Theopedia

Open theism

Definition

Open theism, also called free will theism, is the position that God does not have exhaustive knowledge of the future.1 Because human choices are genuinely free in the libertarian sense, uncaused by anything that would make their outcome certain in advance, future free acts are not yet true or false facts for God to know until they occur.2 Proponents still call God omniscient, redefining the term as knowledge of everything actually true, and hold that he has voluntarily limited his own knowledge and control of history so that creatures’ choices can be real rather than predetermined.3

Historical Origin

The position is not new. Charles Hodge’s account of the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge locates the same denial in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: “The Socinians, however, and some of the Remonstrants, unable to reconcile this foreknowledge with human liberty, deny that free acts can be foreknown… Such is the argument of Socinus.”4 Matthew Barrett’s dissertation on monergism draws the same line forward to the present: unable to reconcile libertarian free will with exhaustive foreknowledge, and unwilling to give up the former, some modern Arminians reject God’s exhaustive foreknowledge instead, so that “in this area Open Theists are in good company with the sixteenth to seventeenth-century Socinians.”5

The modern movement takes its name and its present form from a cluster of evangelical theologians writing in the 1990s: Clark Pinnock and several co-authors in The Openness of God (1994), John Sanders in The God Who Risks (1998), and Gregory Boyd in God of the Possible (2000).6 Pinnock held that God has bound himself by “a kind of covenant of non-coercion with creatures,” accepting “certain metaphysical constraints that God cannot avoid” as the price of a real relationship with genuinely free creatures.3 He described his own position as “a species of free will theism” set against “the strong immutability central to the Thomistic model.”7

The movement drew formal opposition inside evangelical institutions. Roger Nicole, a founding member of the Evangelical Theological Society, brought charges that Pinnock’s and Sanders’s open theism violated the Society’s doctrinal statement on biblical inerrancy, and Norman Geisler pressed the same objection.8 At the Society’s 2003 annual meeting in Atlanta, a motion to remove both men from membership fell short of the required two-thirds majority, and both retained their membership.9

Core Tenets

Craig Carter groups open theism with process theology and social trinitarianism as three twentieth-century departures from the classical doctrine of God that share a common premise: that the transcendent, unchanging God of classical theism cannot have a genuine relationship with his creatures.10 Open theism is the mildest of the three. Because the limits it places on God’s power and knowledge are self-imposed, by God’s own choice to bind himself to creatures rather than a metaphysical necessity built into his nature, Carter judges it “much closer to orthodoxy than process theology.”11

Open theists argue that a God who exhaustively foreknows, or who exercises meticulous control over, every future event leaves creatures without the kind of freedom that a real relationship requires, since a choice that could not have been otherwise is not, on their account, a choice at all.2 They read Scripture’s language of God “relenting,” being grieved, or responding to prayer and repentance as describing God’s actual, unscripted engagement with events as they unfold, rather than as accommodated language describing, from a human vantage point, a plan already fixed.6

Confessional and Biblical Response

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states that God’s knowledge is not grounded in, and does not depend on, any prior sight of what creatures would freely do: “Although God knoweth whatsoever may or can come to pass, upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything, because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”12 The clause “whatsoever may or can come to pass” leaves no class of future contingents outside God’s knowledge, precisely what open theism denies.

This has been the broad consensus of the church generally, not a distinctively Reformed or Baptist commitment. Hodge states it plainly: “The Church, therefore, in obedience to the Scriptures, has, almost with one voice, professed faith in God’s foreknowledge of the free acts of his creatures.”13

Scripture states the extent of God’s knowledge of the future without the qualification open theism proposes. God alone can say, “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isa. 46:9-10), a claim of knowledge Scripture treats as marking God off from every rival claimant to deity (Isa. 41:21-23). David confesses that God knows his words “before a word is on my tongue” (Ps. 139:4), and Job, silenced by God’s own questioning, concedes, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). 1 John 3:20 states the same reach in summary: God “knows everything.”

Hodge answers the objection, shared by Socinus and by modern open theists, that certain foreknowledge is incompatible with genuine freedom: “If an act may be certain as to its occurrence, and yet free as to the mode of its occurrence, the difficulty vanishes… The foreknowledge of God is inconsistent with a false theory of free agency, but not with the true doctrine on that subject.”4

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Matthew Barrett, ed., None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Bethany House, 2019), glossary, s.v. “open theism”: “A view that denies God knows the future; it denies God has exhaustive foreknowledge.” ↩

  2. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Inadequacy of Arminian Synergism,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 317-355: “This problem has led many Arminians (Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, etc.) to Open Theism because they cannot reconcile exhaustive foreknowledge with libertarian free will. Therefore, rather than rejecting libertarianism they reject God’s exhaustive foreknowledge.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 137, quoted in Craig A. Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 1. ↩ ↩2

  4. Charles Hodge, “Chapter V. Nature and Attributes of God,” in Systematic Theology, Volume I (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 366-442, 400-401: “The Socinians, however, and some of the Remonstrants, unable to reconcile this foreknowledge with human liberty, deny that free acts can be foreknown… Such is the argument of Socinus… If an act may be certain as to its occurrence, and yet free as to the mode of its occurrence, the difficulty vanishes… The foreknowledge of God is inconsistent with a false theory of free agency, but not with the true doctrine on that subject.” ↩ ↩2

  5. Barrett, “The Inadequacy of Arminian Synergism,” 335: “In this area Open Theists are in good company with the sixteenth to seventeenth-century Socinians.” ↩

  6. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel,” editor’s note: “There is a revival of this view in early twenty-first-century North American evangelical theology under the rubric of ‘open theism.’ Important titles include: Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000); Clark H. Pinnock et al., The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994); John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998); for a critique, see Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004).” ↩ ↩2

  7. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, x-xi, quoted in Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism.” ↩

  8. Doug Koop, “Closing the Door on Open Theists?,” Christianity Today, January 1, 2003, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2003/01/closing-door-on-open-theists/. ↩

  9. Jeff Robinson, “Is Open Theism Still a Factor 10 Years after ETS Vote?,” The Gospel Coalition, 2013, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-open-theism-still-a-factor-10-years-after-ets-vote/. ↩

  10. Craig A. Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 1: “A slightly less radical proposal, but one that arises from similar concerns, is the open theism of Clark Pinnock and others.” ↩

  11. Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism”: “In open theism the limits on God’s power are seen as self-imposed and voluntary on his part, which makes this view much closer to orthodoxy than process theology.” ↩

  12. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 3, “Of God’s Decree,” para. 2. ↩

  13. Hodge, “Chapter V. Nature and Attributes of God,” 400: “The Church, therefore, in obedience to the Scriptures, has, almost with one voice, professed faith in God’s foreknowledge of the free acts of his creatures.” ↩