In the last few decades, a serious error has arisen in the church
that has come to be known as ‘open theism’.
Proponents of this view believe that God’s knowledge of the future
is limited, and they argue in this way:
God has given human beings the ability to have real relationships
with Himself. This means that He gives
us genuine free will (often referred to as libertarian free will or
contra-causal free will). If God knew
all the future, then the future would be fixed, and a fixed future is
incompatible with humans having free will.
Therefore God cannot know everything that will happen in the future.
The main concern of open theists is to uphold a belief in the free
will of people. They are opposed to the
idea that all actions of people are determined by causes that are ultimately
outside themselves. The belief that
God’s knowledge of the future is limited is not their main interest. But it is a belief they feel it is necessary
to hold if they are to retain their belief in free will.
I don’t want to get into the whole issue of God’s sovereignty and
people’s free will here, except to say that I am fairly sure that open theists’
view of free will is a good one. However,
I am certain that they are completely mistaken about God’s limited knowledge of
the future. In fact, the free will of
people is entirely compatible with God knowing everything that will happen in
the future.
There are a few points I would like to make:
Anthropomorphism
Open theists often point to passages in the Bible where God speaks
about regretting that He has done something, changing His mind, or gaining new
insight. They claim that these passages
show that God’s knowledge of the future is limited.
For example, in Genesis 6:5-6 we are told:
‘The LORD saw that the evil of man on the earth was great, and that the inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. Then the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.’
Similarly, in 1 Samuel 15:10 -11 we read:
‘Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: “I regret that I made Saul king, because he has turned away from following Me . . .”’
Again, in Genesis 22:12 , after Abraham has
proved himself willing to sacrifice Isaac, God says:
‘. . . now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.’
And in Jonah 3:10 we are told:
‘When God saw what they [the Ninevites] did and that they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the disaster He had threatened.’
Many other texts could be added to this list.
It is true that at first glance these passages do seem to suggest
that there have been times when God has learned something that He didn’t
previously know.
However, we need to be careful not to interpret biblical texts more
scientifically and technically than we should.
Ancient Jews often expressed things using colourful, non-literal figures
of speech. And one example of this is
the figure of speech known as anthropomorphism.
Anthropomorphism involves speaking about someone or something as
if he/she/it is a human being, although literally that is not the case. In the Bible it is used frequently to
describe God. God is invisible spirit
(John 4:24 ), but it is impossible for us to
conceptualise Him in that way. So the
Bible often anthropomorphises Him.
For example, the Psalms frequently speak about God stretching out
His hand, baring His arm, and about His voice, His footsteps etc. God is pictured as if He is a human being, so
that we are able to conceptualise Him better.
(The incarnation, in which God the Son took upon Himself a human nature
in order to become the God-Man Jesus Christ, is very different from
anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is
simply about picturing the invisible God as if He were a human.)
When used to describe God, anthropomorphism doesn’t just involve
physical features, however. Human
psychological reactions are sometimes attributed to God that He does not
literally experience. (Often this use of
human reactions to describe God is called anthropopathism, but we can think of
it as a type of anthropomorphism.)
It is very easy to understand the four passages I cited above, and
many others, in this way. There is no
reason for us to suppose that God literally grew in knowledge or that He literally
realised He had made some bad decisions.
Instead, God is being visualised as if He were a human who has grown in
knowledge or come to realise something. As
humans we are more able to grasp the distress that God literally feels, or the
dislike or like that He literally has, if psychological anthropomorphisms are
used. The alternative would be to talk
about Him in abstract terms. But these
usually don’t impact on us so well.
To understand passages like the ones cited above literally is
therefore to fail to understand their symbolic nature. Properly understood, they don’t suggest that
God’s knowledge of future events is limited in any way.
Biblical passages that
contradict open theism
There are also a number of biblical passages that contradict open
theism.
Revelation 13:8 is one example.
In this verse, grammatically the most natural way of reading the text in
Greek is:
‘. . . whose name has not been written in the book of life of the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world.’
If this is the correct interpretation, this verse would be telling
us that at the time the world was created, the crucifixion of Christ was a
definite part of God’s plan. This is a
big problem for open theists, because, in their theory, at the time God made the
world He didn’t know whether people would sin or not.
