Battle Royale X: Openness Theology, Enyart's Post 4B
Battle Royale X: Openness Theology, Enyart's Post 4B
I send out a heartfelt
thank you to Jefferson, the one who arranged this contest, and a hardworking TOL super-moderator! Sam, thanks for asking questions that keep the debate focused! In this post I directly answer all of the official questions that my Settled View opponent has put to me, including Christ’s prediction of Peter’s denials. Regarding other arguments you’ve made, for space constraints I’ve
cut for now my answers to your unofficial questions about non-prophesies and Psalm 139, leaving just barely enough room for two replies:
Conditional Prophecy
It is obvious that the message Jonah preached to Nineveh and thus the prophecy of God allowed for repentance. If not there is no reason to send Jonah, and no reason to give them forty days. -Sam, 3A
Sam,
by your own rationale, therefore all prophecies of warning allow for repentance, for they are (1) delivered, and (2) given prior to the threatened judgment. Either that, or you were just being argumentative, and reject your own logic.
That all prophetic warnings allow for repentance is explicitly: affirmed by the Open View, denied by Calvinists, and tolerated by Arminian Settled Viewers (as with Judas, Mark 14:21).
Problem of Evil
[The Open View] does not solve the problem of evil. Think, for example, about the planes flying into the twin towers. Even if God is limited to the present, he knew of the plot and knew that the planes were flying toward the towers. He did not stop them… I believe that at some point God will reveal to us why he allowed[/U that to happen and it will, in the end, glorify him. -Sam, 3A (emphasis added)
Sam, I’ll pardon you for this logical error, since it exists in the Openness camp also. A righteous Creator has two obligations: (1) to do rightly, and (2) to judge rightly (see obligation #1).
Do Right refers to His own actions, and
Judge Rightly as here is specifically His final response to wrongdoers. The Creator cannot reduce suffering by insulating His moral creatures from harming one another, as with an eternal bubble law. You can’t out-think God. Before Creation, God realized that to make us incapable of harming one another would not alleviate but increase the hurt. For
it is our very concern for others (which is called love),
that is one of the greatest motivators to not harm ourselves. Thus Jesus quoted the Mosaic Law (Lev. 1918), saying, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Mark 12:31). When a man’s heart has grown so cold that he will indiscriminately hurt others, he no longer loves himself either, and he can apply for a job with Al Qaeda. Imagine the horror that a typical American husband would become if nothing he did could hurt his wife or child! That is the epitome of well-meaning but misguided judgment, illustrated today by the counter-productive “deterrence” of left-wing governments trying to make it so that a man
can not, rather than
will not, commit crime. The epidemics of selfishness, unfaithfulness, and slothfulness would explode to a magnitude otherwise known only in hell, if our own sin could not hurt others. And then that child, whom you thought your bubble-law could protect, will grow up worse than his father, raised by a monster and unrestrained from childhood by any fear of hurting others.
The pagan Greek culture viewed
misfortune (even the word reeks of Hellenism) as being hurled at them by God for inexplicable and often arbitrary reasons. Augustine imported this into Christian theology by way of utter immutability (Arminians please note, as it turns out, this is what demands an entirely settled future). Thus Augustine interpreted his “toothache” (
Confessions, 9, iv) as coming from God, rather than from excessive sweets and poor hygiene; whereas for an unfathomable reason, God today desires less glory from cavities from those who floss. And speaking of the Reformed Aristotelian God, though His reasons for having plagued modern sailors with scurvy may elude human comprehension, the use of vitamin C has stopped the practice. For the Greeks thought Zeus threw lightening bolts as divine judgments, and after thousands of years of homes being hit, Benjamin Franklin devised the lightning rod, which has succeeded in foiling the aim of the Calvinist God.
