A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Is "Open Theism" heretical?

Several people in the blogosphere have darkly pointed out that Pastor Greg Boyd, who made headlines for his renunciation of any close identification between Christiaity and a particular political party (which shall remain nameless…), is also a proponent of “open theism.” Some of these same folks have also alleged that open theism is heretical. Is that true?

According to Wikipedia, Open Theism

claims that God is not immutable, impassible, nor timeless since they believe that these attributes are not consistent with the personhood of God and his relationship to man as presented in the Christian scriptures. According to open theists, the God of the Bible is a God whose actions are not timeless but historical. God is neither completely immutable nor impassible as He may change his mind and He may be affected by his creatures emotionally and in other ways. God does not practice meticulous sovereignty (determining everything) but practices general sovereignty that allows for free will in mankind and allows man to contribute to bringing about the future. The most controversial aspect of open theism is the claim of its proponents that the omniscience of God does not include foreknowledge of the outcome of individual free choices that have not yet been made. Open theists argue the existence of such knowledge is not consistent with the nature of the future that they believe is implied by free will and that such knowledge is not consistent with the belief that our prayers can make a difference to God with regard to his plans.

As far as the first part – the stuff about God being passible and historical – goes, this has become a very common theme in contemporary theology. Names like Moltmann and Jenson come to mind, not to mention the process theologians. And anyone who believes in libertarian free will must believe that God doesn’t determine everything.

And the more controversial claim – that God doesn’t have knowledge of future free choices seems to follow pretty much directly from these premises. If God is “in” time rather than “outside” it, it’s hard to see how he could have certain knowledge of an even which was not completely determined by antecedent events. That’s just the definition of libertarian free will, or at least a necessary condition for it.

Now, I’m not too sure about any of this. I’m much less eager to jettison “classic theism” than open theists and other proponents of God’s passibility. Or at least I haven’t been convinced that it’s necessary or desirable. But I’m not sure that I can identify anything here that’s heretical, even the controversial bit about God’s knowledge. That seems analogous to a traditional question about God’s omnipotence. The textbook answer to the question of whether God’s omnipotence is threatened if he can’t do what’s logically impossible is that, strictly speaking, the logically impossible is not a coherent or conceivable thing. So it’s no limitation of God’s power to say he couldn’t perform the logically impossible.

So likewise with future knowledge of undetermined free choices. If God is in time and some acts of human choice are truly undetermined, then it seems like certain knowledge of those choices would be logically impossible. So, granting the Open Theists’ premises, to say that God doesn’t know the outcome of those choices wouldn’t be anymore problematic than the analogous issue regarding omnipotence. It’s no limitation of God’s omniscience if he’s unable to know what it would be logically impossible to know.

But, as far as I can see, there’s nothing heretical going on here, though admittedly I could be missing something. Open Theism may be false, but that’s not the same thing as heretical.

11 responses to “Is "Open Theism" heretical?”

  1. Brandon

    One of the big features of the dispute is that the open theists deny that God’s knowledge is eternal; it’s only when you grant this that libertarian free will requires that God not know future free acts. The usual way of handling these cases under the view that God is eternal is to say that God knows future free acts not in their antecedent conditions (except to the extent that those conditions make the free acts possible) but in their actually happening. Part of what’s at stake here is divine infallibility. The indeterminacy of free acts affects everything to do with human history; so if God cannot know with certainty future free acts, he becomes fallible whenever he predicts what will happen in human history. But, of course, human beings aren’t the only ones with free will. So I think there genuinely is something problematic about the open position, insofar as limitation of omniscience goes; it requires us to say that God cannot know what will happen whenever free will (human, angelic, or even His own — He can resolve to do X, of course, but since He’s free, He can’t know whether He’ll ever decide not to do X anymore) is involved. And that covers everything in the future. Given how much rides on divine promises, this is perhaps not a small thing.

