The heart of the word, "god," is power. In all religions, God is seen as transcendent power. This is the one idea that all concepts of God share.

Today I picked up an old collection of theological essays, Frontline Theology, edited by Dean Peerman. I read "Religion, Faith, and Power," by Richard R. Niebuhr. I've like Niebuhr for a long time.

In the course of his essay, he says: "If I must choose one word now to indicate the meaning of the word, ‘God,’ it is power. (Of . . . alternatives available . . . This one [power] seems to me the most universally significant.)." That sounds almost like what I wrote above. I would agree with Niebuhr if by, "God," he means "god."

The Christian God is distinguished as the God whose power is love,
whose power is subordinated (sub-ordered, arranged beneath) to love,
whose power is in the service of Holy Love.

The power of love, not the love of power.

Open Theism Again

He was talking about me. How do I know? Because he had been kind enough to let me know before mailing the letter for publication in the Texas Baptist Standard. For months this San Antonio pastor, a former student of mine, had been emailing, calling on me to repent of the “heresy” of Open Theism.

I am recording here a part of my response to the published letter, a letter that was the opening volley in a war against open theism among Texas Baptists. I record this, hoping to further an awareness of the nature of this controversial doctrine of God’s relationship to the future.

Sad to say, I have been told by people wiser than myself that there is no chance that open theism will ever find favor among Baptist Christians. So far as I know, I am the only Texas Baptist to openly identify with open theism, but I disagree about its future. The views of Copernicus, Columbus, and Semmelweis, although widely believed today, were a long time gaining acceptance. This is a pattern well-known to historians.

The fact is that I strongly affirm most of what my adversary says open theists deny. Using the language of his letter, I believe “God is: holy, good, loving, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-present,” although I define omniscience more precisely than it is understood traditionally. I also believe “salvation is: by grace alone, through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone.”

Again using his language, I do not “deny the foreknowledge of God,” although I understand it differently than many do. I certainly do not “describe God as one who makes mistakes,” or who “repents as a man.” [Italics mine] God does not make mistakes nor does he repent in the ways characteristic of humans.

I do affirm that God “risks, regrets, and repents,” but not as men repent. Also, in contrast to the charge in the letter, I strongly affirm God’s capability to work all things together for good.
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To move now beyond the letter and my response, I believe that open theism clarifies what Christians believe about God. The truth is that most of us live by a theology of openness whether our doctrinal understanding agrees with it or not. Open theism is an effort made to bring our doctrine and our practice into harmony. It can help us integrate thought and life and lead us toward greater Christian integrity.

The alternative to open theism is a closed theology in which everything in history and eternity is already a “done deal,” and we are without choice. Moreover God is without choice. Open theism denies such a closed world. It affirms the good news that the future is open–that God is open. We live in a world of possibilities; nothing has to remain as it is; no one has to go on living as they have. Change is an open possibility.

The Bible (The New Testament as well as the Hebrew Bible, which was Jesus’ Bible, and which is the Christian’s Old Testament) is at it heart and in its purpose a gospel message. It is good news. Open theism is rooted in the gospel story, in the love of God, in what prayer is all about, and what evangelism is all about. Its major challenges come from concerns about divine sovereignty, prophecy, foreknowledge, predestination, and foreordination, and in the immutability–unchangeability–of God, all of which I will address another time.

Open theism is the theology Christian actually live by, that unconsciously we believe. We live believing the good news that the future is open, that it depends on how we decide to relate to God. We are free to repent of our sinful ways and turn to the God whose arms are “open wide.” Our future is open. It is not already in and done from all eternity.

We pray believing that prayer affects God. Prayer, by itself, does not change things. It does not operate by some kind of independent magic. It is God, who in response to our prayers, changes things. Some things will not happen if we do not pray; some things will happen only if we do pray.

What God will do in the future depends in part on our prayer life, our living relation to him. Although many of us would hesitate to say it explicitly, in practice we believe that prayer can change what God will do. The future, under God’s control, is partly dependent on us.

We evangelize the non-Christian, believing who although lost at present, their future is open. Although now in their unforgiven sin, they stand under the wrath of God, if they repent and believe the gospel, we know that God’s gracious love stands ready to forgive and accept them. It has long been observed that although many Baptists preach Calvinistic sermons, they extend Arminian invitations.

Open theism, contrary to some representations of it, does not necessarily choose sides in the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. If these systems are defined in narrow form, open theism rejects them both. On the other hand, it affirms–as historic Baptist practice and cooperation has done–features of both. It is a mistake to cast open theism as merely another way of describing the old predestination/free will debate.

The biblical statement, “God is love,” is the defining foundation for open theism. Love is not God, but God is love. Holy Love is the very heart and character of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ. All other attributes and actions of God flow from his holy love.

Love is a relationship–a personal relationship. It is neither a principle nor merely a power. It is a word used to describe personal relationships that are as God intends.

Love by its very nature is grounded in freedom. Love cannot be forced; it must be freely chosen, else it is not love. This is why God created the human with freedom of choice. We are created for a relationship of love with God and with each other. God loves us and desires our love, but in the very nature of love cannot force that love. Our rejection of God always disappoints him; our love for, trust in, and worship of God always pleases him.

We miss the major thrust of the Bible if we think that our response doesn’t affect God at all, that it makes no difference to him. And if it does make a difference--any difference--to God, then, in some sense, our decisions change something within the very heart of God. We make a difference to God, and we are dealing with a God who is open to reconsider some of his actions. If this is really so, the story of this kind of God is good news.
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We will explore this further.

