Free Will
Does God Intervene?
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Jesus, Miracles, Open Theism
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…
Why Does God’s Activity Seem So Arbitrary?
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Free Will, Jesus, Prayer, Problem of Evil
Why? It’s the question that never goes away. Why is one infant born sickly and deformed when at the same time another is born perfectly healthy? Why does tragedy repeatedly strike one family while another…
God’s Love and Your Freedom
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, God is Love, Love, Open Theism
The most distinctive aspect of the revelation of God in Christ is Jesus’ demonstration that God relies on love to defeat his enemies and to accomplish his purposes. More than anything else, it was the…
When God Needs an Intercessor
Category: General
Tags: Divine Foreknowledge, Free Will, Intercession, Prayer
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Ezekiel 22
In the previous two posts, we have been exploring biblical narratives that point to how God’s knowledge is temporally conditioned and thus supports an open view of the future, or open theism as it is…
When God Discovers
Category: General
Tags: Divine Foreknowledge, Free Will, Open Theism
Topics: Open Theism
Scripture consistently portrays God’s knowledge as conforming to the ways things really are, and part of the way things really are is temporally conditioned. Scripture never expresses the commonly-held sentiment that time is somewhat illusory….
When God Regrets
Category: General
Tags: Divine Foreknowledge, Free Will, Future
Topics: Open Theism
The openness of the future is illustrated in the Bible’s depictions of God as grieving the outcome of decisions he himself has made. Regarding the incredible wickedness of humanity before Noah, for example, we read,…
The Risk of Love
Category: General
Tags: Creation, Free Will, freedom, God is Love, Trinity
The most basic and yet most profound teaching of the Bible is that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8; 16). He is revealed to be a God who is triune—Father, Son and Holy Spirit (See…
Why You Have Free Will
Category: General
Tags: Choice, Free Will, Open Theism
Topics: Free Will and the Future
God’s decision to create a cosmos that was capable of love and that was, therefore, populated with free agents (see previous post) was also a decision to create and govern a world he could not…
Love and Free Will
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Love, Open Theism
Topics: Free Will and the Future
God could have easily created a world in which nothing evil could ever happen. But this world would not have been capable of love. God could have preprogrammed agents to say loving things and to…
Your Prayers Matter
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Open Theism, Prayer
My conviction is that many Christians do not pray as passionately as they could because they don’t see how it could make any significant difference. They pray, but they often do so out of sheer…
Free Will in the Bible
Category: General
Tags: Determinism, Free Will, Open Theism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Scripture portrays humans as having minds and wills of their own. They are, in a real (though limited) sense, creators of their own behavior and determiners of their own destinies—whether this behavior and destiny is…
So Much Evil. Why?
Category: General
Tags: Evil, Free Will, Open Theism, Warfare Worldview
In light of the profound evil being experienced by the people of Paris and countless other locations around the world, we thought we would raise again the question that many ask when things like this…
The Earth is a Spiritual Battlefield
Category: General
Tags: Church Fathers, Evil, Free Will, Satan, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
The early Church Fathers uniformly believed that angels, like humans, were created free and given a sphere of influence and responsibility over creation. As with humans, angels could use this influence for good, as God…
Why Compatibilistic Freedom Does Not Make Sense
Category: General
Tags: Determinism, Evil, Free Will, Problem of Evil, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Compatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. In this view, freedom is defined as the ability to do what you want, though what you want is determined by factors outside of…
Paul Teaches Free Will, Not Determinism: Romans 9, Part 3
Category: General
Tags: Belief, Determinism, Faith, Free Will, Mercy
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Romans 9
In this series of posts, I am challenging the deterministic reading of Romans 9, which interprets Paul’s teaching as saying that God chooses some to be saved and others to be damned. There are six arguments…
A Video Introduction to Open Theism
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Greg Boyd, Open Future, Open Theism, The Work of the People, Travis Reed
Topics: Open Theism What it is and is not
Here’s a video clip on Open Theism from Greg’s sessions with Travis Reed with The Work of the People. What is Open Theism? Open Theists affirm that God knows all of reality perfectly, so Open Theism really…
Sinful Nature and Free Will
Category: Q&A
Tags: Adam and Eve, Free Will, Sin, Sinful Nature
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Sin
Q: If our sinful nature is what causes us to sin/reject God, can we be held responsible for our sins, when this nature resulted from Adam and Eve’s sin? Do we really have the freedom…
Why Prayer Matters
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Prayer
Topics: Hearing God, Prayer
Two questions about prayer: What possible difference can prayer make to an all-good and all-powerful God? Why would an all-wise God leverage so much of his will being done on earth on whether or not…
Do Angels and Demons Really Exist?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Angels, Demons, Evil, Free Will, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
While the supremacy of God is never qualified in the Bible, this supremacy is not strictly autocratic. Other “gods” or spiritual entities like angels and demons are not mere puppets of the God of the…