The desire for human love that God gave us comes with the requisite risk of hating and of being hated. The capacity for fellowship necessitates the risk of hurting and being hurt. And God can rightly grant mercy to wrongdoers, patiently giving men around the world time to repent, without violating His righteousness. God would violate His own righteous nature, if He Himself orchestrated evil (like deciding how many times to have a child sodomized in a particular porn video scene, as Calvinists believe He does), or if He used patience as an excuse to allow injustice to go eternally unpunished, thus wrongly giving precedence to the merciful aspect of love over His own righteousness. And finally, everyone should understand the code word “allowed,” as used by Calvinists and even at times by Arminian Settled Viewers, and as just used by Sam, that “at some point God will reveal to us why he
allowed that to happen,” by which they mean that God specifically decided that this particular sin was preferable to repentance and holiness, such that this particular rape is preferable because it glorifies God. I rebuke that.
On How to Make a Rooster Crow
The entire Peter matter comes down to the rooster. How’s that? Because if my debate opponent (like many Calvinists and Settled Viewers) raises the objection that apart from exhaustive foreknowledge
God would really have a problem getting a rooster to crow on cue, then their losing position should be obvious. And this is what Open Viewers have to put up with, for if our opponents feign disbelief that God could cue a rooster, how can they possibly consider the Scriptural argument of God's insight and ability to influence human action?
And once again, I am embarrassed to have to give this response. But since Sam in round one presented the rooster as an actual dilemma, I’ll have to address it; and I’ll do that in spades:
[Openness author John] Sanders’s answer…, simply pushes the problem back a step. He posits that all that God needed to determine “in this case would be to have someone question Peter three times and a rooster crow.” The problem is obvious. How is it that God can be sure that one or two of those three people will not decide, at the last minute, not to question Peter? How is it that God can be sure that the particular rooster will not oversleep, or even be killed by its master? -Sam, Post 1A
As all birds sing, a rooster crows, and does so to remind competitors to stay out of his territory. Science still ponders what sets his internal clock, called a circadian rhythm, for he crows anticipating the sunrise to start a new day of hunting. Sometimes a rooster will crow early, whether from a fast clock or an empty stomach I haven’t learned, commonly prompting others to follow suit, for not uncommonly, roosters live within earshot of each other.
(By the way Sam, you asked about our family. Let me say here that Cheryl and I named our youngest son Dominic, and just tonight lying with him on our trampoline at dusk, he said, “the moon pulls the stars out.” He’s four. We named Dominic after my great-grandfather who was born in Italy, surnamed Galluccio, from the Italian
Gallo, meaning rooster! And when we go to Jerusalem, we especially enjoy visiting the church of Saint Peter
de Gallicantu, where the rooster crowed, the location being reasonably established. So perhaps I bring some family pride to the rooster matter
).
Now, Sam asks me, apart from exhaustive divine foreknowledge, how “God can be sure” that a rooster will crow when God wants it to crow. And I guess the best answer is that God can tell the rooster to crow, as He told Balaam’s donkey to speak. But in a serious debate on whether God is free to do brand new things, or whether
His entire future for all eternity is already settled, I have to take this further, because I’m informed that perhaps a hungry farmer would have eaten the rooster. Well… I suppose God would overcome that challenge by having another rooster crow. Their society was agrarian, after all, and the high priest’s complex outside the city walls accommodated much livestock as known by an extant first century inscription there. When doubting if God could make a rooster crow on cue, we should remember that we’re talking about the God who MADE the rooster. And He spun the earth on its axis, and gave the rooster its circadian rhythm, and
made the SUNRISE which the rooster forecasts! But what if
all nearby roosters keeled over and died that night? What if a worldwide bird flu, a rooster pandemic, took every potential crower? Then God could make another from the dust of the ground. But the Settled Viewer will object that long ago God rested from creation. So then He could make a donkey crow like a rooster.
Did God predict Israel’s escape through the Red Sea because He just happened to foreknow that it would suddenly part that day? Did God instruct Joshua to march around Jericho seven times because He was killing time? But wouldn’t God’s prompting the rooster to crow be a fundamental violation of its will, thereby violating the tenets of Openness, “making the problem more difficult rather than less so?”
