What Does God Know and When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy Over Divine Foreknowledge

Several years ago, I discovered that some serious, evangelical Christian scholars believed that God may not know everything about the future. That surprised me, to say the least. I wonder if God saw this coming. I had always been taught that God knew everything, past, present and future. In fact, I was taught that He even knew future contingencies that wouldn't actually occur, but, if they did, this is how it would happen. God's complete omniscience seemed to be a reasonable concept to me. After all, He's God, right? He exists outside of time, so how could a matter that hinges on time (past, present, future) present a limitation for Him? Well, I discovered that some theologians would be quick to say, "Wait, just a minute, buddy boy. What about this passage where God seems to change his mind?" Or, "what about this passage where God's actions are changed based upon what a person does?" Or, "what about this passage where God seems to truly discover something about a person based upon a test He has given the person?" Or, "how can people really have a free will and, yet, God already knows what they're going to do?" And, so, the debate is on. Millard J. Erickson's book, "What Does God Know And When Does He Know It?" presents the issues of this debate in a reasonably fair and comprehensive manner. Erickson presents the arguments for the Traditional View of God's foreknowledge and he presents the Open View of God. He offers a biblical basis for each position. He examines the hermeneutics and doctrinal structure of the issues. He looks at the historical development of the matters and the philosophical influences. And he presents some of the practical issues that follow. Erickson has a keen eye for identifying the logical inconsistencies of the Open View. Erickson, himself, holds the Traditional View of God's foreknowledge and he makes that clear, in the book. However, he also states that his book represents an attempt "to deal with these issues with an open mind and to listen carefully to the arguments on both sides." He does acknowledge the strength of the Open View on the points where he perceives they have the stronger argument, especially in the "Evaluation and Conclusion" section of the book. Summing it up, he writes this, "On balance, then, while no single view has given final answers to the issues involved in the foreknowledge debate, the traditional view of God's exhaustive definitive foreknowledge appears to have considerably more cogent intellectual support and fewer difficulties than does the alternative." This is a good introduction to Open Theism.

Millard J. Erickson is an experienced theology instructor who has served several evangelical seminaries and who has more than twenty-five books and numerous published articles to his credit. In What Does God Know And When Does He Know It?: The Current Controversy Over Divine Foreknowledge, Professor Erickson grapples with tough questions and issues that transcend academic contemplation and reach into personal life, such as "When we pray, do our prayers make a difference, or is everything that will happen already determined?" and "Does God have a plan for our lives, and is it based on a knowledge of all that will happen?" A powerful, astutely reasoned treatise filled from cover to cover with deep spiritual reverence and a respect for the divine while simultaneously striving to better understand common concerns in the light of profound faith, What Does God Know And When Does He Know It? is strongly commended to the attention of clergy and lay readers alike.

Dr. Erickson does not disappoint. He once again shows how the best way to handle the Bible is by first examining one's own presuppositions and philosophic bent in the exegesis process before analyzing the texts.This is the finest strength of the book, whereby he shows the Traditional Evangelical approach and Biblical givens that will be used to interpret passages in question. Most indicting against the open theists is their failure to do just that. They go headlong into interpretation and pronouncement of their opinions without declaring their obvious dependency on neo-philosophic speculation. Erickson exposes their stunning lapse. He shows how their arguments against Historic Evangelical position collapse in the realm of undeclared, unsupported and assumed First Principles that are non-negotiable. Open theism is too heavily reliant on the contrivances of modernist philosophers like Charles Hartshorne.When I looked up Hartshorne on the web, much disturbing information about 'Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes' and Process Philosophy that challenge the Bible and Historic Christianity became abundantly evident.Any belief system that relies even remotely on Hartshorne as one of its heroes and mentors must to some degree be Hartshornian in presuppositions and First Principles. While open theists seem to knock Historic Evangelicals for reliance on Greek Philosophy, the question is: whom do they themselves rely on? Which Greeks are hiding under their sanctimonious mattress?The book is fair, balanced and easily readible. I understand D.A. Carson has been working on a book to add to the discussion. I enjoyed his essay in God Under Fire, which in 30 pages nearly accomplished what Dr. Erickson does here in a full volume.My only quibble is how the book ends not with a bang, but a whimper. Instead of outright declaring open theism to be non-evangelical, he says the tone and emotion of the debate needs to be moderated. Perhaps so. But a spade should still be called a spade, truthfully in love and lovingly in truth. Any less and it's neither truthful nor loving in Christ's sight. Just reading Rev. 2 & 3 makes one shudder about how Jesus felt about false doctrine damaging His precious churches! We too must beware!

