Open Theism: An Interview with Dr. Ronald Nash
Michael
Collender: Representing the traditional Christian view of God we have
with us Dr. Ronald Nash, professor of philosophy and theology at Reformed
Theological seminary. Author and co-author of over 30 books and numerous
journal articles, Dr. Nash has sought to apply Christian theology as the
foundation of his study in both history and philosophy. Within this great
body of work he has also written on open theism and its consequences on our
view of history, theology, and ultimately God Himself. Dr. Nash, thank you
for joining us. Dr. Ronald Nash: Glad to talk.
MC: First off, what is your assessment of open theism?
RN: Well, as a part of my answer to that general question, let me advise your listeners about what I always tell students is an important process of coming to grips with any difficult subject and that is, to read the best material available on the subject. Fortunately there have just been three or four very good books published on the subject of open theism. One of them just reached my desk yesterday as a matter of fact. They all ought to be available from amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com and it just makes sense to me that anyone who really is serious about this stuff ought to get some of these books and read them. Let me quickly tick off those titles and the authors. The first, and I think the best of these books is titled God's Lesser Glory and the author is Bruce Ware. He happens to be a colleague of mine, he teaches at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville where I also teach. The second book is written by another colleague of mine who teaches at Reformed Seminary in Florida, which is where I teach as well, that book is called No Other God and the author is John Frame. There's another book that's a compilation of essays edited by Doug Wilson, it's title is Bound Only Once. And the fourth book is written by one of my favorite authors, the title is Life's Ultimate Questions and some of the points that I'll make today are going to appear in that book. Now, one of my major problems with open theism is that I think the proponents of this view fail to track out the logical consequences of their beliefs. Now they are hardly alone in this. This is a rather common practice. Now what I mean by tracing out the logical complications is looking at your beliefs and then asking if that is true, then what else follows logically from it? Now let me show you how that works. Open theists proclaim that God cannot know future contingent events. That is the fancy way of referring to events in the future, which result from human beings making free choices. Now that claim sounds innocent enough, but let me show you some of the consequences of that. Think back to the moment when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross. Incidentally, let me tell you what John Sanders, one open theist, says about the cross. He says that God the Father had no knowledge that His Son would end up being crucified. And at that particular moment, when God the Father looks down from heaven and sees His Son hanging on the cross, John Sanders put it in language somewhat like this, "Oops, I guess we have to switch to plan B." Because, you see, to these open theists, God is completely surprised by any large number of events that happened in the world. But this poor, impotent deity, who is described by the open theists, this finite God of open theism, had no way of knowing at the time that Jesus was dying if even one human being would accept His Son as Savior. This poor, impotent deity faced the possibility that the suffering of His Son on the cross would bring about the salvation of no one. Another open theist, who happens to be a friend of mine, Bill Hasker, teaches at a college in Indiana, says that the very fact that there is a church of God is a matter of God's dumb blind luck because God had no way of controlling whatever outcome might follow the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross. Now I believe all of these consequences are absurd, but I believe that they all follow logically from the presuppositions of open theists, and they constitute at least one major reason why Christians should be looking elsewhere than open theism for the answers of their world view to questions like the ones we've been considering on this tape.
MC: Thank you Dr. Nash. Some open theists accuse historic Christianity of borrowing its view of God from the Greeks. And in your book The Gospel and the Greeks you address the connection between Greek culture and the Christian religion. Are they right? Did Christianity borrow its view of God from the Greeks?
RN: What really troubles me about this allegation, that orthodox theology has been strongly influenced by Greek thought, is that in this particular case it is open theism that manifests the influence of Greek thinking. The idea of a finite God; that is the territory of Plato and Aristotle. If you're looking at least at the idea that a supreme being cannot know the future, that comes directly from Aristotle. So far as I know that particular idea was originated by Aristotle in his book on interpretation. Aristotle asked the question "Will there be a sea-fight tomorrow?" One navy is going to attack another navy and which fleet will win?) And Aristotle says there is no way for any being to know that because no proposition about the future can be true. Therefore if the proposition "The Greek navy will win the battle tomorrow" is offered by someone and it's a proposition about the future, that proposition cannot be true, that proposition cannot be false until tomorrow. Therefore no one can know it. And that constitutes one of the major reasons why open theists like Clark Pinnock and John Sanders and a lot of these other fellows say that poor God can't know the future. Well, I'm sorry; if God can't know the future, then God cannot predict the future. Now I'm confident that a large number of your listeners are immediately thinking of all kinds of prophecies in the Old Testament and New Testament in which God Almighty predicts precisely what will happen in the future, and that's something that can't be possible in a universe in which God cannot know future, free human actions. So if we ask the question "will the real Greek please stand up?" I think it would be the Open Theists that have to rise to their feet on this issues.