With
all Calvinists,
Sam believes that God caused everything that will ever happen to happen not because He exhaustively foresaw it, but by His determined will. Otherwise, Calvinists have the Arminian problem of simple foreknowledge, with God being just another
being caught up in an eternally-settled fate, unalterably written in stone, before there even was stone, written before the ages of the ages, but not by Him. So, I am going to ask Sam to concede that even apart from exhaustive foreknowledge, God can be far more competent, powerful, able, and effective, than could any human being under the same constraint.
Open Viewers everywhere battle such
non sequiturs, and not just from rash or unlearned Settled Viewers, but from experts who pretend that both camps inexplicably believe that God is powerless to intervene, and becomes a mere spectator.
They should find deists to debate if they’re dying to use those arguments! So what would be the purpose of arguing God’s insight and influence regarding humans with someone who denies His ability to squeeze a rooster? So then, as I don’t allow my opponent’s flaws to cause me to avoid substance, I will proceed as though Sam has conceded that even without exhaustive foreknowledge, God has the ability to make a rooster crow.
Sanders… posits that all that God needed to determine “in this case would be to have someone question Peter three times and a rooster crow.” The problem is obvious. How is it that God can be sure that one or two of those three people will not decide, at the last minute, not to question Peter? How is it that God can be sure that the particular rooster will not oversleep… It seems that Sanders’s answer has only made the problem more difficult rather than less so.” -Sam, Post 1A
Even if all men were utterly impotent to influence others, God is not. The typical person who hung around Caiaphas’ household would be inclined of his own accord to question Peter, and Satan would likely reinforce such inclinations, adding his influence to pressure Peter to turn on Jesus, as Lucifer had already asked to “sift” Peter (Luke 22:31). Jesus made the prophecy not to prove His deity (He had just raised a man from the dead), nor to mock, but to encourage Peter to realize that even though the Lord knew his weakness, the Messiah would still stand by him, looking not to Peter’s internal fortitude, but to Peter’s learning that apart from trusting God, he would
only fail, whereas with God, all things are possible!
Scripturally, God, demons, and people all use the power of suggestion. Since Sam will admit that, I’ll save words and skip right to an example from when I wrote for the Ziff-Davis publication
PC Week as a Senior Technical Analyst. At an exclusive Comdex party of 200 conventioneers in an executive suite at Caesar’s Palace, all influential computer industry geeks, I watched as a professional hypnotist had $100,000-a-year professionals behaving like fools, barking like dogs and diving over furniture. Did he do this as his nightly performance because he had exhaustive foreknowledge, and since he always seemed to foreknow when folks would behave this way, he simply predicts it, and voilà, everyone applauds seeing his prophecy fulfilled? George Lucas granted this power, at a more spiritual level, to Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Jedi mind trick, and the audience loved it because we can all relate to how easily weak minded people are manipulated. Subtle influence often compels with great force, especially for those not walking with the Lord, and though I waste words to point this out, both Lucifer and God understand the power of suggestion better than mere men. So, God made us with will, and the ability to think, to communicate, to recollect, and to persuade. And yet Janet Jackson can go on MTV with a ring through her nose, and millions of young people in unison as if on cue begin piercing their bodies, all to show that they are unique. And yet in discussing the accusations leveled against Peter in the courtyard across that fire of coals, Settled Viewers assume it inconceivable that accusations might fly, even though in this case, EVERYBODY wants them to, the devil, his demons, those at the compound, and God! Between the bunch of them, I wonder if anybody can resurrect an accusation? The only one in the whole of creation that wouldn’t want the question asked would be Peter! And he was too scared to influence anybody.