    I think it’s right to say that most open theists aren’t (formally) heretical, though. Usually they are just trying to reaffirm that God is loving, caring, etc., and sometimes they don’t have a good grasp on what ‘classical theists’ mean. (Which is sometimes as much the fault of classical theists as the open theists.) Of course, open theists are perfectly willing to call classical theists heretical, too, and attribute to them a denial of God’s love, mercy, etc.

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  2. Thuloid

    I basically agree with Brandon here, but think that with a little more development, the problems do imply serious heresies. Certainly, proponents of open theism like Boyd don’t believe themselves to be advancing a heretical idea, or even skirting the edge of one. He doesn’t mean his open theism to imply what I think it does.

    In practice, it seems to me that Boyd’s theology comes close to a number of heresies. First, it’s about as nakedly Pelagian as one will find. Not even subtle in this respect–agents can all, of their own free natures, choose good or evil, to sin or not, to be aligned with either God or Satan. His “warfare theology” depends on this. It’s very difficult to see what role the cross plays, except as an example for our “spiritual warfare” and as a promise of the eventual demise of evil.

    Second, this account of freedom has consequences for the doctrine of creation. If God is unable to prevent certain outcomes lest he violate the free wills of agents, and he cannot know the choices of such agents except as possibilities, then it must be that God does not create those choices except as possibility–that is, some component of the creation originates as reality in the agents themselves, and not in God. It could not then be said of Christ that in Him all things consist, or were created through and for Him. And if this is the case, then it is doubtful how such things could be made new, or how Christ could recapitulate a humanity that is in some measure independent of God. So then we’ve got Christological implications and implications for the doctrine of atonement.

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  3. graham old

    Though I’m happy to ditch divine impassibility, I’m no fan of Open Theism. However, I think it is far from heresy.

    When I see people deciding that something must be “heresy” based on what it could possibly lead to, or how it could be developed, I wonder how they actually find the courage to believe anything.

    As far as I can see, it makes very little difference to anything. I debated with an Open Theist in an american Pentecostal journal, but the fact is that his view comes with so many caveats (as mine and the arminian respondants did ) that our views were not actually that far apart.

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  4. Lee

    Brandon – interesting objection. I was having a conversation with a philosopher who is a co-parishoner of mine the other night and he seemed to embrace the idea that God might be radically unpredictable in just such a way. He was coming at it from more of a postmodern than a Open Theism perspective, I think, but I found it disturbing in the same kind of way since I take it that we want to think of God’s revealed character as something we can count on. Of course, maybe an open theist-type would reply that all of God’s free choices will be consistent with his character, thus mitigating any radical unpredictability?

    Thuloid – is open theism incompatible with a high doctrine of grace? I can see why it might tend in that direction, but I’m not sure it has to.

    Graham – I like your point. It’s been said that all the major heresies in the church emphasize one important truth but disregard other equally important, balancing truths. But it could be they arise because that truth was being neglected.

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  5. Brandon

    I think your suggestion is precisely what open theists do tend to suggest; that is, what we can rely on is that God will always act justly, mercifully, etc., even though even He can’t predict what will happen in the future. I think that’s fair enough as far as it goes, but I think it requires a pretty radical re-interpretation of what goes on in prophecies and promises. (For instance, what are we to make of Isaiah’s prophecy about Cyrus’s restoration of Jerusalem? Or Jesus’ prediction that Judas would betray him?)

    With respect to your comment to Graham, I thought you might find interesting this quotation from Hilary of Poitiers:

    “Thus in their several assertions or denials, there are points in which each heresy is in the right in defence or attack; and the result of their conflicts is that the truth of our confession is brought into clearer light.” On the Trinity, Book VII.

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  6. Thuloid

    Lee–

    Well, the easiest way to tell would be to find out if there are any open theists who really manage to pull off a high doctrine of grace. I don’t know of any, but that’s not saying much.

    But as best I can make out, no, I don’t think such a thing is possible. The more I look at the problem, the scarier it gets. The trick is that, if open theism is to accomplish what it seems it’s supposed to (at least, in Boyd’s system, and in others I’ve read about)–to insulate God from responsibility for certain states of affairs by preserving a radical free will — it leaves some things, even some element of our humanity not of God’s making. How could we say that God redeems what isn’t rightly His?

