We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

Isn’t God “changing his mind” an anthropomorphism?

Question: Traditionalists argue that passages that refer to God “changing his mind” are anthropomorphic, depicting God in human terms. Open Theists take these passages literally, however. But if you’re going to take these passages literally, it seems you should, for consistency’s sake, also interpret passages about God “coming down” from heaven literally (e.g. Gen. 11:5; 18:21). Conversely, if you’re unwilling to take these passages literally, how can you insist that the passages about God changing his mind are literal?

Answer: This argument assumes that since Open Theists take some passages (which are treated as anthropomorphic by traditionalists) literally, Open Theists must then take all passages in the Bible literally. How does that follow? One could just as easily argue that since traditionalists treat as anthropomorphic passages that Open Theists take literally, traditionalists must then treat all passages in the Bible anthropomorphically! It’s really a very bad argument.

The fact of the matter is that nobody takes everything in the Bible literally and no one takes everything in the Bible to be metaphorical (anthropomorphic or otherwise). We all have to determine what genre a passage fits into – and thus, whether it’s intended to be more literal, or more anthropomorphic. The only claim of Open Theists is that there’s no good exegetical or philosophical reason to take passages that speak about God changing his mind as anthropomorphic. The only reason traditionalists interpret them this way is because admitting God changes his mind conflicts with the traditional view that God exhaustively knows the future from all eternity as a domain of settled facts. If you grant that God really changes his mind, you must acknowledge that the future is partly open.

I would go further and argue that interpreting these passages as anthropomorphic renders their meaning unclear. If God doesn’t actually change his mind, then what do the passages that explicitly declare that he does change his mind mean? Saying they’re anthropomorphic doesn’t help us, for anthropomorphic expressions, if they’re true, must still communicate something accurate about God. Saying God has “a strong arm,” for example, communicates that God is strong – even though he doesn’t literally have arms. But what does it mean to say “God changes his mind” if in fact God doesn’t change his mind? This is simply inaccurate.

I therefore conclude that when the Bible says God changes his mind (which it does 39 times), it quite literally describes God changing his plans in response to changing circumstances in history. And this implies that the future is partly open.

Related Reading

Lighten Up: Open Theism T-Shirt

T-shirt on Zazzle designed by Jin_roh.

What is the significance of Acts 21:10–12?

While Paul and Luke were making preparations to go and preach in Jerusalem, “a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.” The prophet approached Paul, took his belt, and announced, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and will hand him…

Topics:

God’s Love and Your Freedom

The most distinctive aspect of the revelation of God in Christ is Jesus’ demonstration that God relies on love to defeat his enemies and to accomplish his purposes. More than anything else, it was the perfect love of God revealed in the incarnation, ministry, and self-sacrificial death of Jesus that in principle defeated evil and…

Doesn’t Psalms 139:16 refute the Open View of the future?

One of the passages most frequently cited in attempts to refute the open view of the future is Psalm 139:16. Here David says that God viewed him while he was being formed in the womb (vs. 15) and then adds: “[Y]our eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in…

How do you respond to 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1?

One text says the Lord incited David to count the warriors of Israel and Judah. The other text says that Satan incited David to count the warriors of Israel. (The Lord had forbidden this, as it displayed a confidence in military strength rather than in Yahweh’s power). Compatibilists frequently cite this as an example of…

How People Misunderstand Open Theism

Open theism holds that, because agents are free, the future includes possibilities (what agents may and may not choose to do). Since God’s knowledge is perfect, open theists hold that God knows the future partly as a realm of possibilities. This view contrasts with classical theism that has usually held that God knows the future exclusively as a domain…