02.20.09

Why I’m Not An Open Theist

Posted in Uncategorized at 05:03 by Alexander

Open Theism addresses a number of problems with attributes popularly ascribed to God. Hellenistic influence has, throughout Church history, been a source of error. It is no surprise, then, that the immutability, impassibility, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God should be put on trial. Unfortunately, this opens five cans of worms that cannot be very neatly closed again. I do not think Open Theism does a satisfactory job of closing all the loops any more than did the original attributes it calls into question.

If a well-thought-out doctrine espoused by numerous very wise theologians cannot do this in many, many books (most of which, I will admit, I have not read), I will not presume to do it in a single blog post. Instead, I will open the cans of worms, dump them all out on the counter, then toss them into the bin of agnosticism and start from scratch with a few praxis-centric assertions. In other words, I’m going to mess with you until you have a headache, then say, “Eh, screw it all, none of it matters. Here’s what does matter.” Read on at your own peril.

Immutability

The quality of being unchanging. If God is truly unchanging, then He is unable to be influenced by prayer. If, however, He is subject to change, then He is changing from one thing to something else. This implies that the way He was is not adequate, and that the way He is will not be adequate. God, if changing, is imperfect. He is still growing, still becoming. Cf. process theology/process thought.

Impassibility

The quality of not suffering pain. If God is impassible, divine mercy is not connected to empathy. Since God cannot suffer, He cannot share in our sufferings or empathise with them. Christ, being one person with two natures, will have suffered in His human nature only. Numerous modern theologians reject divine impassibility.

Timelessness/Omniscience/Foreknowledge/Predeterminism

Here’s where it gets really ugly.

It’s generally agreed that God is eternal. He existed before creation. He created the universe. Time seems to be a property of the universe, just like the laws of physics. Time was, therefore, created by God. If this is so, it would make sense that God is not subject to the limitations of His creation as we are. If God is not mastered by His creation and is also omniscient, He must possess foreknowledge. He must know the future. This means that the future must, in some sense, already exist (or it could not be known).

If the future is already “written,” however, human agency is destroyed. One cannot truly be held culpable for one’s actions if they are predetermined. It’s been argued that God, having created us, would be justified in damning some and extending grace to others based on divine whim, hence the doctrine of unconditional election. A consequence of this, however, is a disconnect between sin and atonement. If all are sinners (T) and some are elected based on divine wisdom (U) to receive redemption (L) they cannot resist (I) or lose (P), sin effectively becomes value-neutral. We are not damned because we are sinners (for some sinners are not damned, namely the elect), we are damned because we are not redeemed. Since we have control neither over our sinfulness (for all are sinful), nor over our redemption, we cannot be properly called guilty. If God in his wisdom chooses to save some and not others, I will not call Him a tyrant. But it cannot be said that those He does not choose are damned for their sin.

Open theism, on the other hand, contends that the future, strictly speaking, does not exist as such. Because future events have not yet happened, they do not exist to be known or not known. God, if He is omniscient, knows all that exists. Since the future does not exist, the lack of divine foreknowledge does not conflict with divine omniscience.

On the gripping hand, if God cannot know the future, a modified understanding of scripture must be adopted. A great deal of biblical prophecy is of the “God says” variety rather than the “this is what will happen in the future” sort. Furthermore, a number of the “this is what will happen in the future” passages are actually “God will do this in the future” passages. It is generally possible to reliably predict one’s own future actions (even for humans). Here’s where the problem arises: Christ. God (seemingly, at least) sent His Son into the world knowing/intending for Him to die. Here we have two bad options: 1) God foreknew that the Pharisees would hate and despise and ultimately kill Him, which is not  possible since the future does not exist and cannot be known, or 2) God knew the Pharisees would hate and despise Him because He was predicting His own actions–that is, God forced the Pharisees to become agents of His wrath, thus destroying their own agency. Perhaps, then, God did not know that Jesus would be killed, which leaves us with two more bad options: 1) God never intended for Christ to be killed, or 2) God, knowing the hearts of the Pharisees, knew Jesus’s ministry would be terribly offensive to them. He could hypothesise that, given their nature, and the presence of the Roman garrison, there was a very good chance of Him being persecuted, and quite possibly dying, but He could not know for certain, when, where, how, or even if He would die at their hands.

Alternatively, it can be argued that knowledge of the future does not predicate a closed-ness thereof. In other words, God’s knowing what will happen does not mean what will happen cannot change. If a person plans to do something, say kill 500 people, God will have known about it since the beginning of time. If that person then changes his mind, the future is altered, and God’s foreknowledge is, from the beginning of time, accordingly altered. This does not mean that God had been wrong about the future, or that He himself had changed. It simply means that as something external to Him changed, his knowledge willen hoven change-frupt (sorry, I don’t know how to say that in Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional Tense) retroactively accordingly. If my house is white, God knows that it is white. If I paint it grey, God knows it is grey. He was not wrong in the past about its colour, but His knowledge was altered by the alteration of the house itself.

Free Will

The notion of truly free will is a chimeric abstraction. In reality, the choices of one ‘free’ agent limit the choices of another. If person A chooses not to build skyscraper B, person C cannot jump off of skyscraper B. If person D holds person E at gunpoint and demands her money of her, she cannot choose both to live and to keep her money. Similarly, the actions of God necessarily limit the freedom of humanity. There is, therefore, an ongoing interplay of billions of free agents, constantly creating and destroying possibilities for other free agents. In order for God to minimize (for He cannot eliminate) His constraints on human free will, he would have to, in essence, create the world and then step back from it. Cf. Deism. This would not, however, stop humans from increasing or decreasing the  freedom of other humans.

Omnipresence

Is God in Hell too?

If you are not yet confused, read Wikipedia for a while. Start with the article on Free will, then move on to Open theism, Calvinism, Arminianism, Eternity, Determinism, Time, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, Impassibility, Immutability, Process theology, and Game theory. Also make sure to click on any links in those articles on topics you don’t fully understand and read those articles too. Then read all the books cited in all the articles you’ve read. If, after that, you still think any of it matters, let me know ;) To all of the arguments I’ve made in this post, there are counter arguments, and to those, counter-counter arguments.

So what does matter? None of that. I think Open theism is wrong (along with Calvinism and Arminianism) in that it starts with the wrong questions and assumptions. It is not possible to deal with all the issues brought up above with some perfectly designed philosophical/theological construct. And even if it were, it would be just that: a construct. But I don’t think any of those views are heretical.

Here’s where I start, and for the most part where I finish:

• God does not deceive us
• God responds to prayer
• God speaks to and offers guidance to us
• It appears to me that I have a certain degree of control over my actions, and, to that end, I desire to use that wisely

Thoughts? Opinions? Corrections, elaborations, arguments? I’mma get some Advil.

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