know – Snyder's Soapbox

In a nutshell open theists say, “God can’t know the future.” Their argument is, “God knows everything that can be known. But the future cannot be known. Therefore, God does not know the future.” Right off the bat, I mean out of the gate, there are a couple of glaring problems with their argument. One is they have subjected God to His creation. According to this argument, God is now limited in what He can know, by linear time. God transcends time. He is above time. Sure we experience Him in time, because we are finite creatures existing in His creation. In that creation He has given us a defining dimension called time. This in no way limits His knowledge. God exists in an ageless age we call eternity. You can think of it as an infinite instance where all things exist and cease to exist at God’s sovereign will.

The next big problem with open theism is that it negates most of the Bible. Think about it, if God cannot know the future as a finite reality, determined by His decreed or ordained will, how did the prophets speak God’s words, in such a way where the actual determined future, took place in accord with His will, to become historical narrative? When they spoke, what He told them about the future. It came about exactly as He told them. What was given as prophecy did not simply become reality as it was fulfilled. It was determined reality the moment God decreed or ordained it. As they experienced it in linear time, it may have seemed like the prophecy was coming true experientially, but in fact it was known by God as He was the source of it. The Bible is a progressive revelation of God’s word. The actual realities that hadn’t occurred yet to the prophets were no less actual. Prophecy once fulfilled and recorded is increased by the quality of becoming historical narrative.

Most open theists hold the view they do because they have reduced God to a man like creature. They do this because they cannot justify the existence of evil. They fail to study theodicy in a Biblically consistent, God centered, and God honoring way. It honors God to be honest, and to glorify Him. It does not honor Him to elevate mankind’s concepts of justice, good, and evil.

Here is another definition of open theism, “Open Theism is the thesis that, because God loves us and desires that we freely choose to reciprocate His love, He has made His knowledge of, and plans for, the future conditional upon our actions. Though omniscient, God does not know what we will freely do in the future.”

I would not disagree with most of the first part. God does love the elect and does desire that they would choose Him. Of course He does not love the ones who will reject Him unto their mortal ends. They will die in their sins. I would vehemently disagree with their assertion that, “God has made His knowledge, and plans for, the future conditional upon our actions.” I believe that I have demonstrated through use of the example of Biblical prophecy how foolish this viewpoint is. The next statement they make is, “Though omniscient, God does not know what we will freely do in the future.” This defies logic. The definition of omniscient is to know all things. How could He not know, what is actual reality in the future, and still be said to know all things? He would not be omniscient anymore. Knowledge is a thing. It is a created thing. We only know things in a corrupt way. We are finite creatures made by God. We have a very limited ability to perceive reason, understand, recall, and communicate. All of these attributes of ours are affected by sin and our finite existence as creatures. We call this the noetic effect of sin. God, as the creator of all things, knows perfectly everything about the things He created. This being said, He is the source of all knowledge and knows it perfectly. What can be known is known by Him in totality and perfection. That is omniscience. Not this convoluted notion of pseudo-omniscience the open theist proposes. Again, they do this because they have a low view of God and cannot explain why evil exists without besmirching God. Their reaction to this is to reduce God and His knowledge to something more akin to a creature rather than the sovereign Creator.

They start with some false presuppositions that necessitate and precipitate the heresy of open theism. The presupposition, that God limits His knowledge, to what end, so that we can make a free choice? It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. The presupposition, that it is necessary for God to limit His knowledge, so that we can choose Him is equally as offensive. I exhort you all to flee from open theism. If you don’t understand some things of God, like how there can be a good God who lets evil exist, or how He can be in control of everything and use sin sinlessly, just trust God and lean not on your own understanding. One day you might mature to the point where you do understand these things. There is no need to justify them wrongly and attribute to God attributes that are not true.

I know it sounds complex, but trust me it isn’t… or perhaps it is? The word, “noetics” means; the science of the intellect or of pure thought; reasoning. So what we are talking about here today is how our ability to reason has been corrupted by sin. See, I told you it wasn’t that complex, but wait, there’s more! When we start getting into the concept I think we will all be amazed at how affecting this problem is.

Adam and Eve were made with good minds. They functioned free of sin. Well, then came the fall. They sinned, and God punished them, and their progeny. (us) Part of what happened is that we gained the knowledge of good and evil. We also gained the corruption of our ability to reason. We became spiritually dead and enslaved to sin. God says in His word;

9What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;

10as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;

11THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;

12ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVEBECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”

13“THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE, WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,” “THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;

14“WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING ANDBITTERNESS”;

15“THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,

16DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,

17AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.”

18“THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”

19Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;20because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

So God says there are none who understand or seek God. Think about this, if our reasoning wasn’t corrupted we would objectively reason through problems without pride or anger affecting those conclusions. Have you ever been so angry you couldn’t think clearly and made a bad decision you regretted later? Well that wouldn’t happen if we weren’t sinners. Imagine a mind operating free from sinful influence. Do you know who has a mind like that? I’ll give you a hint, the answer is what every kid in Sunday School says when they don’t know the answer… If you said, “Jesus” you are correct. So if you are not God, then you have the problem of sin affecting the way you perceive, process, understand, and apply everything that comes into your head. That’s right kids; we are all under the curse of original sin.

Here is another example, have you ever been so enamored with a person that they could do no wrong according to you? Most of us could say yes to that. The problem is that they are just as much a sinner as everyone else. They aren’t the person you perceived them to be. The mind was not able to properly understand and judge the information available because of sins affect on reason.

Our perceptions are affected by sin. We see what we want to see. We don’t see what is actual. Our reasoning of what we see is affected to. We run everything through a filter that is changing what goes in so that what comes out is not actual. When we are processing the unreal perceptions through a conduit that affects those perceptions we come up with flawed conclusions. These flawed conclusions are then applied to our situations with varying results, none of which are founded on actuality.

We are so deeply corrupted by sin that we would never be able to repent and have faith in the God of the Bible without His direct intervention in our lives. So think about how you think and if you think the way you thought you thought or if you think the way sin makes you think if you think of sin as a thing that can affect the thinking of thoughts you think.