    Or, putting it more biblically, if one must die with Christ to be raised with Christ, that ought to mean the whole person, else the whole person is not raised. But in the framework of open theism, it would seem that some elements (the choices of free agents) do not belong to Christ. There are constraints to this freedom that originate in God, but the theism loses its “open-ness” if the mechanism of choice itself is not independent of God (God does not know its outcome, therefore does not make the critical component). We must construe such a component of humanity as never requiring redemption, as it may freely choose God though utterly independent of Him. And far, far worse, we must then construe this component of humanity as unredeemable if it chooses against God.

    So we end up with a paradox; that God’s grace is sufficient for all except that freedom which open theists assert is so esteemed by God. The glorified man then lacks this freedom, and is only a partial man. What does God save? Only that which cannot meaningfully be said to sin (at most, sin could in some fashion be said to have been communicated to the rest of man through this will, and that portion saved, though the will remains outside the scope of grace). This is, at minimum, extremely troubling. I’d like to see how Boyd develops these issues.

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  7. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Lee,

    Lately I have been looking into this sort of thing in connection with the problem of evil. I have found books and sites on varieties of open theism (some deny God knowledge of any future contingents; others only of future contingents concerning our free actions; all deny God Molinist middle knowledge and insist on libertarian freedom), free-will theism (a close relative), and process theism.

    All three limit God’s knowledge of the future actions of his free creatures, compared to the views of more traditional theisms. And all three put God in time.

    But it seems there is also something called “finite theism” that insists the power of God is limited in comparison to the way in which it is conceived by classical theists.

    This seems also to be motivated in part by the problem of evil, as the theisms that limit God’s knowledge seem to be.

    Not much out there by way of books or sites, though, on finite theism. Let me know if you’ve run into anything.

    PS. I think Thuloid is right in suggesting that open theism makes humans co-creators in a very real way. They become creators of their own choices, or at least those that were in the relevant sense free (if not all of them are).

    That, I think is at the heart of the objection people make in Calvinist – or even Thomist – spirit that it flies in the face of God’s sovereignty, his position as the unique creator and conserver of all contingent beings in every respect.

    PPS. Brandon is right, too, I think, re the consequences re God’s foreknowledge. But it’s really the libertarian notion of free will that’s doing the work.

    Merely denying that future contingents have a truth value would not be a problem if human choices were fully determined by natural law, and God was resolved to maintain the same laws in force throughout the future.

    He would know what we will do in the sense that he presently knows what he intends to make us do in the future.

    In open theism, he lacks that path to knowledge of our future choices because open theists specifically deny all forms of determinism.

    At best, he can now know what he intends to do, though many of his intentions are like ours as well in being conditional upon what other people turn out to choose to do.

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  8. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Btw, a lot of these guys seem to be Methodists. Odd.

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  9. Lee

    GSG – I’m not too familiar with what you’re calling “finite theism,” though you might check out a paper by Peter Geach called “Omnipotence” where he distinguishes between omnipotence and “almightiness” and denies that we must attribute omnipotence to God.

    I’d speculate that many Methodists find themselves sympathetic to open theism, etc. because of their tradition’s emphasis on the free human response to grace (Arminianism vs. Calvinism, etc.).

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  10. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Here’s a start.

    http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-38244/theism

    Theism in Western thought > The nature of God in modern thought > The idea of a finite God

    “He [God] is doing his utmost, the finitist holds, but there are things—refractory materials or explicitly evil powers—that he has not yet subdued, though hopefully he will eventually do so. ”

    A nod towards a more frankly dualist view?

    “Among the outstanding advocates of the idea of a finite God were, at the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. Pragmatist William James and some of his disciples, notably Ralph Barton Perry. ”

    Some people point to HN Wieman.

    http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2781

    But, really, it doesn’t look like there’s much of a following, anymore, for this.

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  11. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Nice template. Where’s the search function?

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