Jesus had been telling His disciples that He Himself would soon be killed (Mark 9:31, etc.), and that some of His disciples also would be killed (John 16:2) and even crucified (Mat. 23:34)! None of this phased Peter, until He saw Jesus arrested, and fled with the rest (Mark 14:50), but then followed Jesus at a distance. But how could Jesus know that Peter would not die for the cause? Well let’s see. Is that a difficult judgment to make? Do you know anyone who believes that abortion is murder, who is not willing to die for the cause? Jesus wouldn’t need omniscience, just rudimentary discernment. But what if the prophesy failed? What does God value more: holiness or fulfilled prophecy? But was this a conditional prophecy? Sam, let me try to
quote you but from memory, I think you wrote, without looking (promise):
It is obvious that the prophecy Jesus gave to Peter allowed for repentance. If not there is no reason for Jesus to make it, and no reason to give Simon until the rooster’s crow. –Sam, 3A, as per Bob’s recollection
Did God make man for the Sabbath, or Peter for the prophecy? Or did He make the prophecy for Peter’s sake? If in the last minute, Peter cried out to God, then he would have said, “Yes, yes, I do know Him! I follow Him. He is my Lord.” And then his love for God would have turned into love for his neighbor. “Please tell your cousin I was wrong to strike him. And to you all… I lied when I said I don’t know Jesus. I am weak, but He is strong. You should trust Him, because He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”
And just then the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And:
It displeased Him exceedingly, and he became angry. So He prayed to His Father, “I know that You are a gracious and merciful God.” And His Father said to Him: “Is it right for you to be angry? Is it right for you to be angry about the prophecy?”
And if Calvin could answer for the Messiah, he would just quote Jonah:
“It is right for me to be angry!” But the Father replied, “Should I not pity Peter?”
And if Peter had not denied Christ, and Calvin were later angry, the Lord’s words to the ungrateful laborers would apply: “I am doing you no wrong… Or is your eye evil because I am good?”
Sam, you might accuse me of flights of fancy, making up such extra-biblical stories about Judas and Peter as some kind of apocryphal proof-texts. But in 30 years of Bible teaching, with thousands of copies of my manuscripts, CDs and DVDs in circulation, I’ve never before told these stories. In the past I have said only that Jesus would be pleased if Judas had repented, and Peter had trusted. In 1A Sam, you challenged me, “Thus if Jesus was unsure about the future actions of Peter, then
one must face the possibility that he could have been mistaken.” So I faced it. And you too can see the face of God in the mercy He holds out, as Jesus said to Jerusalem, “How often I wanted to gather your children… but you were not willing!” (Mat. 23:37). They ask, “How could Peter possibly have trusted God?” Calvinism has made trusting God the only unthinkable act! But hey, while I’m at it, let me predict that when we all get to heaven, we will learn that John Calvin had confessed to the men of Nineveh, when first he saw them, that secretly he was angry too, like Jonah, wishing that salvation had never come to them, because he had valued the prophecy more than their souls. And then he saw his legacy, upon all Calvinists and most Arminians, whom he taught to strain at roosters and swallow whales.
Sam wrote that the prediction of Peter’s behavior: “might, I suppose, be only a result of the knowledge of Peter’s personality.” Jesus knew Peter was too weak to give his life, and yet impetuous. Though fearful, Simon was the kind of person who would jump out of a boat in a storm, and then sink from a lack of faith. And during the Passover, Jerusalem swelled to
a million people. If the Magi could find the Babe in a manager, then whether Peter went to Bethany on the far side of Olivet, or back into the city, God would be able to produce accusers. And those accusations would not be temptations to do evil (James 1:13-14), but simple questions of whether Peter knew the Lord.
Jesus would have been forgiving Peter’s
seven denials, if God hadn’t caused the rooster to crow just then. So does God have a reasonable expectation that He can see this prophecy through? Peter was scared but curious; the rooster was in the wings; and then by the time two of the accusations had already landed:
One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?”
Peter then denied again; and immediately a rooster crowed. -John 18:26-27
So God knows the hearts of men (as all sides agree), and He has influence and power to intervene (as all sides agree), and God would especially intervene to fulfill prophecy (as all sides agree)! So now, what was that we were arguing over? Oh yes… so, that is how to make a rooster crow!
