The Open Future

When considering the extent of God's knowledge, our conclusion is usually that God is one who knows all things, past, present, and future. Very few people in all of Christendom would be crazy enough to challenge this, because, after all, scripture makes it obvious that we have such a God, right? For instance, how could God be viewed as a being who doesn't know the future, yet could give his prophets visions of the future? So, like I said, it would be crazy to challenge this.

But that's exactly what we're going to do. Is it not worth considering the possibility that we don't quite have the understanding of God we have been led to believe? If you're no stranger to my articles, you should probably be expecting a very uncomfortable read for the entirety of this work, and you wouldn't be wrong. We're going to challenge the norm, the orthodoxy, the very comfort of everyone who relies on their view of a God who knows all knowledge beyond what is knowable.

The position I am writing to you about is called Open Theism. It wasn't all too long ago that I had heard of this term, though I did share the position prior to hearing of it. Open Theism is known by other names, such as The Openness of God or The Openness of the Future, but for the sake of this article we will just call it Open Theism, the term more widely used by its advocates.

This position, in simple terms, claims that God does not know every detail in advance. God can see the number of possibilities in any given circumstance, for he understands the reality he created and the way things operate within that reality, meaning he may be able to deduce the end result from among those possibilities. However, is it possible that God doesn't know the exact result of every circumstance, perhaps leaving him as surprised as we are sometimes? And how does this explain prophecy?

The question arises, then, of whether God knows all things. I, as would every other Open Theist, argue that God does know all things, but knows all things that are knowable. See, there is a difference between this and knowing the unknowable, such as a future that has not been determined. In regards to man's free will, God does not have absolute certainty which directions we will take at all times. Man's free will would not be free if it were preordained, obviously. And, if man's will could be known, it would not be subject to change, and a future devoid of the possibility of change is a future that has been determined. Because of this, some events of the future may go one way or may go another, and it seems that God recognizes these possible courses, but which way they will go exactly he does not know. Therefore, this writer argues that God knows the future in terms of possibilities as if they were certainty, though no single possibility is always certain. However, because he sees them as certainties, and thus, sees them perfectly, God is all-knowing, for he knows all that is knowable.

This likely raises many questions, not the least of which is whether there is scriptural evidence for these bold claims. I believe there is, and we will examine a small portion of the plethora of passages that are proof of our theses.

A God Who Changes His Mind

The first aspect of the openness of God that we'll observe is the fact that God changes his mind. To put it simply, this implies that God's will can be changed. As we observe a couple examples, I want you to consider that a God who changes his mind is a God who has an attribute foreign to a God who knows all things eternally. In various instances throughout scripture, man leads God to change his mind about things. In Genesis 18, we find Abraham changing God's mind about destroying all of Sodom and Gomorrah on account of the wicked, which would have resulted in the righteous perishing with them. But first, note that God heard the cries pertaining to what was occurring in those cities, yet had to observe for himself to know for sure:

20And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; 21I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. (Genesis 18:20-21)

According to Christian understanding today, God should have had foreknowledge of this event, for he supposedly knows the future before it happens. But as we see here, he did not know for certain that Sodom and Gomorrah had “done altogether according to the cry of it.” We can also deduce that God did not preordain their wickedness, for if he had, no observation would have been necessary. Abraham stayed back with the Lord at this time and asked him if he would destroy the righteous with the wicked (18:23). Because of Abraham's question, we can understand that he was aware of the fact that God would destroy the righteous along with the wicked. But Abraham, on behalf of the righteous (namely Lot and his family), convinced God to spare the cities if even ten righteous people remained (18:24ff).

We know God ultimately destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, finding only Lot and his family righteous, a family of fewer than ten. Nevertheless, God still heeded Abraham's plea to spare the righteous, and Lot and his family were given time to make it to safety (Genesis 19:15-25), except for his wife, who looked back and was turned to a pillar of salt (19:26). Though Sodom and Gomorrah were ultimately judged as guilty, God's mind was certainly changed regarding the all-around result, and it was not the only time this would happen.

