In this episode, our esteemed panel of theologians navigates the intricate concepts underlying Open Theism—a doctrine that posits God’s ability to experience time and engage freely with creation. By examining the historical and philosophical influences that have shaped traditional Christian theism, we uncover the potential pitfalls of classical doctrines that depict God as immutable and timeless. Tune in as we challenge conventional wisdom and bring to light a refreshing perspective rooted in a personal and flexible relationship with the divine.
Greetings to the brightest audience you can go to enyart theology the enyart theology youtube channel you so do not want to miss that before we get started there are four of us on this panel i’m going to edit out the introduction and jump right into the content dominic uh when someone asks you what is open theism how do you briefly elevator speech yeah the elevator speech is like a one or two minute speech about
SPEAKER 03 :
whatever topic it’s on. Like you only have enough time to tell someone as the elevator gets to its floor before everyone gets off. Elevator speech. What is open theism?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, essentially, the definition I use is that open theism is the Christian doctrine that God is living, eternally free, infinitely creative, and that he experiences time. And now a lot of people will kind of agree with that. If you don’t really define the terms, it’s when you define the terms that it starts getting a bit controversial. But with a lot of classical views of God, classical Greek views of God, It seems to imply a settled future for mankind itself, which a lot of people have issue with. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that it implies a settled future for God himself. And that is a big problem because it removes the free will of God. And so Calvinism, Arminianism, Molinism, they tend to not focus as much on God, more so on people. Open theism tends to focus on God and the free will of God. So open theology… theology being the study of God, and openness meaning from an open perspective that God has free will. So guys like James White, they accuse open theists of having a man-centered theology, when in reality, open theism comes down to the free will of God himself. And even if mankind did not exist, open theism would still be true.
SPEAKER 03 :
ding i think we’re at our floor okay so for everyone wondering um i’m tonight i’m drinking apple juice i’m trying to hydrate so if you see me sipping from bourbon colored liquid that’s what that is so tom do you got an elevator speech
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, Dominic did a great job. I’ll try to go even shorter. But yeah, I think the emphasis is on that God is free. He can do new things. He can change his mind. He can respond. He can respond to people in a real way. So in the Bible, we read God is changing his course based on what he sees people do. And we also have examples of things happening that are contrary to what he expects. So that, that I think is, you know, when it comes to God changing his mind, a lot of people can, you know, delude themselves into thinking that’s not really what’s going on but when god explicitly says that he regrets how things turned out regrets what he did or that he expected people to behave a certain way and he’s frustrated that that they didn’t uh those are strong indications that things aren’t all pre-known or pre-planned in meticulous detail yeah sounds good so active actor in
SPEAKER 01 :
what’s going on sebastian logged in last and so he gets to go last if you don’t count me i don’t know maybe i’m going last so i would i would basically start by saying open theism by the simplest definition just means god is free to choose and when you understand that god is free to choose from this understanding that the present is all that exists so God has given everything all tools all availability all uh authority in heaven and Earth is available for anybody that would call out to him in this very moment so it’s not that God is not trying to reach everybody he is but the reality is is that we fail to take uh to go to him to be our protection to be our Savior to be the one that you know gives us everything that we need and so in this regard you see that God’s heart can be impacted if we fail to uh respond to the to his heart which shows that he is sensitive he has a heart that feels it feels broken at times it feels rejoiced sometimes and so in understanding this that the future is not fated or determined but rather it is open we can take advantage of the opportunity that god who we are made in his image and do what he’s called us to do and bring joy to his heart
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that all sounds good. It’s very much a lot of the same themes and topics being touched on. I’m going to share my screen real quick. This is an excerpt from the book, Openness of God, and this is how they define it there. God in grace grants humans significant freedom to cooperate with or work against God’s will for their lives. He enters into dynamic give and take relationships with us. The Christian life involves a genuine engagement interaction between God and human beings. We respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses, and it goes on. God takes risks in this give and take relationship, yet he’s endlessly resourceful and competent in working towards his ultimate goals. Sometimes God alone decides how to accomplish these goals. On other occasions, God’s works with humans’ decisions, adapting his own plans to fit the changing situation, God does not control everything that happens. Rather, he is open to receiving input from his creatures. In loving dialogue, God invites us to participate with him to bring the future into being. Now, I do have some criticisms of this definition, but this is probably a popular introduction to world of what is open theism and so that it might be slanted and worded in the way it was for maximum emotional impact it’s talking about us and our relationship with god whereas uh bob enyer dominic’s dad started he always argued with these calvinists debated these calvinists and said open theism is about god is god free to do things and the calvinists would get stumped and be like i don’t know what to do with that And so I think the Bob Enyart approach might be better than this type of definition.