On Declaring Victory
With any disagreement, but importantly in debates over the most vital matters, the argumentation can crescendo to where the truth is staring both sides in the face. And if that moment passes, the debate will degenerate into comparatively unimportant matters. (
Denying some of the most basic truths of God’s nature and the Incarnation versus
Can God get a rooster to crow on cue?)
It became obvious that Sam would continue to reject that God’s righteousness is more fundamental than His sovereignty. And it became clear that He was heading to reject basic Incarnation truth (as various Settled Viewers do also), perhaps even by denying that God the Son became significantly more mutable when He “became flesh.” Thus it was crucial to declare victory because most readers would not realize what had just happened. The turning points of many struggles, like WWII’s Battle of Midway, etc., are decisive even though one side still may need convincing. I am sorry, though, as I’ve posted in the Grandstands, that I flaunted my position with the
resistance and
checkmate lines (which by the way I attribute primarily to my flesh, an attempt at Star Trek humor, and writing at 2 a.m., whereas you must attribute them primarily to God’s eternal decree; see, even in our weakness, we are stronger
).
And the reason I pointed out Sam’s credentials twice while making these points is this: it is not the newcomers to Calvinism that most resist these simple truths of God’s nature, but it’s the theologians, the authors, the senior pastors, the professors, the standard-bearers. The argument that the attributes of goodness, etc. take precedence over power, etc. is so utterly true on the face of it. Yet Arminian Settled Viewers follow Calvinists in resisting such fundamental truth, because they intuitively see that it will undermine exhaustive foreknowledge.
For
THE PRECEDENCE OF GOD’S ATTRIBUTES IS THE ULTIMATE HERMENEUTIC!
Not all things divine are equal. For, “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice,” (Prov. 21:3). That is, not all of God’s pronouncements are created equal, because various commands reflect different aspects of His attributes. God
has power, but “He
loves righteousness and justice,” (Ps. 33:5). Sam, if you ever admit that God’s being relational, good, and loving takes precedence over power and knowledge, (which Scripture teaches and the Incarnation proves), then together we can interpret the relevant passages with this hermeneutic, and see that the declaration of victory was made at the right moment.
Questions and Answers
In round five I plan to show (space permitting) how Augustine redefined the Christian God based on utter Greek immutability, and how the Reformation broke with Rome but not Greece, and extended the 1,000-year Hellenist grip on theology. Then I will have completed the first half of the debate showing the precedence of God’s deeper attributes (goodness over power, love over knowledge, etc.), countering Settled View proof texts, and showing the philosophical origin of Calvinist and Arminian exhaustive foreknowledge. So then in round six, I plan to present the Open View argument.
Bob Answers Sam’s Questions
SLQ8 -Bob would you please respond specifically to the exegesis of Matthew 6:8, in particular my claim and arguments that this passage does not only speak of present knowledge?
BEA-SLQ8: I answered this with BEA-SLQ0 regarding the present-tense scope of Mat. 6:8, Chrysostom (347-407 AD), and the Gnostic Thomas (~150 AD). If you are asking me to respond to your “second-temple” (500+ BC - 70 AD) argument from silence, my answer is BEA-SLQ0.
SLQ9 -Would you please respond specifically to my exegesis of the prediction of Peter’s denial taking into account the points that I have made in the first post?
BEA-SLQ9: Jesus could predict Peter’s denials and their timing because God knows the hearts of men (as all sides agree), and He has influence and power to intervene (as all sides agree), and God does especially intervene to fulfill prophecy (as all sides agree). For a full treatment see above,
On How to Make a Rooster Crow.
SLQ10- Would you please respond to my charge that you have misread whatever Greek lexicon that you are using when you speak of dei in Acts 2?