In the book of Jeremiah, there are actually multiple instances of God changing his mind. For the sake of space, we'll observe just one. In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah is told to go down to the potter's house (18:2), where he would learn something. So, Jeremiah obeyed, observing a potter molding clay (18:3). However, the vessel the potter was making was not turning out as intended, so the potter altered his original plans (18:4). Then, Jeremiah learns a lesson:

6O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mind hand, O house of Israel. 7At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; 8If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. 9And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; 10If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, the I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. (Jeremiah 18:6-10)

When God declares judgment against a city or nation, he is right to carry it out. At that time, it is his will to do so. However, God can change his mind if the inhabitants should repent. God is giving them a chance to repent by their own choice, meaning their fate is not predetermined and they have the free will choice to heed God's warning, lest they are judged and destroyed. If God can know all things unknowable, there would be no choice for a city or nation's inhabitants to make. God would execute judgment swiftly and without a second thought. Yet, we always find God having that second thought when a city or nation repents. The Ninevites are another prime example (refer to the book of Jonah).

A God Who Tests

Another interesting thing to consider is how God tests people in order to know something with certainty. If God already had knowledge of a person's love, for example, there would be no need to test them in order for God to know for sure. Makes sense, right? And if God had preordained a person to follow him, we can also agree that there would be no need to test whether or not this person is, in fact, following him, correct? In the following examples, we'll observe God testing his followers for the sake of God's own assurance as to where they stood with him, beginning with Abraham.

In Genesis 22, God calls upon Abraham for a test. Everyone knows the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac per the Lord's command (22:2), but have you ever caught on as to why God would test him? And if you have, do you understand the implications of God's reasoning? Just as Abraham is about to slay his son, he is stopped:

11And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. 12And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. (Genesis 22:11-12)

I've read some objections to this, one being a question of why God sent his angel to stop him if he did not know whether Abraham would follow through with the act. Such an objection is misplaced, however, because God sending his angel to stop Abraham in no way implies God had foreknowledge of the event so much as was observing the event as it took place. In verse 10, we read that Abraham had stretched forth his hand to slay his son. At that point, it was certain Abraham was going to follow through with it, and so God sent his angel to stop him. No foreknowledge necessary, just mere observation. A second objection is why God would have had a ram prepared as a substitute for Isaac ahead of time (22:13). This objection merely assumes that this ram was prepared ahead of time, but that is not necessarily what the text implies. Verse 13, at the very least, suggests the ram was provided at that very moment, not ahead of time. And at most, the verse should be taken to mean that God anticipated the various possibilities and had prepared ahead of time. No absolute foreknowledge necessary, nor implied.

Abraham's faithfulness to God's test determined whether God would follow through with the blessings previously granted to Abraham (22:16-18), and it is absolutely senseless for anyone to suggest that God had foreknowledge of how it would turn out. If foreknowledge was in play here, then God was merely playing a game with Abraham. And one may certainly assume this to be the case, though it runs contrary to the fact that God was previously uncertain that Abraham feared him, but now knew for certain because of Abraham's actions. To deny God's uncertainty is to make God a liar, plain and simple.

Similarly, God had to test the Israelites to know exactly what was in their hearts. Their exodus from Egypt lasted forty years, forty years God spent examining their hearts. If God had the foreknowledge necessary to arrive at the proper conclusion, or had even preordained the results, a test would not have been necessary. Observe the following:

2And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. (Deuteronomy 8:2)

Likewise, the Israelites were warned against false prophets, that their signs and wonders may come to pass for the sake of proving Israel's love for God:

13If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, 2And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 3Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

A God who relies on tests to fool mankind into believing they have choices is contrary to the God of the Bible, a God who allows man to act freely of their own choices. God tests such free beings to know their hearts, something absolutely unnecessary should God already have the foreknowledge to answer this for him.

A God Who Regrets

When I began questioning what kind of knowledge God has, it came from simply making my way through Genesis, specifically after arriving at chapter 6. In fact, I still remember reading through this chapter and onward, stopping after the story of the tower of Babel, suddenly arriving at some questions I never had before. Such questions may have lightly come to mind during previous readings, but it was at this time they stuck with me.

