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 Mark 14:13–15?
In planning for the Passover meal, Jesus tells his disciples, “Go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”
Defenders of the classical view of foreknowledge sometimes interpret this passage as meaning that the disciples would “by chance” meet someone who would “happen” to be carrying a jar and who would “happen” to take them to a house where the owner would by divine design allow people he never heard of to eat in his upper room. They thus argue that this text is evidence that God foreknows future free actions. Nothing in the text suggests such an interpretation, however.
The text implies that the man carrying the jar was expecting to meet Jesus’ disciples. The matter-of-fact manner in which they were instructed to talk to the owner of the house also indicates that the owner and his servant were expecting Jesus and his disciples to come at that time. In other words, the matter seems to have been prearranged by Jesus. Hence, the most simple interpretation of this passage requires no appeal to divine foreknowledge.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism, Responding to Objections
Verse: Mark 14
Related Reading

What is the significance of Jeremiah 3:19–20?
“I thought how I would set you among my children…And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. Instead, as a faithless wife…you have been faithless to me…” If the future is eternally and exhaustively settled, and if God therefore knows it as such, he could not have…

Free Will: An Aesthetic Model
Greg continues his thoughts on free will by offering an aesthetic model for free will. This one gets pretty philosophical, but it’s worth toughing it out.

How do you respond to Ephesians 1:4-5?
Question: Ephesians 1 refers to believers as predestined before the foundation of the world. How do you reconcile this with your view that free actions of people (like choosing to believe in Christ) can’t be predestined or even foreknown ahead of time? Answer: It took three hundred years before anyone in Church history interpreted the…

How do you respond to Isaiah 46:9–11?
The Lord says, “I am God, and there is none other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying ‘My purpose shall stand, and I will fulfill my intention.’” To distinguish himself from the dead idols Israel was…

How do you respond to John 13:18–19; 17:12?
“I am not speaking of you all; I know whom I have chosen. But it is to fulfill the scripture, ‘The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he.’” Jesus prays…