic, dom­i­nat­ing, and monopolistic. [pullquote]Pinnock insists, sov­er­eignty has to do with rule and author­ity, not con­trol. He argues in response that God still has con­trol, but not in a way that is deter­min­is­tic, dom­i­nat­ing, and monop­o­lis­tic. [/pullquote]A word that open the­ists will use is that God is “omnire­source­ful.” God at times maybe has to adjust to cer­tain cir­cum­stances, because of human free will, but He is ready and has the where­withal to never be caught off-guard. This, Pin­nock argues, is a truly omnipo­tent Creator.

Yet this does not make God weak, for it requires more power to rule over an unde­ter­mined world than it would over a deter­mined one. Cre­at­ing free crea­tures and work­ing with them does not con­tra­dict God’s omnipo­tence but requires it…God’s power presently is more sub­tle, much greater in fact than the coer­cive power of a pup­peteer. Monop­oly power is easy to manage—more dif­fi­cult is power that makes free agents and gov­erns a uni­verse where crea­tures can dis­obey. (Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God,  113–114)

b. The Immutabil­ity of God

This is not the only place where Open The­ists have caused con­tro­versy. They also con­clude that God can change. The Reformed the­olo­gian insists, “How can this be? Scrip­ture upon scrip­ture voices that God does not change.”

Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.  (1 Samuel 15:29)

Remem­ber the for­mer things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me; declar­ing the end from the begin­ning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; say­ing, My coun­sel shall stand, and I will do all my plea­sure; call­ing a rav­en­ous bird from the east, the man of my coun­sel from a far coun­try; yes, I have spo­ken, I will also bring it to pass; I have pur­posed, I will also do it. (Isa­iah 46:9–11)

“If God were to change where would this leave us? What if he decided to change his mind about us, about sal­va­tion? No, God never changes,” says the clas­sic theist.

The Open the­olo­gian goes even fur­ther, he demands that God even changes his mind, he rethinks his think­ing! Pin­nock reports that by look­ing at the texts of the Bible, it is obvi­ous from many dif­fer­ent ref­er­ences that God did change his mind and con­tin­ues to do so. In par­tic­u­lar, the book of Jonah depicts this forth­rightly by say­ing God actu­ally “repented” of the evil he said he would do. Not only this, this is a God who asks ques­tions (Num­bers 14:11), One who regrets deci­sions (I Samuel 15:11), and One who finds out things (Gen­e­sis 2:19).  In fact, Pin­nock also sug­gests that God even learns through the process of redeem­ing the world.

This implies that God learns things and (I would add) enjoys learn­ing them. It does not mean that God is anybody’s pupil or that he has to over­come igno­rance and learn things of which he should have been aware. It means that God cre­ated a dynamic and chang­ing world and enjoys get­ting to know it.(Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God, pp. 123–124)

[pullquote]Pinnock is very clear in what he is say­ing about this. “God is unchang­ing in nature and essence, but not in expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and action.” [/pullquote](Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God, pp.  113–114) He is not espous­ing that God’s nature or who he is to the core changes or is altered. But with the inter­ac­tion with his chil­dren, God can change his mind as well as what he does. 

c. The Knowl­edge of God

For many, prob­a­bly the most trou­bling stance of the open the­olo­gian is the view that God is not omni­scient in the sense that we have thought about that term in the past. Again, sim­i­lar to the issue of God’s power or con­trol, clas­sic the­ists see God’s knowl­edge as exhaus­tive and defin­i­tive. He knows every­thing even before it hap­pens. Clas­sic the­ists argue that this brings com­fort and secu­rity. If God knows every­thing, he can con­trol every­thing. “Again,” the clas­sic the­ist would ask, “how could you take such a view that God doesn’t know every­thing? Have you read the Scrip­tures? Just start with the prophets and you will see that God knows every­thing that will hap­pen and what will be.” How­ever, open the­olo­gians insist that we must think out our the­ol­ogy and under­stand the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of these beliefs. If God knows every­thing then that lends itself to every­thing being fixed. And if every­thing is fixed then we can not be made as cre­ations of love, but we are sim­ply robots con­trolled by the hands of God.