You see, God did not know for certain how man would turn out. I believe he knew all along that it was possible for man to desire darkness more than light (especially if one takes the pre-Adamite view, for God would have had plenty of experience with men walking in darkness prior to creating Adam). But because of God's covenant with Adam, there was a chance to walk in the light. All they had to do was choose to take that path, leaving open two possibilities that otherwise would not have been available, to either walk in darkness or walk in the light. But, as we find in Genesis 6, darkness won over the light:

1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. (Genesis 6:1-7)

For a God who knew exactly how man turned out, or even preordained them to be as such, it would seem odd for him to regret having even made them. Is his regret imaginary? Of course not! But it would have to be if the more classical views of God are true. To think that God regretted making man regardless of already knowing how they would turn out, is like someone going to a grocery store without money, expecting not to buy anything, getting to the register and not being able to make their purchase, and then regretting that they couldn't make that purchase. It simply doesn't make sense.

It also makes even less sense for God to appoint kingship to someone, and then regret giving them such a position, if all along he knew how the king would act. In the case of king Saul, God showed regret for having appointed him the position of king over Israel. Saul was expected to obey God's commands (1 Samuel 15:1-3), yet Saul did not do as the Lord commanded (15:5-9). And thus, the Lord said:

11It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night. (1 Samuel 15:11)

God knew Saul could have walked in his commandments, but it was just as likely that he would not. God knew the possibilities, but did not know which possibility would become reality. This is why he could feel regret for having made Saul king. To argue that God always knew that Saul would disobey his commandments would make God's feelings fake. I, however, believe God's feelings are genuine, that he hopes for man to walk in his ways, rejoicing when they do and feeling sorrow when they do not. This hope would not exist if God knew all things with certainty, however.

This is why God can feel regret, for he, like us, has expectations, and sometimes those expectations and hopes are not met. It speaks volumes to me to realize that our God is a God who gives the benefit of the doubt, for surely seeing all possible outcomes leaves much room for doubt, while the mere fact of God's regret reveals that his hopes are in spite of any doubt there may be.

Such expectations are evidenced in Isaiah 5, in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem, against all odds, managed to fail God. God questioned what more he could have done to his vineyard (the house of Israel, verse 7), for he had seemingly done everything he could, and he expected the vineyard to yield grapes. Yet, despite all God had done, to his surprise the vineyard yielded wild grapes, instead; his pleasant plant (the men of Judah, verse 7) had become the wild grapes thereof. God expected things to turn out one way, and all signs even pointed in favor of God's expectations, yet we find here that man had caused God's expectations to not come to pass. I believe God's surprise is evident in verse 4.

In Ezekiel 22, God states that he had been searching for a specific kind of person, but could not find what he was looking for:

30And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. 31Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God. (Ezekiel 22:30-31)

Can God genuinely look for something he knows is not there, or preordained to not be there? No. God did not know he would not find someone, and I believe his frustration over the matter is evident, frustration he could not have possibly had if he already knew what to expect. And if he knew what exactly what the result would be, yet expected differently, I feel we would be justified in questioning the intelligence of such a being.

What About Prophecy?

An examination of Open Theism would be incomplete without addressing the source of classical theism's ideas pertaining to the foreknowledge of God: prophetic insight.

I have done my fair share of research regarding the objections people make to Open Theism, the most common allegation being that Open Theists disregard God's omniscience, and therefore, classical theists object to any idea of a God with limited knowledge of the future, evidenced by God's ability to foresee events far ahead of when they occur.

To be clear again, Open Theists do not deny God's omniscience. God's omniscience, we believe, is extended to the realm of possibility and not always certainty, however. In other words, God knows all that is knowable. But how does this explain God's foreknowledge of future events, such as the succession of kingdoms leading up the last days (Daniel 7), or the rise of our savior, Jesus Christ (Genesis 3:15)? To put it simply, God provided his prophets with knowledge of things he had already determined to pass according to his will.