SPEAKER 02 :
And what I do like to point out is that a lot of theologies try to defend the free will of God, and open theism, I think, does a very—sorry, of man. And I think open theism does a very good job of that, but not as a primary goal, but just as a byproduct of—
SPEAKER 03 :
open theism but we don’t set out trying to be like how can we defend the free will of man oh i know open theism that’s not how the conclusion is well that’s how our critics like to portray us and so when i see open theists go online and say open theism is about man’s ability to have libertarian free will it’s like ah ah don’t do that uh but uh norman geisler very early in the open theism debate wrote a book uh creating god in the or creating god in the image of man And he very correctly, he found out, he annotated, he documented, he argued that open theism is primarily assault on the nature and character of God, which up until that time, open theistic… the tendency of open theists was not to talk about the nature and character of God. But he starts talking about God’s classical attributes, his incommunicable attributes, God’s pure actuality, God’s simplicity, his immutability, his impassibility, his timelessness, these types of things, which open theism hits on all of those and overturns them argues against them and so he saw open theism very correctly as an overthrow of the classical perception of god i think norman geisler gets it more right than the people who wrote this initial open theist book boyd at all sanders and uh pennock and those individuals does that make sense
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and I definitely think there’s kind of almost two types of definitions you could give. One is a much more esoteric like, hey, open theism is a rejection of Greek attributes, whereas a much more layman’s definition is much more like God is relational, God can be affected by our prayers. And so it just depends on kind of who you’re talking to, what their education level is, what definition you’ll use.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, how entrenched are those classical Greek ideas in their theology? Like, sometimes it’s good to point those out. People might not even be aware where those come from. They just, they’ve heard it in church. They’ve heard all the Christian leaders talking about, you know, God being immutable and things like that, and not being able to increase in knowledge or learn anything new and so i i think it is helpful you know to to take people through that that those those philosophies came from plato they were popularized into christianity through people like augustine and then um
SPEAKER 03 :
now we don’t even know we just think it’s biblical because it’s been repeated over and over again right so judge rightly puts in the comments uh god is living personal relational good and loving on the open view and so that’s that’s a good succinct um kind of like uh manifesto like that’s that that’s that’s very much condensed and so that’s that came from dominic’s dad also correct and he had nice little graphics to go along with these things and so it was nice and it was simple and bob his his strength was that he understood how to reach people on a deeper level than just an intellectual level how to reach their their psyche or or their emotions he was in into it so he could kind of figure out how people could be persuaded and he was able to push towards those directions and so
SPEAKER 01 :
A lot of good things there. What I see is that if you were just to give somebody a Bible without any prior understanding of philosophy or anything like that, somebody that just learned literature, they would not come to these conclusions because when God speaks, he means what he says and he says what he means. Otherwise, you have to literally put it on its head and say, God does not mean what he says and he says what he doesn’t mean. And so I usually put it back on somebody that has, you know, exhaustive foreknowledge view. And I say, OK, if this is the case and you’re telling me that God doesn’t mean these things, then should I do that to my daughter? Should I then tell her, hey, let me manipulate you? I don’t mean what I’m saying right now, but I’m trying to get a desired result from you. And if that’s the case, like that’s how we’re supposed to interact with one another, because that’s how God’s interacting with us. How can we then be relational with him? And I think that’s where the disconnect comes from is this attitude of like dismissing God’s personhood is very heart is very person. And because people like amygdala don’t realize that they’re putting God into an amygdala bubble and he’s so far and so distant that they can’t actually relate to him. because they don’t know if he’s listening, if he cares, if he’s available, if he even bothers to concern himself with the affairs of man. They see it in the scriptures, but because they uphold these preconditions, they’ve denied him to even be able to respond. And I think it’s been a great disservice from not seeing that God has an openness to his creation in this regard.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so here’s a quote from Norman Geisler. This comes from his A Battle for God. And what we’re looking at here is a draft copy of my upcoming book. But the quotes are all legit, copy-pasted, right? This is what Geisler says. For example, neotheism. Now, Geisler, he tried to do this thing where instead of saying open theism, he’d say neotheism. I think he’s trying to meme it into existence, and it never stuck. And so he’s just bad at memeing things. Neotheism. which this is geisler’s term for open theism denies god’s immutability his eternity simplicity and pure actuality oh god’s pure act right it denies god’s infallible foreknowledge of future free acts and as a consequence uh oh god’s complete sovereignty over human events and so this this is what they’re scared of And it overthrows all their sacred little attributes that they can ascribe to God when they’re doing their systematic theology, when they’re doing their… Theology proper or whatnot. It’s like, oh, let’s talk about the metaphysics. God is impassable because if he’s passable, then he could gain from outside himself, which would make him less God than he was before because any change would imply imperfection or degradation or these types of concepts. So this is what they’re afraid of being overturned.
