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
Paradigm Shift Questions
A couple that was recently introduced to ReKnew and several of my books recently wrote to tell me that they are in the process of embracing the warfare worldview along with the open view of the future. They said that they “realize that these things aren’t minor adjustments but are rather all-encompassing paradigm shifts in…
What is the significance of Jeremiah 26:2–3?
The Lord tells Jeremiah to prophesy to Israel that they should repent, for “I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on [Israel] because of their evil doings.” It is difficult to discern what God intended to reveal about himself by claiming he is willing to change his mind if…
Free Will: Is it a coherent concept?
Greg is going to be spending the next several blogs talking about the idea of free will. In this first reflection, he discusses whether it is coherent to speak of a decision that is not determined or exhaustively caused.
How can people who believe the open view trust a God who doesn’t control the future and doesn’t know for sure what will happen?
It’s true that according to the open view of the future things can happen in our lives which God didn’t plan or even foreknow with certainty (though he always foreknew they were possible). In this view, trusting in God provides no assurance that everything that happens to us will reflect his divine purposes, for there…
The Open View of Messianic Prophesies
Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr A number of passages speak of particular events being foreknown by God, even events resulting from individuals’ free will. For example, dozens of prophesies in the OT accurately predict details about the coming Messiah (e.g., he would be born in Bethlehem; arise out of the lineage of Abraham; be executed with…
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.…