The Open the­olo­gian would argue an impor­tant point, when it applies to God’s lim­ited knowl­edge, one begins to see this truth when read­ing the sto­ries found in Scrip­ture. As a past sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor once said, those who have an open view of God (or Armini­ans) lean toward nar­ra­tive the­ol­ogy; they see the Bible as a tremen­dous story to be engaged in, not just a list of doc­tri­nal state­ments for us to abide to and check off.

What does the Bible say about God’s knowl­edge? It says, for exam­ple, that God tested Abra­ham to see what he would do and after the test says through the angel: “Now I know that you fear God.” (Gen­e­sis 22:12) This was a piece of infor­ma­tion that God was eager to secure. (Clark Pin­nock, The Open­ness of God,  pp. 121–122)

And this leads us to the final point. Open the­olo­gians are often accused of over-limiting God’s knowl­edge. Those with an open view of God insist that he knows what he needs to know, which is most every­thing.  A mis­con­cep­tion that some may hold about this empha­sis is that God knows very lit­tle, if nearly noth­ing. How­ever, this is not their stance on the issue. Open View the­olo­gians main­tain that God does not need to know every­thing exhaus­tively or in a deter­min­is­tic fashion-—again, he knows what he needs to know.

How Did We Get Here? What Have We Become?

A ques­tion some may ask is: how did this Open View of God come about? Was it just some the­olo­gians play­ing where they shouldn’t? Or did it come about as a real response to some­thing wrong with our present under­stand­ing of God?

a. The Influ­ence of C.S. Lewis and Free Will Theism

Other than the Wes­leyans, Armini­an­ism has been pretty much a non-issue within the world of evan­gel­i­cal­ism. Calvin­ism or Reformed the­ol­ogy has ruled the day in most denom­i­na­tions. How­ever, it can be argued that one of the most influ­en­tial “the­olo­gians” of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury has been C.S. Lewis. Many of us have grown up on his books such as Mere Chris­tian­ity, Screw­tape Let­ters, The Prob­lem of Pain, The Great Divorce and many oth­ers. [pullquote]For the evan­gel­i­cal church, espe­cially the Amer­i­can one, C.S. Lewis is our patron saint. Open The­ol­ogy in some ways came out of his writ­ings and the gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed him have been highly influ­enced by his thoughts and writings.[/pullquote] Lewis often spoke of the free choice we had in our rela­tion­ship to God. In the clas­sic, Mere Chris­tian­ity, he devotes a sub­stan­tial part of the chap­ter, “The Shock­ing Alter­na­tive” to the issue of free will. Lis­ten to some of his words from this book:

Free will is what has made evil pos­si­ble. Why then, did God give [crea­tures] free will? Because free will though it makes evil pos­si­ble, is also the only thing that makes pos­si­ble any love or good­ness or joy worth having.

The hap­pi­ness God desires for His crea­tures is…ecstasy of love…And for that they must be free.

The bet­ter stuff a crea­ture is made of—the clev­erer and stronger and freer it is—then the bet­ter it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.

Because of Lewis the Amer­i­can church has had a sub­tle, but strong influ­ence with regards to the issue of free will. Though he was not a staunch Armin­ian, this view per­vades most of his works which so many evan­gel­i­cals have read. An exam­ple of this would be in one of the open the­ists such as Gre­gory Boyd. In his books, Boyd often quotes Lewis and you see the influ­ence this Eng­lish­man had on him. And this makes sense as well. With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves. With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves. [pullquote]With regard to the issue of free will, Lewis was not influ­enced by main­stream Amer­i­can Protes­tantism; more likely, as a sto­ry­teller him­self, he was per­suaded by the sto­ries of Scrip­ture themselves.[/pullquote]