Prophecies were sometimes conditional, as we observed in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. Jonah was told to prophesy to Nineveh in response to their wickedness (Jonah 1:2). When Jonah did not listen, God approached him again (3:1-2). Jonah prophesied against the Ninevites, saying, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). However, this was conditional upon the Ninevites' repentance, and because they repented, so did God (3:10).

Returning to Jeremiah 18, which we observed earlier, we can find these conditions confirmed:

7At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; 8If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil I thought to do unto them. 9And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; 10If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. (Jeremiah 18:7-10)

Thus, not all instances of prophecy were set in stone. Their fulfillment was conditional as to how those being judged reacted, whether they repented of the evil that put them in God's sights in the first place. God's warnings to the churches of Asia in the book of Revelation were exactly in line with this.

However, not all prophecy can be viewed as conditional. Some events would come to pass, and no amount of man's free will would stop it from happening, such as the coming of Jesus Christ. First prophesied by God himself in Genesis 3, God went to great lengths to keep a faithful line through which the messiah would be born, even wiping out humans with a flood and sparing a remnant. I believe the necessity of the messiah was dependent upon Adam's actions, however, and it would seem my Christian brethren acknowledge this, if only passively. Consider that there would have been no need for saving had Adam not sinned and brought the knowledge of sin into the world (cf. Romans 5:12).

But many would argue that Jesus Christ was “foreordained before the foundation of the world,” with which I would agree. However, considering the evidence put forth thus far, is it accurate to deduce that God had eternal foreknowledge of man's fall and need for a savior? Or, is it perhaps more accurate to deduce that God knew things would go two ways, that either Adam and those that followed would keep his commandments perfectly and have no need for a savior, or that they would sin and require a savior on their behalf, and therefore, God prepared a savior for mankind from before the foundation of the world? Refer back to Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac, and that God had prepared a ram as a substitute in case Abraham was really willing to go through with God's test. I believe we are right to see a similarity between the two scenarios, but should view them as God reacting to possibilities, not certainties. And as with the sinners of Genesis 6, so is it true of Adam, in that God could not be certain which path he would take, though he was surely aware of the possibility.

In the case of Daniel's prophecies, we have a very large amount of time in which they would be fulfilled, covering nearly 500 years. There would be a number of successive powers over this time (Daniel 2 and 7), which would result in a great number of events occurring in order to make this happen (cf. Daniel 11). It would seem evident that God preordained such events to mold a specific state for Israel during the last days, through which the messiah would be brought forth. These events were preordained according to God's will to carry out very specific plans, plans which no less revolved around his promise of a savior in the garden of Eden.

When God's prophets received knowledge of such things, they received predetermined knowledge, not unknowable knowledge. That is the difference between the understanding of Open Theists and those inclined toward the classical views. Open Theists have harmonized the various modes of God's knowledge in a way that is consistent with God's nature (per the examples given in this article and many more).

Conclusion

It is my position that God, in both the Old and New Testaments, is found working with his creation. God conveys his hopes for people, rather than compelling them to act in some prescribed way. I believe this is evident throughout the Old Testament's narrative of Israel. I also believe the very call for repentance supports the Open Theist's position, proving man's free will choice to heed or disregard God's commandments.

All that we have observed in this brief examination suggests that God desires to be in a relationship with his creation, a relationship which respects the freedom to respond to him, whether it is to question him, as in the case of Abraham, or heed his warnings, as in the case of the Ninevites. Because of this freedom, some of God's will is conditional upon man's choices, whereas, in order to fulfill a promise, aspects of the future were preordained, though we must recognize that even the existence of the promises themselves were conditional upon man's choice to remain obedient, making even a preordained future dependent on those to whom a promise was given.

Without a nature such as what has been advocated in this article, I believe we can only conclude that God is one who does not truly share in the emotions we experience, for God could never have genuinely felt regret or anger had he predetermined the course of all of man's actions, let alone eternally foreknew the courses all men would take. As proved by Abraham, God has a real relationship with his people, a relationship that cannot exist with a God who shows no flexibility. And while he is our Lord and we are to obey him, our relationship is not without freedom of choice, choice that may even cause God to give something a second thought.

How wonderful a relationship like this is, I do argue.