Sam, you wrote of “several serious problems” including “that
the lexicon does not say what Bob quotes it as saying.” I posted this scan in the Grandstands the day you made this accusation to minimize doubts about my reliability or integrity. My Greek lexicon is an older, hardcover edition of the standard
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, written in German by
Bauer, and translated and adapted by
Arndt and
Gingrich, (or BAG, before Danker added his initial). Here’s the entry I was quoting from, on p. 171 of the 1957 edition:
Readers will notice something quite unusual (and I’m grateful to you Sam for pointing it out to me). The lexicon gives
two different meanings for the exact same word in the same sentence! Dictionaries commonly give multiple meanings for a word, depending upon the context, but this is
the first time I have
ever noticed a lexicon giving
two meanings for the same instance of a word. When I found Acts 1:16 listed under the heading I expected to find it under, “what is fitting,” I failed to look further (something that would never have occurred to me), to make sure it didn’t
also appear with another definition. (I’d been bagd!) What does two definitions for the same word indicate? Of course it proves my point
from the introduction to my first post that, “words have a range of meaning” and that you cannot understand the use of a word “simply by taking the words literally or interpreting them solely by their immediate context.” At “times, the meaning comes through knowing the true nature of God, and the overall message of the entire Bible.” Your questions to me have admitted how centrally important a hermeneutic is to decide how to interpret a word or passage. Surely, our whole debate, the entire question of
Openness Theology: Does God Know Your Entire Future?, comes down to the right method of determining which meaning to select for a passage! Yet while I have provided a specific method for doing that (NOAH, whether you agree with it or not), the closest I can find from your posts is, “the study of the historical Jesus” will give confidence to “hermeneutical decisions,” (Post 1A), which is true, though not a functional hermeneutic.
Not even the
dictionary can distinguish between the meanings of such passages, apart from interpretation based upon presuppositions regarding the nature of God. Even BAG and BAGD, whom you agree are “the leading authority for Koine [biblical] Greek,” remain non-committal on whether Peter indicated Judas’ action was required by “divine destiny,” or merely “fitting.” The only way to adjudicate this is by submitting the meaning to the constraints of the true nature of God, and not the expert lexicographer, but the careful student of God’s Word is most qualified to decide this. Context is so compelling that, forgive the hyperbole, you should know the meaning of even a completely foreign word in a sentence.
Because Calvinism and the Settled View give precedence to the Greek-influenced, quantitative, lesser attributes of control (sovereignty), immutability, power, and knowledge, you interpret that Judas was utterly compelled to sin. Giving precedence to God’s being relational, good and loving, I interpret that Judas had the ability to decide otherwise, thus understanding δει here as meaning “what is fitting.” (If you prefer I will list here BAG’s longer but obfuscatory category title, “of the compulsion of what is fitting;” but I also reasonably shortened my reference to your preferred first category, intentionally leaving out the word
fate, which smacks of Greek philosophy.) My interpretation preserves God’s goodness and the principle that as authority flows downhill, responsibility climbs upward. And finally, above any linguist’s definition of a word, is the actual use of the word by the same author. I gave many examples where δει meant anything but BAGd’s “divine destiny,” highlighted by Luke quoting, “Jesus saying the Pharisees should love and do justly (Luke 11:42, which they
did not do).”
SLQ-11 Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Jesus based proof of his deity on the correct prediction about Judas?
BEA-SLQ11: The only significant part of your Judas argument I can find that I did not address in my section titled, “
Did Judas Have A Necessary Role?,” is as in 3A, where you quoted the Lord
at the Last Supper from John 13:18, “‘that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘HE WHO EATS MY BREAD HAS LIFTED UP HIS HEEL AGAINST ME.’”, although I don’t think that He yelled it
. And you continued with verse, “19 ‘From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He.”
Regarding you claim that εγω ειμι (ego eimi) here clearly refers to Christ’s deity, you can take it that way
interpretatively if you’d like. However the translators of the KJV, my NKJV, and your NIV disagree with your grammatical claim, and translate it not as in John 8:58, with the divine title, I AM. Rather, they supplied the predicate nominative as is so common (otherwise we’d have various gods running around the New Testament). So the translators render this, “I am
He,” which here can mean that He is the Christ.