b. One Prob­lem with the Doc­trine of Predestination

Open View the­olo­gians have made us think out our the­ol­ogy and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of those beliefs. Each doc­trine that we have about God has impli­ca­tions. Yet often we either deny these ram­i­fi­ca­tions or do our best to cover it up with Scrip­ture verses out of con­text. Some­times worse yet, we attempt to place the truth of God into an acronym like TULIP (i.e., total deprav­ity, uncon­di­tional elec­tion, lim­ited atone­ment, irre­sistible grace, and per­se­ver­ance of the saints) which inevitably can­not hold the intri­cate truths of the Scrip­tures. We attempt to com­part­men­tal­ize God. The Open­ness of God move­ment is a response to this. It looks at pas­sages and sto­ries in the Bible that show dif­fer­ent sides of God and cre­ation from what we may have been pre­vi­ously taught. When viewed in this way, the doc­trine of pre­des­ti­na­tion has some ram­i­fi­ca­tions that sim­ply are not bib­li­cal. There are many areas in which the Calvinist/Augustine view of God breaks down. One of the main ones is the prob­lem of evil.

The rea­son Calvin­ism does not work in the 21^st cen­tury is because it is not real­is­tic with regard to the world we live. In par­tic­u­lar, it leaves major ques­tions untouched when it comes to the prob­lem of evil. If we live in a deter­mined uni­verse to some extent God is respon­si­ble for the evil that hap­pens to us. This is a major prob­lem that Open The­olo­gians have with Calvin­ism. As one exam­ple, when we look at the Holo­caust, we can con­clude, “Where was God? Why did He allow this? What is the greater good that seven mil­lion peo­ple were bru­tally mur­dered and mas­sa­cred?” There is none, because God did not ordain the heinous acts the Nazis. Again, this was sim­ply human free­dom at its worse.

Open the­olo­gians con­tend that clas­si­cal the­olo­gians have neglected the impor­tant fact that we live in a war zone and with that, Open the­ists con­tend that with regards to their the­ol­ogy, they leave out a cru­cial char­ac­ter in the bib­li­cal story. This per­son, of course, is the one we find through­out the pages of Scripture—the angelic being, Lucifer or Satan.

David Grif­fin makes this point that the “real­ism of the New Tes­ta­ment image of the demonic is lost in the the­ol­ogy of Augus­tine and other clas­si­cal the­olo­gians because of their monis­tic monothe­ism accord­ing to which there is only one cen­tral power.” He fur­ther notes that “the bat­tle between the divine and the demonic is, accord­ingly, a mock, not a real bat­tle.” (Gre­gory A. Boyd, Satan and the Prob­lem of Evil, pg. 61)

God is so in con­trol in the Reformed view that there is no room for the evil one and his plans and activ­ity. Fur­ther­more, just like us, he is sim­ply a pup­pet in God’s hands. How­ever, this is not the bib­li­cal view of his inter­ac­tion with our world. He is a viable enemy to God and his cre­ation, both to believ­ers and to the lost. He is the “god of this age,” (2 Corinthi­ans 4:4) and who even has the power to offer Jesus the king­doms of this earth (Matthew 4:8–10). He truly is a for­mi­da­ble foe. Even though he is an ulti­mately defeated adver­sary, because of the sac­ri­fice of Jesus on the cross, he still does wreak havoc in the lives and hap­pen­ings of our world.

Leviathan and Rahab encom­pass the earth and war against God… “Rag­ing waters” of chaos defy the Almighty and threat­en­ing his cre­ation must be kept at bay…A sin­is­ter spirit of great power is the “god of this world” and “the ruler of the power of the air.” An evil “prince” owns all the king­doms of this world and indeed con­trols the entire fallen world…Everything and every­one under his author­ity has to some extent been affected accord­ingly. (Gre­gory A. Boyd, Satan and the Prob­lem of Evil, pp. 301–302)

There are many the­o­ries with regards to the Atone­ment (i.e., why did Jesus die on the cross?). The most preva­lent one is sub­sti­tu­tion, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. How­ever, another impor­tant one is what is called the ran­som the­ory—that is, Jesus’ death on the cross ran­somed us from the hand of Satan. [pullquote]There are many the­o­ries with regards to the Atone­ment (i.e., why did Jesus die on the cross?). The most preva­lent one is sub­sti­tu­tion, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. How­ever, another impor­tant one is what is called the ran­som the­ory—that is, Jesus’ death on the cross ran­somed us from the hand of Satan. [/pullquote]Redemption in this case lit­er­ally means “buy­ing back,” and this the­ory of atone­ment was the main view up until the Medieval Period. There are a hand­ful of verses declar­ing this, but the main one is found in the gospel of Mark: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ran­som for many.” (10:45)

