Chapter 9

Open Theism and God in Time

A Bridge Too Far

Introduction: The Tempting Shortcut

If you have been following our argument so far, you know that we have been building a case for divine temporality — the view that God genuinely experiences time, that He acts in real sequence, and that He is not frozen in a timeless, unchanging "eternal now." We have seen the strengths and weaknesses of divine timelessness (Chapters 4–6), made the positive case for a God who experiences temporal succession (Chapter 7), and examined William Lane Craig's creative but ultimately problematic hybrid view (Chapter 8). At every step, we have argued that the biblical portrait of God as a living, acting, responding, creating, grieving, and rejoicing Person sits far more naturally with divine temporality than with divine timelessness.

But here we hit a fork in the road. And it is a fork that makes many Christians nervous.

The moment you say "God is in time," a certain alarm goes off in some people's minds. They immediately think: "That's open theism! If God is in time, then He can't know the future. If He can't know the future, then biblical prophecy collapses. If prophecy collapses, we can't trust God's promises. And if we can't trust God's promises, the whole Christian faith unravels." This chain of reasoning is understandable. It is also completely wrong.

I want to be very direct about the purpose of this chapter. We need to examine open theism carefully for one simple reason: it is the most prominent contemporary theology that affirms divine temporality, and many people — both critics and supporters of timelessness — assume that affirming God's temporality automatically makes you an open theist. If that assumption were true, it would be a serious problem for our argument. But it is not true. It is a false dichotomy — a forced choice between two options when a third option is available. You can be a thoroughgoing temporalist — believing wholeheartedly that God experiences real sequence and succession — while also affirming that God has exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of every event that will ever occur. That is my position. And in this chapter, I want to show you why open theism, despite getting some important things right, ultimately goes a bridge too far.

We will begin by defining open theism and tracing its origins. Then we will give it a fair hearing — there are genuine insights here that deserve respect. After that, we will explain where it goes wrong: its denial of God's exhaustive foreknowledge is both contrary to the biblical witness and theologically unnecessary. Finally, we will clearly distinguish the position defended in this book — what I call "dynamic divine temporality with transcendent access" — from the open theist model. The full refutation of open theism's philosophical arguments will come later in Chapter 32. Here, our goal is to present the view, appreciate its contributions, identify its central error, and show why divine temporality does not require an open future.

What Is Open Theism? A Clear Definition

Let me explain open theism in the simplest terms I can. Open theism is the view that God is temporal — He exists in time and experiences real sequence — and that He is genuinely responsive to His creatures, but that He does not exhaustively know the future free choices of human beings. The future, on this view, is partly "open" even for God. God knows everything about the past and the present with perfect accuracy. He knows His own intentions and plans. He knows what He Himself will do. He even knows the probabilities and tendencies of what creatures are likely to do, based on His perfect knowledge of their characters and circumstances. But He does not know with certainty what free creatures will actually choose until they choose it.¹

Think of it this way. On the open theist view, God is like the world's greatest chess player — incomprehensibly brilliant, able to anticipate moves far better than any human strategist, and fully capable of adapting to whatever happens. But even the world's greatest chess player does not know with absolute certainty what his opponent will do next. He can predict, anticipate, prepare contingency plans, and respond with breathtaking wisdom. But the actual move remains unknown until it is made. Open theists believe this analogy captures something real about God's relationship to the future. God is not caught off guard — He is infinitely resourceful. But He does not have a crystal ball that shows Him exactly what every creature will freely decide at every moment of history.²

This might sound radical, and in many ways it is. But open theists insist they are not diminishing God. They argue that omniscience — God's attribute of knowing all things — means that God knows all things that can be known. And if the future free choices of creatures do not yet exist (because the creatures have not yet made them), then there is nothing there to be known. God's not knowing the future is not a limitation on God's knowledge any more than God's inability to create a square circle is a limitation on His power. You cannot know what does not exist to be known, just as you cannot do what is logically impossible to do.³

The Key Figures and Origins of the Movement

Open theism as an organized theological movement traces its origins to the 1994 publication of The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, a collaborative volume written by five evangelical scholars: Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger.⁴ Each author contributed a chapter approaching the question from a different angle — biblical, historical, theological, philosophical, and practical. Together, they presented the most comprehensive articulation of the openness view that had yet appeared.

Gregory Boyd, a pastor and former professor of theology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, became one of open theism's most prominent popularizers. His book God of the Possible was written to communicate the openness view in accessible language for ordinary church members.⁵ Boyd preferred the term "the open view of the future" rather than "the open view of God," because he wanted to emphasize that the debate was about the nature of the future — whether it is "settled" or "open" — rather than about diminishing God.⁶

William Hasker, a philosopher at Huntington College, provided much of the philosophical backbone of the movement. His book God, Time, and Knowledge argued that divine timelessness is incoherent and that libertarian free will is incompatible with exhaustive divine foreknowledge.⁷ John Sanders's The God Who Risks developed the theological and providential implications, arguing that God's relationship with humanity is genuinely reciprocal — God takes real risks in creating free creatures.⁸ And Clark Pinnock's Most Moved Mover presented the broadest theological vision, arguing that God is dynamic, responsive, and passible — a God who is genuinely moved by what His creatures do.⁹

The debate generated by these thinkers was enormous. Within evangelical circles especially, open theism provoked passionate responses. The Evangelical Theological Society debated whether to remove open theists from its membership. Denominations issued statements. Books and articles — both for and against — multiplied rapidly. Bruce Ware's God's Lesser Glory and John Frame's No Other God offered sharp evangelical critiques. Whatever one thinks of the movement, there is no denying that it forced evangelical theology to reckon seriously with questions about divine knowledge, freedom, and temporality that had been largely ignored or treated as settled.