In your published paper,
The Openness of God and the Historical Jesus (from Nov. 16, 2001 which you delivered in Colorado Springs at the annual convention of the Evangelical Theological Society), you acknowledged, “
one could argue that Judas had already made up his mind, and that knowledge of Judas's present state was open to God.” You could have said this more definitively, since Judas had already arranged the betrayal (Mat. 26:14-16; John 13:2). If Judas broke down and repented at this moment, He would have said, “The Lord is right, and I am so sorry! I know I will never deserve your trust, nor even your forgiveness. I’m so sorry.” And the Judas aspect of Christ’s statement would have been thereby corroborated. Then Sam, you went on to say that, “this will not answer the question of how Jesus would have known the ultimate outcome (i.e., [His] death) of the betrayal, nor the question of what might have occurred had Judas changed his mind.” I answered these in 2A.
SLQ12 -Would you please respond specifically to the exegesis showing that Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise, particularly the exegesis found in Post III.
BEA-SLQ12: Please see BEA-SLQ11.
SLQ13 -Would you agree that if Peter and/or Judas did not have the ability to choose otherwise, then your definition of free will (or will as you put it) is flawed? If not, why not?
BEA-SLQ13: Yes.
SLQ14 -Would you explain (given your response in Post II) how it is possible for Jesus (whom we both agree is God) to be wrong and yet for God to hold no false beliefs?
BEA-SLQ14: I have explained this in [BEA-]SLQ7 (I forgot to put the BEA-, which convention makes searching for answers really easy). Rather than me explain my explanation, Sam, per common debate practice, you should point out a disagreement with my explanation, which I can respond to.
Questions in Search of an Answer
BEQ17: Sam, In the tradition of BEQ1, BEQ7, and BEQ9, I ask: Is God able to change such that He can have true relationship:
A: within the Trinity?
B: with His creatures?
Sam, if ever I debate Reymond, I’ll ask him his position on immutability. I’m debating you. You of course are free (at least that’s what I believe) to quote whomever you would like.
BEQ18: Please answer BEQ11.
Sam, the Grandstands are restless, wondering why you avoid answering, and after a lifetime of debating Calvinists, I reply: it’s not by eternal decree, it’s the questions! I asked, BEQ11, “…can you indicate how Scripture could theoretically falsify (prove wrong) the Settled View?” And you non-answered, “SLA-BEQ11- Let me state that
I do not agree that the three options you list are the only ways (or even the best ways) to falsify openness.” Sam, you misread what I wrote. I said, “Let me give
examples of the kind of passages Sam could quote,” etc. I’ve now devoted much space to answering your big three: Mat. 6:8b, Judas, and Peter; probably 3,000 words more than the scant attention you’ve paid to my argument. If you want more, you’re going to have to specifically identify an area of your argument I’ve not addressed, or offer a rebuttal to my points. But don’t worry, we’re not done with the historical Jesus, we’re coming back to the Gospels… like a tsunami.
BEQ19: Please answer BEQ12: Are foreordination and foreknowledge the same thing?
I appreciate the succinct quote of SLA-BEQ12 which discredited the Westminster Confession as confused and self-contradictory. But neither did you nor that quote answer BEQ12 nor even mention foreknowledge. A
yes or
no could answer. I am grateful that you’re pasting my questions, so that all can see plainly you’re not answering.
BEQ20: Please answer BEQ13, which I’ve here unnecessarily clarified: Is my conclusion above (from FDR) true that [as a general rule], “prophecies of future events do not inherently provide evidence of [exhaustive] foreknowledge?”
Your circular non-answer hurt my head. A
yes or
no could answer.
