Is Open Theism heretical?

[Bright Raven]

Prove your point of view from scripture

 

[JudgeRightly]

Prove your point of view from scripture

Gladly.

But first, let’s define the claim correctly. Open Theism is not the claim that God is ignorant, weak, mistaken, or surprised because He lacks intelligence. That is a straw man. Open Theists affirm that God is all-knowing, sovereign, incapable of error, and able to accomplish His purposes. The disagreement is over whether the future is exhaustively settled or partly open.

The issue is this:
Does Scripture teach that every future free action is already a settled fact?

I say no.

Scripture repeatedly presents God as living, personal, relational, good, and loving — not as a frozen abstraction outside all sequence.
Now to Scripture.

God says in Jeremiah 18:

At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.

That is not an obscure passage. That is God Himself explaining how He deals with nations. His declared judgments can be conditional. His blessings can be conditional. Men can repent, and God can relent. Men can rebel, and God can withdraw promised blessing.

That is exactly what happens with Nineveh:

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

Jonah did not preach, “Maybe Nineveh will be overthrown.” He preached judgment. Yet when Nineveh repented, God did not do what He had said He would do.

That is not God making a mistake. That is God being merciful.

And that distinction matters. A prophecy of judgment is often given not because God wants it to happen, but because He wants repentance.

Then there is Genesis 22:

And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

The text says, “now I know.” It does not say, “now I have theatrically revealed what I eternally knew could not be otherwise.”

Likewise, Deuteronomy 8:2 says God tested Israel:

...to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

Again, the text presents a real test with a real outcome.

Genesis 6 says:

And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

That is not the language of an impersonal blueprint unfolding exactly as eternally fixed. That is the language of the living God grieving over man’s wickedness.

Jeremiah 19:5 says of Israel’s abominations:

...which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.

That is very difficult to square with the claim that every evil act was eternally settled in exhaustive detail in the divine mind.

And in Exodus 32, God tells Moses He will destroy Israel and make a nation from Moses. Moses intercedes, and the text says:

And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Again, the plain reading is that God responded to Moses.

So yes, I am happy to prove the point from Scripture.

The biblical God tests, responds, relents, grieves, judges, forgives, waits, becomes angry, shows patience, and interacts with men in real time.

The settled-view response is usually to say, “Those passages are anthropomorphic.”

But that cannot simply be asserted whenever the text becomes inconvenient. If every passage where God responds, relents, grieves, tests, waits, or says “now I know” is dismissed as figurative, then the doctrine is not being derived from Scripture. Scripture is being filtered through an outside philosophical assumption.

So the question is not whether God knows everything.

He does.

The question is whether future free choices already exist as settled facts to be known.

That is the point that needs to be proven from Scripture.

And I do not believe Scripture teaches it.