Lipps, that is a very comprehensive list. I could even see value in you creating a blog and expounding on each of those to more depth at some time, because you have a rare combination of facility with logic and langauge and experience growing up in many different contexts within the spectrum of evangelical life and culture. Plus, it might even be good for you to figure out how to explain why these things are in the list in a helpful way to others who do not yet understand why you would say what you're saying.

And I would add to your second list:
- God's "way"/"call" for a given person has aspects both universal to all and particular to the person's unique nature and nurture

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Whether right or wrong, I'm not sure.

If it makes you feel any better, it was not written with the intent of being helpful, right, good, comforting, or true. It was written with the intent to express frustrations and to be honest. Maybe the frustrations are wrong or unhealthy, and if you think so I'd be glad to hear it. But I wasn't saying anything about them so much as laying them out there.

My 2 cents on certainty. Certainty is a tough thing to come by. Many philosophers (and normal people...) think it doesn't exist, and all we can hope for is confidence. I think we can be certain of some things, as do you, based on your 2nd list. I think though, the only way you can be certain of that second list is because God has clearly revealed these things to you through his means of revelation: Scripture, the world and your heart.

I can appreciate the upper list, especially as simply an expression of what's on your heart. There are things that are less clear in Scipture, and there are things that are more clear. There are things that are more important in Scripture and less important, which Jesus seems to tell us in his scolding of the Pharisees and his assertion of a greatest commandment. The more clear things are in Scripture (and nature and our hearts), the more certain we can be of them.

I think that some of those things on the upper list are certain enough to be on the lower list, particularly the one's that question his knowledge. I think God does know. And if he doesn't, I think we've got bigger problems than things like authentic Christianity. If God doesn't know, how can you possibly be sure that the kingdom will in fact come? If God doesn't know the future, maybe he loses. Maybe evil will win. I can't live with that, and more importantly, I think Scripture makes it clear that he does win and he does know.

Well, I think God can know he will defeat evil and bring the kingdom without "knowing the future". Being omnipotent, he can of course will to do anything, at any point in time, and make sure that it happens. It's sort of like, if we were to tell an ant that is captured in a jar, "In 5 minutes I am going to squish you". If we pay attention to the clock, and assume that nothing happens to us (which is a fair assumption--what could "happen" to God?), and assume that our will does not change, then nothing could possibly make it so that the ant was not squished. (Sorry to use a horribly gruesome analogy). It's not a necessary fact of logic or the laws of nature that the ant is to be squished, but I know it will happen anyway. So I know the future in that sense! Neither is God's ultimate victory a necessary fact of logic or the laws of nature--it seems contingent on his desire to have that victory (which we can be certain he has).

So as far as things concern him, he knows the future. And of course being omniscient, he can extrapolate from any natural mechanism in the world to any future natural state, since he knows all the currently existing natural laws. The thing that I doubt is human will--I don't know if he knows what every human will decide about him in the end.

Neither do I think this is a limitation on God. Maybe the category of future-non-self-will is in principle unknowable, like the category of things-created-by-God-which-he-cannot-lift is in principle unrealizable. So maybe my doubt is just that human decisions exist at all before they are made, in which case, how can God, if his omniscience is defined as knowing everything, not every nonthing, be faulted for not knowing them (these non-things)?

Anyway, I agree with you about God needing to have true assurance of his own victory. For if he doesn't, our hope is lessened. But I think he can have that assurance without "knowing the future" in the sense that I meant.

But I appreciate your sentiments about certainty, and think that I quite agree, and there probably are some things on the upper list that I can have the same certainty about as the things on the lower list.

I hope you don't mind me continuing the dialogue on this matter, because it is no small one. Essentially we are talking about open-theism verses traditional orthodox understanding of God's knowledge. It sounds as though you are open to open-theism. My seminary comes down pretty hard on open-theism, so I have obviously been biased against it, but that doesn't mean I haven't been biased in the right direction.

My biggest problem with the idea that God doesn't know future human decisions is that it seems to give human freedom a power and autonomy that Scripture simply does not acknowledge. The biblical writers seem fully comfortable with something that most people today are not comfortable with, and that is that God knows and directs the future entirely and yet we are still free and held responsible to make decisions.

