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 the significance of 1 Chronicles 21:15?
“And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but when he was about to destroy it, the Lord took note and relented concerning the calamity; he said to the destroying angel, ‘Enough! Stay your hand.’”
This powerful passage tells us why God sent the angel and why he changed his mind. If God foreknew he was not going to destroy Jerusalem, he could not have genuinely intended to destroy it and the Scripture which explicitly tells us “he was about to destroy it” must be considered incorrect. Moreover, if God never really intended to destroy the city, his dispatching the angel for the expressed purpose of doing so becomes altogether unintelligible. Nor could he have authentically “relented” from a previous plan, for he never really planned this destruction in the first place.
The classical view of an exhaustively settled future introduces a certain artificiality into texts such as this one which depict God as changing his plans. For this reason, I believe we should reject this view of the future and accept that God can truly change his mind about temporal matters.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Chronicles 21
Related Reading
Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge to God
A historic overview and critical assessment Abstract: The traditional Christian view that God foreknows the future exclusively in terms of what will and will not come to pass is partially rooted in two ancient Hellenistic philosophical assumptions. Hellenistic philosophers universally assumed that propositions asserting’ x will occur’ contradict propositions asserting’ x will not occur’ and…
Why do you claim that everybody, whether they know it or not, believes that the future is partly open?
Whatever a person may theoretically believe, they act like the future is partly open. For, as a matter of fact, there’s no other way to act. Think about it. Every time we deliberate between options on the way toward making a decision, we assume (and we have to assume) that a) the future consists of…
What is the significance of Numbers 14:11?
In the light of the Israelites’ relentless complaining the Lord says to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?” The fact that the Lord continued, for centuries, to try to get the…
Dealing With Objections to Open Theism, Part I
There are four major objections to Open Theism. Today we will deal with the first two and then tomorrow the third and fourth. For a basic introduction to Open Theism, click here. Objection #1: The open view denies omniscience. It is often argued that the open view denies the omniscience of God, even saying things…
What is the significance of Jeremiah 36:1-6
The Lord has Jeremiah write his prophecy on a scroll, telling him, “Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, they will each turn from their wicked ways; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin” (Jer. 36:3). Jeremiah then tells his scribe to take the…