Scrip­ture tells us that we are slaves as indi­vid­u­als and those of us who have given our lives to Jesus Christ are a “bought” and freed peo­ple. If this is the case, who were we bought from? This is an impor­tant “doc­trine” that is rarely dis­cussed, but is cru­cial if we are to under­stand the story of God and redemp­tion. Essen­tially, Jesus bought us from the domin­ion of Satan. When Adam and Eve said “no” to God, they inevitably said “yes” to the one who beguiled them. To some mys­te­ri­ous extent, God is under oblig­a­tion to keep this con­tract, because he is just. This being the case, Open the­ists main­tain that he is lim­ited in con­trol to some extent when it comes to the activ­i­ties of the evil one.

Can’t We Just Get Along

We know that we all pos­sess knowl­edge. Knowl­edge puffs up, but love builds up. If any­one thinks he knows some­thing, he has not yet learned it as he ought to know it. But if any­one loves God, he is known by him. (1 Corinthi­ans 8:1–3 ISV)

Alfred North White­head remarks, “the clash of doc­trines is not a dis­as­ter, it is an oppor­tu­nity.” This is clearly the case when one approaches Open Theology. [pullquote]Alfred North White­head remarks, “the clash of doc­trines is not a dis­as­ter, it is an oppor­tu­nity.” This is clearly the case when one approaches Open Theology.[/pullquote] We have for­got­ten some­thing very impor­tant. Doc­trine is not the hinge pin to our sal­va­tion. There will be no true or false quizzes or exam­i­na­tions con­cern­ing our beliefs in Calvin­ism or Armini­an­ism. Is doc­trine impor­tant? Of course, it is. How­ever, too often Chris­tians believe it is the all in all when it comes to hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God, and it is not. This is the lit­mus test that you are either in or out by what you think and believe. Yes, there are some cru­cial aspects of doc­trine that need to heeded, but in large part many the­o­log­i­cal dis­agree­ments are just that, argu­ments. That is why it is so dis­ap­point­ing and sad that some the­olo­gians have said some very hard words when it con­cerns the late Clark Pin­nock. A quote from John Sanders reflects this:

[Clark is] often seen as a threat by the evan­gel­i­cal door­keep­ers. In large part this may be because evan­gel­i­cal the­ol­ogy, rather than being inno­v­a­tive and the­o­ret­i­cally reflec­tive self-critical, oper­ates more like the prac­tice of account­ing in the busi­ness field—it  insists in pro­ceed­ing only by pre-approved rules and fixed for­mu­lae and for­mats. (Callen, Barry. Clark Pin­nock: Jour­ney Toward Renewal, pg. 4)

Cor­rect doc­trine does not give us a right rela­tion­ship with God. The­o­log­i­cal strug­gles like this when they go awry entirely dis­arm our mes­sage before the world. How does Jesus says that the world will know him—because of our unity and love for one another. (John 17:20–23) They will never know him because of our doc­tri­nal stances and the the­ol­ogy that we hold. If we lose our unity and love for one another and con­tinue to live so dog­mat­i­cally in our beliefs (I would argue like the Phar­isees), the world will be lost on our splin­tered and unlovely message.

We must become more mod­est in our claims. I do not have the final answers. The­ol­ogy is an unfin­ished task, and all of our efforts at inter­pre­ta­tion are lim­ited in insight. As Paul says, “We see through a glass darkly.” There is more to be known about God than any of us presently knows. (Pin­nock, Clark, “The Pil­grim on the Way, Chris­tian­ity Today, 1998)

If you would like to delve deeper in under­stand­ing Open The­ol­ogy, I would rec­om­mend the books below.

[amazon_enhanced asin=“080106290X” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0830818529” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0830815503” /]