Next, it’s been exciting for Openness readers to see, even in this debate, that the erroneous monolithic doctrine of God’s timelessness has cracked. Our side vigorously opposes timelessness (which flows from Greek immutability) as irrational and anti-relational. (In 1B I referred to “the power of relationship,” and the historical march of the force of relationship, long held hostage by cold pagan philosophy, is now taking captives.) Twice you’ve acknowledged, “I agree that God is
not timeless” (3A), and that “the doctrine that God is ‘timeless’ needs to be reformulated, I have already agreed” (4A). Those admissions will illustrate to you why humanist philosophy led to timelessness, when I ask you:
BEQ21: Has it ever been possible for God to change anything that will happen in eternity future?
BEQ22: Sam, do you agree that God did not ordain Peter’s rooster to crow because He eternally foresaw it, but because He willed it?
BEQ23: Sam, even if God were not to rely on exhaustive foreknowledge (for example, when He ordained the Body of Christ, etc.), God can be far more competent, powerful, able, and effective, than could any human being who does not have exhaustive foreknowledge?
BEQ24: will you agree that even apart from exhaustive foreknowledge, God can be far more competent, powerful, able, and effective, than could any human being who does not have exhaustive foreknowledge?
BEQ25: If a passage can be interpreted in an Open or Settled way, please provide a general hermeneutic that students can use to determine which may be the correct interpretation.
As you know by now, I believe the Open View results from giving precedence to God’s greater attributes of goodness, etc., over the quantitative attributes of how much unchangeableness, etc., God possesses. From the start of this Battle I’ve been showing that from platonic Augustine, through Calvin, till today, immutability has been overstated, and is the source of a cascade of beliefs that undermine belief in the true nature of the biblical God. So after I present the Open View in Round Six (given the space), I would LOVE for the last four rounds (40%!) of the debate to wrestle over the foundation. Do God’s attributes of relationship, goodness and love take precedence over immutability, power, and (quantities of) knowledge, and did Christ think it not robbery to be emptied of these? For He willingly humble Himself, thereby identifying the lesser attributes by what He relinquished.
Finally, I had asked in “BEQ16: Does the Incarnation show that God the Son divested Himself in some significant degree of knowledge and power, but explicitly not of His goodness?” And Sam answered:
SLA-BEQ16-
No. (emphasis added)
SAM! Thank you for the direct answer. The lines are drawn! You added, “God cannot divest himself of any of his attributes, therefore the Son did not divest himself of knowledge or power.” From your first post we’ve been trying to draw you out on this, and get you to take a stand, and we sense that this debate has forced your hand. In 1A you seemed to leave the question open writing: “If Jesus believed that either his Father knew the future or he himself knew the future…,” suggesting that you were non-committal as whether the Son had divested Himself of omniscience through the Incarnation! So in the first paragraph of my discussion of the first OMNI, of my first post, I wrote that God the Son, “‘emptied Himself’ (Phil. 2:7 ASV; Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich; etc.) of qualities such as power, presence, and knowledge, but not of love,” trying to pull you out. By the way Sam, I was at the Broadmoor Hotel in the Springs in 2001 the same time you were, and I heard John Sanders give his wonderful defense of Openness in person, but I did not read the paper you presented there until this summer. And in your published Openness paper, you referenced the Lord’s remarks about His Second Coming, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven,
nor the Son, but only the Father, (Mark 13:32; Mat. 24:36), and you wrote that this, “would indicate that
Jesus felt no shame in admitting that his knowledge was limited in at least one area.”
So, Sam, when you published your
paper,
The Openness of God and the Historical Jesus, you did not take the position you’ve just made in TOL’s Battle Royale X, round four, when you rejected that Jesus humbled Himself, in part by relinquishing omniscience. Rather, you undermined that position. Please expect upcoming questions probing the absolutely foundational, decisive issue of Christ’s humility in the Incarnation. For now:
BEQ26: Can you deny, or affirm by giving an example from Dr. Kennedy’s program, or in a past published paper, etc., whether previously you have ever
publicly identified yourself as rejecting that the Son relinquished (emptied Himself, held in abeyance, divested, lessened, your choice) omniscience (or any of the OMNIs or IMs) for the purpose of His Incarnation?
In Christ,
Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church
