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.
Prayer and the Open Future
Kurt Willems posted a blog today written by Derek Ouellette regarding why understanding that the future is partially open is the only thing that really makes sense of prayer. Derek addresses his thoughts to your younger self, the self that was more “Open. Teachable. Curious. Adventurous.” Let’s all be willing to respect and freely interact with the part of ourselves that is hungry for truly satisfying answers.
From the blog post:
Let’s assume that God is all-competent and all-wise. He’s not a buffoon or an imbecile. He’s able – not just by sheer strength, but by wisdom and competence. We always talk about how God is all-power and all-knowing. We never talk about how God is all-competent. God is able to work through the most complex situation without having to flex his bulging omnipotent bicep. He’s able to work through it by his know-how. He is, after all, omnicompetent.
Image by Derrick Tyson. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Open Theism, Prayer, Warfare Worldview
Related Reading
How do you respond to Acts 13:48?
“When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and praised the word of the Lord; and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers.” If the individual Gentiles who believed were “destined for eternal life” before they “became believers,” some may argue, they obviously were foreknown by God before they became believers.…
Standing Our Ground Together
Osheta Moore is someone we’ve featured here before. She’s a lovely, thoughtful, passionate African-American woman of God ministering with her husband T.C. Moore in Boston. Osheta has been featuring a series called Standing Our Ground…In Prayer. In the wake of the tragic and senseless death of Jordan Davis, she struggled to articulate the grief and…
Living Into the Future
Why didn’t God create a “perfect world”? Here’s Greg’s response to that question. See more at The Work of the People.
Free Will in the Bible
Scripture portrays humans as having minds and wills of their own. They are, in a real (though limited) sense, creators of their own behavior and determiners of their own destinies—whether this behavior and destiny is in line with God’s will or not. This fundamental assumption is demonstrated in a variety of ways throughout Scripture. It…
Podcast: Is an Open Future World a Logically Possible World?
Greg gets technical in this abstract, yet profound, introduction to an open theist’s interpretation of the square of opposition. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0217.mp3
How does an Open Theist explain all the prophecies fulfilled in the life of Jesus?
Question: Throughout the Gospels it says that Jesus “fulfilled that which was written.” Some of these prophecies are very specific and involve free decisions of people. For example, a guard freely chose to give Jesus vinegar instead of water (Jn 19:28), yet John says this was prophesied in the Old Testament, hundred of years before…