If God did not or could not know the future of human decisions, then this appears as though it gets God off the hook for the problem of evil (which I think is one of the biggest motivations for the whole open-theism movement). The problem is, when this question is posed to God in Scripture (which it does not come up much, which in itself says something about human autonomous freedom not being a concern in Scripture), this is not the answer than is given. When Paul gets into this in Romans 9, the question is clearly brought to the forefront. If God is in control, how can he blame those who sin? The answer (if open-theism is correct) says, "Well, don't blame God, he doesn't know what you will choose...His knowledge simply doesn't extend that far." But we emphatically don't get that answer. Instead we get, "who are you to ask this question?"

If open-theism is right and God doesn't know free human decisions, then Paul seems unaware of it, as does the author of Job. For me this is the most compelling argument against open-theism, Scripture takes for granted that God knows and we are responsible. If there is a problem understanding this, the answer is "who are you to ask this?" I don't necessarily like that answer. But why don't I like it? I think when I look deep enough, it's because I want autonomous human freedom. I want to be in control of one little part of the universe, that not even God himself can control! Now that's power! But I think it's evil too.

One other major problem with open-theism is that it does not do justice to several biblical prophesies. I know that prophecy does not only concern predicting the future and often explicitly involves historical contingencies. But the test for a true prophet is whether or not they can predict the future (Deut. 18:21-22). There are many, many examples of how open-theism cannot fit with this model of prophesy. One is Genesis 15: 13-16. God tells Abraham that his decedents will one day be enslaved for 400 years, but in the 4th generation they will come back to Canaan. The way this prophecy gets fulfilled involves generations of free decisions that if they were autonomous, God could not know the outcome. But God writes the story (Genesis 45:5-8, Genesis 50:20), and predicts the events as they unfold because he knows what will happen.

Jesus says God knows the hour when he will return (Mk 13:32), but his return is predicated upon other events happening, events that involve free human decisions to come about (13:1-30). God knows in advance how those decisions will come about, so he can know the day and hour of Jesus' return.

There are many, many other examples of this sort of prediction that are very specific and predicated upon free human choices. But if they are autonomously free, then those prophecies end up being mere coincidences that could have gone either way. This is not the picture of God we're given in Scripture though. His knowledge knows no limits (Ps. 147:5). There is nothing in creation that is hidden from his sight (including human decisions), and to him we must give account (Hebrews 4:12-13).

I know this is long, but it's a very important topic. Have you read John Frame's No Other God? If not, I highly recommend it on this question. He is an amazingly clear yet complex writer, with a submissive hermeneutic on Scripture. I think you'll find it at least giving you major food for thought.

Joel--for the record, I'm not much for labeling or being labeled with a system of ideas, i.e., open theism, rather than talking about the ideas themselves. I.e., I don't want to be taken to be defending open theism here (since I don't know what all that theology entails).

Anyhow, my point about the future is philosophical, not scriptural. It's also not so much a point about the abilities of God as a point about the nature of reality. If reality is such a way, for example, that there is no such thing as "the future", then it is hard to imagine how any being at all could conceive of a future event in any mode which we would term "knowledge".

Knowledge traditionally requires 3 things--a belief, a justification for that belief, and the universe being arranged in such a way as that the state of affairs the belief picks out actually holds. It is really hard to see if this property "actually holding" can be tensified with respect to the future. If it can, then God's omniscience would need to apply to future truths. If not, then God's omniscience would no more need to apply to it than to falsehoods or logical impossibilities. I.e., it's a recognized fact of theology (at least mine), that God cannot conceive of square circles, but that our use of the word "cannot" is misleading, because it does not describe a limitation in this case. God can not be not-God, but we don't consider that a limitation.

Similarly, in the case of time, if it turns out that the concept of a future event is more like the concept of a square circle than the concept of a present event, then it would be no limitation on God that he couldn't know the future (because "future" would be meaningless). Maybe it seems really odd that the concept of a future event would turn out that way, instead of being like the concept of a present event. I honestly don't know which way to go--time is one of those parts of philosophy that are very paralyzing, and even in typing up this little bit, I've realized how impossible it is even to use language in discussion of it, because our language is temporal, just as our experience seems to be, whether or not the fundamental nature of reality (which is what I am talking about) is.

