The present debate about divine foreknowledge has revealed a deeper problem. We have lost sight of who God is. Many modern replies to open theism respond from fear and not from the settled faith of the Church. This is seen in public statements like the Southern Baptist Convention’s confession that says, God’s perfect knowledge includes the future decisions of free creatures. See Article II at the official site for the text you can read in full ( link ).
The early councils never began with abstractions. They confessed the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In that shared life, God knows and loves and gives. Scripture speaks of the Spirit who searches the deep things of God ( 1 Cor. 2:10 to 11 ). This is not dead knowledge. This is communion. Nicaea confessed that the Son is of one substance with the Father. Constantinople confessed the Holy Spirit as Lord and giver of life. Chalcedon confessed the one Lord Jesus Christ in two natures without confusion and without change and without division and without separation. The third council of Constantinople confessed that the Lord Jesus has a divine will and a human will. These confessions do not shrink God. They protect the truth that perfect love can truly give and truly receive without loss of divinity. The Father gives Himself to the Son. The Son receives and returns that love. The Spirit proceeds as the bond of that communion. The life of God is eternally self giving. For this reason, openness is not an add on to God. It belongs to who God is. When the future of creatures is truly open, God knows it perfectly as open. God does not lack anything. God knows all that can be known, as Alan Rhoda argues in his careful account of generic open theism.1 James D. Rissler adds that providence is hopeful rather than fearful. God works toward His purpose in a way that honors freedom because love does not control.2 The decisive truth is the person of Christ. Who is Jesus today. He is still fully God and fully man. After His resurrection He ate with His disciples ( Lk. 24:42 to 43 ). He invited Thomas to touch His wounds ( Jn. 20:27 ). He ascended bodily ( Acts 1:9 to 11 ). Stephen saw the Son of Man at the right hand of God ( Acts 7:56 ). Paul calls Him the man Christ Jesus ( 1 Tim. 2:5 ).
This means that the Son’s assumption of our humanity is forever. God has united creaturely finitude to Himself without loss. Any model of foreknowledge or sovereignty that cannot honor this permanent truth has already drifted from the councils. The prophetic witness fits this reality. In Jeremiah, God says perhaps they will listen, which shows real contingency within God’s address ( Jer. 26:3 ). Jack R. Lundbom notes that this is not mere theater. It is how God works with people in time.3 Terence E. Fretheim adds that the point of prophetic speech is to avert disaster, not to stage a pretend exchange ( Jer. 26:3 ).4
A root mistake in much reactionary theology is to read Israel’s Scriptures as if the Trinity were not revealed. When we read the Lord who grieves and relents without reference to the Son and the Spirit, we force the text into an alien mold. The Father who speaks through the prophets is the same Father who sends the Son and gives the Spirit. Prophecy is personal address. It invites response. D. Brent Sandy shows that prophetic language often uses figures that compress whole histories into living symbols that depend on how people respond, as when Jeremiah speaks of Shiloh ( Jer. 26:6 ).5 When we define omniscience as a frozen list of future facts, we silence the clear testimony of Scripture. We also make the humanity of Christ into a problem rather than the glory of God. This is why reactionary statements like the Southern Baptist confession are not safe guards of orthodoxy. They are symptoms of forgetfulness. They forget the councils. They forget the Trinity. They forget that love can know and act and yet make room. The Church did not survive by reacting. The Church survived by confessing. One God in three Persons. One Lord Jesus Christ in two natures and two wills. To hold this is to honor Scripture and to honor the way God works in history. When we start here, the best insights of open theism find their true home. God’s knowledge is not ignorance of the future. It is perfect wisdom that knows possibilities as possibilities and actualities as actualities, and all of it in love. The future is open to us because the life of God is self giving. The Son who ate with His friends and showed His wounds and rose and ascended is the same Lord who will come again. The Spirit searches the deep things of God and helps us in our weakness ( Rom. 8:26 ). The Father speaks even now, not to stage a show, but to bring us to life. Let us begin with the Trinity. Let us keep the councils. Let us read prophecy as the living word of the living God.
Notes
1 Alan R. Rhoda, “Generic Open Theism and Some Varieties Thereof,” Religious Studies 44, no. 2, 2008.
2 James D. Rissler, “Open Theism: Does God Risk or Hope,” Religious Studies 42, no. 1, 2006.
3 Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 21 to 36, Anchor Yale Bible 21B, 2008, on Jeremiah 26:1 to 24.
4 Terence E. Fretheim, Jeremiah, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, 2002, on Jeremiah 26.
5 D. Brent Sandy, Plowshares and Pruning Hooks, InterVarsity Press, 2002, on prophetic figures and compression.