It is worth noting, however, that open theism did not appear out of nowhere in 1994. As R. T. Mullins observes, the historical roots of open theism stretch back much further. In the nineteenth century, the Methodist philosopher Lorenzo Dow McCabe argued in his 1882 book Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity that human free will requires that God cannot know future human choices.¹⁰ Within the Restoration Movement, T. W. Brents argued in his 1874 work The Gospel Plan of Salvation that exhaustive foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom, and that God freely limits the range of His knowledge to preserve that freedom.¹¹ And as Mullins notes, similar ideas about an open future can be traced through various Protestant traditions. Open theism is not a late twentieth-century invention — it is a recurring response to the tension between divine knowledge and human freedom that has resurfaced in different forms throughout church history.¹²

The Core Commitments of Open Theism

What unites open theists? Mullins identifies three core commitments that hold the movement together.¹³ First, open theists are committed to presentism and endurantism — the metaphysical view that only the present moment is real, and that objects and persons endure through time as wholes (rather than being spread out across time as four-dimensional "worms"). Second, open theists are committed to libertarian freedom for human creatures. This is the view that for a choice to be genuinely free, the person must have the real ability to choose otherwise — their choice cannot be determined by prior causes. Third, open theists affirm God's creational freedom and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. God freely chose to create the world out of nothing, and He was free not to create at all. This distinguishes open theism from process theology, which denies creation ex nihilo (as we will see in Chapter 10).

Kenneth Gardoski provides a helpful summary of what he calls the "pillars" of open theism, building on the work of Sanders and Pinnock: (1) the love of God — God's nature is fundamentally love, and love requires genuine relationship; (2) the conditionality of God — God's actions and responses are genuinely conditioned by what creatures do; (3) the general providence of God — God provides for His creation in broad, general ways rather than meticulously controlling every detail; (4) the libertarian freedom of humanity — human beings have genuine, undetermined freedom of choice; and (5) the reciprocity of God — God and humanity exist in a genuinely give-and-take relationship.¹⁴

These commitments lead open theists to their distinctive conclusion: because the future free choices of creatures do not yet exist, God cannot know them. The future is ontically open (it does not yet exist), causally open (it is not determined by prior causes), alethically open (propositions about future free choices are either indeterminate or false), epistemically open (God does not know them), and providentially open (God has not settled every detail of what will happen).¹⁵ This "fivefold openness" is what gives the movement its name and its distinctiveness.

What Open Theism Gets Right

Before we turn to our critique, I want to be deliberately generous. Open theists have made genuinely important contributions to the theology of God's relationship to time, and intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge them. In fact, I share several of open theism's core convictions — even as I disagree sharply with its central conclusion about foreknowledge.

First, open theists are right that God is temporal. God experiences real sequence and succession. He acts, responds, creates, speaks, listens, grieves, and rejoices — and these are genuine temporal activities, not merely metaphors for a timeless, changeless reality. As we argued in Chapter 7, the biblical portrait of God is overwhelmingly temporal. God calls Abraham at a particular time. He delivers Israel from Egypt at a particular moment. He sends His Son "when the fullness of time had come" (Gal. 4:4). The narrative structure of Scripture presupposes a God who acts within the flow of history, not above or outside it. Open theists have consistently and courageously defended this point against the classical tradition, and they deserve real credit for it.

Second, open theists are right that God is genuinely relational and responsive. When Scripture says God "heard their groaning" (Exod. 2:24) or that God "relented from the disaster" (Jonah 3:10), open theists take these texts seriously as descriptions of a God who genuinely listens, genuinely cares, and genuinely responds to what His creatures do. They refuse to explain away the relational language of Scripture as mere anthropomorphism or accommodation to human weakness. In this, I believe they are much closer to the biblical portrait than the strict classical tradition, which often reduces God's emotional and relational engagement with the world to mere metaphor.¹⁶

Third, open theists are right that God is affected by what creatures do. As I argue in my companion book The Heart of God, God has genuine emotional responses to His creatures. He truly grieves over sin. He truly rejoices over repentance. He truly loves, and His love is not a cold, unmoved, unfeeling decree but a warm, passionate, engaged reality. Open theists have done valuable work in recovering this biblical insight against the tradition of strict divine impassibility — the view that God cannot be affected by anything outside Himself. Pinnock was right when he described God as the "Most Moved Mover" rather than Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover."¹⁷

Fourth, open theists are right that God genuinely interacts with the world in real time. Prayer is not a show. When we cry out to God, He hears us — not in some timeless, eternal instant where all prayers are simultaneously and changelessly present, but in the real moment of our crying out. When God answers prayer, He is genuinely responding to a genuine request. This conviction is precious to me, and I share it completely with the open theists.

Fifth, open theists have performed a valuable service to the church by forcing a conversation that needed to happen. For centuries, the classical tradition presented a portrait of God as utterly immutable, impassible, and atemporal — a portrait that many believers found difficult to reconcile with the God they encountered in Scripture and in prayer. Open theists challenged this portrait head-on, and while I believe they went too far in their response, the conversation they started has been enormously productive. It has pushed theologians across the spectrum — classical theists, modified classical theists, and temporalists alike — to think more carefully about what it means for God to be eternal, unchanging, and all-knowing.

