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.
An Open Orthodoxy
Our friends Tom Belt and Dwayne Polk recently started a blog called An Open Orthodoxy. This is going to be something you’ll want to follow. Really smart guys with something to say. They posted this clarification on the defining claim and core convictions of open theism that hits the nail on the head.
From the blog post:
To summarize, then. God is love, and he creates for benevolent purposes which include creation’s coming to participate in and reflect the love that he is. This glorifies God, and this glory is the end for which all things are created. To fulfill this end, God endowed us with a certain freedom, and this freedom in turn entails certain risks. Open theists reason from these three core convictions — divine love and a free and risky creation — to the conclusion that God knows the open future as a branching of possible ways or paths the world might and might not take. But from the open theist’s point of view, these core convictions are the heart and soul of the view. The conclusion that God doesn’t eternally foreknow in every conceivable detail precisely how the world’s possibilities will unfold (which claim has received all the attention) is — to put it surprisingly but perhaps more accurately — the most uninteresting thing about the view. For us it’s not particularlyabout foreknowledge; it’s about freely becoming what God purposed us to be. It’s abouttheosis. The foreknowledge piece turns out to be just the most consistent way we know to express it.
Amen.
Category: General
Tags: An Open Orthodoxy, Dwayne Polk, Open Theism, Tom Belt
Related Reading
What is the significance of Exodus 4:10–16?
Immediately after convincing Moses of his ability to [somehow!] convince the elders of Israel to listen to him, Moses says, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (vs. 10). The Lord reminds him that he is the Creator and is therefore bigger than any speech impediment.…
Free Will: An Aesthetic Model
Greg continues his thoughts on free will by offering an aesthetic model for free will. This one gets pretty philosophical, but it’s worth toughing it out.
What is the “classical view of God” and what about it do you find objectionable?
The “classical view of God” refers to the view of God that has dominated Christian theology since the earliest Church fathers. According to this theology, God is completely “immutable.” This means that God’s being and experience never change in any respect. God is therefore pure actuality (actus purus), having no potentiality whatsoever, for potentiality is…
A Brief Outline and Defense of the Open View
While many Christians have found the open view of the future to be the most helpful and accurate view of God’s foreknowledge of the future based on biblical, philosophical, and experiential evidence, others have criticized the view as unorthodox and even heretical. What follows is a brief description and defense of the open view prepared…
What is omni-resourcefulness?
Question: What do you mean when you refer to God’s omni-resourcefulness? Can you support this with Scripture? Answer: I and others use the term omni-resourcefulness to highlight a feature of God in Scripture that the classical theological tradition consistently overlooks. Part of the greatness of the God of the Bible, we argue, is that he…