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 2 Chronicles 32:31?
“God left [Hezekiah] to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.”
God tests his covenant partners to discover whether they will choose to remain faithful to him, an exercise that is absurd if God exhaustively foreknows exactly how faithful every person will choose to be. If the classical view of the future is correct, the biblical purpose for every “testing”—viz. “to know all that was in his heart”—is misleading at best.
Defenders of the classical view sometimes argue that verses such as this are meant to describe how things appear to us rather than how they truly are. But there are two problems with this interpretation.
First, the verse does not state or remotely suggest that it simply looked as though God tested Hezekiah to know his heart. It rather suggests that God was genuinely seeking to find this out.
Second, it is not at all clear how passages such as this which describe the motive behind God’s actions (viz. “in order to know”) can be explained away as an appearance. How does it appear to us (but not to God?) that God came to know Hezekiah’s heart through this testing? If God didn’t really come to know Hezekiah’s heart by the means which this verse says, the verse doesn’t seem to communicate much of anything.
However, once we accept that God is a God of the possible and not simply the God of eternally frozen facts, and once we accept that God can genuinely think and speak in terms of “maybes” and “ifs,” verses like this can be understood in a straightforward manner without extravagant theological explanations.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Chronicles 32
Related Reading
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…
Ask Greg Anything on Reddit!
Greg is going to be featured on Reddit! Yes that’s right. You can ask Greg anything. Your questions might be serious like: Why is there so much evil in the world? Why can we trust the Bible? What caused you to be a pacifist? Or they might be less so: Why do you preach without…
Does the Bible forbid interracial marriages?
Absolutely not! Racist Christians used to argue against interracial marriage by quoting Old Testament passages that prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jews. This prohibition had nothing to do with race, however. In fact, there was no concept of different “races” until white Europeans invented it during the Colonial period, partly to justify their enslavement of other…
What is the significance of 1 Kings 21:27–29?
Because of Ahab’s great sin the Lord tells him, “I will bring disaster on you; I will consume you…” (vs. 21). Ahab repents and the Lord responds by telling his messenger prophet, “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster…
How do you respond to Romans 9?
The Deterministic Interpretation of Romans 9 Many people believe that Romans 9 demonstrates that God has the right and power to save whichever individuals he wants to save and damn whichever individuals he wants to damn. I’ll call this the “deterministic” reading of Romans 9, for it holds that God determines who will be saved…
How do you respond to 2 Samuel 17:14–15?
“Absalom and all the men of Israel said, ‘The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.’ For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring ruin on Absalom.” This passage is sometimes cited to support the view that God ordains all…