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 Judges 2:20–3:5?
The Lord did not provide any assistance in Israel’s battles, “In order to test Israel, whether or not they would take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their ancestors did” (vs. 22). The pagan opponents of Israel “were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord” (vs. 4).
In the classical understanding of God’s foreknowledge, Scripture’s repeated declarations that God tests people in order “to know” their character cannot be taken at face value. If Scripture cannot err, it seems we must accept that such testing was the means by which God found out how people would freely develop their character. This is explicitly declared in this passage.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Judges 2
Related Reading

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…

Does God Exist Outside of Time?
Our friend Jeremy Jernigan wrote something recently that we wanted to share with you today. Jeremy is the author of Redeeming Pleasure and Teaching Pastor at Central Christian Church in Arizona. He blogs regularly at TomorrowsReflection.com. He’s the husband to Michelle and dad to five amazing little kids. You can connect with him on Twitter,…

What is the significance of Revelation 22:18?
“If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city…” For God to “take away” something he must have given it first. But, as with the previous verse, if God foreknew from whom he would…

Are you a pietist?
Question: Soon after the publication of your book The Myth of a Christian Nation, I heard Chuck Colson charge you with being a “pietist.” Since then, others have repeated the charge. They all claim you advocate a Gospel that focuses on individual salvation but leaves social issues for government to address. Are you a pietist?…

Boyd’s Bad Ass Tattoo
by: Greg Boyd In the process of working through a philosophical issue surrounding the openness of the future around twenty years ago, I and two friends (Alan Rhoda and Tom Belt) ended up creating the “Hexagon of Opposition”, or “Hexagonic Logic of Futurity,” as I’ve sometimes called it. I’ll explain what it all means in…

The Hexagon of Opposition
Throughout the western philosophical and theological tradition, scholars have assumed that the future can be adequately described in terms of what will and will not happen. In this essay I, Alan Rhoda and Tom Belt argue that this assumption is mistaken, for the logical contradictory of will is not will not but might not. Conversely,…