The way things went in my head was like this:
1. I don't know that the future is conceivable
2. Therefore, I don't know that God can conceive the future
3. Therefore, it is open to me to doubt that God knows the future.

That's all! That's why I included it on the doubt list--I hadn't really considered whether I doubted it or not from a scriptural perspective. My first comment reply to your comment was also from a philosophical perspective, meant to show that, even if God doesn't know the future, he could still know that he will "win" (whatever "will" would turn out to mean in a future-less language).

There's also the possibility, suggested by a sentence or two above, that God doesn't know the future in the philosophical sense, but that he does to us. That is, God knows things which look to us like they're "in the future", but really it's not that God knows the future; instead it is us who are misguided in referring to a non-existent entity with the words "the future". I suppose this view is equivalent, from our perspective, to the one in which there is, philosophically speaking, a future, and in which God knows it. But it'd only be equivalent from our perspective, not God's.

I appreciate you taking the discussion in a scriptural direction. I'm quite befuddled by scripture in the cases you brought up, and have no response.

Well, sort of: I do think a lot of the examples you mention could be fiddled with enough for us to agree that God could "count on" certain things happening while not strictly knowing them. Moreover the thing about the test for a true prophet is not particularly convincing. It's beside the point though: what you said is "the most compelling argument against open-theism", namely the set of God's biblical responses to questions about his foreknowledge, stands despite that.

In the end for me it comes down to interpreting Paul and the author of Job as saying one thing or another. From my high-philosophy standpoint, I could easily read their works as written from a place of human ignorance, where they just haven't thought about the philosophy of time enough.

So I guess this whole scriptural tack plays way more into my hermeneutic, and how much my pre-existing philosophical intuitions or doubts are supposed to inform my reading of scripture, and what to do when there are conflicts between those intuitions and a "plain" reading of scripture.

On the whole, I find myself in favor of the plain readings, whatever those turn out to be, given the appropriate relativizations of context and so on. Right now, however, I think I'm just out on how much human freedom/power/autonomy God does give us, and so I'm less inclined to be worried, like you seem to be, about what happens if I believe other things that imply we have a certain amount of it (freedom/power/autonomy).

Bottom line: I don't know why God responds the way he does in Romans 9 and Job, and I don't like it--I don't like the responses and I don't like that I don't understand them. Given that, it is no surprise that it is an area of periodic doubt (particularly when I am trying to think up doubts instead of having them fall out of a life lived). All the same, I feel that if I doubt in this area, I doubt in God's grace, and with struggles--not in intentional arrogance.

Re list #1: Thanks for vocalizing some doubts that even I haven't had, that's no easy task! I especially like the one that emphasizes being a Christian over making more. There's some seriously great questions in there that more Christians should be discussing.

Re list #2: I'm impressed that you were able to come up with a list of things you haven't seriously doubted. I wish I could say the same! I probably have a spell every 3 months or so that I seriously question the existence of God. This greatly simplifies my troubles since the rest of the list of doubts suddenly becomes moot! He is the Epistem. Usually I'm brought back by some astounding facet of nature like a bug or a glance at the night sky. Sometimes the doubt simply passes like the previous meal's indigestion.

I wonder if my doubts have their own weather system, dark clouds come and go without warning.

Dave,

It often surprises me too that I have not seriously doubted the existence of God. I thought that being a philosopher in a secular university would give me ample cause to doubt the existence of God, but in reality, we didn't much talk about God, and when we did, I was never particularly impressed with arguments for his nonexistence. They may have been perfectly good arguments, but I was never impressed by them. This in itself surprises me--maybe it's the good ol sensus divinitatis at work.

No, my problems with God always seem to be of the more relational kind--do I love or hate God? Do I want to follow or disobey God? Do I trust or distrust God? I don't know if this is better or worse than doubting his existence entirely, but sometimes I do wonder what it would feel like to doubt that.

The weather system of doubt is a cool image...I wonder what forces drive the clouds about?

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I apologize if the title "open theism" is not something you want to be labeled with. I apologize. Your doubt and response to my response seemed to fall into that category to me, but I agree with you that labels often are meant to constrict and limit people, of which I do not want to do to you. So I'm sorry about hat.