SPEAKER 04 :
Remember in Exodus 34 when God listed all his attributes and they line up perfectly with what Geiler wrote there, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
it’s so funny it’s like when you look at the god statements throughout the bible now if you get my book the hellenization of christianity part one i i look at god statements throughout all these ancient texts and you can see the pattern of how does the bible talk about god how do the early texts talk about god when they when they give a god statement a paragraph about who god is what do they say and it goes from you know like moses god is loving and he’s forgiving the thousandth generation things like that it goes from that to like first century, second century Gnosticism where God is ineffable, ungenerated, monad,
SPEAKER 02 :
uh without predicate like these it’s it’s just they’re completely different statements it seems to me like the classical greek theists that they just want to gaslight everybody into believing what they believe it’s almost like when you go to a modern arts museum and it’s just everything is terrible and disgusting and it’s none of it has any beauty whatsoever but it’s presented real nicely in this big gallery. It’s like, no, no, you know, we’re smarter than you. Just trust us to, you know, do this. It might seem silly to you. So impassibility, you know, God doesn’t, he is not provoked to emotion. Yeah, the Bible says that thousands of times, hundreds, if not thousands of times, but you’re just, you don’t understand. You need to trust us. Trust the people who have come before you. We’re better at thinking than you. Don’t question it. And so it’s really just a theological gaslighting. And so I, i feel like open theism is almost a a response to that the frustration of being gaslit into believing literal insanity about god that’s not in the bible yeah it’s like like you say that with a modern art there’s like a pile of garbage and if you look at it and you go well that looks like garbage then you’re
SPEAKER 04 :
not very sophisticated you’re kind of a rube and and so the same thing with the text like if you read the text and you believe what god says about himself then you know you you have kind of a well that’s that’s baby talk you’re not very sophisticated uh we need guys like plato to come along and reinterpret what the what the uh biblical authors wrote
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so on that note, this definition of open theism has been up on Wikipedia for over 10 years, and it’s great. And I think people keep trying to change it or something, but it gets reverted. Open theism, also known as openness theology, is a theological movement that has developed within Christianity as a rejection of the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. and so it on wikipedia like the standard definition points to the fact that open theism is a rejection of this classical greek philosophy and it’s great and as long as we could keep that up there we should be doing that um but going to turn real quickly to my definition of open theism. We need some sort of definition that is all-encompassing. It’s not going to exclude people that shouldn’t be excluded. It’s going to disclude people that should be excluded. And it’s going to just be simple statements that everyone should be able to affirm. So that’s my goal in defining open theism. And so there was a thread about this on the Facebook God is Open page, but I’ll put up the points here. So what you need for is something quick, something snappy, something memorable. So it can’t be like, When you’re putting out the list, it can’t be like a huge paragraph of text. It has to be something simple that can be expanded on so that people can get the real quick gist and then expand on any point, something memorable. And so number one, God is open. This is the Wikipedia definition. you go down to what that means by god is open this is what everyone here on the panel defining open theism this is what you’re all defining it means god is free he has volition um that some people don’t think god has volition god is just a min maxing monster or something like that he can’t make decisions he’s not trapped in fate or into action so this so it could be the case that fatalism is true and god is just a cog in the wheel of fatalism and so we need to exclude views like that that’s not open theism god reacts in relation to the world oh there has to be a god too open theism so god is open how can he respond to his own inner he has to be able to respond to his own inner monologues a lot of people don’t believe that god has inner monologue right He can’t be trapped. He can’t be faded into actions. It can’t be this kind of like a fake freedom where, like, the Molinists will say, hey, God could tell you what he will do tomorrow, and then he doesn’t have to do that. But you said he knew what he will do, and then they’ll claim something like, well, he knows what he will do, and he won’t do other things, even though he can do other things, and it gets into this weird weird loop. I don’t know if you guys interact very often with the Molinist types. But God can’t be in some sort of fatalistic action. It can’t be a quasi-freedom where he never really was going to do that thing there was no possibility of that thing happening and uh he was forced into this one action and you just use tricks of words to get him to have volition or choice or anything like that yeah and the probability of him doing x is zero that’s not the actual possibility