MC: Now stepping from philosophy to the way that we handle Scripture, open theists claim their God is very much the God of the Bible and they sight passages from Scripture that teach that God can change His mind. Passages like 1 Samuel 15:35, "And the LORD regretted (literally repented) that He had made Saul king over Israel". It seems this passage and others, like Genesis 5 and 6 teach that God can make choices that He regrets; that He can be surprised. Now, how can historic Christian orthodoxy deal with passages like this?
RN: There's no need for a new answer. The church, ever since the Reformation and probably some of the predecessors of the Reformation, clearly recognized that when human beings use language about God there will be times when they cannot use language in a literal way. For example, when Jesus said "This is My body", He did not mean that text to be interpreted in a straightforward or literal way. Likewise when He said "This is My blood" or "I am the door". What we call non-literal or anthropomorphic (human-like) language attributed to God appears throughout the Bible. And it creates far fewer problems with respect to passages like those you sighted when we recognized that they are not to be taken in a straightforward way. In fact, what's interesting is that many of the passages cited by open theists as support for their position turn out to be passages where the straightforward interpretation of the passage leads to a disaster. Let me give you a couple of examples, and these examples appear in their writings.
In Genesis 22:12, as we know, God told Abraham to take his son Isaac up to the top of the mount and there offer him as a sacrifice. And God says "Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld from me your son, your only. . ." Surprise! Here is a classic case where open theists say "God learned something new. God is surprised." But notice the implications here. This is what open theists can't trace out. Remember, open theists say God can't know the future, but they insist, as they had better, that God can know both the past and the present. But the open theists' straightforward reading of Genesis 22:12 actually implies that poor God couldn't know the present. He did not know at that moment that Abraham really trusted Him. God's knowledge was lacking not only with respect to the future, it was lacking with respect to the present. And moreover, it was also lacking with respect to the past. Now clearly, when our God can't know the past and the present, He really is a finite deity, and that is an implication of their position.
Let me give you one more text here. Consider Genesis 3:9 where God is seeking Adam in the garden and the verse reads "Then the LORD called to the man and said to him, 'Where art thou?'." Now, even when I was a 12 year old kid in Sunday school, I knew that was not literal language. But open theists have to interpret that as literal language because they want to attack the full compliment of God's knowledge. But the problem again here is that if you take that passage literally, God didn't know where Adam was at that particular moment in God's present. In fact, God didn't even know His geography, where Adam was in the garden. So these people are really playing games, I suggest. They condemn us for not interpreting passages straightforwardly, when they themselves can't do the same thing. Now listen; it is wrong to interpret any of these anthropomorphic texts to say that God learns something new from changed situations. It is wrong to interpret them to say that God changed His mind. Instead of understanding them in that way, we should recognize that what may seem to be changes of mind may actually be just new stages in the working out of God's plan.
An example of this would be the offering of salvation to the Gentiles. Well, as part of God's original plan it represented a rather sharp break with what had preceded. Some other apparent changes of mind in the Bible are changes of orientation resulting from man's move into a different relationship with God. God didn't change when Adam sinned. Rather, man had moved into God's disfavor. This works the other way as well. Take the case of Ninevah. God said "Forty days and Ninevah will be destroyed unless they repent". Okay, Ninevah repented and it was spared. But it was man that had changed and not God that had changed. Now philosophers have a technical term for this; they call it a "Cambridge change." That is, it's a situation where we use the language of change but no real serious or essential change has taken place.
Now, if I have the time, let me address the passage in 1 Samuel. Actually, let me address two passage because they're both relevant to this. And if your people hear nothing else from me today other than the books they ought to read they ought to pay attention to the next three or four minutes. Let me quote Numbers 23:19; "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?" Now this is what people should notice; two serious errors are combined in that verse - changing one's mind, and lying. And here is the implication. If God can change His mind, then He should also be able lie. You can't separate those. Jump from Numbers 23:19 to 1 Samuel 15:29. It's the same kind of parallel that's set up, "He who is the glory if Israel does not lie or change His mind. For He is not a man that He should change His mind". What's interesting is that's the same text from which the earlier passage you quoted comes from. Now here is the interpretive principle that needs to be applied here. If God can really change, then God can also lie. You can't separate those. But if there is a literal, straightforward text in Scripture that tells us that God can't do one of those things, then it follows that He cannot do the other thing either. And Hebrews 6 makes it very clear in straightforward, literal, non-anthropomorphic language that God cannot lie. So if it is impossible for God to lie, as Scripture tell us it is, then it must also be impossible for God to change His mind. And therefore, these texts that appear to tell us that God can change His mind, are anthropomorphic texts which should not be taken in a straightforward way.