We can let this thread die if you prefer. I thought you'd be into going as far as it goes, but if you want to let it go, we certainly can. I feel like I'm backing myself into a corner because as you said, this is a statement of doubt (on a certain day), not a creed of belief, which would naturally be more open to attack. I hate when people jump on other people at the slightest movement of something away from typical Christian answers to questions.

On anyone else's post, I would have said nothing. But because it's you, I thought you'd be into a spirited discussion where we aren't afraid to disagree in order to make sure we "in unity." Sometimes we all pretend to be in unity over issues that we genuinely disagree on. Often times that's no big deal because they are periphery beliefs (like the time of the rapture for instance. Who can be sure about that one?). Other times though there are disagreements that are meaningful and significant (like Trinitarian controversies, the nature and person of Jesus, among many others). I think divine omniscience is important enough to discuss openly when disagreement or doubt from the traditional answer comes up.

I certainly can appreciate the philosophical doubt that is not the same thing as a theological discussion (at least on some level). And your bringing up of the nature of knowledge is entirely appropriate. I would venture to say that all theology and philosophy is in one-way or another an epistemological discussion. What can we know, and how can we know it?

Ultimately, I think our ability to answer that question (or any question) will come back to, "what has God told us about this issue?" The answer to that will always involve Scripture as the norming norm, though not the exclusive revelation of God. I know it's simplistic, but how else can we possibly answer the question of, "does God know the future" without considering as a whole (as best as we can) what he has revealed to us. So I did not intend to beat you over the head with Scripture references, but for me these have been the informative ones in my readings and studies. Our ability to conceive the nature of the future must be brought into submission with what Scripture has revealed. This is what I take Luther to be getting at when he called reason a whore. Not that reason cannot be of help and a guide, but on the hierarchy of norms, it is below the word of God.

As far as your discomfort with Romans and Job goes, I can see that meaning one of two things (though there may obviously be more...). One is that you don't like them because you (like everyone else) like autonomy. I'm not saying that's what is true, but it is a possibility. A second likely alternative is that your discomfort is the Holy Spirit on some level telling you my interpretation is wrong. A lack of peace can often be such an indication.

So which one is it? That's the hermeneutical spiral at work, of which we are all a part.

I'm confused about statements like "I thought you'd be into going as far as it goes", and "I thought you'd be into a spirited discusssion...". Do I not seem to be? My last comment wasn't meant to halt the discussion in any way. I certainly agree that divine omniscience is important enough to discuss openly when disagreement or doubt comes up.

Unfortunately, though I might doubt the traditional answer, that doesn't mean I'm prepared to battle to the intellectual death for a competing answer. Quite the contrary! I've just been mulling over the possibilities and merits of competing answers, and seeing how they cohere with the rest of my system of philosophical and scriptural beliefs. From where I am standing right now, "open theism", or whatever you want to call it, fares much better philosophically and ethically, and much worse on a standard interpretation of some biblical passages (which point you added to the discussion).

It's not so much a question of what, from day to day and then ultimately, I'm going to affirm as true. But the fact that a particular view of omniscience might be well off scripturally is not the end of the dialogue for me, since I am a philosopher as well and need to engage these ideas on that level. It would be the same as if I were an evolutionary biologist--the intersection of faith and research is a confusing place. Fruitful, though!

Your point about this whole discussion being epistemological is right. Our answers will hinge on how we answer the question, not "what has God told us about this issue?", but "how do we know what God has told us about this issue?" You cite scripture as being the norming norm, without being exclusive. Then it is merely a part of this non-exclusivity for me to pay attention to philosophical intuitions, just as it is for a scientist to pay attention to the physical structure of the universe.

You gave two options for what my discomfort with Romans and Job means. I think there is a third option. I may or may not like autonomy more than I should (I probably do!), but where my discomfort comes in is that I struggle with the question, not how much I like autonomy, but how much and what kind of autonomy is good and God-given. I tend to see creation as betowing a surprising amount of autonomy, of some kind or another, upon humans. So to me it was really less a question of what I personally feel about my own personal autonomy, and more a question which of the many competing views of God's purpose for and gift of autonomy is best. For the last couple years I have been thinking that autonomy is more God-sanctioned than you seem to.