I want the reader to feel the weight of these agreements. I am not dismissing open theism as a fringe movement unworthy of serious engagement. I am not caricaturing it as a reckless attack on God's sovereignty. Open theists are serious, devout, evangelical Christians who care deeply about the authority of Scripture and the reality of God's love. I respect them even as I disagree with them. But disagree I must — because on the critical question of divine foreknowledge, I believe open theism takes a step that is both biblically unsupported and theologically devastating.

What Open Theism Gets Wrong: The Denial of Exhaustive Foreknowledge

The heart of the open theist position — and the point where it departs from historic Christian orthodoxy — is its denial that God has exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of future free choices. Open theists argue that because future free choices do not yet exist, there is nothing there for God to know. This sounds logical on the surface. But I believe it fails on two counts: (a) it is contrary to the clear witness of Scripture, and (b) it is theologically unnecessary, because divine temporality does not actually require an open future.

(a) The Biblical Witness: God Declares the End from the Beginning

The most powerful biblical argument against open theism comes from the prophetic literature, particularly the book of Isaiah. In one of the most striking passages in all of Scripture, God Himself identifies His ability to declare the future as a distinctive mark of His deity — the very thing that separates Him from all false gods:

"Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.'" (Isaiah 46:9–10, ESV)

This passage is stunning in its clarity. God is not merely claiming that He has good plans or powerful intentions. He is claiming that He declares — makes known, reveals — "the end from the beginning." The Hebrew word used here is nagad (נָגַד), which means to declare, tell, or make known. God is not guessing about the future. He is not making educated predictions based on present tendencies. He is declaring what will happen with absolute certainty, because He knows it.¹⁸

Notice the context. Isaiah is drawing a sharp contrast between the God of Israel and the false gods — the idols. What makes the God of Israel unique? What separates Him from the mute, powerless idols of the nations? His ability to make the future known. The false gods cannot predict the future; the true God can — and does. As William Lane Craig observes, Isaiah makes knowledge of the future the decisive test in distinguishing the true God from false gods.¹⁹ In Isaiah 41:21–24, God throws down the gauntlet: "Set forth your case, says the LORD; bring your proofs.... Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods" (ESV). The ability to declare the future is presented as the ultimate credential of deity.

If the open theists are right — if God cannot know future free choices — then this argument collapses. If the future is genuinely "open" even for God, then God cannot declare the end from the beginning in any robust sense. He can declare what He Himself intends to do. He can make educated guesses about what creatures will probably do. But He cannot declare with certainty the outcomes of events that depend on free human choices. And yet the biblical text presents God's predictive ability as absolute and comprehensive — "the end from the beginning" — not merely "the parts I've decided to control from the beginning."²⁰

How do open theists respond to Isaiah 46:9–10? Boyd argues that the passage is about God's own intentions and purposes, not about exhaustive knowledge of the future. He writes that God "foreknows that certain things are going to take place because he knows his own purpose and intention to bring these events about."²¹ In other words, Boyd reads "declaring the end from the beginning" as meaning "declaring what I have decided to do" — not "declaring what will happen because I know it all."

But this interpretation is too narrow. As Luis Scott rightly observes, the text says God "declares the end from the beginning" and "from ancient times things not yet done." The word used is "declaring" — making known — not "decreeing" or "causing." Isaiah is making a statement about God's knowledge, not merely about His intentions.²² And the context makes this clear: God is contrasting Himself with the idols, and the contrast is specifically about knowledge. The idols cannot tell the future; God can. If all God can tell is what He Himself plans to do — and not what free creatures will do — then His advantage over the idols is significantly diminished. Any sufficiently powerful being could tell you what it plans to do. The remarkable thing about the God of Israel is that He knows everything that will happen — including events that depend on human choices.

Furthermore, the broader context of Isaiah 46 involves God's promise to sustain Israel through future events that will inevitably involve complex human decisions. God promises to "carry" Israel "to old age" (Isa. 46:3–4) and to bring about salvation through Zion (Isa. 46:12–13). These promises cannot be kept if God does not know how human beings will freely act in the centuries to come. If God cannot foresee the decisions of kings, armies, prophets, and ordinary people — all of whom exercise free will — then He cannot guarantee these outcomes. As Scott argues, God's purpose within this passage is grounded in His promise to sustain Israel, and that promise presupposes foreknowledge of the human events that will unfold along the way.²³

The Specificity of Biblical Prophecy

Beyond Isaiah 46, the sheer specificity of biblical prophecy poses an enormous challenge to open theism. Consider just a few examples. The prophet Daniel predicted the rise and fall of specific empires — Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome — centuries before they appeared, in a specific sequence, with specific characteristics (Dan. 2, 7). These predictions involved not just God's own actions but the free decisions of countless human beings — kings, generals, politicians, and ordinary people whose choices shaped the course of empires. If God did not know how these human beings would freely choose, how could He predict the rise of entire kingdoms "with all the political, sociological, and historical consequences" that entailed?²⁴

Or consider Micah's prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), fulfilled when Caesar Augustus issued a decree requiring Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem for a census (Luke 2:1–7). This fulfillment depended on a chain of free human decisions: Augustus's decision to order the census, the timing of his decree, Joseph's decision to comply, and countless other contingent human events. If God did not know these future free choices, how could He guarantee that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth?

