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PDFBy David R. Bauer
Free Methodists believe that we must take seriously the fact that Scripture presents God as both knowing the future and sometimes changing his mind. Some readers of the Bible take these two descriptions to be contradictory. After all, they would say, how can God change his mind on the basis of something that happens at a point in time if God had had full knowledge of the future and was thus aware of all that would happen? This consideration has led certain readers of the Bible to deny either God’s complete foreknowledge or God’s practice of changing his mind on the basis of what human beings do.
But the Bible affirms both of these descriptions of God, and does not consider them contradictory. Although the biblical writers do not argue explicitly for God’s complete foreknowledge, they do assume God’s foreknowledge and many passages describe God as knowing the future (Genesis 15:13, Daniel 2:21-49, Acts 20:23, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12). In addition, there are several New Testament passages that represent Jesus as knowing the future (Matthew 24:5-25, 13:11 and 38; 21:18-19).
Other biblical statements describe God as changing his mind on the basis of what humans do (Exodus 32:1-34, Jonah 3:1-10; 1 Samuel 15:1-35, Matthew 2:20-22). The Old Testament describes this divine change as an instance of God’s “repentance.” This language does not suggest that God realized that what he intended to do was morally wrong, and therefore changed his behavior. Rather, it indicates that in response to specific human actions God reconsidered what he had intended to do. God’s practice of answering prayer participates in this broader pattern of God responding to human initiation.
According to human experience and logic, these two perspectives appear contradictory; or they at least seem to imply contradiction. But at this point we must remember the fundamental claim of Scripture that God is holy. God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are incomparably higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). Scholars refer to this biblical understanding of God’s holiness as “transcendence.” From the human perspective, there is necessarily a paradox (i.e., an apparent contradiction) with the God who is above time and yet works within the temporal framework. What we humans might consider contradictory may be entirely consistent with God. There are certain cases in which the only way limited humans can approximate an understanding of God is to affirm two (apparently) contradictory things at the same time. Thus, God both knows entirely the future, and God sometimes changes his mind on the basis of what his human creatures do. Therefore, on the basis of God’s holiness or transcendence, we resist the strong human tendency to reconcile the Bible’s paradoxical language on God’s foreknowledge.
Moreover, the Bible does not consider that God’s practice of sometimes changing his mind in response to human initiative suggests a limitation of God’s sovereignty. The Bible indicates that God’s sovereignty is large enough to include a measure of human freedom and initiative. God sovereignly wills the divine-human relationship as described in the Bible, and has thus constituted his human creatures as true persons who possess the capacity for moral freedom.
Free Methodists do not believe that the doctrine of the sovereignty of God means that God has predestined everything, in the sense that God absolutely and directly causes it to happen. Rather, God’s sovereignty means that the universe has meaning and order. There are some things that must happen, such as the fulfillment of prophecy in accordance with God’s purposes. There are many things that may happen, given the freedom God has bestowed upon humanity. But God is sovereignly at work in all these things, so that each in its own way contributes to the realization of God’s good purposes (Romans 8:28). The responsiveness of God, then, expresses God’s sovereignty and serves the purposes of God’s love.
Thank you, Dr. Bauer and the SCOD, for issuing this statement regarding God’s foreknowledge. I believe this helps ground us as we wrestle with some of the ideas put forth by Open Theism. While we don’t adhere to the determinism of those who follow Calvin, we nonetheless recognize God’s transcendence and the providence that results. I think this is a valuable corrective to previous messages that have been conveyed.
Hello, I’ll thank my Pastor, Keith Simpson for informing me of this blog post as this is something we’ve discussed on a few occasions as I am one who finds the open view immensely helpful in understanding God’s providence and knowledge and our freedom.
I agree that God’s holiness and transcendence amongst other attributes contribute to and remind us of the vast mysterious nature of God. Still, I think we should be cautious in then applying the category of mystery to what seems like a contradiction. It very well could be that the reason that we detect a contradiction here is because there is a contradiction and God wants us to use our best reasoning faculties to recognize the contradiction and then explore another route for our understanding. In other words, we ought to be careful not to cover bad doctrine (bad because it is contradictory) with mystery.
I would call attention to the admission above, that “the biblical writers do not argue explicitly for God’s complete foreknowledge, they do assume God’s foreknowledge and many passages describe God as knowing the future,” leaves plenty of room for the open view. As an open theist, I don’t believe that there is nothing about the future that is unsettled and unknowable, but rather parts of the future remain open, and parts of the future are settled as future events, distant and immediate become determined in the present or have been determined in the past. They become determined through deterministic natural processes, free decisions of humans and free decisions of God that in the past, he sovereignly left open to be determined later or revised (as he changes his mind in response to humans who repent or petition him with his goals at heart, though God also knows what decisions he will never change as scripture has told us). In this picture, God can even know some of our future choices because we do act on autopilot, we do act on character that is developed through our choices, yet we do come to legitimate forks in the road that will be formative for future decisions out of the character that forms, but those other decisions are not knowable as settled until we resolve the potential. So while I admit that some psychological determination plays a role, I don’t shy away from that because our experience is indeed filled with decisions where we truly could go either way (thus free) and some decisions that are automatic and according to personality.
As an open theist, I do hold what could also be described as a paradoxical position, that God does indeed know the future exhaustively, but as to why I hold that this paradox is not really a contradiction is known to me as can be gleaned from reason, experience and scripture. I insist on this description of the future not as a game of semantics but because it really is the nature of the future on which we disagree. I don’t believe that the future is out there as a settled one dimensional list of facts of events that proceed one after the other nor is it out there on some other temporal plain as some frozen unchangeable thing. I hold that God has sovereignly designed our future with algorithms with variables left open for us. This is a very complex future where the results of every contingency is known. God knows everything about what will follow and what may follow one set of choices as well as the alternative set of choices. The future is exhaustively known not like a standard novel, but rather it is like the books popular amongst youths of “choose your own adventure.” God knows all the possible outcomes and he knows which outcomes he has sovereignly chosen to come from coming to pass, such as any outcome in which his promises and purposes are not fulfilled (which still leaves many other possible outcomes).
Another caution about resting too much on mystery is because many of us we free will theists reject the similar route taken by so many Calvinists. We are to accept that it’s just a mystery how we are responsible for our sins even though they would not have happened had God not eternally decreed it nor can they fail to happen in light of that decree. But it’s also a profound mystery to me as to how in light of that, a morally good God can righteously damn us, whom he created in his own image. I along with choose to reject this as a legitimate mystery and won’t dress it in God’s Holiness and transcendence. I submit that this only highlights the caution we must exercise when covering contradictions with mystery.
I do appreciate the description of sovereignty offered that God is bringing his purposes out of the world.