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 Hosea 8:5?
The Lord asks, “How long will they [Israel] be incapable of innocence?”
The Lord’s continual striving with Israel regarding their lack of innocence suggests that this question was not merely rhetorical. If God knows the future to be eternally settled, however, he could not in earnest ask this (or any other) question about the future. He would have known from all eternity that Israel would continue to reject his program of holiness. The fact that the Lord sincerely asks this question and authentically attempts to answer it as soon as possible, testifies to the truth that the future of Israel was not completely settled at this time—not in reality, and thus not in God’s mind.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Hosea 8
Related Reading
How do you respond to Jeremiah 25:8–12?
The Lord says to the nations: “Because you have not obeyed my words” (vs. 8), “this whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of…
What is the significance of 2 Kings 20:1–7?
The Lord tells Hezekiah “[Y]ou shall die: you shall not recover” (vs. 1). Hezekiah pleads with God and God says, “I will add fifteen years to your life” (vs. 6). If everything about the future was exhaustively settled and known by God as such, his prophecy to Hezekiah that he was going to die would…
Lighten Up: Oh my… I am so very very scared…
Well, my dear friend Frankie V. once again has a bad case of verbal diarrhea (explains his breath lately), running off about how he’s going to smack me down in our “all-out, no holds barred, ring-side seat, verbal wrestling match” on the open view of the future. I’m supposed to shutter in my boots at…
Isn’t Open Theism outside of historic orthodoxy?
The Church has never used one’s view of divine foreknowledge as a test for orthodoxy. And while the open view has always been a very minor perspective, it has had its defenders throughout Church history and it has never been called “heresy” (until in mid 1990s when some started using this label). According to some…
How do you respond to Jeremiah 29:10–11?
The Lord says to Israel, “Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place [Jerusalem]. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says he Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give…
Good From Evil
The Bible is very clear that God has nothing to do with evil. There is “no darkness” in God. (I Jn 1:5). Far from intentionally bringing about evil, God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil” (Hab. 1:13). All evil, therefore, must be ultimately traced back to decisions made by free agents other than…