The Incidental God of Open Theism
The Incidental God of Open Theism
The Incidental God of Open Theism
Question: What is Open Theism's raison d'etre?
Answer: To secure for themselves freedom from God, total autonomy and final authority.
How do they set about to accomplish this? The steps are as follow:
(1) Under the guise of "freeing" God from any association with evil, the Open Theist strips God of His transcendent attributes, i.e. His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, impassibility and immutability;
(2) Under the guise of extolling God's hatred of evil, the Open Theist over-emphasizes God's imminent attributes, i.e. that He is living, loving, good, personal and relational;
(3) Under the guise of affirming justice, and all the while ignoring its true definition, the Open Theist makes man completely and totally autonomous by insisting that man's will must have libertarian freedom, otherwise God could not justly hold them accountable;
(4) Under the guise of affirming genuine love, and all the while ignoring its true definition, the Open Theist makes man the final authority by insisting that man must choose for himself whether or not God will save him.
What methods are used by the Open Theist to accomplish this?
(1) To sit in judgment of God by seizing upon apparent contradictions in the Bible, and explain them by declaring God's ignorance;
(2) To sit in judgment of God by seizing upon apparent contradictions in the Bible, and explain them by declaring God's lack of foresight;
(3) To sit in judgment of God by seizing upon finite and figurative descriptions of God as changing and emoting, and to explain them by declaring God's ignorance and lack of foresight.
This is what Knight does, just like every other Open Theist I've encountered over the past eleven years. He takes a couple passages of scripture that seem to contradict, and eisegetically uses them as prooftext for his false theology. Does he bother to study them out to see what the verses really mean? No, there's not reason to. It says what it says. Nevermind that the word "author" was added by the translators (as any first-year Bible student who understands the AV's typographic conventions will immediately recognize). If the verse seems to support his view, there's no reason to check it. Instead he jumps on the apparent contradiction and declares: See! See! Either God is less than God, or else the Bible contradicts itself. And since the latter cannot be true, the former must be.
Such is the mission and purpose of Open Theism. If a passage seems to say that God is fickle, don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Use it to prove that God is fickle. If a passage seems to say that God is too dumb to see something coming (i.e. is surprised by something), don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Instead, use it to prove that God is a dimwit. If a passage seems to say that God is ignorant, don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Use it to prove that God is ignorant. And so on, ad nauseum.
Here's the diffierence in approaches to such passages:
The Bible student who believes in the Infinitude of God sees these descriptions in the Bible and concludes, "God cannot be fickle, dimwitted or ignorant, therefore these must be figures of speech conveying something even more emphatic and important than would appear on the surface; I'd better study this out."
The Unsettled Incidental Theist sees these descriptions and jumps immediately to the conclusion that God is less than God, just as Knight has done regarding the "author of confusion" passage. Notice all the hoops that Knight must jump through to make sense of a passage that makes perfect sense according to the careful Bible student, sans hoop-jumping.
Knight said:
Yet from your perspective.... (the settled view) you must in fact believe that God authors confusion in every detail.
Settled view claim: Everything authored by God, yes.
God's claim: I am not the author of confusion
Clearly that's a legitimate objection to the settled view.
Is God the author of confusion or not?
Yes. God is the author of everything. God is infinite, unbounded, supreme. Nothing is greater than God; God is not subordinate to anything, not time, not man, not man's judgment, not man's will. Yet the Open Theist will readily and eagerly seize upon any verse they can twist to make God subordinate to all of these. And since God's attributes of being "good, personal, living, relational and loving" take priority over everything else, then He really can't do anything, which is what has been demonstrated abundantly in this thread, abundantly evident in the inability of any Open Theist to tell me one thing that God actually, actively is doing in their lives on a daily basis. What is God actively doing in your life right this moment? The Open (Incidental) Theist has no answer.
What are the results of Open Theist theology?
(1) God is reduced to an incidental being who does not really, actually, actively DO anything;
(2) Man is exalted to a level of total autonomy and final authority on all matters related his own life and eternal state.
I began this post by asking "What is the Open Theist's raison d'etre?" And as I stated at the beginning, the answer "To secure for themselves freedom from God, total autonomy and final authority." This should sound familiar, because the sin of seeking autonomous authority, the sin of Adam, is (almost) as old as time itself.
What is the conclusion concerning Open Theism?
Open Theists have succeeded in created a God in their own image and have thereby committed the sin of Adam. They have sought to independently, on their own will, on their own judgment, authority and autonomy, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, to acquire autonomous knowledge and judgment apart from God. Such a theology is powerful and compelling to the innate rebellion and sinful nature of man. This is the Broad Road, appealing to the basest level of sinful humanity. Open Theism impugns and denigrates God, thereby pulling Him down. Open Theism exalts man's freedom and autonomy from God, thereby giving man the final authority of all matters concerning his own life and eternal state. Open Theism is nothing new. It started in the Garden of Eden, and has existed in one form or another ever since. Its goal is to tear God down and to build man up, to make God less than God and to make man more than man. It is humanism with a Luciferian impetus. With man as the final authority, God has become incidental.
Job 40:8 Wilt thou also disannul My judgment? wilt thou condemn Me, that thou mayest be righteous?
I am not authoring the scattering and confusion but I know it will be a result from my actions.
