We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
How do you respond to Matthew 21:1–5?
Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this: ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately” (vs. 1-4).
Though this verse is sometimes appealed to by defenders of the classical view, it does not support their view of an exhaustively settled future. For the Father to reveal this to Jesus he need only know all present circumstances: there’s a donkey and a colt tied up right now somewhere in Jerusalem. If the Lord needed to exercise some providential influence to get the owner of the animals to go along with Jesus’ request, that could be easily accomplished. The fact that Jesus speaks in conditional terms—“If anyone says anything to you”—shows that this is not an infallible preview of an unalterable future.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Matthew 21
Related Reading
Dealing With Objections to Open Theism, Part II
There are four major objections to Open Theism. In this post, we are dealing with the third and fourth. (See yesterday’s post to read about the first two.) Objection #3: God cannot foreknow only some of the future. It is often argued that for God to be certain of anything about the future, he must be…
Open Theism and the Nature of the Future
In this philosophical essay Alan Rhoda, Tom Belt and I argue that the future cannot be exhaustively described in terms of what will and will not happen, but must also be described in terms of what may and may not happen. The future, in other words, is partly open. The thesis is defended against a…
What is omni-resourcefulness?
Question: What do you mean when you refer to God’s omni-resourcefulness? Can you support this with Scripture? Answer: I and others use the term omni-resourcefulness to highlight a feature of God in Scripture that the classical theological tradition consistently overlooks. Part of the greatness of the God of the Bible, we argue, is that he…
What is the significance of 1 Samuel 13:13–14?
Because of Saul’s rebellion, Samuel tells him, “The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever but now your kingdom will not continue.” The biblical narrative depicting God’s dealings with Saul up to this point is predicated on the assumption that God intended to establish Saul’s descendants as the permanent heir to the throne…
How do you respond to John 6:44?
“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me…” Calvinists sometimes argue that this passage teaches that the Father chooses and then “draws” certain people to Christ. Those who are “drawn” certainly come to Christ (John 6:37) while all who are not drawn remain in their sin. In short, this…