Or consider Jesus's prediction of Peter's denial. Jesus told Peter, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times" (Matt. 26:34, ESV). This prediction is remarkably specific. It specifies the number of denials (three), the timeframe (before the rooster crows), and the person (Peter). Boyd argues that Jesus made this prediction based solely on His knowledge of Peter's character — specifically, a "predictable aspect of Peter's character" that made denial likely under pressure.²⁵

But this explanation is wildly inadequate. As Scott carefully demonstrates, the fulfillment of this prophecy depended on an extraordinary convergence of contingent circumstances, almost none of which had anything to do with Peter's character.²⁶ It required that Peter would follow Jesus to the courtyard of the high priest despite the danger. It required that specific individuals — a servant girl, bystanders, and a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off (John 18:26) — would recognize Peter and confront him. It required that each confrontation would happen in the right sequence and at the right time. It required that Peter would deny Jesus exactly three times — not twice, not four times — and that all three denials would occur before the rooster crowed. None of these details were predictable from Peter's character alone. They depended on the free decisions and chance encounters of multiple people, none of whom knew they were playing a role in the fulfillment of prophecy.

Craig makes a similar point. He argues that trying to explain biblical prophecies as mere inferences from present circumstances "denudes them of any theological significance." The writers of Scripture clearly understood prophecy not as God's educated guesswork but as a demonstration of His infinite knowledge.²⁷ The New Testament introduces a whole family of words connected to God's knowledge of the future — proginōskō (προγινώσκω, to foreknow), prognōsis (πρόγνωσις, foreknowledge), prooraō (προοράω, to foresee), proorizō (προορίζω, to foreordain) — and Craig rightly observes that the claim that biblical omniscience does not include knowledge of the future seems difficult to sustain in light of this evidence.²⁸

A full exegetical treatment of the prophetic evidence for divine foreknowledge is developed in Chapter 20. Here, it is enough to note that the specificity and scope of biblical prophecy — involving not just God's own actions but the free decisions of countless human beings across centuries — constitutes powerful evidence against the open theist denial of exhaustive foreknowledge. If God does not know the future free choices of creatures, the prophetic pattern that runs through the entire Bible becomes inexplicable.

(b) The Theological Argument: Divine Temporality Does Not Require an Open Future

The second problem with open theism's denial of foreknowledge is that it rests on a faulty assumption. Open theists assume that if God is temporal — if He exists in time and experiences genuine sequence — then He cannot know the future, because the future has not yet happened. This seems like a straightforward logical deduction: temporal beings can only know what exists, the future does not yet exist, therefore temporal beings cannot know the future.

But this argument only works if we assume that God's temporal experience is identical to ours — that God is "locked into" the present moment just as we are, unable to access anything beyond the current "now." And that assumption is precisely what the position defended in this book denies.

I have argued (in Chapter 7, and more fully in Chapter 25) that God's temporal experience transcends creaturely temporal limitations. God is genuinely temporal — He experiences real sequence and succession. But He is not trapped in the present the way we are. He has what I call "transcendent temporal access" — the ability to see, know, and interact with all moments of created time, past, present, and future. God is in time, but He is not limited to experiencing only the present moment and then waiting for the future to arrive. He can access the future because He transcends the creaturely limitation of being locked into the "now."

Think of it this way. We human beings experience time like passengers on a train. We can see the landscape immediately around us (the present), we can remember the landscape we have already passed (the past), but we cannot see the landscape that lies ahead around the bend (the future). We are locked into our position on the train. God, on this model, is more like someone who is on the train — genuinely experiencing the journey, feeling the motion, living through the sequence — but who also has access to a map that shows the entire route, including everything ahead. He knows what is around every bend, not because He caused the landscape to be there, but because He can see it. His knowledge of the future does not make Him timeless any more than having a map makes the train stop moving.

The open theist error is to assume that temporality necessarily entails epistemic limitation — that being in time automatically means you can only know the present. But why should we accept that assumption? It is an inference from creaturely experience, not a logical necessity. We creatures are locked into the present because of our finite nature. But God is not a creature. His temporality is qualitatively different from ours. He experiences genuine sequence, but He is not bound by the same limitations that restrict our temporal access. To assume that God must be limited in exactly the same way we are is to commit what we might call the "anthropomorphic fallacy in reverse" — projecting creaturely limitations onto God.²⁹

Mullins provides helpful categories for understanding the different ways the future might be "open" or "settled." He distinguishes five dimensions: the future can be ontically open (it does not yet exist), causally open (it is not determined by prior causes), alethically open (propositions about it have no determinate truth value), epistemically open (God does not know it), and providentially open (God has not settled it).³⁰ Open theists affirm all five. But these dimensions are logically separable. One can hold that the future is ontically and causally open — that it does not yet exist as a concrete reality and that it is not causally determined — while also holding that it is epistemically and alethically settled — that propositions about it are determinately true or false, and that God knows their truth values. This is precisely the position that simple foreknowledge with transcendent access occupies. The future is genuinely open from the creature's perspective (we do not know what will happen, and our choices are not determined), but it is epistemically settled from God's perspective (God knows what will happen, not because He causes it, but because He can see it).

The full philosophical development of this model — including the grounding objection, the relationship between foreknowledge and freedom, and the mechanics of transcendent temporal access — is developed in Chapter 25. Here, the essential point is simple: open theism's move from "God is temporal" to "God cannot know the future" involves an unwarranted logical leap. There is no reason why a temporal God with transcendent capacities cannot have exhaustive knowledge of the future. And the biblical evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that He does.

Foreknowledge Is Not Causation

One of the most persistent arguments in the open theist arsenal is the claim that exhaustive foreknowledge is incompatible with genuine human freedom. If God already knows what I will do tomorrow, then it is already settled what I will do tomorrow. And if it is already settled, then I am not really free — I could not do otherwise. This argument goes all the way back to the ancient world. Cicero argued that if all things happen by fate and are foreknown, then human freedom is an illusion.³¹

But this argument confuses two very different things: knowing that something will happen and causing it to happen. These are not the same. Knowledge is not causation. Foreknowledge is not determination.

