The bible, openness, and the spaces between
The exegetical conclusions of Old Testament study insist that God does not simply create man and then stand back without the knowledge of his free choices, simply waiting to see what he will choose, as is inferred from the arguments of Open Theists. Listen to what Clark Pinnock has to say regarding God’s supposed “openness”.
“In contrast to other, more abstract approaches to theism, the open view of God is a relational model of understanding. In conventional theism, God is seen as an all-controlling and unchangeable Being who determines directly or indirectly all things that happen. He exists out of time and is unaffected by anything. He knows all things in advance and sovereignly ordains what he knows. The open view, on the other hand, sees God as a relational and triune God who exists as a community (Father, Son, and Spirit) and seeks loving relationships with creatures. In order for such relationships to be possible, God imparts genuine (or “libertarian”) freedom to human beings. This freedom allows them the possibility of loving God or of acting in ways unconstrained by God’s will. God chooses to achieve his goals by means of collaboration with humans rather than by predetermination. Out of this view emerges a God who is vulnerable as he experiences the pain of human rejection and the consequences of disobedience. But God is also infinitely resourceful and competent, responding to our choices in ways that enable him, in cooperation with us, to achieve his purposes. One aspect of this approach has to do with God’s foreknowledge. God does not (we think) have exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of every detail of the future, but has so arranged things that the future would be created through divine-creaturely interaction. In terms of divine sovereignty, it means that God exercises general rather than meticulous providence; that is, he leaves the future partly settled and partly unsettled. It is settled in that much can be foreseen and God’s victory is assured. It is unsettled in that the circumstances in which God achieves his ends are open to change. As we like to say, God’s goals have open routes.[i]”
It is Pinnock’s position that the Reformed view of God (even the evangelical view of God) is antithetical to the possibility of God being relational. Neither does it allow for His creatures to genuinely love Him, thus the introduction of the idea of “libertarian freedom”. It is neither right to claim that God simply knows all the potential choices that might be made by all the beings that may possibly exist, as the Molinist would suggest or to make the heretical assertions that Pinnock makes. Pinnock is also wrong when he criticizes what he calls “conventional theism” for believing that God is “unaffected by anything”. Surely he must remember that classical Reformed theology is not “Neo-Platonic”, making the error that the “divine” cannot cooperate with the flesh because its transcendence is absolute; that God is utterly “other”. No, Christian theology affirms that God condescends to His creation as the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth. So, at least in that way, God is affected by that which He has created and this is no small point; the New Testament itself claims that Christ identifies with our suffering. On the other hand, Molinism (sometimes referred to by a primary tenet—middle knowledge) bears the name of its early popularizer, Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina[1] and is in contrast to Calvinism and open theism, as this quote from an article at gotquestions.com suggests.
“According to Molina, God knew perfectly what you would be have been like if you would have lived in Africa , or had a car accident that paralyzed you at age 9. He knows how the world would have been changed had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated. From small to big, from people to animals, God knows every possibility that can exist. And according to Molina, it is by this knowledge God governs the world. God has all possibilities laid out before Him, and He chooses which is best. This system might satisfy the intellect when it comes to evil. For God only allows evil to happen if He sees it will result in a good outcome. But in reality, all events, whether good or evil, are not dependent on God’s wise decrees, but on what history gives God to work with. [ii]
He (Luis de Molina) wrote a book called The Harmony of Free Will with the Gifts of Divine Grace, in which he advocated a theory of the relation between grace and free will. He maintained that efficacious grace does not move the free will to cooperate with it but that the free will makes grace efficacious by cooperating with. The Molinists emphasized an universal divine salvific Will and often maintained that God elects to salvation those whom He foreknows will cooperate with his grace. Thus God’s foreknowledge, the scientia media, was held to act as a sort of “middle” mechanism between the human free will on the one hand, and the efficacy of grace and of divine election on the other. Modern Proponents Include: Luis de Molina, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and Thomas P. Flint. [iii]”
Having at the age of eighteen become a member of the Society of Jesus, he studied theology at Coimbra, and afterward became professor in the university of Évora, Portugal. From this post he was called, at the end of twenty years, to the chair of moral theology in Madrid.Besides other works he wrote De liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia (4 vo., Lisbon, 1588); a commentary on the first part of the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas (2 vols., fol., Cuenca, 1593); and a treatise De jure et justitia (6 vols., 1593-1609). Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[i] Pinnock Clark. article at thecatalyst.com. Sanders, Cf. J. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence
[ii] What is Molinism, and Is It Biblical? Article at www.gotquestions.org
[iii] Middle Knowledge (Molinism) Article at www.monergism.com
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