The debate over openness theology or free-will theism continues to bubble along nicely. Books both for and against continue to pour from the presses. In the past two decades some thirty volumes have been penned directly on this issue. One of the latest to weigh in, offering the "no" case to openness thought, is What Does God Know? Written by veteran theologian Millard Erickson, it explores one major component of openness thought, the belief that God does not know the future. Erickson has actually written before on openness theology, with parts of The Evangelical Left ( Baker, 1997) and God the Father Almighty (Baker, 1998) offering critiques of the movement.Erickson begins by assessing the biblical support offered both by open theists and classical theists. This is followed by a look at the hermenuetical issues involved. It seems these sections could have been a bit stronger, and he seems to over-rely on Bruce Ware's God's Lesser Glory (Crossway, 2000) here. But it is a good introduction to the biblical material that is being debated.He next explores the historical development of God's foreknowledge, arguing that although it was not a major doctrine of the early church councils and creeds, it was in the main supported throughout church history by most of the church. There have always been dissenters on this issue, but they have tended to be in the minority, and often on the edges of orthodoxy.He then explores the philosophical debate surrounding God's foreknowledge. These are some of the stronger chapters in the book, as Erickson has always had as good a grasp of philosophy as theology. He demonstrates that the claims of the openness camp concerning classical theism's over-reliance on Greek philosophy are overstated and somewhat misleading. He also shows that openness thought is also quite depended on philosophy in its own right.He concludes by looking at the practical consequences of these two theological systems, and how they impinge on other major doctrines of the faith.All in all this is a very good restatement of classical theology, and a very incisive and irenic critique of openness thought. Erickson is always a joy to read and he has done a good job here in defending the traditional understanding that God does indeed know all things, even the future.

Dr. Erickson has delivered everything the Bible student has come to expect in fair, Scripturally accurate and balanced evaluation of differing belief systems. Here, he dissects Open Theory and determines the cause of demise: contra-biblical infection from the Humanism Philosophistication Virus (overexposure to unbridled, tainted human reasoning with insufficient immunization from Holy Spirit wisdom).The main strength of the book is its faithful adherence to 'All Scripture as written in context interprets each & every Scripture'. Erickson exposes Open Theory as a heterodox philosophy that uses 'Each Scripture as I understand it interprets All Scripture'. This allows Openists to take certain verses, motifs, preferred themes and use them as driving control mechanisms to 'harmonize' troublesome passages/counter-motifs to fit the Open Theory.Erickson makes the excellent and insurmountable case that Openism fails the Presupposition Test: it is flawed from the getgo by having faulty Control Beliefs built in before the Bible is even opened. Which view handles the most Scripture in its natural, author-intended sense relevant to a doctrinal issue (God's Attributes) with the least interpretive legerdemain? Historic Evangelical.Which view extracts selective favorable Scriptures in unnatural, reader-imagined senses fitting the system's philosophic givens with speculative, imaginative, peculiar interpretive circumlocution? Open Theory.With this book,Openism is clearly exposed as DEVANGELICAL.Here is just one example of how Open Theory fails to let the Bible speak for itself without forced Eisegesis (reading into the passage foreign matter the interpreter holds to as non-negotiable givens): Peter's certainly predicted denials.All 4 Gospels have Jesus predicting with 100% certainty Peter's future free denials before the rooster crows the following dawn. Sure enough, Peter denies the Lord 3 times precisely as and when Jesus definitively foretold.The Historic Evangelical accepts the Scriptures as written and allows Jesus to be 100% Certain in His Omniscient Foreknowledge of Free Futures as Actuality (Definitely This, Definitely Not That).The Open Theory Devangelical rejoinders have all sorts of creative, contorted, convoluted mental gymnastics to escape the plain implications of Jesus' unerring prediction and precise fulfillment without exception. They are forced to argue that the only way Jesus could do this was to arrange it, stage it, orchestrate it to the point of 'squeezing' Peter not just once, or twice, but three times to get him to fulfill the prophecy.All sorts of psycho-dymanic speculation is posited as to Peter's character being 'solidified' to some irrevocable point as to be manipulatible or predictible. But of course, this goes way beyond the text's simple description of events and violates the Bible's own dictum: Do not go beyond what's written!Here are some penetrating questions for Openists:1)Under equally extreme pressure, Job and Abraham did no