Let me use a simple illustration. Imagine I am standing on the balcony of a tall building, looking down at a street intersection. I can see two cars approaching the intersection from different directions, both running red lights. From my vantage point, I can see that they are about to collide. I know that a collision is about to happen. But my knowledge does not cause the collision. The drivers are making their own free (if reckless) choices. My knowledge is the result of my vantage point — I can see what is about to happen. But my seeing it does not make it happen.

God's foreknowledge works in a similar way — though His "vantage point" is infinitely greater than mine. God can see future events — including future free choices — not because He causes them, but because He has access to all of time through His transcendent temporal capacities. He knows what Peter will freely choose to do in the courtyard, not because He is making Peter deny Him, but because He can see what Peter will freely choose. The knowledge follows from the seeing, and the seeing does not interfere with the freedom of the choice.

Open theists sometimes object: "But if God already knows what I will do, then it is already fixed, and I cannot do otherwise." This objection trades on an ambiguity in the word "fixed." In one sense, yes — if God knows I will choose A, then I will in fact choose A. The future is epistemically settled. But in another, much more important sense, the choice is not "fixed" at all — it is not caused or determined by anything outside my own free will. I choose A freely, and God's knowledge reflects my free choice. The "fixity" is in God's knowledge, not in any causal chain that removes my freedom. Craig puts it this way: God's foreknowledge of an event does not mean God caused or determined that event.³²

This point is crucial for our position. We affirm three things that open theists believe are incompatible: (1) God is genuinely temporal, (2) God has exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of all future events including free choices, and (3) human beings have genuine libertarian free will. We hold that this triad is not only logically consistent but biblically necessary. God knows the future without causing it. He sees it without determining it. His foreknowledge is the result of His transcendent temporal access, not the result of causal determination. And this preserves genuine human freedom while also preserving the full scope of biblical prophecy and divine providence.

The Dangers of Denying Foreknowledge

I have been trying to be fair and generous with open theism, and I hope the reader has felt that. But now I need to be equally honest about what I see as the serious dangers of denying God's exhaustive foreknowledge. These dangers are not peripheral. They strike at the heart of the Christian faith.

1. It Undermines Confidence in Biblical Prophecy

If God does not know the future free choices of creatures, then the remarkable specificity of biblical prophecy becomes either inexplicable or illusory. How could God predict the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem, the betrayal by Judas for thirty pieces of silver, the manner of Jesus's death by crucifixion, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, or the rise and fall of specific empires — all of which depended on free human decisions — if He did not know those decisions in advance? Open theists attempt various explanations: God was predicting what He Himself intended to bring about, or He was making probabilistic inferences based on present circumstances, or He was exercising sovereign control over specific events while leaving others open. But none of these explanations adequately account for the scope and detail of biblical prophecy. As Craig argues, reducing prophecy to God's educated guesswork strips it of its theological significance.³³

Pinnock himself made the startling admission that "prophecies often go unfulfilled."³⁴ Scott rightly points out that this statement, whatever Pinnock's intention, raises serious questions about biblical inerrancy and the reliability of God's word. If God's prophetic declarations can fail — if there is a real chance that what God has announced will not come to pass — then the prophetic pattern that runs through the entire Bible is compromised. Jesus said, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), but on the open theist model, Scripture's prophetic declarations could, in principle, turn out to be wrong.³⁵

2. It Undermines Providential Control of History

If God does not know the future free choices of creatures, then His ability to guide history toward its appointed goal is significantly diminished. The God of open theism is incomparably wise and resourceful — open theists are quick to emphasize this — but He is navigating the future without a map. He can respond to whatever happens with infinite creativity, but He cannot guarantee specific outcomes in advance. And yet the Bible presents God as One who does guarantee outcomes. He promises to bring Israel through exile and back to the land. He promises that the Messiah will come. He promises that Christ will return and that all things will be made new. These promises presuppose not just good intentions but actual knowledge of how the future will unfold — including the free decisions of countless human beings along the way.

As Mullins discusses, critics of open theism like T. J. Mawson have pressed the "divine bodgery" objection — the worry that a God who does not know the future might make mistakes, have His plans go wrong, or need to "put things right" after a failure.³⁶ Open theists respond that God is infinitely resourceful and can use contingency plans to work through any setback. Gregory Boyd, for instance, argues that God has elaborate contingency plans prepared for every possible outcome.³⁷ But this response, while creative, only makes God a brilliantly adaptive problem-solver — not the sovereign Lord of history who declares the end from the beginning. There is an enormous difference between a God who knows exactly where history is going and works infallibly to bring it there, and a God who is doing His best to manage an unpredictable situation. I believe the God of the Bible is the former, not the latter.

3. It Undermines Pastoral Assurance

This may be the most practically devastating danger of open theism. Can we really trust God with our future if He does not know what it holds? When a mother prays for her child's safety, can she rest in the assurance that God knows what lies ahead — or must she settle for the comfort that God will do His best to respond to whatever happens? When a believer faces suffering, can they trust that God has a plan that will bring good out of evil — or must they accept that God is improvising as He goes?

The Apostle Paul writes, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28, ESV). This promise presupposes that God knows "all things" — including the future events that He is working together for good. If God does not know what will happen tomorrow, then His ability to work all things together for good is limited to His ability to react well to whatever occurs. That is a very different kind of assurance than what Paul offers.

Similarly, Paul's grand declaration in Ephesians 1:11 that God "works all things according to the counsel of his will" presupposes comprehensive knowledge of what "all things" are. A God who does not know the future cannot be said to work all things according to His counsel, because He does not yet know what all things will be.

