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 Acts 15:7?
At the Jerusalem council, “Peter stood up and said to them, ‘My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles should hear the message of the good news…’”
The tense of the verb that locates God’s “choice” in “the early days” strongly suggests that it wasn’t made in the eternal past as the classical view asserts. The God of the possible decides among possibilities as he moves along with us in time. After considering every variable, the Lord decided that choosing Peter rather than anyone else to initially bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles best fit his sovereign purpose.
If everything is settled from all eternity in the mind of God, however, there is nothing really left to decide in time. Everything in Scripture, as well as in our own experience, which suggests that God makes decisions or reverses previous decisions as he moves with us into the future must be judged as mistaken.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Acts 15
Related Reading
Podcast: Does the Cruciform Hermeneutic Sabotage Open Theism?
Greg plays Peek-a-Boo with God and considers whether those verses Open Theists use to support Open Theism might simply be times when God is accommodating for us. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0236.mp3
What about the thief on the cross?
Question: You hold that most people who are saved will nevertheless have to go through a “purging fire” to have their character refined and fit for heaven. Whatever is unfinished in our “sanctification” in this epoch must be completed in the next. But how does this square with Jesus telling the thief on the cross,…
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…
What is the significance of Jeremiah 32:35?
As in Jeremiah 19:5, the Lord expresses his dismay over Israel’s paganism by saying they did this “though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination.” If this abomination was eternally foreknown to God, it’s impossible to attribute any clear meaning to his confession that this…
God is Flexible: Romans 9, Part 4
As we continue this series on Romans 9, [Here’s the link to the first post in the series.] today we will look at the famous potter/clay analogy. Most tend to interpret the potter and clay image as supporting the deterministic view of God. But in fact, it teaches just the opposite. This is the fifth argument…
Confronting Divine Determinism
Part of the fallen human condition inclines us to shirk our moral responsibility and accept that everything is predetermined, whether by God, the gods, fate, or blind chance. Various forms of determinism have been prevalent in most primitive religions, in much ancient philosophy, in most forms of Islam and even, most surprisingly, in much traditional…