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 Numbers 16:20–35?
After Israel’s sin under the leadership of Korah, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from this congregation, so that I may consume them in a moment” (vs. 21). Moses and Aaron pleaded with the Lord to only judge those who were most guilty. In response, the Lord modifies his judgment and gives the people a choice between himself or “wicked men” (vs. 23–35).
This passage represents another instance of the Lord modifying his expressed intentions in response to prayer. If all of the future is exhaustively settled in God’s mind, however, God’s declared intention to “consume” the whole congregation could not have been sincere. He never really intended to do it, for he always foreknew he wouldn’t do it. For all of the godly motives of those who defend the classical view, it has the unfortunate consequence of depicting God as one who toys with us with idle threats he has no intention of following through on.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Numbers 16
Related Reading
What are the main principles of the warfare worldview?
In my book God At War (IVP, 1997) I flesh out what I call the “warfare worldview” of the Bible. This is the view that the world is a battle ground between God and good angels, on the one hand, and Satan and fallen angels, on the other. In my book Satan and the Problem…
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…
Terror in the Night
I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was pinning me to the bed, choking me, and electrocuting me, all at the same time. The wind was blowing through…
Lighten Up: Underestimated
Frank Viola is at it again. He seems pretty confident that when he and I debate the Open Future this fall that he’ll smear me. That’s his prediction, anyway. The think is, I’ve been underestimated before. It happens all the time. People think I’m this goof who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s OK…
Does your “dispositional” ontology avoid substantival categories?
Question: In Trinity and Process you argue against a “substantival” ontology and instead advocate a “relational,” “process” and/or “dispositional” ontology in which being, being-in-relation and being-in-process are one and the same. In your view, entity x is its relation to entity y (and all other relations) and is the disposition to interact with y (and…
Q&A: If God is So Great, Why Would He Care About Us?
Question: I’ve read that scientists estimate that the number of stars in the universe is 10 to the 24th power (10 with 24 zeros after it). I’m told that finding the earth amidst all these stars would be like finding one particular grain of sand in a sand pile the size of the United States piled…