MC: Thank you Dr. Nash. I have a few final questions for you. Now Greg Boyd, in his book God of the Possible writes, "Next to the central doctrines of the Christian faith, the issue of whether the future is exhaustibly settled or partially open, is relatively unimportant. It is certainly not a doctrine that Christians should ever divide over." Now, Dr. Nash, is open theism merely an intra-church debate about the future, and thus, in the words of Dr. Boyd, relatively unimportant, or is more at stake?
RN: With all due respect to Dr. Boyd, this is a move that has been made by every heretic in the history of the church. When the Jehovah's witnesses or other Unitarians have said the deity of Christ is not something that we should fight about. Or the substitutionary atonement. This is a classic move. Now I'm not imputing heresy to my friends who are open theists in any kind of straightforward way, but once we know where the church has always stood on these issues, when someone comes along with what amounts to a new way of understanding these things and says "now this is nothing to really get excited about, don't split churches over this, don't leave my church" , then I'm sorry, this is a matter where we have to take a stand. The last group of people who's advice we follow on this matter are the people who are deviating and departing from the church's long-held position on this.
MC: What exactly is at stake in this issue?
RN: Good question. What is at stake is, number one, our understanding of God and the kind of God upon whom our faith is based. What's also at stake here is our firm belief, or what is the belief of people who are not open theists, that God is sovereign, and that God is in control of all of human history, and God will bring His will to pass. One of the points that I argue in my book Life's Ultimate Questions is that a God who cannot know the future cannot control the future. And thus, if we follow the open theist very far down his road, we end up with a God who cannot give us the confidence that we need to believe that His will will prevail in human history. We're dealing, frankly, as I sometimes say to audiences; when I understand with the God of open theism, I want to pray for that God because He needs help. Right now the world series starts this week. The God of open theism has no idea which team is going to win the world series. The God of open theism who's going to win the battle against terrorism. That is not my God. That is a different God. And it is not the God of the Christian worldview. The very integrity, the heart of our faith is at stake with this issue, and this is not a minor, trivial matter that says "well, you can continue to go to this church and worship this alternate God and so on".
MC: You said before that you didn't want to call this heresy. But is sounds like you're being very kind to your friends who would hold this position as well.
RN: There are two kinds of heresy. One kind of heresy is illustrated by a serious error called "Socinianism". And many of the beliefs of Socinianism are actually taught by these open theists. Their position is not new. The Socinians lived during the years of the Reformation and they denied God's knowledge of future contingent events, but they also then followed that belief down the road to other beliefs that were specifically heretical. So one kind of heresy is where you really are out to change the nature of the Christian faith in to a totally different religion. I'm not accusing open theists of that. But there is a second kind of heresy where, without knowing it, without thinking it, maybe because they're afraid to think through thing to their end, good people, honorable people, say things that entail conclusions that are utterly inconsistent with the historic Christian faith. And that's where I think the open theists are.
MC: What should we as a church do then?
RN: Well, in about a month the Evangelical Theological Society is going to meet in Colorado Springs and the members of the ETS are going to debate the question of whether people who believe this way are holding beliefs that are inconsistent with the doctrinal stance of the Evangelical Theological Society. And if their beliefs are inconsistent with the doctrinal stance of the Evangelical Theological Society, then they should leave. If the ETS does not reach the proper conclusion here, I think it's time for a whole lot of people to leave the ETS because it clearly will no longer stand for the theological foundation upon which it was based. If that means there is a battle within the church, well, that's hardly new. The reason the church got to this point is that when errors crept into the church over the centuries, brave and honorable people stood up and said "God help me, I can do no other", to quote Martin Luther there. Every time the church - Christians, leaders, thinkers - have failed to take a stand against error, one error multiplies into another. During the 18th century, people who claimed to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible in New England began to deny the Deity of Christ and they did so on the basis of a spurious of false interpretations of Scripture. That heresy was not rooted out, and before you knew it all of those congregational churches in New England that had failed to take a stand decades earlier were committed to a full blown Unitarian and Universalist position. You nip it in the bud and if you don't, then the errors that are implied in this position will eventually creep in and take over, and then we've lost a serious battle.
MC: Well Dr. Nash, thank you very much for joining us.
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