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 Exodus 32:14?
The Lord states his intention to destroy Israelites because of their wickedness: “Now let me alone,” he says to Moses, “so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them” (vs. 10). Moses “implored the Lord” (vs. 11) and, as a result, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (vs. 14).
If the classical view of divine foreknowledge is correct, God would already have been certain that he wasn’t going to “consume” the Israelites and his statement to Moses regarding his plan to do just this would be disingenuous. Scripture’s teaching that God “changed his mind” about the matter would be inaccurate as well. If God’s declared intention and Scripture’s teaching are true, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that God’s mind was not eternally settled regarding the fate of Israel at this time.
Some theologians have tried to avoid this conclusion by suggesting that God can make plans in time which go directly against what he eternally foreknows and can even eternally foreknow that he will change his mind. But it is difficult, to say the least, to get a coherent conception of God genuinely planning something he is certain will not be, or genuinely changing his mind to arrive at a conclusion he eternally foreknew.
As far as I can discern, the concept of God foreknowing he will change his mind is self-contradictory. It is like saying, “God has an eternally unchanging mind which knows that he will someday change his mind.” If God’s mind really changes, it can’t really be eternally unchanging. If it’s really eternally unchanging, he can’t really change it. Think about it.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Exodus 32
Related Reading
If God Can’t Control, How Can I Trust Him?
Question: If God can’t always answer our prayers for healing, for example (and I completely understand why—free will etc), then HOW can he promise to bring good out of the bad things that happen? Surely he is powerless to do that too? And if he can bring good why can’t he therefore heal in the…
Is Your Christianity Shaped by Plato or the Bible?
The Timaeus is a work that Plato wrote that addresses the questions: “What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is?” (Tim. 28a)? These questions contain one of the most influential – and, in my opinion, one of the most disastrous – philosophical ideas of…
How do you respond to Numbers 23:19?
The Lord tells Balak through Balaam “God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind.” This verse (as well as 1 Sam. 15:29, which quotes it) is often cited in refutation of the claim that God genuinely changes his mind. However, since Scripture explicitly states…
Shouldn’t preachers rally Christians to fight political injustice?
Question: My pastor has publicly supported your book The Myth of a Christian Nation. But he’s recently called on the church to take a stand against the injustice of our local government cutting funding for inner city recreational facilities. This seems right to me, since we’re suppose to defend the cause of the poor and…
Scientific Support for the Open View
If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction. What follows are two more “pointers” to the view that the future is at least partly open (indefinite, composed of possibilities). I’ll first consider an argument from quantum physics, followed by a pragmatic argument regarding what we ordinarily assume to…
Podcast: Is God Outside of Time?
Greg discusses the nature of time, the importance of sequence, and the centrality of poetry. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0286.mp3