"Open Theism"

If God is relative, not absolute, than it would seem that God is subject to change, and of course we all know that God cannot change. Again, we are under the influence of Aristotle and his Unmoved Mover, and are still in agreement that Patripassionism is heresy. Yes, God changes.

Note the several references in the Scriptures where it is said that God repented of one thing or another. We all understand that God has not done something wrong for which he must repent, but we also must recognize that God, in some sense, changes course in these passages. God is often frustrated, but never thwarted. If he fails to find those who will trust and obey, he continues to move to accomplish his will and purpose. I

t was not God’s will that Israel have a king in the days of Samuel, the judge of Israel. God was their king. But when they were insistent, God made a shift, relative to their stand, and gave them Saul as king. God could accommodate himself to the situation, and did. When Saul became a disappointment, God selected David as a replacement; when David failed at significant points, Solomon was God’s choice, but God again found the need for a course correction after the failure of Solomon.

Nowhere is change more evident in God than in the Incarnation. God, by divine knowledge and creative experience knew everything about human being, but he did not know by experience what it meant to be a human being until Mary had her child named Jesus who was in all points human. This is something new for God, to be Emmanuel.

And when Jesus prayed in agony in Gethsemane, and later on the cross asked in despair why God had forsaken him, surely no one is prepared to say this made no difference to God. The full story of God’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth means there is some kind of difference in God after the incarnation. God, in some sense, is changed.

Now Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the second “person” of The Trinity, knows, bu experience, what it is like to live as a human. That is who he was on this earth, and as the writer of the Hebrews notes, that is who is now, and always be: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Rather than proving that God doesn’t change, it refers to the fact that God is changed forever as a result of the incarnation.

God’s character doesn’t change, God’s purpose doesn’t change, but because his character and purpose are relational in nature, it is God’s character to be free to change, relative to the living people and their free responses as they are involved in the working out of his purpose.

God is love, God can be trusted eternally; Jesus is the truth and the only way. In him alone is life and that life is the light of men. This truth doesn’t change.

But God is alive and dynamic, not a mere eternal principle, Force, or Absolute Idea, so there is a continual process of change in God as he still suffers for us, in us, and with us. Since we are free and God is free, the future depends on the way we respond to God: in faith and obedience, or in rebellion and disbelief.
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Another potential objection immediately arises. If the future is dependent on our response to God’s initiative, then it would seem that God would not know what the future will be, the future would be open. Doesn’t God know everything? Isn’t God omniscient?

The answer lies in the distinction between the potential future an the actual future. The eternal, holy God who created the entire world knows everything that has happened--the actual past--knows everything that is on the scene of the present--the actual present--and knows all future potentiality. Nothing could occur that would surprise God or catch him unprepared. But the actual future is another matter.

H. L. Cravens, a legendary teacher at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, was a nationally acclaimed, championship checker player. Occasionally on days set aside for fun, he would challenge as many university students as desired to play him in a game of checkers--all at once. Tables were set up and as many as sixteen checkerboards might be lined up as students took him on.

Dr. Cravens stepped to the first table, the first checkerboard, and moved a checker, then to the second board, and on, until he had played each student. Then he would walk back to the first table and start again with the first student’s game. He took only a few seconds at each board. In a short while, a few boards began to be folded, then more, until only two or three remained. Dr. Cravens always defeated all challengers, although I do remember one fellow who claimed, “I almost beat him.”

For years I assumed that my friend knew all possible moves on a checkerboard, and had strategies for dealing with any of them. I suspected that after the first two or three moves he knew whether his opponent was a serious player or not, and that he could usually predict what each player was likely to play next.



A couple of days before his death, visiting in his home, I told him I had often spoken of his checker knowledge as analogous to God’s knowledge. He confirmed most of what I said about his knowledge of checkers, but noted that he did not begin to know all possible moves that might develop during the course of a game between skilled players. He believed those moves to be almost infinite in number.

He did agree that after the first few moves he knew what kind of player he was up against, and that at any given moment he knew not only what possibilities there were for the next move, but also what move a player was likely to make. He also knew ahead of time how he would respond, depending on what choice his challenger took.

As indicated earlier, I see H. L.’s knowledge of checkers as a pointer to God’s knowledge of the future. The world and human history are infinitely more complex than a checker game, but God created it all and does know all its possible moves. Humans were created with genuine freedom, but again, God knows all possibilities that exist for humanity as well as for each person. In the sense that he knows all future possibilities and cannot be surprised or caught unprepared, God knows everything. But because God is love--relational--and because he created humans with the freedom that love entails, God does not know the actual future until it happens.

At any given moment, he knows not only what moves are possible, but he knows what moves are likely because of the pattern and character of the past. He is prepared to accomplish his purpose not matter what human choices are made, but if the human is genuinely free, God cannot know which option will be taken until it is actually taken.

God can be trusted to complete the creation and redemption he has begun; he will not be defeated. There will come the time when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” the day when the victory will be complete and he will be known as “King of Kings and Lords,” will put all enemies under his feet, “and he shall reign forever and forever.” But until then, both God and his creature struggle with the powers of evil, and the moment by moment development of this conflict is open and unknowable in its actuality until that moment happens.

To repeat, God knows all the past, the entire present scene, and all potential futures, but he does not and cannot know the actual future until it occurs. Our understanding of God’s knowledge hinges on the distinction between potential and actual future events. More fundamentally, it hinges on our understanding of the relation between love and freedom.