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 7:12–14?
The Lord says to Solomon, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
This well-known verse describes the Lord’s willingness to reverse judgment in the light of people’s repentance (cf. Jonah 4:2; Joel 2:13–14). When God judges his people by shutting up the heavens, he is willing to alter his course of action, relent from his punishment, and heal the people if they will pray, seek his face, and turn from their wicked ways. This is a picture of a God who is supremely responsive to the ever-changing circumstances of life in which free creatures are involved, not the picture of a God who eternally knows reality as a frozen block of unalterable facts.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Chronicles 7
Related Reading

If salvation depends on our free choice, how are we saved totally by grace?
Question: I’m an Arminian-turned-Calvinist, and the thing that turned me was the realization that if salvation hinges on whether individuals choose to be saved or not, as Arminians and Open Theists believe, then we can’t say salvation is 100% by grace. If we have to choose for or against God, then the credit for our…

How do you respond to Matthew 16:21?
“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” The ministry and death of Jesus are the centerpieces of God’s plan in world…

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…

Sermon Clip: Does Romans 9 predestine you to Hell?
Did God predestine you to Hell? Can he even do that? In this short sermon clip, Greg Boyd talks about his own struggles when trying to understand Romans 9 which on the surface seems to imply that God determines who goes to heaven and hell. In the full sermon, Greg takes a deep look at…

Revelation 17:8 refers to people whose names haven’t been written in “the book of life from the creation of the world.” Doesn’t this conflict with open theism?
As in Revelation 13:8, the clause “from the foundation” (apo kataboleis) need not mean “from before the foundation” but simply “from the foundation” (= since the foundation). It’s not that names either were or were not written in the “book of life” before they were ever born. Rather, throughout history, in response to the choices…

What is Open Theism?
Open Theism is the view that God chose to create a world that included free agents, and thus a world where possibilities are real. The future is pre-settled, to whatever degree God wants to pre-settle it and to whatever degree the inevitable consequences of the choices of created agents have pre-settled it. But the future…