Can God See the Future?
Some evangelical scholars are taking worldly heat for suggesting that divine knowledge has its limits
By BURTON BOLLAG
God knows everything that will ever happen. That is the majority view among evangelical Christians. But in recent years a few scholars at evangelical institutions have proposed a radically different view: There is no divine script for the future, they say. Free will plays a big role.
The debate over the scholars' ideas has taken on such fervor that last month an evangelical college told one of its professors, a believer in free will, to leave.
The fired professor, John E. Sanders, at Huntington College in Indiana, is a leading proponent of an approach known as Open Theism, which declares that God and humans with their free will together determine the future.
Bruce A. Ware, senior associate dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an ardent opponent of Open Theism, says the controversy is of much more than scholarly interest. By rejecting the notion of a supreme being who knows or has even planned the whole future, he says, "Open Theism undermines people's confidence in God." It "makes God pathetic."
Other theologians see the debate over Open Theism as a proxy for a struggle over who will lead the evangelical movement -- free-will-believing liberals or old-fashioned Calvinists. As the debate has spread, a number of evangelical institutions, including the six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention, have started to require faculty members to sign statements saying that they believe in God's complete knowledge of the future. The statements are intended to keep out supporters of Open Theism.
But the idea's impact is spreading beyond the walls of evangelical seminaries. "For philosophers who speculate about God, it has breathed new life into the debate," says Kelly James Clark, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College and secretary-treasurer of the Society of Christian Philosophers.
An Old Controversy
In other branches of Christianity, arguments over free will and omniscience have been conducted for many centuries. During the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, theologians risked more than their jobs when they found themselves on the wrong side of a theological dispute. It was not uncommon for trials on charges of doctrinal deviations to involve torture of the accused and their subsequent burning at the stake.
Theologians and philosophers in the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have long debated the proper balance between belief in an all-powerful deity and in human free will. St. Augustine, the 4th-century Latin church father; al-Ashari, the 10th-century Islamic theologian; Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher; and John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, all grappled with the issue. All of them argued in favor of God's power.
The scientific revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, and particularly Darwin's theory of evolution, profoundly influenced the debate. Darwinism led many theologians to move away from a more literal reading of the Bible and to reject the concept of a God with absolute power over the physical and human worlds.
Process theology, developed in the first half of the 20th century under the influence of works by the English mathematical logician Alfred North Whitehead and others, views God as involved with humankind in a continuous, dynamic process. The idea has much in common with Open Theism but approaches the issue from a philosophical standpoint that transcends Christianity. Open Theism's proponents say their approach emerged from a close, evangelical reading of the Bible.
The Holocaust provided a new jolt to traditional thinking about God's omniscience, as theologians grappled with the question of what kind of deity would stand by and allow such horrors to happen.
Indeed, the problem of evil has always been central to the debate. Those proclaiming God's infinite power must answer why God's plan contains such atrocities. Those theologians who envision a God who has granted free will to humanity find the explanation for such evils not in God, but in humankind's sinfulness.
Despite the tension between free will and God's power, most branches of Christianity have little problem accommodating both concepts today. "Most of the rest of the Protestant world would agree that the future is open and depends to a varying extent on free will," says Matthew S. Collins, a New Testament scholar and a senior official of the Society of Biblical Literature, which brings together scholars from a wide range of theological orientations.
John F. Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University, says contemporary Roman Catholic theologians have generally come down on the side of free will. "The Catholic interpretation takes the Bible very seriously," he says, "but not so literally."
For Christian evangelicals, however, the battle over the extent of divine foreknowledge remains fierce. "I'm a Calvinist," says Mr. Ware, the Southern Baptist dean. "I hold that God has absolute control and has decided everything that will happen."
Even the Holocaust? Yes, says Mr. Ware, but that doesn't mean that his deity is a monster. Injustice will be punished, he insists. Whether in this life or the next, "people are all held accountable before God."
A New Approach
Open Theism represents one of the most serious challenges to the doctrine of the evangelical movement in decades.
