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.
What is Open Theism?
Open Theism is the view that God chose to create a world that included free agents, and thus a world where possibilities are real. The future is pre-settled, to whatever degree God wants to pre-settle it and to whatever degree the inevitable consequences of the choices of created agents have pre-settled it. But the future is also open to whatever degree agents are free to resolve possibilities into actualities by their own choices.
In the open view, God knows everything perfectly, including the future. But since the future is partly comprised of possibilities, God knows it as partly comprised of possibilities.
This doesn’t in any way take away God’s sovereignty, for in the open view, God has unlimited intelligence. While beings with limited intelligence are more prepared for certainties than possibilities (because the more possibilities they have to anticipate, the thinner they have to spread their intelligence), the infinitely intelligent God is just as prepared for each and every future possibility as he is a certainty. Whatever comes to pass, God has been anticipating that very event from the foundation of the world as though it had to occur. It’s just that in the open view, God is so smart, it didn’t.
People sometimes worry that if the future isn’t foreknown as exhaustively settled, God can’t promise to bring good out of evil or defeat evil altogether in the end. Without knowing it, however, people who worry in this way are insulting God’s intelligence. If we trust that God’s intelligence is unlimited, we can remain confident that whatever comes to pass, however evil, God has been from the foundation of the world setting up a plan to respond to it. And we can affirm this without having to suggest that evil was originally part of his plan.
The open view has many positive implications for believers. It allows us to affirm that evil is not in any sense part of God’s plan for our lives, even though he perfectly anticipates it and can promise to redeem good out of it. It also means that our lives really make a difference. In the open view people have genuine “say-so” in what comes to pass. Things really depend on what humans do, including whether or not people pray.
For more on this, see G. Boyd, God of the Possible (Baker, 2000).
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism What it is and is not
Related Reading
Why did God create me to be a pedophile?
Question: Since the first time I experienced a sex drive it’s been directed towards little children. I’ve never acted on this, for I know it’s wrong. But it torments me. Why would God created me with pedophile cravings? Answer: I’m so sorry for your condition and greatly respect the fact that you have committed yourself…
Is speaking in tongues the initial evidence of receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
Pentecostals have traditionally taught that speaking in tongues is evidence that a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. Those who defend this position do so primarily on the basis of a pattern they discern in Acts. They note that when the disciples were first baptized in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, “all…
Why Does God Need Prayer?
Greg Loves Questions. In his best selling book Letters from a Skeptic, he responds to questions from his father, who was then an atheist. Tomorrow Greg will be hosting a AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. We hope you can join us! Here is an adaptation of one of Greg’s responses to a question from…
Process Theology & Open Theism: What’s the Difference?
Question: When ReKnew talks about Open Theism is it a mistake for people to equate it with Process theology, and if so what are the defining differences? I guess I am starting to lean toward Dr. Boyd’s thoughts for all things theologically egg-heady, so I thought I would ask the question. Your ministry has been freeing…
How do you respond to Acts 17:26?
“From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” (cf. Dan. 2:21) In this passage Paul is preaching to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (17:18). His goal is to show them that, in contrast to…
Isn’t Faith Inherently Irrational?
Is Faith Inherently Irrational? Many people seem to assume that faith is giving credence to things that don’t make much sense and for which there is little or no evidence. Take the doctrine of the Incarnation, for example. This is the traditional Christian teaching that Jesus is “fully God and fully human.” Now, to many…