The Narrow Path Ministries

Assessing the Necessity of Open Theism: 1- respecting Immutability and Impassability
The Bible is the source book for understanding God. To ensure accurate interpretation of any biblical message, all related passages on the topic must be taken into consideration (See McGrath, A. 2009. “Augustine’s Origin of Species.” Christianity Today, May, 38-41.). Classic theism is succinctly defined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_theism and includes a link to Process Theism, an intellectual cousin of Open Theism. John Sanders synopsizes Open Theism at http://www.opentheism.info/.
From the Open Theism website description and the email interaction between Sanders and Christopher Hall, a proponent of Classic Theism, which was recorded in the May 2001 Christianity Today, under the title “Does God Know Your Next Move?,” it can be seen that the three main areas of contention between these two viewpoints are God’s immutability, including His immanence and impassability, His omniscience in light of humankinds’ freedom of choice, and His goodness given the existence of evil. I will deal with the issues raised by Sanders both on his Open Theism website and in his dialogue with Hall.
Immutability To cite the Open Theism website, “That God changes in some respects implies that God is temporal, working with us in time. God, at least since creation, experiences duration. God is everlasting through time rather than timelessly eternal.” How can God be immutable when the Bible tells us that God changes the course of events: in answer to prayer (e.g., Hezekiah’s prayer for recovery from his illness in 2 Kings 20:1-11.), in the face of repentant behaviour (e.g., the Ninevites in the book of Jonah.), and when choice of punishment is given for sin (e.g., King David in 2 Samuel 24:1-17.)? Saunders raises this type of example in the exchange with Hall noted above. God’s immanence also ties in with His immutability. How can God be immanent when we know there is past, present and future – how can God know the future when the future has not yet occurred? Does God not react to the future as it plays out? These are interesting questions!
From the point of view of Classic Theism, Sanders position is unorthodox. First of all, Scripture tells us that God does not change and is timelessly eternal (e.g., Genesis 21:33; Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Nehemiah 9:5, Psalm 90:2; Psalm 102:27, Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8.). Also, logic tells us that God cannot change. If God changes, then God had a beginning. If God had a beginning, then some other entity would be needed to create God. This could lead to a never-ending series of changing entities which create, so we stop the series of changing entities with one entity, the unchanging God. There is no was or will be with God – was and will be are the change characteristics of our physical world. The name that immanent God takes in the Bible(see Exodus 3:14.) is I AM – God is always now.
However, these biblical and logical arguments do not deal substantively with the issues raised by the three examples of apparent change by God cited above: answer to prayer, suspending punishment in the face of repentant behaviour, and giving choice of punishment for sin. These arguments also do not deal adequately with the issue of God’s immanence – specifically how can God know the future when the future has not yet occurred? Hall deals with these issues in a general way, citing church history and the irresolvable nature of some theological questions. I will deal specifically with these issues in Assessing the Necessity of Open Theism: 2-respecting Omniscience and Free Will from a Classic Theism perspective.
Impassability How can God not experience emotional change when the Bible is replete with descriptions of God’s changing emotions (e.g., grief: Genesis 6:6, anger: 2 Chronicles 36:16, joy: Nehemiah 8:10.)? The late Clark Pinnock, also an Open Theism proponent, raised this issue in his book Most Moved Mover. The Classic Theism response, as articulated by Christopher Hall in his review of the book in the February 2003 Christianity Today under the title “Openness Season,” is that the biblical descriptions of God’s emotions are metaphorical. I believe this is accurate but I prefer to think of them as anthropomorphic metaphor: descriptions enabling us humans to better relate to God. Clearly, if God is immutable, He must also be impassable. There can be no changing of emotion or of anything else with Immutable God!

Conclusion 1
Open Theism exposes shortcomings in Classic Theism, for which we can be thankful, but in an unorthodox way, which is unnecessary. The second posting deals with omniscience and free will, and the third with God’s goodness.
I believe all the original insights in this posting were divinely inspired.

Ken Tunstall, PhD.
Retired Management Consultant, Student of the Bible, Lay Apologist

Five things...

1. It would help if you would take some extra time to format your writing for this message board.

2. It's Sanders, not Saunders

3. There isn't much to respond to in this post since you really just stated the conflict b/w open-theists and non-open-theists. I assume you are planning to post more? You mentioned a 'second' and 'third' posting, but it sorta sounded like they would be more of the same.

