It’s an interesting thing what a near-death experience can do to your theology!
Up until Saturday evening I was on my way to being a full-on Open Theist and rejecting the hyper-sovereignty and hyper-transcendence of Calvinism. But, after experiencing what I did in my out-of-control vehicle and seriously sensing the the movement of God in the lines of my story, now I’m not so sure.
After processing my experience a bit, I thought how silly it was to post on God’s nature and posit an alternative, open view of Him in light of my strong belief in God’s presence and deliberate action in my story. I was going to rip my posts to digital shreds (as much as that’s actually possible!), but then I thought I would post them any way and offer some critique to my own critique.
It’s an interesting thing what a near-death experience can do to your theology, and I hope this space can be a catalyst for wrestling through my new thoughts in light of that experience.
be His today…
-jeremy
Technorati Tags: car accidents, doctrine of god, god, nature of god, open theism
First off, I want to say that I am pleased to be having this conversation with you and that God seemed to have intervened in this situation to save you.
But I think there is room for God-intervention within an Open View of God.
The idea is not that God cannot intervene and protect us, it is mainly that he does not have the future mapped out for us.
God still accomplishes His purposes throughout History.
This is a breath of fresh air as compared to folks that claim that the whole thing is mapped out for us.
My explanation (as someone who leans towards Open Theology) is that because of your choice to drive wherever it was you were going, at whatever rate of speed you chose, and whichever route, God was forced to act on your behalf.
Had you not freely chosen those things, God would not have had to act. He could have just mapped out a safe route for you and controlled the whole thing.
What do you think?
🙂
Jeremy,
I want you to know that I have read every one of your words concerning Open Theism, and I look forward to the coming installments you plan to write. As you may know, I was just the type of person Pinnock seemingly hopes to save with this book. In other words, I held false ideas about God, rejected Him based on those, and turned away from anything to do with Christianity since it left me so disappointed.
Later, after my life fell apart of course, I realized that I would never be able to escape dealing with The Creator of the universe. My single greatest spiritual awakening happened as a result of being made to “deal” with Him—that is, my thoughts about Him. In other words, I had to begin rethinking and questioning my theology, which has lead to incredible experiences and is why I am rather zealous and passionate for other people to experience the same (especially those who are “ex Christian”).
What I find interesting though, is the fact that my previous doctrine of God—the one which poisoned and killed my faith—is actually the very “medicine” being offered by Pinnock as the cure—Open Theism. Would this shock him, I wonder? Is it true that this book’s author has lived the opposite experience, and if so, what does that say for the importance of theology?
For so long I have been very preoccupied with the way people think about God, as I know it is valuable (or has been in my life), but books like this make me question whether or not I’m missing the mark with my passion. Maybe I should be less concerned with the map people are using and more concerned with the destination. In other words, maybe I should think more about correct conclusions, like the fact that God is good and worthy of our praise, and not how we get there?
I say this, because I see so much straw-man reasoning when people try to sell their brand of theology. Everyone holds up a view of God and claims to know where it will lead everyone else based on where it has led them personally.
Calvinism has done beautiful things for me, and I hear it misrepresented all the time. People say it is a cold and distant view of God. Well? Not for me it isn’t. People say that a belief in predestination with regards to salvation would kill all motivation for missions, and this isn’t true either. I could turn this around and conclude what Open Theism does, like make life seem hopeless and out of control, but I see John would say otherwise.
All I can tell you is that growing up in the charismatic, Word-of-faith movement, which seems to be Open Theism in disguise, is not where God meant for me to stay. Saying God is unable to help me since this world and its sin supposedly ties His hands did not get me to the right destination. I saw no point in laying my life down for this god who wants to save people from tragedy but cannot.
I needed to realize that God is in absolute control, and that He has a plan. I needed to hate His plan and have an emotional blowout with Him, beating my fists against His chest, so to speak, but ultimately come to do the only thing I can…cry on His shoulder and trust. This is what I see happening in the book of Job, and only after some great theological storms can I understand the peace and joy in it. Abandonment to Divine providence has proven to be the perfect and needed rest for my weary soul.
This is all very interesting. Please keep writing brother!
~Chris
Hey John!
Thanks for your words and I’m happy to have the conversation too and roll somethings around with like minded folk 🙂
I like your analysis, but a comment from a professor who is more of a Compatibilist (deterministic concept of God) is this: if God is as open as we say, then how can he step into car accidents and prevent them? Because God respects the freedom of of individuals so much, he will not even answer our prayers for safety on the road, because that would impinge on the freedom of other drivers…this sorta makes sense to me in light of a hyper-libertarian freedom often found in this conversation.
But then I agree with you in that God is intimately involved in history, so even if he respected the freedom of the @$$ hole who ran a stop sign in front of me, causing me to slam on my breaks and subsequently spin out of control (yeah, crazy I know!), because God is uber involved in my story because of is hyper-relationality he allowed my car to swoop in front of the group of 6 cars unharmed and land in the grass without causing injury to me or others. (whew! that was one RUN-ON sentence).
Does this make sense? I think thats what I think about it all, though I’m still working it through 🙂 Any other thoughts on God’s sovereignty and relationship to our world and time?
thanks for opportunity to dialogue this through…
-jeremy
Great thought on the subject, but I think that we can definately over-think this.
The kind of God that the the professor’s open-theist refers to just sounds like an asshole. Sort of like, “well, you chose to do this so now I am going to let you die…”
Doesn’t sound respectful, sounds irresponsible. God’s most base role that the entirety of scripture seems to talk about is as a Father to His children.
Now we have a marginal-at-best understanding of what a Father truly is, but at least by earthly standards, we as fathers don’t let our kids just kill themselves. If they decide, on their own will, at the age of 2-years-old to run across the street without looking, we would jump in front of a car to save them.
Yet, we allow them the freedom to choose things as they grow or they will never learn what life is like independant from our protective care. We don’t restrict that freedom for our own needs or desires. If we do, it is considered “poor parenting” by most people’s standards. Instead, we honor their freedom by encouraging them to do what it is that their heart desires.
Do we watch them put a gun to their head at the age of 21 and pull the trigger out of respect for their free will. No, not if we are real Fathers.
Now the person that ran the stop sign, still ran the stop sign. God did not stop them, He allowed the person to make that choice.
He chose to protect you. Do you feel disrespected?
I don’t claim to have the answer here, but this is certainly worth considering. God, we have found can not be packaged up in a human box thankfully, but we are given practical experience and relationship with Him in an effort to figure things out that are necessary about Him.
God does allow us to make poor choices, and I believe that he hopes for better. I believe that He is frustrated with us at times and just plain disgusted at other times. If our choices can upset, frustrate and disgust Him, then it is possible that he was not expecting us to make them. It is possible that He was hoping for better.
I think that He is more open not out of some kind of respect for us, but more out of wonder and fascination with His creation.
So there is definately balance found within the theology. It does not have to be black or white to be Open.
I think of this balance as a spectrum towards openess. At one end of the spectrum is the hard-core determinist, and at the other end is the hard core Open-Theist.
I think that this view I speak of leans towards and open view of God if you know what I mean.
Me
Determinist |———————-|——–| Open View
What do you think?
I’m John and I’m with the other John who has commented above. Evangelical Open Theists do not propose that *nothing* is determined but that not *everything* is. Reality is bigger than we see, and who is to know if countless angels did not lose some feathers maneuvering your car through the eye of the needle. Some things are definitely predetermined by God, other things are open, yet in it all—God achieves good purposes. Open theism magnifies sovereignty and love, it does not diminish God’s sovereignty. Caveat: It does, if you assume “sovereignty” equals “control.”