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.

Open Theism and the Nature of the Future

In this philosophical essay Alan Rhoda, Tom Belt and I argue that the future cannot be exhaustively described in terms of what will and will not happen, but must also be described in terms of what may and may not happen. The future, in other words, is partly open. The thesis is defended against a number of possible philosophical objections.

Click here to download this essay: Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future

Related Reading

Does God Intervene?

Given the vast influence of angelic and human free will, what influence does God have in determining what comes to pass? While God has an important role to play in anticipating and creatively responding to decisions agents make, is God only a responder? Does he have anything to do with what’s going on in creation?…

Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist” Part III

This is the last of a three-part response to Mark Driscoll’s post, “Is God a Pacifist?” We’ve seen that, to prove that Jesus was not “a pansy or a pacifist” (meaning that Jesus was okay with justified killing), Mark Driscoll skips over what Jesus actually taught and modeled in the Gospels and instead appeals to…

Lighten Up: The Down Side of Free Will

What is the significance of Jeremiah 26:19?

“Did [Hezekiah] not fear the Lord and entreat the favor of the Lord, and did not the Lord change his mind about the disaster that he had pronounced against [Israel]?” As in 2 Kings 20:1–6 and Isaiah 38:1–5, if the future is exhaustive settled, it seems God could not have been forthright when he told…

Topics:

Free Will: The origin of evil

In this continuing series on free will, Greg discusses how evil can only be accounted for if we acknowledge free will. This is especially true if you believe that God is good.

Podcast: Are We REALLY Free if God is Going to Ultimately Trump Our Choices?

Greg looks at the nature of freewill, specifically: how God’s promises constricts human free will. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0070.mp3