Open Theism discussed

I've stumbled across another interesting discussion on Open Theism at The Sign of Jonah blog. The original blogger is critiquing Open Theism (although I didn't feel he was particularly successful in this. He seems a little confused about distinction between OT and the problem of evil/suffering, which although connected is not really the same question) and provokes some excellent (although very lengthy) discussion in the comments. I was particularly impressed by the contribution of a commenter called Wesley Brainard who is generally articulate and intelligent in his arguments for Open Theism - although I'm not sure I agree with everything he says about the way God has limited himself (e.g. spacially).

Here's a couple of examples of things which got me thinking:

...This began to take shape around the discussion of God’s freedom. Jim B admitted that God was free to create or not to create. If He was free to choose, then there was a time when God hadn’t yet foreknown. This demonstrates that foreknowledge is not eternal or essential. God is still God without exhaustive foreknowledge.

The open view says that God was free to create the kind of world you propose he created. Does the CV allow that God could have created a world with freedoms like His as the open view suggests?

Keith: I feel like you really ducked the issue with Cyrus. Your basic answer was, "I don’t know how God predicted Cyrus but I’m absolutely sure that it wasn’t through exhaustive foreknowledge". In all candor I think that’s pretty weak.

Wesley: Straw dummy... My argument was that what you offered does not prove exhaustive foreknowledge. I thought Will D.’s post was especially good on this point. If we use your argument for proving exhaustive foreknowledge, my wife would certainly qualify since she knows what I’m going to do or not do before I do or don’t do it. Knowing something does not prove that He knows everything. ...

Openness and Prayer

Blogger TC Robinson has been investigating open theism on his blog and starting various interesting discussions along the way. I recently commented (hopefully gently!) on his post about prayer:

I've always understood prayer to be pretty effective - not just in my personal relationship with God, but also for affecting what happens in the world. I agree there's definitely the sense in the Gospels of Jesus taking time out in prayer to learn his Father's will (as Duane and others have mentioned above) but surely the overwhelming teaching of Jesus is that God responds to prayer and our prayers therefore have real consequences in the world, e.g. Luke 21.36, Matt 7.11 'how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him', Luke 10.2 'ask for workers', Luke 22.32 (in verse 31 it sounds like Satan is also able to pray!)... and I haven't even mentioned some of the most famous verses about prayer!

What I understand from what Boyd and others teach is that because God is relational he has chosen to mediate his authority through free agents such as ourselves and angels etc.* Although the plan was for us to rule 'under authority' (c.f. Luke 7.8), we have real delegated responsibility. To this end God has chosen to limit his influence and authority in the world according to our direction and desire. The really challenging thing about this view is that it makes prayer absolutely critical. God's involvement - to a certain extent - depends on us asking for it! When we pray 'your will be done' we're apparently - in a really odd way - actually giving God 'permission' to act to bring about his will. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

I actually think this view has a lot to recommend it, as it makes sense of Jesus' instructions about prayer and the importance Paul obviously gives to prayer (e.g. 1 Thess 3.10). God is genuinely responsive to our prayers, relational even in the exercise of his sovereign authority. That sounds like a truly dynamic relationship! It's also interesting to note the way Paul talks about being coworkers with God.

[*At the beginning humankind is given dominion over the earth (Gen 1.26-28) but unfortunately it seems we surrendered our authority to Satan, who is now the 'prince of this world' (John 12.41). But Daniel 7 indicates that part of our final destiny is to finally reclaim this authority in the kingdom of Jesus.]

Comments?

Openness, the future and God's foreknowledge

One of the points that's often misunderstood about the Open Theism that Greg Boyd and others espouse, is that they are not saying that God does not know the future. On the contrary, they affirm that God does indeed have knowledge of everything, including what is still to come. What openness argues against is the idea that God only knows one future, in other words that the cosmos runs along a single timeline of 'ordained' possibility (Boyd calls this the 'blueprint worldview'). Open Theism states that God knows every possible future, an infinity of real possibilities (which exist within certain boundaries, of course). Openness asserts that God has given real freedom to individuals within creation to make choices that actually affect what happens in the world, choices for which they are responsible and will be held accountable. Within this He has set out certain conditions and boundaries - e.g. there will be a time of judgement and new creation etc. And of course God is not a detached observer of these events, but in fact the most active participant, always at work to redeem and restore His creation.

