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.

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 number of possible philosophical objections.

Click here to download this essay: Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future

Related Reading

Living Into the Future

Why didn’t God create a “perfect world”? Here’s Greg’s response to that question. See more at The Work of the People.

The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits

“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation might help us interpret violent portraits of God in the OT in a way that discloses how…

How Could God Foreknow Peter’s Choice but not Abraham’s? (podcast)

Greg looks at the nature of God’s foreknowledge and testing.   Episode 562 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0562mp3.mp3

The Image of Cross-Like Love: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 6

In the previous blog I argued that God is cross-like love. In this blog I’d like to take this a step further by demonstrating why the cross alone could function as the definitive revelation of God’s true character and by showing how this revelation weaves together everything Jesus was about. If you want to know…

What is the significance of Deuteronomy 13:1–3?

Moses tells the Israelites that God allowed false prophets to sometimes be correct because “the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.” If God already knows such matters with certainty, Scripture’s inspired description as to why such testings take place…

Topics:

Support for Open Theism from Science and Experience

I have discussed the scriptural support that depicts the future as partially open and that God knows it as such. I do this in God of the Possible. If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction, including science. What follows are two more “pointers” to the view that the…