LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)—Those who say God’s
knowledge of the future is limited are proposing a dangerous view
that counters 2,000 years of Christian belief, Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary professor Bruce Ware said on a Boston radio
program.
Ware appeared recently on the Chuck Morse
Radio Show on WROL-AM to discuss open theism — the belief
that God does not and cannot know the future free choices people
will make. Open theists propose that God, in seeking free
responses from people, neither determines nor “foreknows”
what they will do.
A vocal critic of open theism, Ware has
written a book titled, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished
God of Open Theism.
Open theism was the subject of much debate
at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in November when
members voted to challenge the membership of open theists Clark
Pinnock and John Sanders. The vote at the Toronto meeting was 171-131
against Pinnock, 166-143 against Sanders. An ETS committee will
review the motion and present its report at next year’s
meeting — possibly recommending their expulsion. The ETS is
composed of theologians who affirm biblical inerrancy, and Ware
is a member.
“They [open theists] are very aware of
the criticisms that people like me have raised, but they don’t
accept them,” Ware told Morse. “... I view the
implications of the open view to be very damaging to the faith of
Christian believers — to be told that the God in whom they
trust can make mistakes, and [that He] looks back on His own
actions and says, ‘I’m not sure I would have done that
if I knew then what I know now.’ It’s a very man-like
God to me.”
Christians throughout the centuries have
embraced the view that God has exhaustive knowledge of the
future, Ware asserted.
“This is the classical tradition of the
church, and of course this predates all the way back to the early
church theologians,” he said. “... The view has been
that, yes, God created people with freedom and, yes, God knows
every detail of what the future holds before He creates the world.
So there’s no surprise to God in terms of how it all comes
out in the end.”
Ware said the Bible is full of passages
attesting to God’s complete omniscience (or, his knowledge
of all things). Ware read Isaiah 46:10, in which God says he
declares “the end from the beginning.”
“When God tells us that He wins, that
good wins over evil and His Kingdom will triumph, that’s not
guesswork, that’s not probability, that’s not
hopefulness — that is God’s knowledge of what will be,”
Ware said. “Scripture is filled with examples of and direct
teachings about God’s knowledge of and direction of all of
history.”
In explaining the balance between God’s
direction of human history and human freedom, Ware discussed the
Genesis story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers.
“No one would question the fact that
they chose to sell their brother in Egypt,” he said. “And
they did so in a jealous manner and they were held morally
accountable for that. But then we find ... Joseph [saying],
‘It was not you who sent them here, but God sent me.’
“The language is not, ‘God made
good out of what evil you did,’ [it is instead,] ‘It
was God who sent me here.’”
Ware said open theism is a belief system
that evangelicals of all stripes reject.
“It’s not like the Arminian view
or the Calvinist view or other views that have been held within
evangelicalism,” he said. “This is one that most would
say is not acceptable.”
Ware discussed several passages open theists
often quote. One involves the story of Jonah, another the story
of Hezekiah.
In the first example, Jonah tells the people
of Nineveh their city will be destroyed in 40 days. But they
repent, and Jonah 3:10 says that “God relented concerning
the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them.”
In the second example, found in Isaiah 38, God tells Hezekiah,
“Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.”
Hezekiah prays to God, and the Lord adds 15 years to his life.
“The whole point is to elicit a
response,” Ware said of the two passages. “Isn’t
God telling them what he does for the purpose of the response so
that then he can do what he intended all along to do, and that
is, in the case of Nineveh, bring forgiveness to them, and in the
case of Hezekiah, extend his life?”
Even Jonah himself believed that God would
have mercy on Nineveh, Ware said.
“I think it’s just a superficial
reading of those repentance passages to think that God learned
something new and changed his mind because of it.”
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