In the 1980s several works promoting Open Theism appeared, although that label was not yet used. Then, in 1994, a book with the writings of five evangelical scholars was published by InterVarsity Press, a major evangelical academic publisher, under the title, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God.
"It took everyone by surprise," says Mr. Ware, and the book was so influential that "Open Theism was the de facto topic" of each year's annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society from then until last year. With 2,060 full members, the group is the main association of biblical scholars at America's roughly 400 evangelical colleges, seminaries, and Bible schools.
As the controversy grew, a number of evangelical institutions became caught up in the debate. In the mid-1990s Bethel College (now Bethel University), in St. Paul, came under strong pressure from the Baptist General Conference, which controls the institution, to dismiss Gregory A. Boyd, a professor of theology who was another leading proponent of Open Theism.
A committee set up by the college concluded in 1998 that Mr. Boyd's writings did not violate Baptist doctrine, and the institution decided not to dismiss him. But in a concession to the conservatives, Bethel's president, George K. Brushaber, promised not to hire any other Open Theism supporters. Mr. Boyd has since left Bethel to pursue a career as a writer and a minister in an evangelical church.
James H. Barnes III, Bethel's provost, says of the experience, "We had an incredible theological dialogue on campus that could not have been manufactured if we had wanted it."
"But," he adds, "it was a draining experience."
Meanwhile, the Evangelical Theological Society encouraged a thorough debate of the new approach, holding a panel discussion soon after the seminal book appeared, during which the authors and their opponents struggled over the issues.
One of the points debated was the understanding of biblical passages in which God is surprised by events, or in which he is persuaded to change a decision.
In the Book of Exodus, for example, God decides to destroy the Hebrews when they turn away from him and worship a golden calf. Moses, with apparent success, pleads with God to relent. "So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people," says the Bible.
For Open Theists, such texts, in which events unfold through an unscripted give-and-take between God and humanity, must be taken seriously. Conservatives respond that the deity was, in effect, only playing with Moses.
"You can't take this at face value," says Mr. Ware of the troublesome passages. In each case, he insists, "God knew the outcome all along."
Defending Infallibility
At its 2001 annual meeting, the society began the final move against what many members view as heresy. After discussing numerous papers -- some 30 presentations were against Open Theism and only 3 supported it -- the society passed a resolution reaffirming the majority's view: "We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate, and infallible knowledge of all events past, present, and future."
The resolution passed with 70-percent support. A larger number of members certainly agreed with it, but some were uncomfortable with what they saw as the beginning of an effort to expel the dissidents. Edwin M. Yamauchi, a professor of ancient history at Miami University, in Ohio, who is now the society's vice president, said at the time that if the supporters of Open Theism were excluded, "we will be a more orthodox society, but we will be a poorer society."
At the 2002 meeting, one of the society's founding members, the retired Swiss-born theologian Roger Nicole, declared Open Theism "a cancer on the soul" of the group and called for the expulsion of two of the movement's key proponents. The society decided to investigate whether the two had violated the group's original, doctrinal statement, which asserts the "inerrant" nature of the Bible. (The statement does not directly address the issue of divine foreknowledge.) Their accusers said the two dissidents had denied the truth of biblical passages proclaiming God's full knowledge of future events.
Each man was examined on the basis of what was considered his most flagrant denial of the society's doctrine. For Clark H. Pinnock, a prominent professor of theology who was only months from retirement at McMaster Divinity College, in Hamilton, Ontario, the charges dealt with his book Most Moved Mover (Baker Academic, 2001). John E. Sanders, a midcareer faculty member at Indiana's evangelical Huntington College, was examined on the basis of his The God Who Risks (InterVarsity Press, 1998).
A Personal Journey
For Mr. Sanders, the road to Open Theism began when he was in high school and only nominally Christian. The death of his brother in a motorcycle accident led him to begin thinking deeply about religion. People tried to comfort him by explaining that the accident was part of God's plan. "I said, 'So God killed my brother so I would become a Christian?' They'd say, 'Oh, no, it's not like that.' But there was a disconnect."