It is grammatically possible to take the Greek of this verse
differently and connect ‘from the foundation of the world’ with ‘whose name has
not been written’. It would then mean:
‘. . . whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slaughtered.’
Under this interpretation, although the Lamb is no longer
explicitly said to have been slaughtered from the foundation of the world, a
new problem arises for open theists. According
to open theism, God doesn’t yet know which people will in the future come to
faith in Christ for salvation. However,
this doesn’t square with names that have been written in the Lamb’s book of
life from the foundation of the world.
Plainly, however we understand Revelation 13:8 grammatically, it
contradicts open theism.
Similarly, in 1 Peter 1:18 -20 Peter says:
‘. . . you were not redeemed with perishable things . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or defect. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world . . .’
Note how this passage states that Christ was foreknown by God
before the foundation of the world. Because
there is also a reference to Christians being redeemed by Christ’s blood, God’s
foreknowledge of Christ here surely includes His crucifixion. Again, this means that God must have
foreknown human sin as a certainty, something that open theism denies.
Another relevant passage is Ephesians 1:4. Here Paul states:
‘. . . He [God] chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world . . .’
This runs into the same difficulty for open theism that we have
just seen in connection with Revelation 13:8 and 1 Peter 1:18-20. If God chose people in Christ before He made
the world, then He is surely envisaged knowing for certain at that time that
the human race would sin, something that open theists deny.
Other passages could also be added to the ones I have just listed,
such as Jesus’ prophecies of the sins of Judas Iscariot and Peter. Quite simply, there are biblical texts that
seem clearly to contradict open theism.
God existing outside
time
Something else we must consider is the relationship of God to time. If God’s knowledge of the future were limited,
that would have to mean that He exists in time.
In other words, He would have to experience the progression of time as humans
experience it, or at least in a similar way.
Open theists are clear that they do indeed believe that God exists
in time. And some other Christians also
take this view.
Those Christians who claim that God exists in time fall into two
camps. Some believe that God has always
existed in time. And others believe that
God created time and then chose to enter into it.
Let’s think about each of these groups in turn.
Firstly, then, there are those who claim that God has always
existed in time. They argue that time is
not something God created, but that it has always existed back into the infinite
past.
This, however, is an extremely dubious idea. The concept of a God who has always existed
in time is a long way from the unchanging God of traditional Christian faith.
It is worth noting too that in physics time is widely understood as
something that is bound up with space, and there seems to be no good reason for
thinking that physicists have got this wrong.
Importantly, all Christians agree that God created space. So if time is indeed bound up with space, it
would make sense if time were also a created thing.
As far as the Bible is concerned, it is true that there don’t seem
to be passages which plainly teach that God created time. However, importantly, no passages teach that
He did not create it. And in fact, Jude
25 fits very well with the idea that time was created.
The Greek of the best attested text of this verse includes the
phrase pro pantos tou aionos. In close
English translation this means ‘before all the age’, where the age in question
is apparently the entire course of time.
Many English translations appropriately translate these words as ‘before
all time’.
It is true that ‘before all time’ in this verse cannot be taken strictly
literally. ‘Before’ is a temporal idea,
so ‘before all time’ cannot be a technical statement. Nevertheless, this verse does seem to suggest
that time had a beginning.
When all these points are taken into consideration, we should not
hesitate to say that God created time. And
in that case, He couldn’t have always existed in time.
As I have noted, there is a second group of Christians who believe
that God exists in time. Those in this
group accept that God created time when He created the universe. But they argue that, having created time, God
then entered into it, and that ever since He has existed in time.
This, however, is also an extremely dubious theory. The idea of a God who would change in this
way is in stark contrast to the unchanging God of traditional Christian faith. And it also seems very implausible that God
could or would allow Himself to be bound by something He created.
The positions of both groups of Christians who think that God
exists in time therefore fail to convince.
And if He is outside time, there would be nothing to stop Him knowing
the future exhaustively.
How we picture God
knowing the future
It seems that when most Christians think of God knowing the
future, they picture a God in the present who is peering into the future. In other words, they picture God thinking
about the future in the same way that they would picture a human thinking about
the future. Similarly, with the past,
they picture God looking back into the past in the same way that we remember
things.
