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 Exodus 13:17?
The Lord didn’t lead Israel along the shortest route to Canaan because Israel would have had to fight the Philistines. The Lord wanted to avoid this, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” [NIV: “If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt”].
A God who faced an exhaustively settled future could not genuinely think in terms of what people might do. He would be eternally certain of exactly what everyone would do. The fact that the Bible records God thinking and speaking using terms like “if,” “perhaps” and “maybe” is evidence that God faces a partly open future. It should be noted that verses such as this one are impossible to explain as “phenomenological” or as “anthropomorphic,” for the author is reporting something we never would have known had he not told us—viz. God’s thought process.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Exodus 13
Related Reading
How do you respond to Mark 14:13–15?
In planning for the Passover meal, Jesus tells his disciples, “Go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’…
How do you respond to Matthew 20:17–19?
“The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and on the third day he will be raised.” God knew perfectly the hearts of all the Jewish…
Podcast: What Does God Actually DO in the World?
Greg discusses what a God, who takes his hands off of us, who gives up control for us, who accommodates for us, actually does in the world. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0215.mp3
How do you respond to Isaiah 53:9?
Speaking of the suffering servant Isaiah says, “[T]hey made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich…” As with most evangelical exegetes, I believe that Isaiah 53 constitutes a beautiful and stunning prophetic look at the person of Jesus Christ. The most impressive feature of this prophecy is that the suffering servant…
Can Science Inform Our Theology?
Over the last century, we have witnessed a revolution in various areas of science that relate to how we see the world and even God. For example, the Platonic notion that time and change are less real than timeless stability is being abandoned in light of the fact that physicists work from the assumption that…