SPEAKER 02 :
yeah exactly by the way i love what that has there that god has an inner monologue god thinks through problems and he’s brilliant he’s a brilliant problem solver which i believe open theism is the only theology where God is presented with problems and then thinks through different ways to solve it. I forget who it was. Someone was making fun of Will Duffy a few years back because Will said, God is brilliant. Does anyone remember the name? Tyler Vela? It wasn’t Vela. It was another guy. But he was appalled at the notion that God is brilliant. He was like, God’s not brilliant. God doesn’t think. They can’t conceive of God coming from one conclusion to another. But of course, you look at like in Kings, God has the heavenly council. It’s like a divine board meeting almost of figuring out what would be the most effective way to kill King Ahab. and he has a conversation with his angels about how do we you know figure out how to kill him in the most effective way and he’s problem solving he’s going out he’s getting advice and then an angel presents a plan he’s like well how how will you do this plan then the angel explains it he says that’s a good plan go go and do it and so god definitely has a monologue where he takes ideas considers them ponders them you know come let us reason together sort of thing
SPEAKER 01 :
and only in open theism is that genuinely true yeah and also the idea that god gets tired of repenting demonstrating he has a desired outcome but he’s not getting that and yet he is contemplating whether or not to execute judgment or not but he keeps on choosing mercy mercy mercy and then eventually he gets to the point and that’s the whole reason for these major prophets is that the whole testimony of of what he’s trying to get the nation to do is to turn back to him and he’s saying listen i don’t want to carry this judgment out but i have to turn back to me it’s not faded it’s not done like i will turn i can shape you back into a into an honorable vessel like just heed me and this whole idea is him considering thinking And then eventually, sadly, they kept on going to such a degree that, you know, he won’t always strive and eventually judges, which demonstrates an active participation of God and us in a relation that just is not there outside of that case, because then we are just puppets from a logical conclusion. If he exists outside of time and then, you know, forces upon us. But the idea that we can impact God’s heart is not lost on open theism. Like we can bring joy to God’s heart. We can bring joy.
SPEAKER 03 :
pain to god’s heart anthony rogers spartan points out anthony rogers said brilliant is not how he would describe god but tyler vela also is like god doesn’t think and that’s pretty common james dwesel will say things like that uh more more credentialed people than the velas of the world um but what’s what’s interesting is i just saw on facebook some calvinist uh getting all mad about It was about like salvation like oh you don’t save yourself You don’t lead yourself to salvation and like all the comments were like this this terminology is used all the time in the Bible like like like Paul James says you’ll save many people Paul says save yourself Cornelius is an example of someone seeking God and the Calvinists are just like denying normal language and
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, with the example of thinking, the idea that God doesn’t think, in no world is that a Bible verse that says God doesn’t think. And I think even very honest classical Greek theists will admit, no, we used philosophy to arrive at that conclusion, not a Bible verse.
SPEAKER 04 :
I also hear it claimed that God can’t learn, which it’s like, all the scriptures talking about God testing. And they don’t just say that God tested so-and-so, like God tested the Israelites, but it’ll say tested to know what was in your heart or to find out what was in your heart, whether or not you would… His commandments, like, you know, it’s like triply redundant. Like to get it through, you know, this is not, there’s no other way to interpret that, right? Test to know what is in your heart to find out whether or not you will keep his commandments.