It is true that the Bible visualises God in this way (e.g., in Romans
8:29 ; 11:2; 1 Peter 1:20 ). Nevertheless, we can easily see this simply
as an anthropomorphism that helps us to conceptualise Him better.
If we want to think more precisely about God knowing the future, I
would suggest that there is a better picture we can use. We can think of God looking at time in the
same way that a human being looks at a straight line drawn on a piece of paper.
The human is outside the line drawn on the paper and can see the
whole line at once. Similarly, God is
outside time and can see it all at once.
In this visualisation God is ‘based’ in His timeless state. But He sees all points of time as if they are
present, and He can stoop down to our level and act at any point on the time
line. However, He is literally no more
present at any point of time than at another.
Someone might want to object to this picture by saying that recent
scientific theories have challenged the linear view of time. However, that would make no difference. Whether we see time as a straight line, a
curved line, or even as a multi-dimensional object, God can still be visualised
outside it, looking at it all, and ‘present’ at each point. From outside time, in this picture, He is
therefore looking at what a human would call ‘tomorrow’ or ‘yesterday’ in
exactly the same way that He is looking at what a human would call ‘now’.
Personally, if I use this way of visualising God’s relationship to
time, I find it easy to understand His ability to know what is future from a
human perspective. God is, I believe, from
His timeless standpoint, looking at what I am doing right now, in exactly the
same way that He is looking at what I did yesterday, and what I will do tomorrow,
and so on.
I should point out that when I say God ‘sees’ or ‘is looking’ at me
or the time line of human history, I am necessarily being imprecise. This is because I am using an English present
tense to describe what is really timeless observation by God. But it is impossible to use a verb in the
English language without giving that verb a tense. Hence the imprecision.
I should also point out that when I speak about God looking in
exactly the same way at what we regard as past, present or future, I am not
saying that within the universe the past, present and future are all equally objective
realities. Rather, I am adhering to what
philosophers refer to as the A-theory of time.
According to this theory, the past has ceased to be objectively real and
the future is not yet objectively real. However,
crucially, the past ceasing to be real and the future not yet being real are
truths that apply to what goes on inside the universe. But God is outside the universe.
Our actions and God’s
knowledge
As I have noted, the main reason why open theists believe that
God’s knowledge of the future is limited is because they want to uphold belief
in the genuine free will of people. They
think that if God knows everything that will happen in the future, then the
future would be fixed in such a way that people could not have free will.
There is confused thinking taking place here. The assumption, whether it is recognised or
not, is that God’s knowledge of future human actions would somehow cause those
actions. This, however, is to put the
cart before the horse. God’s knowledge
of the future is actually knowledge that has taken all human actions into
account. In other words, it is human
actions that lead (in part) to God’s knowledge of the future being what it is,
not God’s knowledge of the future that leads to human actions being what they
will be.
For example, suppose that at some point tomorrow I have the choice
whether to go out or stay at home. God
knows what I will do, but that knowledge will in no way cause my action. If I go out, then God knows that I will
choose to do that. If I stay at home,
God knows that I will choose to do that.
God knows what I am going to do, but my will is unaffected by God’s
knowledge of how I will use that will. Instead,
how I will use my will affects what the future is that God knows.
Conclusion
That ends our discussion, so let’s sum up the key things we have
found.
First, the idea that God has limited knowledge of the future in
areas where the human will is involved is clearly unbiblical. Some passages show His knowledge of people’s future
actions. And those passages which might at
first sight seem to imply that He has sometimes grown in knowledge can easily
be understood as anthropomorphisms.
Second, the belief that God knows all the future in no way
conflicts with a belief in the genuine free will of people. God’s knowledge is a knowledge that has taken
all human actions into account. It is
not a knowledge that in any way causes human actions.
Open theism, although it might mean well, actually presents a
picture of God that seriously fails to do justice to His greatness. It should therefore be regarded as a serious
error.
I would suggest that those Christians who think, for example, that
God didn’t know that human beings would sin, or that Saul would turn out to be
such a bad king, are a long way from understanding the greatness of God. Quite simply, God knows absolutely everything,
including everything that is future from a human perspective.
See also:
