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 21:7–13?
The Lord gives David three options of how Israel may be judged. “Three things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.”
Paralleling 2 Samuel 24:12–16, this passage reveals that the Lord gives people genuine alternatives and then responds to their choices. If the future is unalterably settled in God’s mind, however, these alternatives are merely charades. God could just as well have unilaterally declared the curse he knew David would choose.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Chronicles 21
Related Reading

What is the significance of Revelation 3:5?
“If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life…” If God is only the God of certainties, it is not clear how he can honestly speak in conditional terms (“If you conquer…”) and it is not clear why he…

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.

Should churches have armed security guards?
Question: Recently (December, 2007) a security guard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs shot and apparently killed a man who was shooting people in the church parking lot. The pastor (Brady Boyd) hailed her as a “real hero.” Do you think churches should have armed security guards and do you think the pastor was…

How do you respond to Acts 2:23 and 4:28?
Question: Acts 2:23 and 4:28 tell us that wicked people crucified Jesus just as God predestined them to do. If this wicked act could be predestined, why couldn’t every other wicked act be predestined? Doesn’t this refute your theory that human acts can’t be free if they are either predestined or foreknown? Answer: In Acts…

Is Open Theism Incompatible With a Chalcedonian Christology?
Question: The Chalcedonian Creed says Jesus was “fully God and fully human” and that these “two natures” remained distinct in the Incarnation, even though Jesus was one united person. I’m told that part of the reasoning behind the concern to keep Jesus’ humanity distinct from his divinity was to protect the “impassibility” of the divine…