It is worth emphasising in this view that while free agents make real choices about the future, no choice or possible future is outside God's (fore)knowledge. God is never caught unaware! (although Jer 32.35 is interesting!) Every choice you make, every infinite possibility of decision has indeed been known by God since before the creation of the world. And in every single one of those infinite possible timelines God has been working for the good of those who love him. Not only has every  individual ever created been loved by God, but every single timeline has been known and lovingly worked into his glorious purpose.

This infinite, sovereign 'intelligence' is much more difficult for us to grasp than infinite controlling power. We have examples of controlling power that we can 'multiply up', but we have very few analogies for the type of intelligence required to weave together infinite possibilities. Perhaps the nearest model we can think of (although it has some significant flaws), and an example I've heard Boyd use, is that of the Chess Grand Master. If I play a Grand Master at Chess he doesn't have to know for certain every move I will make to predict (with 99.9999999% certainty!) that he will win. In fact probably most of the moves I make will be boringly predictable! Really good chess players see possibilities many moves in advance. But God, to use the same analogy, has seen every single possible move, planned his 'counter-attack' for each one and seen the final endgame before the first move was even made!

There are many other ideas I could talk about that fit alongside openness: for example, what it means for God to be in genuine relationship with us; the understanding that God's will is not always done (thus Jesus teaching us to pray "Your will be done...") and so on, but I think this post is long enough for now!

Altogether I find Boyd, in particular, pretty persuasive on this whole topic. I don't agree with everything he states (he's generally more systematic than I'm comfortable with), but I have a feeling that he - and folks like Prof John Polkinghorne - may be on the right lines. And part of why I find it so compelling is that it seems to match up with what the physical universe is actually like. The argument about the relationship between epistemology (what may be known) and ontology (what actually is) in quantum physics may have a little ways to go (does the limit of what it is possible to know correspond with what actually is?), but most physicists will tell you that at the most fundamental level it makes no sense to talk about certainties (future or present). In the strange universe we live in there seems to be something more 'real' about possibilities. As Polkinghorne says, reality is a lot 'fuzzier' than we'd like to think.

[See also: Ben Witherington's view on the 'script']

Confused about Open Theism?

If anyone reading this has been confused about all this Greg Boyd and open theism-stuff I've been going on about recently, you might find this letter he wrote to another blogger helpful. It's good as a quick overview - and useful to hear what he thinks first hand.

Boyd's also become much talked-about in the States for suggesting that our kingdom is not of this world and the church shouldn't get too cosy with politics. I would recommend this video of Boyd talking on Charlie Rose. He's excellent - lucid, convincing and clearly Kingdom-chasing! I like what he says about getting 'under' people, rather than 'over' them.

Freedom and Uncertainty

We were having a discussion last night at dinner about freedom and uncertainty in the universe. I was reflecting on what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) implies about the universe as created by God.

For those unfamiliar with Heisenberg’s theory, it’s this:
“The more precisely the position [of a particle, e.g. electron] is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.”

In other words, you cannot know both a particle’s position and its movement at the same time. In the quantum world, you must speak in probabilities. For example, as this website helpfully explains:
I can only say that an atom will be at some location with a 99 % probability, and that there will be a 1 % probability it will be somewhere else (in fact, there will be a small but finite probability that it can even be found across the Universe).

Heisenberg was primarily concerned with measurement. His principle implied that previously certain Classical ‘realities’, such as speed, direction, mass, position, were meaningless in the new quantum world and he argued that some aspects come into existence only as they are measured. ("The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.") In this way, the uncertainty at the heart of the quantum world is not a result of our poor measurement technique, but an integral part of the universe itself.

This had massive implications, not least for Newton’s idea of causality. In simple terms, the classical view was that if the position and momentum of every particle in the universe could be determined, then you could predict the path of each based on the forces acting on it, i.e. predict the future. Of course, to Newton, only God could possibly have the observational and computational power to accomplish this. But, as Heisenberg pointed out: "In the sharp formulation of the law of causality—‘if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future’-it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise." Essentially, what he’s saying is that it’s impossible to know the present exactly (but the limit is not on the knowing, but on the ‘exactly’).

The question I asked is, since the uncertainty principle seems to be part of the very fabric of the universe and an integral characteristic of quantum particles, is the universe ‘uncertain’ even to God? In the same way as He’s given us freedom, has He built a similar freedom into the physical universe?

Dad is reading Greg Boyd’s ‘Satan and the Problem of Evil’ and was similarly reflecting on what it meant for humans (and angels) to have real freedom, and the necessary uncertainty built into that.

Thoughts anyone?

(Quotes are taken from this website where you can also read more about Heisenberg)