I do not say this to be unkind to open theists. Many open theists find great comfort in the idea of a God who genuinely responds to their prayers in real time and who walks with them through an uncertain future. And I share the conviction that God is genuinely responsive. But I believe the pastoral assurance offered by exhaustive foreknowledge is incomparably greater: God not only walks with us, but He has already seen the end of the road, and He assures us that it leads to glory.

Consider what happens at a funeral. When a pastor stands before a grieving family and says, "God knows exactly what He is doing. He saw this day before the foundation of the world, and He has a plan that turns even this sorrow into eternal joy," that is a statement of extraordinary comfort. It rests on the conviction that God is not merely reacting to tragedy with wisdom and compassion — though He certainly does that — but that He has already woven this moment into a larger tapestry of redemptive purpose that He has seen from beginning to end. Remove foreknowledge from the equation, and the comfort becomes something significantly thinner: "God is doing His best to bring good out of this situation, and He is infinitely resourceful, but He did not see this coming any more than you did." I do not think most grieving believers would find the second statement as comforting as the first. The assurance of the Bible is not merely that God is wise enough to improvise — it is that God has "made known to us the mystery of his will" (Eph. 1:9) and that He "works all things according to the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1:11) because He already knows what all things are.

Engaging Open Theist Arguments

The Argument from Anthropomorphic Passages

Open theists appeal to a number of biblical passages that seem to portray God as lacking knowledge of the future. For instance, Genesis 22:12 — where God says to Abraham, "Now I know that you fear God" — seems to suggest that God learned something He did not previously know. Similarly, passages where God "tests" His people (Deut. 8:2) or "regrets" His decisions (Gen. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:11) seem to portray a God who is surprised by outcomes and responds to new information.

Craig addresses these passages in his treatment of foreknowledge. He argues that the narratives of God's acts in Scripture are filled with anthropomorphisms — human-like descriptions that are not intended to be taken with wooden literalness. God is described as having eyes, hands, and nostrils, as "seeing" the distress of His people and "hearing" their prayers. These are metaphors, since God does not possess literal bodily parts. In the same way, passages that seem to portray God as ignorant or inquiring may be narrative conventions characteristic of the genre — vivid, anthropomorphic storytelling that communicates genuine truths about God's relational engagement without entailing that God literally lacks knowledge.³⁸

Now, I want to be careful here. I have criticized the classical tradition for dismissing too much of the biblical language about God as "mere anthropomorphism." I have argued (especially in relation to divine emotion) that we should take the relational, responsive language of Scripture seriously rather than explaining it all away. But there is an important difference between emotional responsiveness and epistemic limitation. When Scripture says God "grieves" (Gen. 6:6), I believe this reflects genuine emotional reality in God. But when Scripture says "Now I know" (Gen. 22:12), the context strongly suggests that God is acknowledging a relational milestone — Abraham has demonstrated his faith through action — rather than reporting the acquisition of new information. The "now I know" is addressed to Abraham, not to a heavenly audience. It is a relational declaration, not an epistemic confession.³⁹

And this distinction is warranted by the broader biblical testimony. The same Scriptures that portray God as "testing" Abraham also declare that God "knows the end from the beginning" (Isa. 46:10) and that God's knowledge encompasses "all things" (1 John 3:20). Responsible interpretation requires reading the localized narrative passages in light of the Bible's explicit, declarative statements about God's knowledge — not the other way around. Open theists accuse classical theists of using the systematic passages to override the narrative passages. But the reverse error — using narrative anthropomorphisms to override explicit declarations of omniscience — is just as problematic.

The Argument from Passages Where God "Relents"

Open theists also point to passages where God changes His announced plans in response to human action. Jonah 3:10 says God "relented of the disaster that he had said he would do" to Nineveh. Exodus 32:14 says the LORD "relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people" after Moses's intercession. If God already knew that Nineveh would repent, why did He announce judgment? And if He already knew Moses would intercede, why did He threaten disaster?

The most natural explanation, as Craig suggests, is that these prophetic announcements contain an implicit condition: "This will happen unless you repent" or "This will happen all things remaining the same." The prophets themselves seem to have understood this. Jeremiah 18:7–10 makes the principle explicit: God announces judgment against a nation, and "if that nation... turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it" (Jer. 18:8, ESV). The prophetic announcements are not simple predictions of the future; they are conditional warnings designed to provoke repentance.⁴⁰ God knows all along how the people will respond — including whether they will repent — but He announces the warning precisely because He knows it will lead to repentance. The "relenting" is real — it describes a genuine change in God's disposition toward the repentant people — but it is not a case of God being surprised by an unexpected outcome. The detailed exegesis of these nacham (נָחַם) passages — where God "relents" or "is grieved" — is developed in Chapter 18.

The Argument from Libertarian Freedom

Hasker presents perhaps the most philosophically rigorous version of the open theist argument against foreknowledge. In God, Time, and Knowledge, he contends that divine foreknowledge is logically incompatible with libertarian free will. If God infallibly knows at time T1 what I will do at time T2, then at T2 I cannot do otherwise — because if I did otherwise, God's knowledge at T1 would have been wrong, and God cannot be wrong. Therefore, if God has infallible foreknowledge of my actions, I could not have done otherwise, and my actions are not free in the libertarian sense.⁴¹

This is a sophisticated argument, and it deserves a careful response. The full philosophical treatment will come in Chapter 25 and Chapter 32. But here, in brief, the response is that the argument confuses the necessity of the consequence with the necessity of the consequent. It is necessarily true that if God knows I will do X, then I will do X (necessity of the consequence). But it does not follow that I must do X — that X happens necessarily (necessity of the consequent). The conditional connection between God's knowledge and my action is necessary, but the action itself remains contingent. God knows what I will freely choose; His knowing it does not make the choice necessary.⁴²

An analogy may help. If a time traveler goes to the future and sees me ordering coffee at a café next Tuesday, and then returns to the present knowing what I will do, my action is still free. The time traveler's knowledge does not cause or determine my choice. He simply saw what I will freely do. In a similar way, God's transcendent temporal access allows Him to see what free creatures will do — not by causing or determining their actions, but by having access to the future moments in which they freely act.