SPEAKER 03 :
yeah i like uh verses like oh like things are brought to god’s attention or uh if they’re god says i’m gonna set this rainbow as a sign and when i see it i will remember this promise it’s like this this is talking about in the future this this thing’s gonna happen so god’s not like timeless or whatever god will see it and it’ll it’ll flag his memory it’ll it’ll bring his memory back to this location
SPEAKER 04 :
yeah i think in the old sunday school class i brought that up and asked people like about that sign you know to remember about god’s covenant like who is it for and everyone in their head they all think that it’s for the people to remember but the text says i think twice you know so that when i see it god speaking you know i will remember
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, absolutely. And all the sacrifices, when they sacrifice, it always talks about the sweet odor ascending to God. God smells this sweet odor. It’s like God has these experiences. But one thing I did want to touch on real quick is like, people try to treat words incredibly mechanically. And so if there’s a verse in the Bible that says, no one could come to the Father except that they’re drunk, something like that, they’ll say, oh, this word can mean something very specific. And this word will mean something very specific. But within the Bible, things that will happen do not happen. Like here, this example in 1 Samuel 23, 12, that the men will turn David over to Saul. It doesn’t happen. So in open theism, what will happen doesn’t have to happen. The future is falsifiable.
SPEAKER 01 :
And also like he told the Israelites that when you guys inherit this promised land, you will get hearts fat and you will rebel against me. But we know that those same people did not inherit the promised land. And in fact, it was the children that inherited, even though he said you people in talking to the people that were present at that moment. Now, if you do have this Greek philosophical Christianity that, you know, adopts these metaphysics, you have to outright just say he didn’t mean that. Otherwise, you can just look at the text and say it means what it says. Anytime somebody has to flip it, they just have to say it doesn’t mean that. Well, I just go say, well, I’m not trying to excuse or twist the Bible. I just believe it. I believe what he says.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is pretty effective, especially when people have to really strain in order to get out of whatever happens. And that incident is so documented within the Exodus, how this people went to, God’s going to let them into the land, to then him prohibiting them from the land. You see the entire story. It’s hard to argue with what’s going on there.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I think one benefit of open theism, and this is something that’s true of open theists, not necessarily part of the doctrine, is that we recognize that the Bible was not written by metaphysicians who cared about the metaphysics of God. People bring up stuff like Malachi 3.6 to try to refute open theism, and they act as if there’s just a story story story story and then the author just pauses briefly to talk about a metaphysical reality of god and then jump right back into metaphysics meta or to story story story and in reality the people who wrote the bible and the people who are reading the bible they were not concerned with this philosophy and metaphysics they were concerned with how do i get god to not smite my family right And so it was much more practical application to use the term for those people. Whereas for the classical Greek theists, it’s much more what are the metaphysics of God, which I think if you just read the Bible all the way through, you’ll realize the biblical authors do not care about metaphysics.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s interesting. They care more about relationship. So it’s all about who is God, who is God to us, what’s his role, what’s our role, what are the myths, rituals, and rites of religion that will give us benefits in the here and now in this relationship with God. And so classical theism, if you talk to a Calvinist, like in college, they’d always say, talk about how God’s emotions work. And they’re like, well, it says God has emotions, but he really doesn’t. He’s like a light pole. And as we get away from God, then it looks like anger. If we get closer, it looks like love or something like that. But God himself is not changing. It’s just our relationship to some sort of standard that’s changing. That’s incompatible with basic open theism, and I’d argue with the Bible, they didn’t think like that. Sometimes within the Bible, God changes for his own sake, which would not, that destroys the light pole metaphor. If he’s having internal changes based on his own thought processes, that’s not a
SPEAKER 02 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time here on KLTT Radio. If you want the entire thing, you can find it by going to the Enyart Theology YouTube channel. You do not want to miss it. Hey, may God bless you guys.
In this episode, our esteemed panel of theologians navigates the intricate concepts underlying Open Theism—a doctrine that posits God’s ability to experience time and engage freely with creation. By examining the historical and philosophical influences that have shaped traditional Christian theism, we uncover the potential pitfalls of classical doctrines that depict God as immutable and timeless. Tune in as we challenge conventional wisdom and bring to light a refreshing perspective rooted in a personal and flexible relationship with the divine.