Mr. Sanders, who gradually became a committed evangelical, began developing a position that refused to see all events as ordained ahead of time by God. "An 'openness' view says humans are incredibly responsible for what happens," he says. "If a mudslide occurs in Colombia, well, God doesn't just zap manna to the people. He expects us to manifest Christian values and help the people."
Mr. Pinnock agrees. "If the future is determined now, then what's the meaning of our lives?" he asks. "Where's the drama?"
After 10 months of written communications and preparations, the society's nine-member executive committee called the two accused scholars to a daylong examination in October 2003 at a meeting room in a Best Western Hotel in Chicago. Mr. Ware, the theology dean, assisted Mr. Nicole in presenting the case against the two dissidents.
Despite the passions the controversy had ignited, the tone of the meeting remained courteous. "They weren't mean," says Mr. Pinnock. "They were sincere about looking for the boundaries of evangelicalism."
At the end of the day, Mr. Pinnock made a surprise announcement. He told the committee that he was willing to change the wording of a long footnote in his book that the group found particularly objectionable. The footnote pointed to a half-dozen biblical prophecies that do not appear to have come true. The changed version waters down that conclusion.
For example, in the first Book of Thessalonians, Paul predicts the second coming of Christ in his lifetime. (The society's members agree that this did not happen, and that Jesus Christ has yet to return to earth and install the kingdom of God.) "His word was, however, perfectly appropriate," wrote Mr. Pinnock in his revised footnote, "given the fact that Paul thought that the coming could come at any time."
To the thinking of James A. Borland, a faculty member at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and the Evangelical Theological Society's secretary-treasurer, Mr. Pinnock had "recanted."
Mr. Pinnock sees it differently. "It wasn't a big change," he says. "It seemed to me an easy way to satisfy them."
It did. At its 2003 annual meeting, the following month, the society voted by a large margin not to expel Mr. Pinnock, and by the smallest of margins not to expel Mr. Sanders, who had offered no concessions to his accusers.
Continuing Fallout
The society's decision not to expel the two men was viewed as inappropriate leniency by some members. Norman L. Geisler, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and a former president of the theological society, resigned from the group in protest.
"Before my own eyes," he says, "I saw an organization I belonged to go down the tubes and officially approve a view which denies the infallible foreknowledge of God."
Yet while conservatives failed to get Mr. Sanders removed from the society, they are forcing him from his faculty job of seven years at Huntington. Last month the college's president, G. Blair Dowden, told a stunned faculty meeting that pressure from the United Brethren Church and the prospect of falling enrollments had become too much to resist. Mr. Sanders, he said, would have to leave.
Mr. Dowden says he was not happy with the decision, which was made by the Board of Trustees. He acknowledges that the move could be a blow to academic freedom.
Yet a few evangelical churches and seminaries, including some in the Pentecostal and Methodist traditions, are receptive to Open Theism. John E. Phelan Jr. is president and dean of North Park University's Theological Seminary, which is controlled by the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, a fast-growing denomination of more than 750 congregations across the United States and Canada.
He has invited both Mr. Pinnock and Mr. Boyd to speak on the campus and says he would not hesitate to hire other supporters of Open Theism.
The seminary does not officially support Open Theism, says Mr. Phelan, but he feels that the approach makes an important contribution to theological discussions.
"There is a lot of sloppy language used by people," he says. "I would personally like our students and scholars to think more clearly about what it means when you say something was 'God's will.'"
As for the fight over Open Theism, Mr. Phelan sees it as "a subtext for a larger struggle going on in evangelicalism," over whether its leaders will adhere to more-conservative Calvinism or more-liberal strains of Christianity.
For his part, Mr. Ware, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says most members of the Evangelical Theological Society are just happy that the consuming debate over whether to expel the two members has been settled, and that the group can move on to other things. At the same time, he worries that Open Theism itself is spreading.
"Scholars have said pretty much everything they will" on the subject, he says. "Now it is moving outside the scholarly world, down into the pews."
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