Near-death experience research offers an intriguing analogy here as well. As we will discuss in Chapter 33, many people who have had near-death experiences report a "life review" in which they see and re-experience their entire lives — past, present, and sometimes even future events — in a mode of consciousness that transcends ordinary clock-time. They report seeing events simultaneously and sequentially, compressed and expanded. If human beings can occasionally and briefly experience time in this transcendent way, it is not unreasonable to think that God — who created time itself — experiences time in an infinitely more expansive manner. His temporal experience is not identical to ours. He sees what we cannot see, not because He determines our choices, but because His temporal vantage point encompasses all of time.

It is important to be clear about what this does and does not mean. It does not mean that the future is already "out there" in a fully realized block-universe sense (the B-theory). I lean toward the A-theory of time, which holds that the present is objectively real, the past is fixed, and the future is not yet actual from the creature's perspective. But God's unique nature allows Him to access what is not yet actual for us. This is a divine capacity that has no exact creaturely parallel, though the NDE life review provides a suggestive analogy. The future is genuinely open from our perspective — we do not know what will happen, and our choices are genuinely free. But God, from His transcendent temporal vantage point, can see what those free choices will be.

Engaging Luis Scott's The God of Time

Luis Scott's The God of Time provides an interesting case study for our discussion. Scott defends God's foreknowledge against open theism while also engaging with the temporality question. His treatment of the open theist hermeneutical framework is particularly useful.

Scott identifies what he calls the "hermeneutical parameters" of open theism — the interpretive presuppositions that shape how open theists read Scripture. These include the assumption that foreknowledge is incompatible with free will, that God's knowledge must be tied to the present, and that a settled future implies determinism.⁴³ Scott argues that these presuppositions function as a kind of theological straitjacket, predetermining the conclusions that open theists reach before they even begin interpreting specific texts.

Scott's analysis of open theism's reaction against determinism is especially perceptive. He points out that open theists tend to conflate two very different things: foreknowledge and determinism. Because Calvinists affirm both foreknowledge and determinism, open theists sometimes treat the two as if they were the same thing — as if affirming foreknowledge automatically commits you to a deterministic view of human freedom. This is what Scott calls the "deterministic straw man." You can affirm that God knows the future without affirming that God causes everything that happens. Knowledge and causation are different categories.⁴⁴

Scott also makes the important observation that if God does not know the future, then His declaration that He "makes the future known" (Isa. 46:10) would make God, in effect, a deceiver — claiming an ability He does not possess. If the future cannot be known, then it cannot be revealed. And if it cannot be revealed, then God's prophetic declarations are not genuine revelations but educated guesses dressed up as certainty. This, Scott argues, actually undermines the very character of God — His truthfulness and reliability.⁴⁵

I find Scott's critique of open theism's handling of Peter's denial especially compelling. He demonstrates in careful detail that Jesus's prediction of Peter's three denials before the rooster crowed required foreknowledge of an extraordinary number of contingent circumstances — not just Peter's character, but the identity and actions of the specific questioners, the timing of their questions, Peter's specific reactions, and the crowing of the rooster at a particular moment. The God of open theism, who by definition cannot know future free human choices, could not have predicted this event with the specificity described in the Gospels without taking what Scott calls "a gigantic risk that could have turned Jesus into a liar just before his crucifixion."⁴⁶

While I find much of Scott's analysis useful and share his commitment to divine foreknowledge, I should note that his broader theological framework includes some elements of open theism that I do not share. His understanding of God's relationship to time, while defending foreknowledge, does not always clearly distinguish between divine temporality and creaturely temporality in the way that our model of "transcendent temporal access" does. The reader should engage Scott's arguments on foreknowledge with appreciation while remaining aware of the broader theological context of his work.⁴⁷

Distinguishing Our Position from Open Theism

Let me now state as clearly as I can how the position defended in this book differs from open theism. This is important because, as I noted at the beginning of this chapter, many people assume that affirming divine temporality means becoming an open theist. It does not.

R. T. Mullins helpfully distinguishes between "neoclassical theism" and open theism. Neoclassical theism rejects one or more of the classical divine attributes — timelessness, immutability, simplicity, and impassibility — while retaining God's exhaustive foreknowledge of the future. The affirmation of exhaustive divine foreknowledge is precisely what distinguishes neoclassical theism from open theism.⁴⁸ The position I am defending in this book falls squarely within the neoclassical camp. I reject divine timelessness, strict immutability, strict simplicity, and strict impassibility. But I firmly affirm God's exhaustive, definite foreknowledge.

Mullins identifies several thinkers who occupy this neoclassical space — including William Lane Craig, Thomas Morris, John Feinberg, Jonathan Kvanvig, and John Peckham. These thinkers reject the four classical attributes, affirm God's creational freedom, affirm creation ex nihilo, and affirm God's definite exhaustive foreknowledge.⁴⁹ They demonstrate that a robust, orthodox, evangelical theology of God is fully compatible with divine temporality. You do not need to choose between classical timelessness and open theism. There is a wide and well-populated middle ground.

