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.
Revelation 17:8 refers to people whose names haven’t been written in “the book of life from the creation of the world.” Doesn’t this conflict with open theism?
As in Revelation 13:8, the clause “from the foundation” (apo kataboleis) need not mean “from before the foundation” but simply “from the foundation” (= since the foundation). It’s not that names either were or were not written in the “book of life” before they were ever born. Rather, throughout history, in response to the choices people made, God either wrote or omitted their names from the “book of life.” The fact that names may be blotted out even after they’ve been included (Exod. 32:33; Rev. 3:5, cf. Rev. 22:18) further suggests this “book of life” is not eternally written in stone.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, End Times, New Testament, Open Theism, Q&A, Responding to Calvinism, Revelation
Topics: End Times, Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Responding to Objections
Verse: Revelation 17
Related Reading
Paradigm Shift Questions
A couple that was recently introduced to ReKnew and several of my books recently wrote to tell me that they are in the process of embracing the warfare worldview along with the open view of the future. They said that they “realize that these things aren’t minor adjustments but are rather all-encompassing paradigm shifts in…
The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God
In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular, innovation in Church history. It was birthed in the post-Enlightenment era (17th -18th centuries) when secular minded scholars began to…
Confronting Divine Determinism
Part of the fallen human condition inclines us to shirk our moral responsibility and accept that everything is predetermined, whether by God, the gods, fate, or blind chance. Various forms of determinism have been prevalent in most primitive religions, in much ancient philosophy, in most forms of Islam and even, most surprisingly, in much traditional…
What is the Gospel?
Our friend Roger Olson raised this question in response to accusations by Calvinists that those who espouse Arminianism do not “preach the gospel.” The same argument has been made about Open Theists. Olson writes: The complete gospel is communicated in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and that not…
Approaches to Reading the Bible
As early as the 17th century, certain Bible scholars began to apply the scientific model of knowledge that evolved during the Scientific Revolution to the study of Scripture. This new “scientific” approach is broadly referred to as “the historical-critical method,” one that proponents claimed to be “objective.” It is rooted in the assumption that the…
How do you respond to Ruth 1:13?
Because her husband and two sons had died, Naomi says to her two daughter-in-laws (Ruth and Orpah), “[I]t has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me” (1:13, cf. vs. 20). Some compatibilists cite this passage to support the conclusion that all misfortune is…