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 Samuel 15:10?
In light of Saul’s sin the Lord says, “I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me.”
Common sense would suggest that one can only regret a decision one makes if the decision results in an outcome other than what was expected or hoped for. If God foreknows all that shall ever occur, however, he can never truly expect or hope for something to occur which doesn’t come to pass. Hence it rules out God experiencing bona fide regret over his own decisions. Could God genuinely confess “I regret that I made Saul king” if he could in the same breathe also proclaim “I was eternally certain of what would happen if I decided to make Saul king”?
Some may object that if God truly regretted a decision he made, he must not be perfectly wise. Two considerations alleviate this objection, however. First, it is better to allow Scripture to inform us regarding the nature of divine wisdom than it is to reinterpret the clear meaning of a passage of Scripture in order to make it square with our preconceptions of what divine wisdom must be like.
Second, once we consider that the future is partly open and humans are genuinely free, the paradox of how God could experience real regret over a decision he made disappears. God made a wise decision because it had the greatest possibility of yielding the best results. But God’s decision isn’t the only variable in this matter: there is also the variable of Saul’s will. Saul freely strayed from God’s plan, but that is not God’s fault. Nor does it make his decision unwise.
The God of the possible always makes the best decision: but because he is dealing with possibilities and not certainties—because he is dealing with free moral agents—he cannot guarantee that things will always go as he would wish. The God of the possible is, to a limited extent at least, a risk-taking God.
Many reject the notion that God takes risks of any sort. To them, it seems to undermine his sovereignty. Two further comments may be made about this, however. First, do we not normally regard someone who refuses to take risks as being insecure? Don’t we normally regard someone who is compelled to meticulously control everything as evidencing weakness, not strength? Of course we do. So why do we reverse all of our ordinary assumptions about this when we think about God, especially since Scripture depicts God as taking risks?
Second, the only way to deny that God takes risks is by maintaining that everything that occurs in world history is exactly what God wanted to occur. Sin, pain, child mutilations, eternal hell—all are exactly according to God’s will. Some Calvinists are willing to accept this, but most of us find the idea deplorable. And this means that we must accept the idea that God is a risk-taking God. His risks are always wise, but they are risks nonetheless, for some things may not turn out as he wishes. While some things about the future are settled according to God’s will, it was also God’s will to create a cosmos populated by free agents. This means that the outcome of some things will to some degree be uncertain.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: 1 Samuel 15
Related Reading
How do you respond to Acts 17:26?
“From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” (cf. Dan. 2:21) In this passage Paul is preaching to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (17:18). His goal is to show them that, in contrast to…
Loving a Twilight Zone God?
David D. Flowers posted this insightful reflection over on his blog about an episode of The Twilight Zone and what it says about some pop views of God. Can we really love a God that exercises this kind of random control just because he can? We can certainly fear a God like this, but can…
What happens to babies who die?
The Bible does not directly address the issue of what happens to babies who die before being able to make a decision for or against Christ. People have thus had to arrive at conclusions about this matter on the basis of other beliefs they hold to be true. The majority of evangelicals today assume that…
How do you respond to Genesis 3:15?
The Lord promises that he will “put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” This is commonly considered the first messianic prophecy of the Bible. What a glorious and gracious picture of God we are given here!…
The Incarnation: More Than a Rescue Mission
A mistake people often make concerning the Incarnation is that they fail to distinguish the eternal plan of God to unite himself with humanity in Christ, on the one hand, from the atoning significance this plan acquired after the fall, on the other. Some therefore think of the Incarnation as a sort of “Plan B”…
Isn’t it true that God doesn’t know the future in the open view?
This is the single most common misconception people have about the open view. Open Theists and Classical Theists disagree about the nature of the future, not about how much God knows about it. Both sides grant that God knows everything. He is omniscient. He knows everything there is to know about all of reality, including…