The neoclassical theist, as Mullins explains, says that God is an eternal being who exists without beginning and without end. He is temporal in that He experiences succession — one moment after another, one thought or action before the next. But He is not limited by the creaturely experience of time that confines us to the present moment. He possesses His full essential nature — omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and freedom — without the restrictions that classical theism imposes through timelessness and strict immutability.⁵⁰

The crucial difference between our position and open theism can be summarized in a single sentence: we agree with open theists that God is temporal, relational, responsive, and genuinely affected by what creatures do — but we insist, on biblical and philosophical grounds, that God also has exhaustive knowledge of the future. The open theists believe you cannot have both. We believe you can — and must.

How does God get this foreknowledge? Different neoclassical theists give different answers. Some adopt Molinism — the view that God has "middle knowledge" of what every creature would freely do in any possible circumstance.⁵¹ Others adopt theological determinism. Still others, like the present author, defend simple foreknowledge — God knows the future not through counterfactual reasoning (Molinism) or through causal determination (Calvinism), but through His unique capacity to access all of time directly. We reject Molinism because we find the concept of "middle knowledge" philosophically problematic (as both open theists and theological determinists agree). We reject theological determinism because it compromises genuine human freedom. We affirm simple foreknowledge with transcendent access: God sees the future because He can see the future — not because He determines it or infers it from counterfactuals, but because His transcendent temporal nature gives Him direct epistemic access to all moments of time. The full development of this model appears in Chapter 25.

A Word to Open Theists

Before we close this chapter, I want to address open theists directly — with respect, with honesty, and with pastoral concern.

I understand why you find open theism attractive. You care about the genuineness of God's love. You care about the reality of human freedom. You are troubled by theological systems — especially Calvinism — that seem to make God the author of evil by determining everything that happens. You want a God who really listens, really cares, and really responds. I share all of these concerns. Deeply.

But I believe you have solved the wrong problem. The problem of determinism does not require the denial of foreknowledge. Foreknowledge and determinism are not the same thing. You can have a God who knows everything that will happen without having a God who causes everything that happens. The link between knowing and causing is precisely what needs to be broken — and it can be broken, as we have shown, by distinguishing between the epistemic settledness of the future (God knows it) and the causal openness of the future (creatures freely determine it).

I am also concerned that open theism's denial of foreknowledge, however well-intentioned, creates new problems that are more serious than the ones it solves. If God does not know the future, then His promises become contingent, His prophecies become risky gambles, and His providential guidance of history becomes reactive improvisation rather than purposeful direction. These are not minor theological adjustments. They strike at the foundation of Christian confidence — the assurance that God knows the end from the beginning and that nothing can thwart His purposes.

Sanders himself acknowledged that the rejection of divine timelessness and the affirmation of what he called "dynamic omniscience" are the most controversial elements of the open theist proposal.⁵² I think he was right about that. And I think the controversy is justified — not because temporal theism is problematic (it is not), but because the denial of foreknowledge raises questions that open theists have not adequately answered.

Boyd makes two statements that, taken together, reveal the internal tension in open theism. On one hand, he insists that "the future does not exist and cannot be known." On the other hand, he affirms that "God can predestine and foreknow whatever he wants to about the future."⁵³ But these two claims sit uneasily together. If the future does not exist and cannot be known, how can God "foreknow whatever he wants to"? Presumably, only by determining it — by deciding to bring it about unilaterally. But then the parts of the future that God foreknows are the parts He has determined, which undermines the libertarian freedom that open theism prizes. Open theists are caught in what Scott calls a "Pandora's box" — their attempt to protect human freedom by limiting divine knowledge creates new tensions that are at least as difficult as the ones they were trying to resolve.⁵⁴

Conclusion: A Bridge Too Far

Open theism is not our enemy. In many ways, open theists are our allies — fellow travelers on the road away from the static, distant, emotionless deity of strict classical theism and toward the living, active, responsive, temporal God of Scripture. They have made important contributions to the recovery of a genuinely biblical portrait of God. They have rightly emphasized God's temporality, His relational nature, His genuine emotional engagement with the world, and His real-time interaction with His creatures. On all of these points, I stand with them.

But on the critical question of divine foreknowledge, open theism takes a step that the biblical evidence does not support and that sound theology does not require. The denial of exhaustive foreknowledge is a bridge too far — an overcorrection that creates more problems than it solves. We do not need to deny God's knowledge of the future in order to affirm His temporality, His responsiveness, or His genuine relational engagement with the world. The model of dynamic divine temporality with transcendent access preserves everything that is good and true in the open theist vision — a temporal, responsive, relational God — while also preserving what open theism sacrifices: a God who knows the end from the beginning, whose counsel shall stand, and who works all things according to the purpose of His will.

In Chapter 10, we will turn to another view that affirms divine temporality but goes even further than open theism in the wrong direction: process theology. If open theism is a bridge too far, process theology is a different continent altogether. After that, in Part III, we will trace the historical development of this debate from the ancient Greeks to the present day. And later, in Chapter 32, we will return to the open theist arguments with a full philosophical refutation, demonstrating in detail why divine temporality does not require — and should not include — an open future.

For now, the essential conclusion is clear. You do not have to choose between a timeless God who cannot change and an open God who cannot see. There is a better way: a God who is genuinely in time, genuinely responsive, genuinely relational — and who also knows the end from the beginning. That is the God of the Bible. And that is the God we are seeking to understand in this book.