4. Your... conclusion... was that open theism is unorthodox. This would be an ambiguous assessment of open theism except that you also said it was unnecessary. But I'm curious how serious a threat you believe open-theism is to Christianity. Do you think open-theists can be genuine Christians? Are they heretics?

5. I was mostly interested in your final statement:

I believe all the original insights in this posting were divinely inspired.

What 'insights' are you referring to (I don't mean to be rude... I just didn't see the post as really SAYING anything, it seemed more like a summary of the issue) What motivated you to include this line? Do you believe all your writing is divinely inspired? If so, in what sense?

Reply to mattrose re: 5 things
1. This is the first time I've ever blogged; the 3 postings were part of a longer single paper, which I segmented and condensed as best I could.
2. I've corrected the spelling of Sanders; I knew the correct spelling, but my usual spelling of the surname is Saunders and my habit led me to make a mistake.
3. As you now know, there are 2 more postings.
4. I believe Open Theism is unorthodox - the Classical Theism Wikipedia reference succinctly defines the orthodox beliefs about God; I intend the second posting to demonstrate why it's unnecessary; if Classic Theism is orthodox then Open Theism is heresy; I believe a true Christian is orthodox in behaviour - their beliefs are not what is essential to defining what is a true Christian (orthopraxy not orthodoxy).
5. The "original insights" comment is a standard disclaimer that I use; the only really original insights are in posting 2
kenblogton

Second reply to mattrose
I replied to your questions but you did not reply to my assertions about the unorthodoxy of Open Theism regarding God's immutability and impassability.
According to Sanders website, Open Theism believes "That God changes in some respects implies that God is temporal, working with us in time. God, at least since creation, experiences duration. God is everlasting through time rather than timelessly eternal." God is the CREATOR of time, space, matter & energy, so He does NOT exist in time or space and consists neither of matter nor energy - He is spirit.
God IS timelessly eternal - He immanently observes, but has no experience of, duration!
kenblogton

The impassable God is the impossible God.

Throughout the Old Testament God's passions are described: At various times He is sorrowful, angry, jealous, compassionate, grieved, pleased, joyful, affectionate, hateful, and many more.

kenblogton wrote:God is the CREATOR of time, space, matter & energy, so He does NOT exist in time or space and consists neither of matter nor energy - He is spirit.
God IS timelessly eternal - He immanently observes, but has no experience of, duration!
kenblogton

I don't think there is a strong case in the Bible for TIME being a created thing. It may or may not be. I don't think the Bible says. Philosophically, I find the notion baffling. You say God has no experience of duration. All the biblical evidence is to the contrary. In some sense time may not have existed (at least not in the same way it exists now) before the act of creation, but when God chose to create stuff... God voluntarily chose to work within time and experience duration.

I don't think open theism has any problem whatsoever with your other suggestions. God is the Creator of everything that began to exist. God is Spirit. Amen.

...so He does NOT exist in time or space...

If He does not exist in time or space, how can He affect conditions in time and/or space?

I am hoping for a satisfying answer, and not merely, "He can do so because He is God." Some people use that statement to justify ANY statement about God, such as "God can create a rock so large that He cannot lift it" or "God can create a square circle" or "God can know in advance what a free-will agent will choose."

Reply to mattrose
Philosophically, the notion of time creation is baffling, because we can have no intuitive notion of such a thing since we exist in time. However, Genesis 1:1 says God created the physical universe, which includes space, time, matter and energy. Also, God is not in time. Exodus 3:14 tells us God's name is I AM. That means there is no was or will be; no past nor future, and so NO TIME! The Bible tells us that God does NOT change (e.g., Genesis 21:33; Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Nehemiah 9:5, Psalm 90:2; Psalm 102:27, Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8); all change occurs in time; therefore God is outside of time. God choosing to create time does not mean that God voluntarily chooses to work within time and experience duration, just as a person who creates an animated film does not choose to become a part of the film.
kenblogton

Your position is inconsistent with itself.

You believe (based on interpretations I don't agree with an analogies that don't correspond, in my opinion) that God exists outside of time.

But in this discussion you've also stated that you don't think God know the specific choices free will creatures will make (He, instead, knows all the possibilities).

I don't think these two beliefs can be reconciled. Feel free to fill me in

Reply to mattrose
I don't have any better explanations of God's immutability and impassability than what I've already given. If you could tell me specifically what you find objectionable about what I've said, perhaps I could clarify.
Fitting omniscience into the mix, and using the same analogy which you didn't like, the possibilities are like multiple copies of a film, only one copy of which gets distributed - we humans get to choose which version gets distributed.
kenblogton