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 Genesis 2:19 ?
“So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was the name.”
God wanted Adam to have authority over the animal kingdom (see Gen. 1:28). Hence he empowers Adam to freely choose the names of all the animals. The passage tells us that God brought the animals to Adam in order to see—to find out—how Adam would choose. If God was certain of this all along, however, Scripture is incorrect when it describes God’s motive in bringing the animals to Adam.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Genesis 2
Related Reading

Podcast: Was THIS World the Most Likely World and Wouldn’t God Have Anticipated It?
Greg considers what God might have risked and might have expected for this world. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0224.mp3

Response to the September 11th attacks
Was God Punishing Us? Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, many people have asked the question, “Why did God allow this to happen?” In response, some Christian leaders have suggested that God was punishing our country for reaching an all-time low in moral behavior. As one well-known…

The Logical Hexagon Made Simple
by: Greg Boyd The Hexagaon in a Nutshell For those of you who don’t have the twenty to thirty minutes it will probably take to read this essay but who nevertheless would like to have some idea of what the Logical Hexagon is all about, here is my two sentence elevator speech: The Logical Hexagon…

How do you respond to Ruth 1:13?
Because her husband and two sons had died, Naomi says to her two daughter-in-laws (Ruth and Orpah), “[I]t has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me” (1:13, cf. vs. 20). Some compatibilists cite this passage to support the conclusion that all misfortune is…

Are You a Church Misfit?
Romain Guy via Compfight Here’s a lovely reflection from Rachel Held Evans on the experience of finding that your questions are unwelcome in church. Evans is bumping up against this material as she reads Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. I suspect this kind of experience is much more common that we’d like to admit. Can you…

What is the difference between “libertarian” and “compatibilistic” freedom?
Question: I often hear philosophers and theologians talk about “libertarian” and “compatibilistic” freedom. What do these terms mean? Answer: A person who holds to “libertarian” freedom believes that an agent (human or angelic) is truly free and morally responsible for their choices only if it resides in an agent’s power to determine his or her own choices. Their…